Blogging the House

Cemetery Irises in Situ

2012-01-15T22:14:00.000-06:00

Design on the top of a gravestone in Littig

Something about winter makes Matt & me want to visit cemeteries. This turns out to be a good impulse, since it means fewer brambles and better visibility. Interestingly enough, it's MLK weekend, and we ended up at two historically black cemeteries by coincidence. So that seems sort of seasonally appropriate.

The first was Littig Cemetery on Bitting Rd in Littig. Reportedly, it was created on land donated by a former slave. It's located in a pretty valley of pastureland beneath a ridge that I assume was carved out by Wilbarger Creek, which runs through the area.

A pool of irises in Littig Cemetery

Clearly, some folks have recently put a lot of work into maintaining the cemetery--they've been chopping down the (many) trees that died in the drought and gathering big piles of brush. Nicely, however, they've left the big drifts of irises (presumably Iris albicans, commonly known, for reasons that will become obvious, as "cemetery irises") that are gathered in pools around the cemetery--it will be lovely in a month or two. So many cemeteries are tidy to the point of sterility, but it's so much more interesting when they let a little wildness in.

Littig is a tiny community that has dwindled since its heyday in the 30s and has seen (or is seeing) tough economic times, something that is reflected in the improvised tombstones on many of the graves.


This homemade headstone reads "HUS P. THOMAS DIED 25"

After Littig, we went to Parks Creek cemetery in Manor. From the road, it looks pretty small, and I had assumed it was fairly recent, which doesn't really interest me.

Interestingly crooked tree and irises among the graves in the newer section of Parks Creek cemetery

But Matt was intrigued, so I said, "Sure, okay, whatever." ...And then it turned out to be a wonderful find.

Like Littig, it has a lot of handmade grave markers. The one below is cast of concrete and stones with a decorative border made of steel wire in a green casing.

A headstone at Parks Springs cemetery

But the most interesting thing about this cemetery is that it goes on and on back into the woods. It is apparently grew slowly over the years, the older sections becoming overgrown while the new sections were being used. So if you press your way through the brush, greenbriar, and other inexplicable thorns, you find little pockets of graves surrounded by irises, cacti, refuse, and drought-killed trees.

You have to scramble through scrub to reach this clearing

This interesting thicket contains a huge clump of agave. It's a little macabre, but throughout the cemetery you can see colonies of plants presumably thriving on... people. Yum.

Honestly, though, if there's one thing touring small, old cemeteries teaches you, it's the impermanence of most grave markers. It only takes a decade or two of neglect to topple obelisks, shatter stones, and efface lettering. A giant agave cluster or a pool of irises makes at least as good a monument as stone.

A huge clump of Agave (americana?) Somewhere under that tangle is the remnants of a small metal grave marker.

The plants also make a nice permanent bouquet. What's interesting is that some of the graves back in the woods are only from the seventies (others go back at least to 1900). It doesn't take at all long for a cemetery to be overrun.

In both cemeteries, many of the best-preserved headstones are those of veterans; this one from 1975 is in good shape, but it's fairly deep in the woods.

George L. Allen's headstone

...Where you reach it by wading through irises--hundreds and hundreds of irises.

A glorious glade of irises (presumably, I. albicans)

Holiday Garden Additions

2012-01-01T13:41:00.002-06:00

It was a good holiday for the garden.

I got a new pair of my favorite gardening gloves, which are stretchy and close fitting, so no bulk hanging off the ends of one's fingers, but with nice leather on the palms and insides of the fingers for dealing with thorny roses.

Mom and Dad gave me a bird feeder with pole for my birthday. It's made by a company called "Droll Yankee," which they assure me is the best. So far, it seems to have defied the squirrels and doves, so it's an all-round success. (Also, I've switched to safflower seeds, which are said not to appeal to S & D and which fit better in my existing bird feeder anyway.)

New bird feeder in G-n-R bed, embellished with new baby grasses

The climax, of course, was the awesome new Savio 2050 pond pump, which is currently sending gushing torrents of water through our waterfall. It's so strong, it picks pebbles up from the bottom of the pond and sends them through the waterfall. Yowza.

The amazing pumping power of the our new Savio 2050. Actually, the camera doesn't really capture the full volume. It's like this, only more.

Then the denouement was my birthday present from Matt--eight (EIGHT!) new 'White Cloud' Muhlenbergia capillaris (the grass we saw at the Atlanta Bot Gar that almost made me miss my cousin's wedding) and a sample pack of 12 more grasses that Matt picked out for me from Dove Creek Gardens in Tennessee. (Why isn't there a major grass nursery here in Texas??? We have lots of grass. And not a lot of water. No brainer.)

Matt's sampler of interesting grasses

Here's what was in the sampler pack:

Andropogon scoparius 'Prairie Blues' (little bluestem--some debate as to whether this cultivar is in Andropogon or Schizochyrium)
Carex buchananii (leatherleaf sedge )
C. pendula (weeping sedge)
C. testacea 'Prairie Fire' (sedge)
Eragrostis elliotii 'Blue Eros' (blue lovegrass)
Festuca actae 'Banks Peninsula Blue' (blue fescue)
Miscanthus sinensis 'Nippon' (maidengrass)
Panicum virgatum 'Heavy Metal' (switchgrass)
Pennisetum alopecuroides 'Moudry' (fountain grass)
P. messiacum 'Red Buttons' (fountain grass)
P. villosum 'Cream Falls' (feathertop)

We're using the 'White Cloud' as the background matrix for the Grass-n-Roses bed, studded with the various sampler grasses. So far, everything is tiny little dry tufts, so it's a little hard to tell what it will ultimately look like. I imagine some fine-tuning will eventually be required, just as it was for the Mexican feathergrass (Stipa/Nasella tenuissima), 'Dwarf Hamlin' fountain grass (Pennisetum alopecuroides), and 'Blonde Ambition' big grama grass (Bouteloua gracilis) we had already planted. Oh, and the cute little nimblewill (Muhlenbergia shreberi), sideoats grama (Bouteloua curtipendula), and big muhly (Muhlenbergia lindheimeri).

Pennisetum messiacum 'Red Buttons,'
glowing in the sun

All told, that makes 18 kinds of grasses in the G-n-R bed. Plus inland sea oats in the shade bed: 19! Not bad. It's not quite the Grass Garden at Kew, but still--not bad.

Another view of waterfall & G-n-R bed

Pond Pump and Iris

2011-12-11T14:37:00.001-06:00

In what is obviously a Christmas miracle, today I accidentally came across two pieces of documentation that I really needed and thought were lost forever:

(1) Our current pond pump's capacity is (a puny) 560 gph. It's a "Smartpond" pump, model #DP560

To put this into perspective, my Christmas present this year from Matt is going to be a super-powerful "professional-grade" Savio 2050 (we got $100 off at Amazon!). In other words, it will have 4 x the pumping power. This will obviously require some kind of weir or basin at the top of our waterfall, or it's going to shoot water straight out like a fire hose. Am thinking of attempting something with one of those cheap aluminum catering pans.

There's a guy online who shows how to turn a plastic tool bin into a weir, and I'm thinking of imitating him, only I need the flexibility of aluminum because of the irregular shape of the aperture at the top of our waterfall.

(2) The second documentation-related miracle was that I stumbled upon--and read, stranger still--an old Lowe's receipt that (amazingly) listed the name of the iris cultivar that I bought from them and then promptly forgot months ago: 'Spartan.' (I had googled 'Hector,' 'Troy,' 'Achilles,' and even, desperately, 'Trojan' trying to track this thing down to no avail. Right culture, wrong piece of geography.) It's near the volcanic rocks in our pond bed, and is a lovely sulky shade of burgunda, or so the picture indicates.

Iris germanica 'Spartan'

Pic from van Bloem bulbs: http://www.vanbloem.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=plants.plantDetail&plant_ID=14

But I LIKED Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness

2011-12-08T21:59:00.001-06:00

We're going to take an unusual detour from our regularly scheduled programming into politics. I realize that my readers (all three of you--how I cherish you!) don't come here for political disquisitions. However, this particular issue is important enough to be an exception.

The Senate has recently passed a bill (S. 1867, the National Defense Authorization Act) containing provisions that allows US citizens on US soil to be detained indefinitely by the military without trial. (It is a measure of how low we've sunk that we're accustomed to detaining non-citizens indefinitely, and we barely blink when US citizens are detained--or assassinated--by the US on foreign soil. But at least for the moment, the idea of detaining US citizens here at home indefinitely is shocking and appalling. As it should be.)

