November rain

 The trouble with weather forecasting is that it’s right too often for us to ignore it and wrong too often for us to rely on it. ~Patrick Young

We are in a rain pattern for another day (day 4 to my reckoning).  My gardens are a total disaster. I stepped in one of the flower beds and nearly lost my garden boots!  A lot of suction wanted to swallow them up.  The garden soil is mostly very fine sand over a layer of red clay.  Quite an unpleasant mix.

The last I heard, this is the wettest year on record.  Oddly, the drought map still shows this area as light drought?  How much rain do we need to be declared a swamp?

I see a lot of areas of landscape and beautiful beds that are not under water.  I have to remember that I knew we were at the bottom of a hill when I started.  Back then, it had been so dry I was  moaning about things burning up.  This year things drowned in March through May and regenerated and burned up or lost all their leaves in self preservation?  I am not sure.

The Salvia Greggii bed which was the center piece when I began has gone through cycles of lovely red and pink blossoms, butterflies, hummingbirds .................................
The leaves all fell off.  mid summer. all looked dead.  I did dig out one and then decided to wait until cooler weather.  Voila' they greened up and bloomed just before rain started.  A light frost didn't bother them at all. This rain will probably finish them off.

Taken in early Summer

My plan is to move them anyway, so will wait and see.

All the rain totes and buckets and trash cans are full of water.  I cannot bear to pour the precious moisture just in case dry weather sets in,  From now on, I have to dump the water. No place to store any more.

I am in the midst of "resizing" garden area.  The first thing to go seems to be the gravel paths.  Maybe not such a good idea as water flows over, making muck and sinking places in the path underneath the gravel, thanks to ever present grub which is food for my enemy the mole.

Some things I have learned?  Sunflower seeds  WILL germinate in cool temperatures. Nights in the 30's. I had a favorite bird feeder with a cage around it to discourage larger birds.  It worked very well.  The sun took its toll as the plastic tube that holds the seeds had weakened and cracked.  I wasn't watching since the other feeders are of a more substantial plastic. That said, this one was  ¼ full of seeds when the rain started.  The seeds germinated and the expansion of seedlings and moisture caused the tube to split.  I would like to get a tube to replace the split one as the cage surround is fine.

The cage on the left

The weather forecast for the coming week looks promising for drying out.  There is an awful lot of cleaning up and redoing of flag stone path in court yard.  I had to move stones to allow water to flow faster. It worked, but now they have to go back into the path with some digging out to lower the stones for future rains.  It should have been done long before.  So, now, knee pad and gloves and I will do as much as I can. May take a while...

 The best thing one can do when it’s raining is to let it rain. ~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Weather forecast for tonight: dark. ~George Carlin

Salvia Greggii surprise

Summer is over.  I, for one, am grateful.  I know there will be days when I will feel trapped inside, itching to see what is going on out there.
This year has been one of extreme wet, drought and moles.  Still, I am happy to have to wear that old hand me down  barn jacket with the big patch pockets I had added. It in itself brings back good memories of connecting with a niece who is so much like me, we have to be kin.

During the wet periods this Spring, my gardens were flooded time after time.  I lost most of my plants. Maybe not in the after math of the flooding, later when least expected.
This is the case of the Salvia Greggii bed.  It had been green and healthy looking.  Then, the leaves fell off.  I waited.  Not wanting to give up on them.  They have been the original focal point of my garden.

I waited, then a miracle, they greened up again and tried to bloom.  Then the dry heat set in and the leaves fell off. Sadly, I debated taking them all out and starting over.  I waited.

The drought hung on with months of high 90's and no rain.  I waited.
One bush looked dead for sure.  I did test branches and they all snapped off.  I dug it out.  Then, heat and sore hip kept me from doing much in the garden.

I have decided to remove a third or more of the gardens. There are 9 separate plots with a lot of gravel pathway.  I have worked at repairing mole damage and amending the garden soil.

As the weather has cooled, the shorter, more compact blue and white salvias and one butterfly weed have perked up and started putting on more leaves and flowers.

I love the blue salvis the most of anything in the garden.  They survive anything nature throws its way and even looking tired and faded in the heat of summer, I know they will show off in fall.  They have. This morning, chilly and windy, I took pictures of the deep, elegant blue flowers.  Thank you God!!

