The Garden Guide

Agave Rescue!

I know I haven't been posting much lately.  Truth be told my writing and my flower gardening have both been suffering due to lack of time...I've been super busy turning five of our eight acres in an organic vegetable farm and setting up a CSA (community supported agriculture) program. 

But I have to tell about my new agaves!

I did a post last year about my Agave scabra that we found growing wild on our property and transplanted to the area we call "the desert". Now there are some new kids in town. 

I don't know what kind of Agave they are (feel free to help me out here), but I do know that someone ripped them out of the ground and dumped them on a nearby dirt road.  My husband (who as you've probably noticed brings me random presents from time to time) is the one who discovered them and brought them home to be nursed back to health.

They were in pretty bad shape, but we found them a nice spot for them to recover.

It looks like they wrapped a chain around these poor guys and literally ripped them out of the ground!

 

But in just a matter of weeks the battle wounds are fading and new leaves are preparing to unfurl!  Looks like they're gonna make it!

Going ALL Out!

 

I have a container filled with a red geranium, asparagus fern and Amaryllis.  The Amaryllis was given to me several years ago, and each Spring I usually get a single bloom on each one. 

Imagine my surprise when....

...there were two!

And they didn't stop there....

Now my husband has been walking by this container for years and the other day he paused beside it and asked, "when did we get this plant?"  I laughed and told him we'd had it for years, but he'd probably never noticed it before since it has never bloomed liked this. 

Yep, this year it went alllll out!

 

 

Pretty Prickly

I know that some people just love to grow Cacti. 

I know they come in many unusual shapes and sizes and have seen many striking cactus gardens.

I know that I'm not that much of a fan.

I have a couple of small cacti and that's about it for me.  But, in a way I can understand the fascination...it can be pretty amazing when they bloom.

Every spring this cactus sprouts big ugly gray growths amid its spines.

Which turn into these gorgeous flowers.  Can you believe how striking the colors are?  The petals which are so sheer and chiffon-like are such a contrast to the tough spiny body.

Hard to believe that something this gorgeous comes from something so plain.

Signs of the Time

We've already got spring flowers blooming and trees and shrubs budding out.  It seems like most everything is eager to start showing off. Or maybe flaunting is a better word since Saturday was our average last frost date.  I wonder if they remember the Easter freeze of two years ago?

Showy Columbine (Aquilegia 'Origami Red & White')

Dainty flowers on Purple Shamrock ('Oxalis Triangularis') glowing in the shade.

Dianthus all pretty in pink.
 

My old faithful - African Bulbine ('Bulbine frutescens")

 

Mounded purple Lantana getting started on its nonstop summer blooms.

 

And last but not least, Weeping Jasmine blindingly bright in the evening sun.

Has Spring Sprung...Already?

It seems like just yesterday I was writing about our Bradford Pear showing off its fall color.  Turns out that was back in December and today that very same tree has decided to announce the imminent arrival of Spring.

From a distance the Bradford Pear doesn't look like much...

But if you look a little closer, there is definitely some activity going on.

 

 Looking even closer to discover the first of the dainty flower clusters that in a matter of days will take this tree from barren to breathtaking!

 

Workin' on the Weekend....

Sometimes it seems like we tend to un-do a lot  (probably too much!) of what we've done at our house.

For instance, when we first moved onto our property, it was so sloped in places that it was pretty much un-usable.

At the front of the property the slope wasn't too great, so we did some low rock walls to terrace it.
 

We had big plans for this area which is right at the entrance, but nothing wanted to grow there.  What was originally supposed to be gorgeous flower beds got taken over by some Bermuda grass which was a pain to mow and not what we wanted there at all.

So, this weekend we got busy!! 

I dug up the poor little palm tree and oleander that had somehow managed to survive and got them out of the way.

While my husband ripped out two of the rock walls working carefully around the Live Oaks and our treasured Magnolia tree.  

Here is what it looked like after he took out the lower level wall.  Believe me...it got worse before it got better!

Never mind the fact that it looked like a bomb had exploded!

And then he hopped on the backhoe and started building a new rock wall...one rock at a time.

 

While I was the "lucky one" on the ground with numerous fun items at my disposal such as the shovel, pick, rake, sledge hammer, level, etc...

Its a lot like piecing a jigsaw puzzle together...each rock has to fit just right and everything has to be level. 

 

After two rows of rock we called it a day.  We plan to put one more layer on and continue the curve until it dies out naturally into the existing slope.  Then we will fill it all in with loads of dirt.  In the end the ground will be probably 18" higher and with even less of a slope and better soil, hopefully, we can have the lush garden area we've dreamed about.

One Man's Junk....

I'm sure everyone is familiar with the old saying that goes something like "One man's junk is another man's treasure". 

One day a while back my husband came flying down the drive in his big Dodge, backed up to the trailer, jumped out, hooked it up and was already heading back out when I got to the drive.  He slowed (but not by much) and grinned as he hollered that he "was going to get me a surprise and would be right back!"

And that is how I ended up with my latest treasures...

One is an old seeder of some sort and the other a plow maybe?  I don't know what it is...but I love them.

He knows me well!

Falling for Fall

It seems like as the years pass, the summers get a little hotter and a little less bearable and the few cold days of winter...well, I've always hated being cold.

Spring is much too fleeting. 