The House also has a version of this bill (H. 1540), so the two bills are now in conference to be brought into consistency with one another prior to final passage and signature by the president. The White House, though it has made some vague rumblings about vetoing it, appears to be doing so under the deranged impression that the problem with the bill it that it is too limiting in its scope of presidential prerogative.

If you like freedom, or America, or justice, or if you are opposed to banana republics in general and to living in one in particular, please write to the morally bankrupt goons in DC and tell them to knock it the fuck off. I don't know how they justify their actions to themselves (to us, they use a lot of bloviation about "protecting the American people" and how traitors don't deserve defense lawyers), but this bill is a wholesale violation of Amendments 5 and 6 of the Bill of Rights, which were intended to protect us against detention without due process and indefinite detention.

On the lefty side, here's a detailed breakdown of the issue by Salon's Glenn Greenwald. The NY Times has a piece as well.

Right-wingers and libertarians have no reason to favor this bill, either. To his credit, Rand Paul was one of only SEVEN* senators to speak and vote against NDAA. Here's a right-wing perspective from The American Spectator.

The ACLU has a form letter you can use that they will automatically forward to your reps and senators.

Alternately, you can write your own letter and post it to each of your rep/senators/president individually--whoismyrepresentative.com will get you their contact info.

If you live in my neck of the woods, these are your elected representatives:

Senator Cornyn: http://cornyn.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=ContactForm

Senator Hutchison: http://hutchison.senate.gov/?p=email_kay

Representative McCaul: http://mccaul.house.gov/index.cfm?sectionid=3&sectiontree=3

President Obama: http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/submit-questions-and-comments

And here's what I wrote. It's probably too wordy and sarcastic, and it will presumably only be glanced at by an aide or two and then deleted, but if enough of us write in... maybe the aide's delete finger will get a cramp. That's something.

The National Defense Authorization Act is a travesty. It is blatantlyunconstitutional, and more than that, it is immoral, unethical, and, byfurthering the corruption of the government, undermines the stability of thecountry.

It is difficult to find language strong enough to describe how evil anddangerous this legislation is, particularly sections 1031-1032 of the Senateversion of the bill (S. 1867), which allow US citizens to be indefinitelyimprisoned by the military and allow the military to imprison anyonewho “substantially supports” al Qaida.

I’m appalled that I should have to point this out to the legislative branch of the government—peoplewhose basic job qualifications include a passing familiarity with the USConstitution—but indefinite detention and detention without due process areblatantly, trenchantly, utterly unconstitutional. The Fifth and SixthAmendments are perfectly clear on this point: [No person shall be] deprived of life, liberty, or property, withoutdue process of law; and In allcriminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and publictrial. This echoes that fundamental formulation of American valuesfrom the Declaration: that among our inalienable rights are life, liberty, andthe pursuit of happiness.

You cannot attack a more essential principal of our government, even of ouridentity as Americans. It is ironic that this egregious example of legislative malfeasanceis being defended in the name of fighting treason. The legislation itself is amore violent piece of treason against America than all of al Qaida’sbombing and shootings, including September 11^th. In fact, it mightbe looked upon as al Qaida’s crowning achievement.

I vehemently urge you to vote against this bill when it emerges fromconference. And I will vote against—and campaign against—anyone who supportedit.

Sincerely,
&c.

I had trouble coming up with an illustration for this post, but I finally decided to go with the cute little girl in the Statue of Liberty costume. Let's not let this little girl down, okay?

From: http://www.inhabitots.com/how-to-make-a-diy-statue-of-liberty-halloween-costume/statueliberty/

*The seven nays were Coburn (R-OK), Harkin (D-IA), Lee (R-UT), Merkley (D-OR), Paul (R-KY), Sanders (I-VT), Wyden (D-OR).

Designy Thoughts

2011-12-02T22:13:00.001-06:00

I've never been very designy about gardening--mostly, I find a neat plant and then find some place to stick it. But I'm trying to be a little more deliberate about our planting decisions (after our front beds suffered an overdose of the I-don't-know-let's-just-stick-it-here syndrome). As part of this effort, I recently bought a book that's just a fat little compendium of gardens.

Each garden gets a single page with a paragraph or two of text, which I thought at first was going to be annoyingly superficial. In the end, though, I think such a broad survey actually helps to clarify things that you hadn't ever articulated to yourself before. For example: I like topiary. I had no idea. I never thought I cared about topiary one way or another. But many of the gardens I sticky-flagged were topiary embellished if not downright topiary-centric.

For example, I mentioned in a previous post how much I liked the use of topiary in the Bagatelle rose garden in France. I like how, in combination with the lawn and the trees in the background, the smooth green of the boxwood edging and the topiary cones keep the roses from being too gaudily overwhelming.

The rose garden at the Bagatelle in France. Image from http://hiddenneststudio.blogspot.com/2009_07_01_archive.html

I also like how they impart structure and tidiness--roses being a bit apt to be blobby or scraggly. And they provide height, as well, which is nice since roses tend to be short--the topiaries add drama and help integrate the rose garden with the background. The columnar metal trellises, standard roses, and swags provide a similar punctuation mark sort of function--they help break the garden into discrete and intelligible chunks instead of its being an undifferentiated mass.

Another view of the Roseraie at the Bagatelle in France. Image from http://www.wherewewalked.info/bagatelle.htm

The same concepts apply to this garden at Arley Hall in the UK. A riot of a perennial bed, made intelligible by the pauses and cleanness provided by an immaculate green lawn, some austere topiary/hedges, and a brick wall. I look at this example with particular interest because a perennial bed is alarming in much the same way as blank verse is--it's such a free-for-all. There are so few rules or guidelines. How does the gardener (or poet) know where to begin?

Arley Hall's Herbaceous Border, Cheshire. Image from http://www.arleyhallandgardens.com/gardens.html

The Foresters House in Wiltshire (couldn't find a pic online) by Preben Jakobsen, though much more contemporary, was similarly interesting. It showed how you can choose a plant with a strong, dramatic structure (in this case, an iris), and use it in the perennial bed to slow down the viewer's eye at some strategic point. It's like it gives your brain a place to pause and process.

Then there's the Birch Allee at the Stan Hywet Hall & Gardens in Ohio.

Birch Allee at the Stan Hywet Hall & Gardens, Ohio.

The walk is actually much longer than this photo indicates. In the Garden Book photo, the base of the trees is planted, dully, with Asian jasmine. And really, what we're talking about here is two long rectangles with a perfectly straight sidewalk in between. And yet, that long, golden walk with those pale, white birches is just so arresting. If I ever get a several-thousand-acre estate, I'll be sure to plant an allee just like this.

One of my very favorite gardens in the whole book had no flowers whatsoever--the curious topiary garden in the cloister at the Monasterio de San Lorenzo at Santiago de Compostela. It is wonderfully strange, secret, and mysterious. What do all those endearingly stubby symbols mean? And why do they look Asian? Or possibly Mayan? Unfortunately, there was exactly one photo of it on the internet (how is that possible?!?) and it is copyright protected (see link above).

I also liked Mottisfont Abbey, designed by the very same Graham Thomas for whom the lovely but maddening 'Graham Thomas' Austin rose was named.

Graham Stuart Thomas's garden as Mottisfont Abbey. Image from http://thelondonreviewer.files.wordpress.com/2008/09/mottisfont-abbey-flower-garden-2-19708.jpg

Once again, I think I was drawn to the contrast between formalism and informality. Somehow, I had never grokked onto the fact that a cottage garden can include formal elements like giant topiary pillars. I know it now, though...

But that's not really enough topiary. What you really need is nothing but grass, a pond, and a dozen or so gargantuan clipped yew pyramids.

The Stonehenge-like collection of weird giant topiary at Athelhampton Manor. Image from Alice's Garden Travel Buzz

This is from the grounds of Athelhampton Manor in Dorset, UK. I like it for all the reasons I would think that I wouldn't like it--it's austere, rigidly geometric, the colors are decidedly sombre, and it's utterly artificial. But I love it. Monumental, inexplicable pyramids towering over the visitor like Ents or moai or something. What every garden needs.