 

Back to the Salvia Greggii plants.  They are green and blooming!  I never expected this treasure.  I thought I'd just dig out the whole mess and move the mailbox/toolbox and let the whole thing go back to weeds and grass.     

 
Plans have changed.

Chinese Pistache tree

The gardener who imagines that his work can be reduced to a set of rules and formulae, followed
and applied according to special days marked on the calendar, is but preparing himself for a double
disappointment. Few things are so certain to be uncertain as the seasons and the weather; and these,
rather than a set of dates, even for a single locality, form the signs which the real gardener follows.
That is the great trouble with much book and magazine gardening. -   Frederick Frye Rockwell, Around the Year in the Garden, 1917

Back more years than I can remember, we had a wood pile.  The pile languished for years because I am very sensitive to smoke drifting into house from fireplace. Hubby wouldn't burn because  I would close myself up in the bedroom and endure until fire was out.
Thus, the wood pile ended up rotting and being host to numerous fire ant nests and mysteriously, a tree. The tree was insignificant for years.  The pile kept rotting, the ants kept nesting and the tree kept growing.
Finally, we took the wood away, and dealt with the ants and left the tree standing.  It spent numerous years hanging out, waiting for me to decide what to do with it.  It is not a bad location.  Just seems an odd place for a tree.

Years later, I have researched and find this is a desirable tree.  I had called it a "trash tree" for which I humbly apologize to the local organic gardener radio guy.
I don't care for the color of red that it turns in fall.  It has multiple colors, which does make interesting to watch.  Shades of yellow, orange, green, deep maroonish red.  I never noticed the berries until I seriously did some research.  Yep, a Pistache.

I am sure it is a "gift" from some bird years ago.  We will leave it as it is not supposed to get huge like some mistakes we have in the yard.  Worrisome huge things that we hope won't fall over til we are gone.

 

Snow on the Prarie

Snow on the Prairie

I started this post a while back.  I was reminded of it when I was returning from a visit to a friend. The highway I take has land that hasn't been developed with houses. They are scarce these days.
The fields on both sides of this highway and the major highway into Fort Worth, were full of white clouds.  I knew what they were. Bet very few of the travelers noticed or cared. Their loss. These are beautiful works of nature. 
                                                             

We were returning from a flea market in East Texas and saw field after field of white wildflowers.
Hubby pulled off the highway and let me take a few pictures.

Don't forget to click on picture for larger view.

The first thing I noticed?  Even though at a distance the flowers look white, they are actually the palest of green.  Not a true blossom to my eyes.

The name? Snow on the Prarie. Lovely name for rolling hills of white.

I can't say that I ever noticed the fields of "white" before. Now, I watch for them.  I also saw fields of white in Oklahoma last week.

Perhaps the drought has something to do with them being so prolific this year?

 "The 'Amen!' of Nature is always a flower."
-  Oliver Wendell Holmes.   

 "The nature of This Flower is to bloom."   
-  Alice Walker. 

Hawks, pigeons and songbirds

The older generation thought nothing of getting up at five every morning — and the younger generation doesn’t think much of it either. ~John J. Welsh

Just before dawn I have the world all to myself. ~Terri Guillemets

 The last two mornings, out in the garden at daylight, I have stopped and wondered why the morning is so quiet.  It is almost eerie.  This morning, at around 8AM, I saw a flutter of small birds in one of the many tangles of weeds and bushes. They were small, probably sparrows.  On the high line wire near the road, there were 3 small birds perched and one probable dove.
No birds singing or twittering or feeding at the feeders.  I watched for them yesterday and they never came.

This is the time of year when hawks begin migrating through.  You can always count on their appearance in the fall and winter. There are some hawks that seem to be around all year as well.
The quiet is due to the neighbor who still has racing pigeons.  He was racing them (25 years or so) before the neighborhood grew up around us.  He still shoots at the hawks. (no comment) The hawks are just looking for an easy meal and word has gotten around  that they are served up year round if you wait til they come out from their house.
 I like hawks. They are beautiful birds.  I don't blame them for looking for an easy meal. They work very hard for most.  I have closed the blinds in the kitchen window when one has knocked down a bird in my back yard.  No reason to shoo them off as the bird is dead.  I let them eat and then I clean up the feathers.
As callous as this sounds, this is nature at its real.  A lot of nature is not pretty.
I have had the rare thrill of catching on my camera (cannot say on film these days) a Cooper's Hawk perched on an arbor in my garden. Pretty darned bold.  It was still a treat to stand for many minutes and just watch it.