So, every year I fall a little more in love with fall.  What's not to love about mild days and cool nights, right? And the rich colors...

When else can you find burnt orange and amber on the same oak leaf?

Whole trees of crimson.

Sadly preparing for winter one by one.

 

Shimmering grasses.

 

Feather-like tops for blooms.

 

A surprise bright spot of yellow blooms - the norm in summer, but a delightful discovery in fall.

 

Brilliant berries.

And who can resist taking a moment to pause and reflect on the rapidly diminishing year while admiring the watery reflections of fall in the creek?

Creekside Gardening - Part III

Well its been awhile since I wrote about the creek.  I guess I'll start at the downstream end of the pond area where we built the 2nd dam and waterfall.  The 2nd 2nd dam I guess I should say, since the original kept leaking and we had to tear it out and re-do it.

In the end, part of the dam had to be made of concrete.  Hopefully we'll have time to get down there soon and figure out how to camouflage it.  Just ignore all the pipes you see in the picture...we had to pump water in and around to keep the water level low enough to allow us to get the rock work done.

 

This picture should give you a better idea of how all of this is laid out now.  If you haven't been following along, the first waterfall is far in the back and you can see more of it in Part I of this little series.  The rock planter at the far back left and the lower level rock planter just below the long curving rock wall built to create the pond itself are in Part II.

Putting rocks in this part was kinda tricky with the tree roots and water depth.  It took my husband awhile to find a rock the perfect length, width and thickness to wedge in on the dam side and suspend over to the other rocks in the retaining wall.  When I went down to see how things were going, I saw one rock that looked familiar.  I asked him where that rock came from and he laughed...it was part of several rocks that retained an area we had built up by the house!  I knew that rock looked familiar!!

One day we met the neighbors down at the creek and Robert was telling us how he had seen what looked like a long stick wedged in a hole in the rocks and laying partway in the water.  When he got closer, he saw that it was a water moccasin stretching out from the its little hideaway.

The next weekend Mindy and I planted more plants.  I nervously climbed down in the water to plant this water plant, even though I thought that Robert had seen the snake on the other side of the dam.  The guys joined us later and when Robert saw this plant, he informed me that this was the hole the water moccasin was in! 

With a half laugh and a shudder I joked that I hoped the water moccasin liked his new landscaping!  Yuk!!

The edge drops off pretty quickly here and is a good 10 feet deep.  These two scaredy cats cautiously inched their way into the water to try out their new watering hole. 

After the 2nd waterfall and pool, the creek meanders along the way nature intended.

It curves around a bend and here you can just see the tops of rocks in a rock wall used to shore up this area.  We call this "dinosaur point" due to the odd holes in the rocks down in the creek bed.

Don't they look like dinosaur tracks!

 

Over time the water has carved the creek bed pretty deeply through the rocks in this stretch of the creek.

And here is where it falls off into the biggest pond.  Which I will have to save for next time.

Too Many Plants...Too Little Time!

Well, I got a little ahead of myself....AGAIN!  But, looking on the bright side, it could be worse.  I could have too much time and no plants!

First, I got motivated and dug up 15 more Agave scabra pups to plant along a rock wall on the way to the creek.  So far I've gotten 10 holes dug and 9 in the ground!  The rest are waiting patiently for me to resume my project.

But hold on because I got this in the mail!

Sixty "Walk on Me" (Thymus serpyllum) dormant roots. 

Don't be shocked if you've never ordered anything dormant before!  There are probably 6 roots in each little package and yes they're a tangled mess.  But they are cheap and so far I've had pretty good luck planting dormant stuff in the fall!  Its just the wait until spring that takes faith.

"Walk on Me" is also known as "Wild Thyme" or "Creeping Thyme" and is supposed to be an evergreen ground cover that spreads pretty rapidly, blooms in spring, smells good when crushed, only gets 3-inches tall and loves full sun and drought-like conditions in rocky soil. 

Sounds almost too perfect a solution for our hillside that is beautiful green half the time and the other half looks completely dead.  With the drought it has pretty much been looking dead!

See what I mean!  All the dry native grasses really take away from the green trees and the creek below.  If the "Walk on Me" really does what the catalog said then it will be absolutely gorgeous on this slope!

I ordered the 60 thinking I could handle that much to start....turns out I can't even handle that, because I've only gotten a third of them in the ground and its been 2 weeks!

Meanwhile, when we were at Sunshine Nursery getting vegetable seeds and plants, I couldn't resist a couple of Salvia, some Society Garlic and these purple and some half peach/half purple flowers that I can't for the life of me remember the name....

On top of that, I've been wanting to replace the Pride of Barbados that I lost in a freeze several years ago.  I saw some at Home Depot the other day, but they wanted $16.95 for the small ones.  But one day I was on Craigslist and stumbled across a lady selling handfuls of Pride of Barbados seeds for 5 bucks.  And I figured why not!

And they arrived in the mail too!

Eventhough I managed to pass up the Pride of Barbados while at Home Depot, I still caved and bought a Fire Bush (Hummingbird Bush).  It had a bunch of babies in the pot, so I separated them out.  The "big" one (all of 10") I actually managed to get in the ground.

So, the ground has pretty much dried up after our near 3" of rain last week. (Yay!) We had actual plans for the weekend (that didn't involve work), and now I'm off to enjoy some of this amazing fall weather and get some of this stuff in the ground!