Finally, the book had a surprising number of Chinese garden windows, apparently known as "lou chuang." I couldn't find any really good examples online, though this one is certainly quite pretty:

A Chinese garden wall window. Image from: http://blog.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/travelwithtiff/1/1285257720/tpod.html#_

What it doesn't capture is the way (some) Chinese gardeners use the windows in garden walls to artfully frame some particular scene or garden element, or combination of colors and textures. I'm hoping to someday make a western version of this in the fence by our pond to create (what I hope will be) an enticing glimpse of the pond as seen from the side of the house.

So that's it: topiaries and garden windows. I'm not really sure how to break this new development to Matt...

This Grass Almost Made Me Miss a Wedding

2011-11-21T21:04:00.001-06:00

Masses of 'White Cloud' Gulf Coast muhly

Matt and I were in Atlanta last weekend for my cousin's wedding. We went to the Atlanta Botanical Garden during the day, where we saw the awesomest grass--'White Cloud' Gulf coast muhly (Muhlenbergia capillaris). It makes frothy masses of pale blond billows, and it is very aptly named: it's like being surrounded by a fluffy, luminous cloud.

In my excitement over sharing pix of this beautiful new grass with my brother, I kept the three of us from leaving the hotel on time, which meant we had to slip in the side as the bride was processing up the aisle. Oops. The irony is, my brother doesn't really care about plants at all ("Sure. It's awesome," he said, appeasingly. He did not say, "Can we go now?" but I'm pretty sure that was in the subtext.) The further irony is that none of my pix really do the plant justice. You'll just have to take my word for it: in real life, it's awesome. AWESOME.

More 'White Cloud' in the background

Anyway, the ceremony was very nice (flowers were very stylish--terra cotta orange lilies and lime green accent flowers. And the boutonnieres were made of moss and yellow globes of the disc flowers from some sort of asteraceae--very funky. And at the reception: sashimi!). I don't think anyone noticed our late entrance, aside from my gimlet-eyed grandmother.

And we really enjoyed the botanical gardens (good thing, too. Admission was $20 a pop! Yeesh.) It wasn't a super-geeky bot. gar.--labeling and signage was spotty; you got the feeling it was more into design than botany. But it was very pretty, and intelligently pretty. Sometimes this kind of pricy destination garden depends on waves of gaudy annuals (yuck) to wow the visitor. But when the heart of your gardens is perennials and shrubs, you have to know how your plants will work in all four seasons. In Atlanta, for example, they left spent hydrangea heads on the fading shrubs, which is wonderfully seasonal and melancholy; not the Disney World approach.

My second favorite plant, after the inestimable 'White Cloud' was this radioactive Japanese maple, 'Yama Kagi' or "Full Moon" maple.

Acer japonicum 'Yama Kagi'

Here's a closer view, showing the brilliant color and interesting leaf shape (click for a bigger version). I started making sounds about digging a really deep hole, filling it with peat moss and sulphur, and trying to grow this glorious thing back in Texas. Matt just snorted. Maybe he was remembering my earlier attempt at this kind of thing with the doomed farkleberry. Ours is a cruel, cruel climate.

Closer shot of 'Yama Kagi'

Also of interest was this espaliered loquat--who knew you could grow them this way? Matt thinks it's insincere, but I think it's a very clever way to enjoy your loquat without having to find space for a giant, shaggy monster.

Espaliered loquat (Eriobotrya japaonica)

Other than that, my favorite thing was the orchid house, which was really a wonderful place: tons of freaky strange orchids, several very nice water features, and three staghorn ferns that were bigger than stags. No lie. Beyond that, it was just a place that felt nice to be in, maybe because it featured a stimulating balance between formality and wildness.

Orchid house with giant staghorn ferns

This was one of many nifty weird orchids in the orchid house.

Strange pink orchid

Finally, my other favorite thing of the whole trip. I give you--Bugscuffle, Texas. It's better than Oatmeal, Dime Box, or even my old favorite, North Zulch. To whomever named this town: my hat is off to you.

Bugscuffle, Texas

October: I Love You

2011-10-29T17:43:00.001-05:00

'Buff Beauty,' back in bloom after a long, grouchy hiatus

Love, love, loving the lovely weather.

Things are blooming again. Not that it's raining, mind you. They're just so relieved that it's not 113F anymore. I think it's like those investors that keep buying US bonds despite the downgrade in our credit rating. They're so relieved that we haven't had a complete meltdown that they've decided to take our continued solvency on faith. So with the plants. Sure, we've had a downgrade in our weather quality for the past few years, but at least the climate's still capable of doing autumn at all, right? At least we're not Namibia.

And we've been planting again, also on faith. (We're like those big corporations that took stimulus money and are now taking a chance on the economy by hiring agai--oh, wait.) Anyway, we're really happy with some of our new additions.

For example, this 'Victoria' Salvia farinacea. My phone tends to be a leetle over-enthusiastic about saturating its colors, but this deep indigo isn't too far off from the real thing.

Salvia farinacea 'Victoria'

And another gorgeous treat from the Salvia genus: bog sage (S. uliginosa). I didn't get a very good picture of this tidy, upright, ~2ft perennial, but it is almost that vibrant and luminous, except that it's prettier in real life. Once Matt has propagated it, I'm going to put this one all over the place. That's how much I love its cooling brightness.

Bog sage - Salvia uliginosa

In the same area (the pond bed), we finally got a vine for our third trellis, the evergreen wisteria (Millettia reticulata). It has a faintly Asian flavor to it, but I don't think it will be too incongruous with all the buddleia and butterfly weed--not to mention bog sage--that will ultimately fill these beds.

Evergreen wisteria (Millettia reticulata) and Matt's Insta-Fence Solution: 'Red Shield' hibiscus

Also, I'm trying a little experiment around the pond. I bought a maidenhair fern (Adiantum capillus-veneris) at the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center's plant sale the other day, and I unpotted it, divided it, and rolled each root ball into a sort of burrito made of the shreddy coconut matting stuff that people use for hanging plants. Then I crammed (really--it wasn't a very dainty process) each burrito into the waterfall wherever they could be fit. So the experiment will be (1) can they survive that much pummeling? (2) Will they stay sufficiently moist? (3) Is there enough soil in each burrito to provide the plants with whatever sustenance they need? (4) Are they strong enough to withstand winter, especially considering that our last two winters have involved snow(!).

The pond seen from the gazebo. Click to biggiefy--half a maidenhair is right by the edge of the water in the waterfall

Two other super-strong performers in this difficult year have been 'Hot Cocoa,' a recent grandiflora release by Weeks Roses, and 'Pam Puryear' Turk's cap, the beautiful shell-pink variant of the more familiar Camaro-red Malvaviscus arboreus.

I planted 'Hot Cocoa' last spring--it's one of those new off-color roses that have brown or tan or silver undertones. I really like them--Matt thinks they're rather vile. Color issues aside, HC has been a surprisingly shapely, robust, free-blooming, and low-fuss rose, despite some hiccups with our watering system and the horribleness of the summer. I think Matt may have been right that it's a little to corporate and rigid-looking for the G-n-R bed, but it's been so unstintingly doughty and cheerful that I think it's earned the right to stay there.

And 'Pam Puryear'--which is one of Matt's favorite perennials--is just knocking our socks off (constantly. We put on our socks--boom!--they're gone. Just. Like. That. That's how this plant is.) We planted it this summer in the middle of the Awfulness--which was deranged of us--and it's grown faster than all the salvias and bachelor's buttons and buddleias planted with it. From a one gallon, it's now a good 2' x 2' shrub and it's covered in just the prettiest little peachy-pink baubles.

Mostly, I'm a grown-up lady now, and my favorite color is green, and I love weird, off-colored roses that look like a cross between a pomegranate and a bruise. So my inner 8-year-old doesn't get a lot of gratification, is what I'm saying. But when I look at PP, I completely love it, both with my grown-up eyes and my inner 8-year-old eyes. Sophisticated. Strong. Prolific. And pink. Lots and lots of pink.

'Hot Cocoa' in the middle of the grass bed (not the purple, of course--that's sweet potato vine), and 'Pam Puryear' Malvaviscus arboreus in the foreground--looks a little washed out here. In real life, is much more vivid.

Speaking of off-color roses, we lost funktastic (and rare!) 'Wedding Cake' earlier this year to the weather and a faulty irrigation timer. I scoured the internet again and found a source of 5-inch "bands" (a small, deep, square pot that seems to get used a lot for mail order roses). I would have really preferred a nice, stout 2-gallon, but you take what you can get. Anyway, this time, I bought two. Here's one of the little babies. Looks so helpless, doesn't it? Fingers crossed this time.