The moment when you first wake up in the morning is the most wonderful of the twenty-four hours. No matter how weary or dreary you may feel, you possess the certainty that, during the day that lies before you, absolutely anything may happen. And the fact that it practically always doesn’t, matters not a jot. The possibility is always there. ~Monica Baldwin

  I have a "carpe diem" mug and, truthfully, at six in the morning the words do not make me want to seize the day. They make me want to slap a dead poet. ~Joanne Sherman

GARDEN CHANGES THIS FALL

I started this plan in August. Since then mornings have been cooler. Still no rain. More dying things.  Cooler mornings perk my brain to plan, plan and dream of next spring. Jotting ideas, and anticipating lots of work.

 THE GARDENS HAVE TO BE RESTRUCTURED/DESIGNED.

PLAN TO GET RID OF 4 AT LEAST.   
FIGURE OUT THE PATH ARRANGEMENT.  HARD TO VISUALIZE .
WHETHER TO LEAVE ARBOR WHERE IT IS.
     MAYBE MOVE IT TO SMALLER AREA AND ELIMINATE THAT PART OF PATH?
   
FINISH PUTTING TOGETHER THE WINDOW GREEN HOUSE OR GET RID OF.

START MOVING GRAVEL.  GOOD JOB FOR COLD NASTY DAYS THIS WINTER.  HARD TO NOT GATHER OR RAKE GRAVEL NOW THAT I KNOW I WILL DO LATER.
DEAL WITH WASH OUT AREAS WHERE THE WHITE BUCKET IS.  A GOOD COLD WEATHER JOB.

Summer phlox have never liked my soil. They always started dying from base up and looked so bad.
I have one that I cut back to 3" and it is greening up with watering.

The bed with the tall phlox was supposed to be the specimine bed, filled with blooms spring, summer and fall.
Never happened......................

I am toying with the idea of lasagna garden areas. 

Yep, those windows are the mini greenhouse I started last winter.  We took 2 trips in the Spring and the rabbits were looking for new, tender leaves.  I opened out the hinged windows and blocked the little buggers.  It is still there and so are the rabbits.  They are looking for anything green to eat.  They have not touched the salvias, nor the hyacinth bean vines nor the summer phlox (which are all dead now). 

This is my planned "dividing line".  The arbor is still pretty stable and don't want to move it. So, the area where the pots are will be the cut off point. The smallish grass near the arbor is dead now.  Need to think of what goes there after adding soil amendments.  The big grass is a ravenna grass.  Oddly, it is listed as a noxious plant as it has been "escaping" in Washington state.  It is too big to dig out and fills the space still.  Still mostly green. We will have to wait and see.

Had good ideas for this bed, maybe next year?

I may or may not move this birdhouse pole.

Need to move mailbox as this bed has to be taken out completely.

I have hopes of reworking soil, in this previous coneflower bed.  It is still fenced and maybe the rabbits won't dig under fence in an attempt to get at what greens remain.

End of summer zinnias

I visited my sister-in-law last week and enjoyed the colors and color changes of the tall zinnia survivors of a long hot summer.
Oklahoma got more rain than we got here in north Texas and she still has tomatoes and blooming things.

Some would say the garden was bedraggled and untended. I say there is color everywhere!  What joy to take pictures of blooms!  My gardens are burned up except for surprising regeneration here and there.

There were enough zinnias to pick and make lovely arrangements to enjoy the entire time I spent with my sister-in-law.  We ate, talked, napped and ate and talked and I took pictures of the changing blooms.
It was fascinating to watch the smallish center of the flowers begin to grow darker and larger.  If they hadn't been in the kitchen, we would have missed the hourly changes.

My daughter had given me an older iphone and I tested the camera.  I am not in love with the thing as a rule, but it has a surprisingly good camera.

End of summer rescued from garden

Don't forget to click on picture for larger.

Interesting marigold blossoms

These flowers are an example of how seed heads develop.The 2 pink ones have petals compacted tightly and the brownish scattered blossom is some time later will look like this.

 

More last blooms.

Summer 2015

Another essay I forgot to finish.  Since this writing, the zinnia has given up.  The tough Artemisia that comes back year after year may not. Had moved a number of sprouts to pots and the pots got so hot, I think the roots cooked?

Tiny tough zinnia are about the only blooming thing in garden

 The good thing is; the house inside is clean because too hot to work outside.The bad thing is; the house inside is clean because too hot to work outside.  Texangardener.

 I just came inside from what remains of my gardens.  I am fighting a losing battle and still cannot seem to just let it all die.  Maybe this morning, a bit more of my brain woke up.  Here I was, sweating 80° and not a breath of air stirring.  Coughing from allergic reaction to one of many dying weeds. The air feels thick with dust or pollen?

"Why am I even out here?"  came to mind when I stood up with a heavy watering can in my hand and felt sharp pain in lower back.
"This is hopeless."  So I wiped the sweat from my eyes and came inside.  Even though it is overcast this morning and easier for me to work out there, other things are waiting to be done.  All the crafty things unfinished, all the sewing waiting, all the mending waiting.

All gardeners face this situation at some time in their lives.  It can be anything from hail, flooding, insects, rodents, and even a tornado or illness.

We get sad, we get mad.  We rail at nature, critters and sometimes God.  The garden is still dead.

My plan before it gets to hot (106°  this afternoon), I am going to go to Hobby Lobby and buy some pretty artificial flowers for a basket.

Butterfly weed survived spring rains, lost all its leaves and came back.  Losing its leaves again.

 “Summer has set in with its usual severity.” » Samuel Taylor Coleridge

If I was smart, I would just raise zinnias.  This is one small plant and still has buds

Time to do some planning for garden design.  Who knows, I may even look at the garden magazines for ideas.  Unfortunately most of the magazines I have are for northern climates.  We cannot even be called desert here in North Texas.

Heat, ma’am! it was so dreadful here, that I found there was nothing left for it but to take off my flesh and sit in my bones. ~Sydney Smith, Lady Holland’s Memoir

Rainy garden - reverie

I wrote this a week ago and didn't publish.  It is nice to read at this time when since that day, every day has been dry, hot with temperatures hovering in the high 90's.

It has been 40+ days without rain and most of the time temperatures in 100's or high 90's and most mornings in the high 70's or 80's.

It is 64° and rainy.  Not heavy downpour, light, blissful rain.

What is so amazing?  My depression is gone!  I am enthused for the first time in months.  Excited to plan next year's garden.
I know in my mind that it will hit 85° this afternoon and hot again tomorrow and on and on.

There is still today!

“Can't you see that it's just raining?
There ain't no need to go outside.” 
― Jack Johnson

My mind is racing with things to do for next year.  The plan I have occupying my old brain is containers.  Think small, think build soil, think move bird houses, think move garden mailbox, think fencing the persistent bunnies out. Most of all, think containers. Well, there is always the mole..........................Can't stop em.
I just pray God gives me another glorious spring with flowers!

It is a Great Day!

Summer doledrums

No garden truly blooms until butterflies have danced upon it
~K. D’Angelo



I have spent the last 4 days, watering with saved rain water, pulling weeds, clipping pernicious Yaupon  sprouts, marveling at the peaches hanging from the branches of well past their prime Ranger peach trees.  We thought the frost got them all.  I even had one on my cereal this morning!

After months of monsoon type rain this spring that flooded gardens and drowned many plants. Plants I never thought would be bothered.  Tough old standbys that were alive and green every spring and hung on in the heat of summer.  
“Some people walk in the rain, others just get wet.”
― Roger Miller
We were gone for 10 days in May visiting family and returned to drowned and dying plants everywhere.  My wheelbarrow had 12" in it.  I wish I could have saved more than I did of the precious rain.  The grass and weeds were 12" tall or better.

The mole damage to my paths is still waiting for an idea and energy to repair.  They undermined from one bed to another and there are sink holes all over.