In other essays into strangeness, we were both captivated by the toad lily (Tricyrtis hirta) at Emerald Gardens last weekend (also the source of the Millettia, incidentally. Which was $15 for a great big thing.) If it does well over the next year, I'll be tucking them all over the shade bed. I love their orchidy weirdness, and all how they draw attention to themselves, but in a mannerly, non-overwhelming way. They'll add oomph without dominating, I think.

Toad lily Tricyrtis Hirta - looks like an orchid, but isn't--is a lily, just like the name says

We've also got some well-established garden heroes, like the fantastic 'Souvenir de la Mamaison,' possibly my favorite rose in--brace yourself--the history of the entire world. Yes. I like it that much. It has gorgeous, huge, cabbagey pale pink blooms on beautiful little shrub with immaculate grey-green foliage, and it acts as though we had perfectly balanced summer in the 80s with a couple of inches of rain every month, plus fertilizers and fungicides. Instead of which, we give it irrigation and nothing else, plus a side of bermudagrass and torture by fire on the west side of the house. Nicely done, S de la M. Nicely done.

'Souvenir de la Malmaison'

In conclusion: I love October. It feels nice. It looks nice. I love it.

Glass slag in the mellow light of an October afternoon

Oh, so busy!

2011-10-18T22:15:00.001-05:00

I think we've been liberated by the cool weather--it's been crazy busy time in the garden.

Manicure a la pipe primer

We went to the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center's fall plant sale last weekend, and I ordered a bunch of bulbs from the Southern Bulb Company, plus I extended three zones of our irrigation system (with much digging, breaking of pipes, more digging, gluing, not fitting, recutting, regluing, and raking) and added some stake drippers to another zone. Oh, and I added some lights to the pond's landscape lights.

Busy times.

Here are the new plants:

Nimblewell (wonderful name, no? Very Tolkienian. If only Aragorn had had access to a patch of nimblewell during the battle at Helm's Deep, the whole thing would have been over before the rain even started. No need for Entish intervention whatsoever.) It's a diminutive, rather blowsy little Muhlenbergia (M. schreberi) that I'm hoping will behave in a groundcoverish way. [Update: CA considers this an invasive weed. But... the LBJ Wildflower Center wouldn't lead me astray, would they? Perhaps it's better behaved in Texas's less hospitable climate.]
Sideoats grama (Bouteloua curtipendula)
Missouri violets (Viola missouriensis)
Blue flag (for the pond - Iris virginica)
Partridgeberry (Mitchella repens) for a groundcover in the shade garden
Chandler's craglily (Echeandia chandleri)
Spanish bluebells (Hyacinthoides hispanica - and can I just say to this picture: Yes, please!)
Grape hyacinth (Muscari neglectum) - a very promising specific epithet. They are likely to be more or less neglected, so hopefully that's something they relish. I imagine this is the species that one often finds naturalized in cemeteries.
Chinese Sacred Lilies (Narcissus tazetta orientalis - unlike the N.t.o. in the link, my existing clump has bloomed faithfully and delightfully since they were first planted. I bought more to plant a matching clump on the other side of the front bed.)
Tulipa clusiana var. Tinka - a cute little striped species tulip. Apparently, T. clusianas are sometimes referred to as "lady tulips," which is rather sweet--they are dainty-looking.
Narcissus cyclameneus 'Jetfire' - I've always wanted to grow a cyclamen-flowered daffodil--I find their blown-back petals oddly endearing.
Narcissus tazetta 'Golden Dawn'
Jonquil (Narcissus jonquilla)

Horticultourism--Tyler, TX

2011-09-25T21:07:00.000-05:00

Lovely glass fountain at Blue Moon Gardens with complementary gazing balls

I've been meaning to visit Tyler's very large municipal rose garden for some time now. We are rose enthusiasts, after all. So we woke up early, stopped off at the little red taco wagon for our customary Saturday chicken fajita breakfast tacos, and hit the road.

The gardens were looking well--plenty of blooms, well maintained--but the truth is that it's not really our cup of tea (excuse the pun)--and not just because of its focus on moderns.

Here's the thing: making an entire garden out of nothing but modern roses is like trying to write a sentence using nothing but exclamation marks. All these vibrant reds, oranges, and yellows are screaming at you from all over the place, trying to grab your attention. But there are so many of them, and they are all in uniform, boxy parterres, so nothing really draws you eye any more than any other thing. It's overstimulating and unsatisfying simultaneously.

Using parterres seems like a clever way to impose form on plants that are often so formless and scraggly, but it represses the distinctive personality of each cultivar. It de-emphasizes the rosiness of roses. Or so it seems to me.

The admittedly impressive rows upon rows of roses. Note that the garden is at least this big again to the right.

There are some nice architectural elements in the park. I think it would have been better to select some roses for specimen plantings and some for massing, and then use the architectural elements to support the specimen plants--corners and archways and urns and central medallions in walkways that direct your attention and make the best use of different cultivars' strengths. And then use evergreens in the background to ground the whole thing and to give some relief from the riot of color. Think of a classic perennial border in England--a veritable Mardi Gras of colors and forms, set off by an impossibly smooth grass walk and the neutral background of a weathered brick wall--uniform, serene contrasts to the busyness of the flower beds. (See also the Bagatelle rose gardens in France)

As it is, this was our favorite part of the whole experience--a three-level koi pond tucked in a shady spot away from the roses. Why not put a few roses around the pond's sunnier bank? Some lovely cascadey thing, like swamp rose or 'Climbing Pinkie' or a very mature unpruned Tea rose.

And then my other favorite thing was this cultivar--you should click on it to fully grasp how heavily covered it is with hips, and what a bright gold those hips are. I've never seen anything like it. Unfortunately, it was unlabeled--maybe 'Dainty Bess'? If anyone recognizes it, please let me know.

I feel like I've been a little unfairly harsh--it's pretty nifty that a smallish town--or any town at all, really--has taken on the expense and trouble of maintaining a collection of this size. I mean, look at the pic above--so clean and orderly! Can you imagine how much mulch this requires annually? And there are some very pretty spots--the koi ponds, the camellia walk, and the idea garden full of blooming perennials, for example. It was just that it helped clarify for us some of our own ideas about how we think roses are best used in the landscape, which would be less rigidly formal, more individualized, and mixed with other species.

After that, we went to Chamblee's Roses, which I had always thought of as the Antique Rose Emporium's main competitor. I think their main focus is wholesale and mail order, though. Their excellent facility was scrupulously clean, tidy, and weedless, but it isn't a showplace the way that A.R.E. is. It is definitely worth the visit--we bought 8 roses and a book between the two of us--but it's a straightforward production unit for a terrific boatload of roses rather than a magical garden experience.

It was thanks to Chamblee that we finally got Buck roses. "Moderns," we had hitherto sniffed dismissively. But when saw them in person and full of blooms, they pretty much had us at hello. We bought 'Dawn Star' and coveted 'Quietness' and 'American Legacy.' They seem to combine old rose flower shapes with high fragrance on what are reputed to be very hardy plants. We'll see what kind of shrubs they make. (Footnote: all 3, coincidentally, are posthumous releases of seedlings Dr. Buck gave to family and friends, according to this thread on Gardenweb.)

And I finally got some David Austins: 'Abraham Darby' and the 'Ambridge Rose' and 'Sharifa Asma'.

We also picked up a 'Mrs Dudley Cross' and peppery little 'Spice,' to replace the one from my undergrad days that died of Horrid Fungus our first summer in Elgin.

Then, back in Tyler, I saw the official lettering of the trip--how adorable is that New York Store?

Delectable vintage lettering in Tyler's brick-paved downtown square

Next, on the spur of the moment, we googled "best nursery in Tyler," and got a recommendation for Blue Moon nursery, which turned out to be that unexpected something extra that makes a trip. It was a small place with a lot of very nice plants in excellent shape set in creative, lovingly tended--and immaculate--display gardens. We picked up a bog sage, a tiny yellow daisy whose name eludes me, some purple-flowering Thai basil, a hummingbird feeder, and two Dwarf Hamlins (that Pennisetum alopecuroides cultivar I was seeing all over the place at TNLA).

On the grounds they have this awesome patio/performance area--a fireplace, a niche for an urn, a mantel, a window, and--is that a pizza oven? Whatever it is, it's delightful and convivial filled me with envy.