Needless to say it has been an overwhelming summer.  I have not felt up to snuff for months and feel it most when trying to do garden things.  We were gone the first week of July visiting grand children and returned to more dead and dying plants.

My bed of Salvia Greggi that fed bees, butterflies and hummingbirds had lost all their leaves.  Some are greening up, but most are done.

Some flowers came back with careful watering and deadheading or cutting stems that have shot up too high when fed with much water and pitiful leaves and flowers not capable feeding the most persistent bee. There are no beautiful white and blue salvias.  I have pinched and cut them down to 3 or 4inches.  I will water some in hopes they will come up for fall.

In the midst of pity party, I watched a humming bird rest on a bit of fence and then feed on the surviving butterfly bush.  I thought it was dying at one point, but it has come back.

I have watched tiny yellow sulphur butterflies, called Dainty Sulphur, flitting around what blossoms are still available.

About 1½ inches

Unfortunately, they flit and sip too fast to get a good picture.  (I "borrowed" this one.)  I am amazed at how many there are in my blossomless garden.
Another reason to just enjoy nature for what it is.  Grieving over dead and dying plants is not what gardeners do.  We slowly let them go and plan for next time.

These are pictures of my most photogenic zinnias. To some, they are dead, to me they are guaranteed keepers on my Bloggie camera.  It loves them. 

 I have them growing in a large black pot from the
nursery.  My only successful seed growing this
year.
The stems are tall and then, tiny blossoms.
About the size of a walnut.

The pinks turn this lovely pinkish brown.

When I started this post, it was dry and no chance for rain.  Well, now, we are in for 10 days of temperatures of 100.
Time to let the gardens die. Stop fighting the heat, dry soil, critters.  Time to rest up, make plans and tackle the garden in the fall.
There are changes rattling around in my head of creating a smaller,more manageable garden area(s).
Should put the ideas on paper as they flit into my thoughts and flit right out again.

I think hubby has to be involved in this project.

Roadside wildflower puzzle solved

This had not bloomed before we left for trip

We were driving home from visiting family in Illinois when I noticed an orange flash of color on the roadside.  A lot of orange in spots.  I am not acquainted with very many orange wildflowers and checked my wildflower book with no answer.

Today, hiding out from humidity and heat of my garden, I searched the Web for the lovely, delicate orange blossoms that smelled like lilacs.  There it was! The question was worded as mine was.
 
http://www.theeasygarden.com/threads/new-to-me-wildflower.13802/

The second question was about roadside flower colored orange.


https://www.google.com/search?q=milkweed+photos&rlz=1T4ACAW_en___US378&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=gUHSUfeiF4LW9QTh4YDQCA&ved=0CC8QsAQ&biw=1024&bih=612#imgrc=X4lDvT3W2Yf5ZM%3A

Each state has many, many web sites of their wildflowers.

I hope this will encourage you to search the Web to look for your mystery flower.  Sometimes, it takes many tries of different ways to word the search line.

More to the story

I have read enough to understand the importance of the "right" milkweed for your area.  This is a very good site for information to encourage you to find out the native milkweed in your area.  I love the common milkweed and before I order seeds or plants, I will check our local wildflower society to be sure it is native.
 http://nativeplantwildlifegarden.com/can-milkweed-be-bad-for-monarchs/#comments

I said early in my blogging that gardeners need to be good stewards of wild life and flowers they raise.
It is difficult to avoid that pretty plant at the garden store, but just because it is for sale doesn't mean it is good for our wild life.

Pictures left over after earlier post of South Dakota

This time of year, I cringe when I see my spouse during the daylight hours. Unknown

Ominous clouds on the day arranged for branding that proved there was still rain in the offing.

A lot of "yard" to look after year round. Just one view from driveway.



Don't forget to click on picture for larger.

One of my favorite shots

 

 

 Amazing metal back in the day.  No telling how long these have sat unused.  I didn't see any serious rust decay.

As antiquated as they seem in modern times, they must have been a blessing to farmers.  When you think of early farmers following a horse or other animal pulling a large plow blade. They must have marveled at the convenience of it all!

Farmall

 

Fordson

Hubby thoroughly enjoyed  pondering these beauties from time gone by.