Fireplace and patio at Blue Moon Gardens

At Blue Moon, they recommended we eat at either Edom or Ben Wheeler--apparently, these two rather remote hamlets are bursting with culinary goodness. We chose The Shed in Edom where we had very satisfactory old-school chicken fried chicken and country fried steak; but interestingly, it was the fried cabbage (pretty much everything on their menu is fried--be prepared) that was the revelation--caramelized, sweet, but not soggy. Delectable. They must fry it very fast, in what tastes like bacon grease. So it's going to be a salady week making up for that one, but, lordy! that cabbage was good.

I like this conjunction of signs.

So, all in all, a good trip. Long, but good. We learned some useful things, bought some nice plants, saw some gardens, and had some yummy food. That's about all you need.

Twenty Percent More Color!

2011-09-20T21:57:00.000-05:00

This birdseed is the shizz

Well, I'll be monkey's uncle (or aunt?). It worked! That bird seed just about did attract twenty percent more color.

See this thing? It's... kinda small. But I swear, it's a bird! Not a sick leaf! And it's very yellow.

A tiny yellow bird, attracted to our color-beguiling birdseed

Here's a perfectly awful closeup (I can see that our new bird feeders will require me to buy a new camera). You can see... well, you can see that it's yellow, anyway. I'm currently guessing that it's a yellow-throated vireo, but given my knowledge of ornithology, I wouldn't be shocked to learn that it was a Miniature Amber-Chested Mexican Vulture. Or a Great Gulf Dwarf Primrose Whooping Crane. But for now we'll call it a vireo.

A vireo. Or a small vulture. One of the two.

We've also been attracting Carolina chickadees (I assume that's what this is). They aren't exactly roseate spoonbills, but they're cute enough.

A jumpy little chickadee

I didn't get a picture of the neatest birds--a pair of tiny, dusky blue things. The closest species I could find for our area are the blue-crowned vireo and the eastern kingbird, though neither of those are really very blue, and I would have sworn that our visitors were. Dark and slatey, but definitely blue.

On the other hand, this hummingbird obligingly paused for a number of blurry, indistinct photos. I don't know what kind it is either, except that it doesn't appear to have a ruby throat. I imagine it's here for the Chitalpa though (blooming away cheerfully, drought be damned), not for the birdseed.

A pointy-snouted little hummingbird

Speaking of nectar feeders, I was reminded the other day to put out nectar for the bees & butterflies. It's migratory butterfly season, apparently, and we're really low on nice, nectary flowers across the state. And the bees, of course, always seem to be having a rough time of it. I read the other day that their wax starts to melt above ~110F. So on top of everything else this summer, they had to cope with melty hives.

For the nectar lovers, I was told to put a piece or red or orange sponge out in a pie plate with some sugar water (3 parts water to 1 part sugar) and orange quarters. We've had a couple of these little bird feeders kicking around for years in the garage, so they're finally getting their day in the sun. Haven't seen many butterflies, but every bee in the neighborhood has heard about our nectar sponges. I froze extra nectar in 1/3 cup servings, and every morning (when I remember), I drop a chunk of frozen nectar on each sponge and let it melt in.

In a similar vein of folksy strategies for a crappy climate, we're giving our trees a deep soak via kitty litter buckets. I used an ice pick to pound 5 small holes in the bottom of 3 kitty litter buckets. I placed the buckets around the drip line of this little Lacey oak, filled them, and let them slowly drip out for a nice, deep drink. I think three buckets is enough for this little tree, but I'll probably move & refill them 1-4 times for the larger trees.

Because we can't stop ourselves, we've been putting in a few new plants. This is Bouteloua gracilis 'Blonde Ambition' blue grama grass. Those white-gold horizontal flower heads are pleasantly sparky, especially in front of that red shield hibiscus.

We've also planted this interesting hesperaloe, 'Brakelights' (stupid name, as per usual. Have breeders been outsourcing their branding to some sort of cheapo advertising sweatshops overseas? How are the connotations of brake lights--stop!--traffic!--you can't go!--eek! accident!--what you want associated with a nice landscape plant???). Yuccado has an interesting comparison of BL flower versus a standard red yucca.

Meantime, some of the 50 or so oxbloods that I planted in that same bed earlier this year--and which have receive ZERO water all summer--are poking their brave little crimson heads above a cracked and parched earth. Oxblood lilies are STRONG and BRAVE! And, by happy coincidence, they look quite nice with 'Brakelights.'

Oxblood lilies: horticultural heroes. And new Hesperaloe parviflora cvr 'Brakelights'

2011-09-13T23:26:00.001-05:00

I've always vaguely meant to add more wildlife-friendly plants to the yard. Who doesn't want butterflies and birds, after all? But we've been much more focused on finding homes for our roses and more general landscaping priorities since moving in. But now that the Grass-n-Roses bed is taking shape (grasses being generally rather WF by virtue of providing habitat, apparently),now that the pond is providing a copious water source for the thirsty, and now that the climate is in such a homicidal and faunicidal rage, now seems like the right time to get serious about lending our furry, feathered, froggy, and chitinous brethren a hand.

We installed our first two bird feeders around the pond this weekend, an activity that for some reason made me feel more than usually married. Somehow, it just seems so homey and pleasantly settled to have bird feeders. Matt said it made him feel like an 80-year-old. I said, but a married eighty-year-old, right? (Side note: is there anything we should know about which birdseed to use? We just bought whatever they had at Lowe's, a mix that promised--I kid you not--"20% more color!" We haven't yet figured out if that means the birds will be 20% more colorful than they used to be, or we'd get 20% more highly colored bird species than we used to. At present, it appears to be netting us 2,000% more mourning doves, but whatever. We did see one bright yellow thing, one cardinal, and a sort of titmouse kind of a fellow, which was nice. Oh, and an inexplicable hummingbird.)

And I also trolled through Austin's Grow Green Guide for ideas of plants we could add to the yard. What came as a pleasant surprise is how many WF plants we already have. This begs the question: where are all the bunnies, herons, pumas, foxes, and other furry friends? But perhaps we don't have a high enough density of WF plants. Must work on that.

Wildlife-friendly Plants We Have
Baldcypress (Taxodium distichum)
Montezuma Cypress (Taxodium mucronatum)
Bur Oak (Quercus macrocarpa)
Lacey Oak (Quercus laceyi)
Mexican White Oak (Quercus polymorpha)
Live Oak (Quercus virginiana)
Eve's Necklace (Sophora affinis)
Kidneywood (Eysenhardtia texana)
Texas Mountain Laurel (Sophora secundiflora)
Cordia (Cordia boissieri) - a new one; our previous specimen croaked last winter. If at first you don't succeed...
Pomegranate (Punica granatum)
Evergreen Sumac (Rhus virens)
Abelia (Abelia sp.)
Chitalpa (X Chitalpa tashkentensis 'Morning Cloud')
American Beautyberry (Callicarpa americana)
White Boneset (Eupatorium havanense)
Turk's Cap (Malvaviscus arboreus 'Pam Puryear')
Red Columbine (Aquilegia sp.)
Obedient Plant (Physostegia sp.)
Echinacea (Echinacea purpurea - butterflies)
Pavonia (Pavonia braziliensis - butterflies)
Salvia spp (Salvia spp. - hummingbirds)
Red Yucca (Hesperaloe parviflora - hummingbirds)
Inland Sea Oats (Chasmanthium latifolium)
Big Muhly (Muhlenbergia lindheimeri)
Passionflower (Passiflora incarnata - butterflies)
Horseherb (Calyptocarpus vialis - a volunteer that acts as a proxy lawn for us--not sure if it will have survived the Great Dryness)

But more is required! So I'd like to start working some of these species in, mostly in the G-n-R bed, the bed around the pond, and the shade bed.

Wildlife-friendly Plants We Want
Fragrant Sumac (Rhus aromatica)
Barbados Cherry (Malpighia glabra)
Buddleia (Buddleia sp.)
Chile Pequin (Capsicum annuum)
Fall Aster (Symphyotrichum oblongifolium - nectar)
Gaura (Gaura lindheimeri - butterflies)
Purple Skullcap (Scutellaria sp - butterflies)
Perennial Winecup (Callirhoe involucrata - Hairstreak butterfly)
Yarrow (Achillea sp. - Painted Lady butterfly)
Little Bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium - Skipper butterflies)
Bamboo Muhly (Muhlenbergia dumosa)
Gulf Muhly (Muhlenbergia capillaris)
Wood Violet (Viola sp.)
Echincea Sombrero series 'Sandy Yellow' or 'Hot Coral' (Echinacea purpurea)

Also--and Matt doesn't know this yet, lucky guy! --I'd like to make a rain garden. The Guide had this really cool pic of rain garden, and I realized that something like that would really add pizazz to the the shade bed, plus we'll need and overflow spot anyway when (as I hope will someday happen) we get that old cistern under our house back in operation. Think of all the nice boggy plants we could grow, like cardinal flower!

Pretty, no? And the shade bed would adore the extra water.

Labor Day Fires 2011

2011-09-04T23:02:00.000-05:00

I couldn't find a map of the wildfires online, so I had to resort to making one myself. This is a VERY APPROXIMATE map based on the loose descriptions of fire locations from YNN, KXAN, Statesman, Elgin Courier, &c., &c.

At present, as you can see, Elgin is in a safe patch. Fingers crossed that we stay this way, what with the winds and lack of humidity. My inlaws were coincidentally in the area at the time and had to evacuate, so we're now running a tiny, one-family refugee camp. Everyone's fine--not even the dogs are singed. I wish I could say the same for everyone else in Central Texas. First reports are saying that several hundred homes in Bastrop Co. alone have been lost, and the firefighters aren't even trying to fight it--they're just focused on evacuations.

TNLA 2011

2011-09-03T10:45:00.006-05:00

'Emerald Choco Zebra.' Yeah, I'm serious--that is its name. A zebra that is made of chocolate and also of emerald. That makes sense.

Matt's company went to the 2011 Texas Nurseryman and Landscaper's Association convention in Dallas a couple of weeks ago and very kindly let me come too.

I saw some of my old favorites from previous TNLAs, like 'Summer Chocolate' mimosa, 'Teddy Bear' magnolia, weeping atlas cedar, and 'Emerald Choco Zebra' curcuma (above). I have no idea how they perform (except for the Atlas cedar--we can't grow that one here). But I noticed a hell of a lot more grasses this year than previously. Not sure if that's because I'm in a more grass-receptive mood, or if there is a turn within the industry this year toward drought-tolerant/nativey sorts of plants.

If so I sympthize. All the plant pain in my garden distresses me (we've lost my new funky 'Wedding Cake' rose to a faulty irrigation valve, 'Autumn Damask,' a rose I nurtured along in a pot for eleven years after A&M and that has been in the ground happily for four, is on the brink, and it looks like Serenoa repens is succumbing to transplant shock + heat stress + drought after we planted it (idiotically) in July. Ths is despite getting water 3 times per week.) And I hate the amount of watering we're doing--I hadn't expected to water more than once per week during the heat of the summer, but we'd be living in a desert if I kept to that schedule these days.

So. Grasses.

We've got 3 varieties in the Grass-n-Roses bed:

Big muhly (Muhlenbergia lindheimeri)
'Mexican feather grass (Nassella/Stipa tenuissima)
the new blue grama grass, 'Blond Ambition' (Bouteloua gracilis).

And we're looking for more.

This appears to have been the year for 'Dwarf Hamlin,' a Pennisetum alopecuroides cultivar. It was all over the place, along with 'Little Bunny' a particularly compact and adorable cultivar of the same species.

Pennisetum alopecuroides cvr. Hameln AKA 'Dward Hamlin'

Pennisetum alopecuroides cvr. 'Little Bunny'

That dramatic purple millet from a couple of years ago (or one like it) was also everywhere. Very stylish, but it doesn't look drought-hardy.

This specimen of little bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium--how's that for an orthographically challenging mouthful?) made a compelling case for use in the garden--so dense, vertical, and strikingly colored.

Schizachyrium scoparium

And this yucca with the painstakingly coiffured trunk--wouldn't that be a wonderfully sculptural addition to the garden? I love the buff-colored trunks against the grey-green leaves.

Yucca, Can't remember genus offhand

I also saw quite a lot of both green and silver Carexes this year. They're pleasingly tufty and soft-looking. We might try some in the shade garden as a ground cover, if the heat ever breaks and we ever plant anything again.

Mexican blue palm and Carex flacca/glauca

Other than grasses & friends of the grasses, there were also some interesting new Echinacea cultivars. It's a lousy picture, but I love the pale lemon of the 'Sandy Yellow' Echinacea in the Sombrero series (poorly named--it's not the color of sand at all). And, while not to my taste, the I-am-a-PRINCESS! frills of 'Double Scoop Bubble Gum' would add variety and pizzaz to a nativey perennial bed. (But who comes up with these names? My mouth feels sticky just reading it.)

Echinacea 'Double Scoop Bubble Gum' and Echinacea Sombrero 'Sandy Yellow'

I also really liked two more cultivars in the Sombrero series: 'Hot Coral' and 'Salsa Red'. How well all of these fellows perform down here is an open question, but I do love their looks, and their slightly unusual proportions for an Echinacea--great chubby disc flowerheads with adorably stubby little ray flowers (the "petals"). Kind of the opposite of a sombrero, really, but what the hell.

Echinacea Sombrero 'Hot Coral' and 'Salsa Red'

In other trends, the industry seems very interested in new redbuds. In addition to the lovely 'Forest Pansy,' which has been around for a while, and the 'Hearts of Gold,' which I remember from last year, they're also selling 'Ace of Hearts,' 'Rising Sun,' and the stunning if slightly coarse 'Ruby Falls.'

(A) Hearts of Gold, (B) Forest Pansy, (C) Ace of Hearts, (D) Rising Sun, (E) Ruby Falls
Apologies for the atrocious picture!

(A) Hearts of Gold - chartreuse leaves
(B) Forest Pansy - purple leaves
(C) Ace of Hearts - compact form, dense small leaves
(D) Rising Sun - newest foliage is orangey-pink, with older chartreuse leaves behind and mature dark green behind that
(E) Ruby Falls - weeping purple

Magnolia grandiflora appears to be undergoing similar diversification. There were several cultivars that appeared to be 'Little Gem' competitors--large, columnar evergreens. However, the only one that was really compelling at first glance was 'Teddy Bear' (so cute! so fuzzy!), which is several years old.

In a completely different vein, TNLA always has at least a few lovely things trucked in by hopeful vendors from Florida or Tennessee or Oregon that would never do here, like this wonderful strangeness: a Black Bat Tacca. I've never seen anything quite like it. Sadly, it's incredibly prissy, so I'll just have to admire it from afar. If I ever become a vampire, however, I'll have to have a whole garden of these.

Tacca chantrieri "Black bat flower"

Finally, I rather fell in love with these pots this year. I love the blue and the old fashioned French-looking patterns.

Some nice pots

Latest Drought Map

2011-08-26T16:48:00.005-05:00

Sweet Jesus.

Compare with previous drought maps on this blog:

May 2011

Feb 2011

Jan 2009

Mid-summer Acquisitions; Water Your Trees!

2011-07-27T21:13:00.012-05:00

New Tillandsia xerographica

In defiance of the miserable heat and drought, Matt & I have actually added to our collection this month. In addition to our Louisiana plants from a couple of weeks ago, I also bought a couple more tillandsias to hang over the pond: T. xerographica (top) and T. concolor × streptophylla (middle).

T. xerographica, T. concolor × streptophylla, and an incomplete ball of T. ionantha 'Fuego' Also, one of Granny's Louisiana irises is in a pot toward the bottom left

Closeup of the T. concolor × streptophylla

And, in the midst of general destruction and misery, a couple of the ionanthas are changing color! I had hoped they would, but I hadn't expected it so soon! Isn't that jewel-like carmine ravishing?

Two red T. ionantha 'Fuego'. This probably means they're about to bloom, and possibly to pup and die. It will be interesting to see how this works out in the context of a dangling grapevine ball.

The sawtooth palm (Serenoa repens) seems to be settling in, but the only iris that looks promising is the one I planted in the pond (see earlier pic of 3 tillandsias).

The beautiful bluey-silver of Serenoa repens

Meanwhile, we've upped our watering to three times a week, rather to my disgust (no water restrictions in Elgin--we have a very robust aquifer, I suppose). And while we're definitely getting more blooms out of our roses because of it, the plants still don't look happy. They're droopy and sulky. And the flowers are wadded and oddly colored.

Believe it or not, this is 'Duchesse de Brabant.' A number of our stouter roses are blooming intently--Archduke Charles, D de B, Souvenir de la Malmaison, Belinda's Dream, Maggie--but most of the blossoms are crumpled or strangely colored or generally off-looking.

A month of 100-degree highs will do that to a plant, I suppose. And--yay!--we still have all of August to look forward to!

The red line is our highs for July--averaging 100.35F. NOAA's seasonal drought outlook folks--who now predict the weather by aiming a flame-thrower at a map of Texas and pulling the trigger--say that for almost the whole of Texas the drought will intensify between now and October. Intensify! How?? How can we get less than no rain, I'd like to know?!?!

I'm not sure if any amount of water could make our plants look happy these days, though they are a little less suicidal now than when they were on the twice-a-week schedule.

Speaking of which, tonight we put a sprinkler on the old pecan, which we usually just leave to Mother Nature's tender mercies. But big old trees can crash abruptly in weather like this--even tough old natives, like blackjack oaks and loblolly pines. In fact, I just read the other day that mature trees are actually more susceptible to drought than young, springy, resilient trees. Plus, of course, people taken them for granted, since they look like they've been around forever.

Water your trees, including the venerable old grandfather trees! They make shade! They keep the heat off your roof/skin/car! They absorb CO2 and provide habitat for our furry and feathered friends! And did I mention that they make shade?

Please: think of the trees.

Don't less this happen to you. Unless of course it's November. Then it's okay.

Pics from http://www.wunderground.com, http://www.layoutsparks.com/1/168216/broken-heart-tree-branch.html , and http://thepineappletree.com/archives/store/products/dark-chocolate-i-heart-trees-shirt

Pondly footnote: two 'Steven Strawn' blooms. I love this weird silver hue he's taken on, presumably in response to the heat. It's not Steven's normal color, but really, everything he does is lovely and full of grace--I do adore that waterlily.

In Which We See Dead People

2011-07-15T18:30:00.017-05:00

Awesome polychrome Jesus, Dugas Cemetery, Montegut, LA

Matt & I took a trip to south Louisiana a couple of weeks ago to visit some of the little towns that come up over and over in my family tree, and to scan in old family photos. I adore old black-and-white family photos.

My grandmother's family is from the pink area, while my grandfather's is from the blue. We visited Breaux Bridge, St Martinville, Lafayette, Thibodaux, Houma, and tiny Montegut.

We also saw a bunch of cemeteries, hoping to find ancestors. It was a sort of treasure hunt, where the treasure is an ancient, crumbly tomb whose residents have long since turned to dust, or possibly something wetter and stickier than dust, this being south Louisiana. We found a few, plus many unrelated tombs that were interesting in their own right.

Since this is usually a garden-centric blog, I'll start with items of horticultural interest.

Ferns
This neat little fern was growing in all the crevices and cracks it could find in tombs from Breaux Bridge to Houma. This specimen placed itself particularly artfully.

A permanent green bouquet. Not bad for a dude who's been dead since 1882.

Drought
Louisiana, like much of the south, is in a nasty drought. Not as bad as ours here in Texas, but pretty bad. The funny thing is, a terrible drought by Louisiana standards looks like an unbelievably lush summer by Austin standards. It even rained while we were there. Yeah, that's right--they still make rain in Louisiana. Jammy bastards.

Small cemetery by the border of Vermillion Parish. I wish our drought looked like this.

Of course, a drought isn't about how much water you get in absolute terms; it's about how much water you get relative to what you usually get and what you need to be productive. From that perspective, all this gorgeous green is deceptive. Still, I'd rather suffer in a pool of emerald than on a barren brown rock.

Acquisitions
Matt was unbelievably sweet about this whole trip--patient and interested and accommodating about everything, even though ancestors are mostly only interesting to the folks who owe them their genetic material. He even memorized the relationships between all the principle ancestors, by both real name and family nickname (no easy task!), and kept a little chart in his pocket notebook. By way of reward, we stopped at a nursery that had caught his eye. Of course we bought stuff. I got a small silver-blue saw palmetto (Serenoa repens) for the shade garden, and a Formosa lily (Lilium formosum) for... someplace. Matt got a new cuphea (he loves cupheas), an orange-flowered Crossandra, and an unknown variegated foliage plant. Plus Granny Babe gave us some of her yellow-flowered Louisiana irises.

Neat Cemeteries
One of our best finds in terms of ancestral mausolea was for awesomely named Alidor Stoufflet (b1848) and his equally awesome wife Melicie Walker (b1844) in Houma. They were my g-g-g grandparents, and they died in 1930 and 1924, respectively, but they were almost the oldest ancestors we found. Their tomb is only 80 years old, but it already looks like it's about to fall apart. All flesh is grass, folks. Unless you build a Taj Mahal or a pyramid, don't expect to stick around too terribly long after you shuffle off the mortal coil. (This trip may have accelerated the mid-life crisis I'm due for in a few years.)

The very oldest was this guy--not an ancestor, but more like a third cousin, 8 times removed. Or something. His tomb in Montegut, Louisiana is about as creepy as you can desire--the very picture of decay. Deliciously, the inscription's in French; it says, "Here rests Honore Robichaux, died 7 Oct 1907, age 88 years." He was the grandson of my g-g-g-g-g grandfather, Jean Baptiste Robichaux of Halifax. I guess that actually makes him my second cousin, 6 times removed?

I'd have love to have found tombs of older ancestors, but I guess that will have to wait for a future trip. (To be taken at a much cooler time of year. Good lord, it was hot! I think I may have broken Louisiana's drought just by sweating all over the state.)

Thibodaux had the most intrinsically fantastic cemetery (which is good thing, since it's ginormous and took hours to cover, but didn't actually furnish up any family members). First, you see this unbelievably genteel boulevard of irreproachably white and identical mausolea. So uniform! So tidy! But this is the new part.

Respectability Row

When you turn the corner, you start seeing a lot more variety--new tombs, old tombs, rich tombs, poor tombs, big ones, small ones... This is where it starts to get fun.

Old Town

Then, if you're Matt, you go poking around behind the tombs and discover this hidden alleyway. There's no real path to it; you just have to pick your way between the tombs. There's no grass--though there are weeds. It's the weirdest thing. It's like burying someone behind your garage or something--a neglected, hidden area that stretches on most of the length of the (very large) cemetery. Could it be an island of unconsecrated ground? Is this where they stick the Protestants? Or is it just where they stash the poor? Did they dig these folks up and move them to make way for Respectability Row? Answer comes there none.

Storyville?

Meanwhile, Matt, in his role as intrepid investigative reporter, stuck his camera in a tomb whose front door was partially missing. This is what the inside looks like. All those roots dangling from the ceiling kind of creep me out. Stop trying to eat people, you sinister plants!

In an "oven"

According to the internet, a niche like this within a tomb is popularly known as an "oven," partly because these tombs heat up in the sun and turn their occupants into humus in a year or two. Then if space is at a premium, the remaining bones are dumped out of the coffin and swept into a communal ossuary within the same mausoleum, and the oven is ready for its next occupant. Sort of like slow-motion cremation. Pragmatic and efficient, though I find the idea of my bones commingling promiscuously with those of my family members to be off-puttingly incestuous.

Here's a commingling that I love, though: old tomb, new occupant; old vase, new flowers.

Grey tomb, yellow flowers

Family Photos
My grandmother and her cousin, Shirley, were incredibly generous with their time and knowledge, and I was able to scan hundreds of wonderful old photos and gather stories about them. Here are a handful. Shirley has an awesome old carte-de-visite style album given to my great-great grandmother by a hitherto unknown (male!) friend with the implausible name of Webb Zenor. Check out the inscription: his handwriting's as fantastical as his name. See the little curlicues inside of the word "Compliments"?

To Miss Rosa Muller / Compliments of / Webb Zenor / 1879

This is the oldest family photo that I know of. Below it is the inscription "Mrs. (Felicie) Nicholas Muller." Now Felicie Hebert was born in 1833, according to my records, which makes this one old photograph (maybe 1836?). I don't think England's royal family started having their pictures taken till the 1840s. Victoria's coronation in 1837, for example, wasn't photographed. So I'm suspicious--either the attribution or Felicie's birthdate is likely in error. Still, for the moment we'll call it our oldest photo.

Felicie? Maybe? If so, her parents--who lived in New Iberia--were crazy early adopters of photography. They'd have been all over the iPad like white on rice.

Here's her son, Anthony Muller, dressed as a Mardi Gras king.

Anthony Muller, g-g-g uncle

And here's where family history meets the larger tide of history. Several decades later, it's a Mardi Gras parade in Morgan City. The king and page are white. The guys pulling the float and carrying the torches are all very reluctant looking black guys. Very, very Jim Crow. Eerie.

Morgan City's first(?) Mardi Gras parade

On a happier note, here's Tante Rose (g-g aunt) with two unknown pals. She's dressed as a man and smoking a cigar. Granny says Tante Rose was "a character"--not, I think, in a good way. She liked her own way, I gather, and maybe she was a bit selfish and hard on others. But here she looks like a barrel of fun--like the family cutup.

Tante Rose on left, with cigar

And lastly, the Venus of the Bayou. This might be Maggie Elbina Stoufflet (Mommom--pronounced "muh-MOM," not "mom-mom"), but then again it might not. I love her come-hitherish pose.

Acadian Odalisque

Eleventy Billion Oxeyes; Tillandsia Baubles

2011-06-12T19:38:00.003-05:00

Ball of moss. Kind of.

Ode to the Sprinkler
Matt's nursery dumped their oxeye daisy inventory--apparently, it's hard to get them to bloom in a pot and thus hard to get them to sell. We were the beneficiaries. I'd been want something daisyish to cluster around the roses and hide any knobbly knees, and oxeyes are--I hope--just the thing.

I spent several hours yesterday and several more today placing them, using a carpet knife to cut openings in the blasted weed barrier (in my head, I now say this word the same way Seinfeld says "Newman!"), and digging holes. It was pretty damned unpleasant, even at 8:30 this morning, until I turned on a sprinkler to give a little encouragement to the daisies still in 4-inches. I had flats and flats of daisies to plant, so I just plodded away under the spray and got completely, blissfully drenched. You've no idea (unless, I suppose, you've ever been wet yourself. Then you might just possibly have an idea) how cool and refreshing it was. I may do all my summer yardwork under a sprinkler. Beats the hell out of heatstroke, and goodness knows pretty much every inch of the yard could use some extra water.

The daisies are all looking a little appalled by everything (it was very hard to keep them from crispifying in their pots), but I'm hoping they'll bounce back now that they're in the earth. I do think they'll make a nice unifying motif in a yard that is often (charmingly?) heterogeneous.

Some traumatized daisies lining the front walk

On a side note, adding the daisies pretty much necessitates that we switch from spaghetti tubing to regular PVC+sprinkler heads. Digging irrigation trenches behind 5' roses: that should be... fun.

Suspended Epiphytes
In pond news, I bought some Tillandsia ionantha 'Fuego' plants a week or two ago to grow as a sphere and suspend over the pond. I'd like ultimately to have about 5 baubles, each growing different Tillandsias, all hanging from the Robinia over the pond. Tillandsias are the genus to which Spanish moss (T. usneoides) and ball moss (T. recurvata) both belong. I rather miss the Spanish moss from home, and its brother and sister species come in some really fantastic shapes and colors, so I think it could look really neat. Anyway, I installed the T. ionantha ball today. I used a grapevine ball and hot-glued (I know, but this is actually a recommended method!) the little plants to the ball. Turns out, it taked umpty-zillion plants to fill in a small (~5" dia.) grapevine ball--and I had seven. So it's looking a little sparse, but I'm hoping it will fill in over time. Or I'll buy more. (The idea was to look like this).

Bear in mind that this is the first of 5. I'm sure it will eventually make visual sense.

Fishy-fish & Catch-up

2011-05-30T20:42:00.005-05:00

It's hot. I'm not a fan. So I've been inside a lot during the day lately. When I go out, I put on SPF 70 (seventy, forsooth!) and a huge straw hat and still get burned. Screw this.

Matt's more rugged than I am (by a lot--when the apocalypse comes--apparently not on schedule--Matt's pretty much my meal ticket. If he breaks a leg or a tree falls on his head on our post-apocalyptic homestead, we're both doomed.) Anyway, he's been plugging away an extension to the irrigation system to cover the roses in the AC bed. I tapped a little more edging into the ground on the grass-n-roses bed, but otherwise I mostly sit on the patio, communing with the fishes and fanning myself pinkly.

Catalog of the Fish

A small swarm of fish, a couple of weeks ago

Speaking of fish, they've made babies all over the place, plus I bought some pretty fantails. The total (named) fish population consists of:

NEW GUYS (Fantails)

Fred (Looks like Bob, but with a fan tail)
Ginger (All white with tiny red dots at the base of her tail)
Myrna (All white with a red flare from fin to tail)
Orangina (unusual shade of fluorescent orange)
Safety First the Second (Safety First the First, RIP)

BABIES

Zoro (a baby Shubunkin! With a black mask on his head.)
Blue (another baby Shubunkin! Mostly pale blue.)
The Golden Ghost (yet another! Mostly pale gold.)
Fiamma (all white with a red flare from dorsal fin to tail)
Spike (light orange with a black dorsal stripe)
Redtip (All white with a red fin and tail)
Bob Jr. (looks a lot like Bob Sr.)
Lyn Jr. (looks a lot like Lyn Sr.)
Chaplin (white with pronounced red mustache-shaped mark over mouth & dorsal stripe)
Pearl (solid white. There are about 5 of these. I call them all "Pearl.")
Penny (solid red. There are about 5 of these. I call them all "Penny.")

OLDIES

Bob (red with white splodges on underbelly near head)
Lyn (red with white splodges on underbelly near tail)
Thor (big red)
Big Olaf (other big red)
Jupiter (white with red dot on his head)
Drusilla (solid white, short tail. Kinda dull.)
Lena (solid white, long swishy tail--very glamorous)
Spooky (light blueish Shubunkin with a few pale gold splodges)
Crazy Eye (dark blue/grey Shubunkin with big dark orange splodges)

There are other babies that haven't developed a name yet, but I think this is all of the main guys.

Roses
In other news, 'Hot Cocoa,' 'Francis Dubreuil,' 'Belinda's Dream,' 'Souvenir de la Malmaison,' 'Mutabilis,' and 'Green Ice' are blooming, with varying degrees of enthusiasm. 'Mrs. Dudley Cross,' a transplant from the Brazos River bottom, has seemingly decided--after a protracted period of hesitation--to live. It was a big, mature shrub, and the catalyst(s) appear to have been (1) hooking up a watering system (2) cutting it back hard when it refused to leaf out, and (3) dousing it generously with Immunox (was starting to exhibit signs of Horrid Fungus).

Ongoing Projects
???

I really don't know. Heat has scrambled brains. I guess plant a few more Mexican feathergrass. Pound in some more edging. Hibernate till September. Then we can work on filling in the rest of the grass-n-roses bed and taming the AC bed.

I'm told that Texas was unusually cool and moist in the 19th century. Immigrants from Germany, Bohemia, Sweden came here and thought they'd found the land of milk and honey. They wrote their friends, "Pack your bags! It's gorgeous here!" And then the wet spell ended and the poor bastards were stuck in Texas in August.

Immigration propaganda for 19c Texas. Looks nice, doesn't it?

How'd It Get to Be August So Soon?

2011-05-08T17:52:00.006-05:00

Pastures are toasted, there have been cigarette fires on the median strips, and our "lawn" is a brown dust bowl. Apparently, we've skipped May, June, and July, opted not to pass "Go," and landed straight in August.

BAD climate! Naughty, naughty climate!

Here's NOAA's assessment of our current state of drought (we're at the pink cross of dismay, a hop, skip, and a jump away from the maroon tide of doom):

And thanks to that bitch La Niña, it doesn't look like things are going to improve till fall at the earliest.

But it is not all dust and ashes here at Chez M. This picture nicely captures a number of new developments, positive and otherwise.

This is one of the few blooming roses left in the yard, newcomer 'Hot Cocoa,' a modern grandiflora that is a weird nifty combination of orange, pink, brown, and purple.
We just added some Mexican feathergrass to the grass-n-roses bed.
One of our lawn's many dead patches. It's so dead in the back yard that bare dirt is exposed.
We really need to buy a gate to hide the working area of the yard. Ah, money. Why aren't you made of rubber?
We added some more metal edging to the grass-n-roses bed, so it's looking slightly less disreputable. Still need about 11 more pieces :-(
Lotus 'Mrs. Perry D. Slocum' is back! Yay lotus!
New dwarf lotus 'Momo Botan' is having a rather slow start. Hang in there, little buddy.
We got the waterfall going! We need a bigger pump! And we need to hide the tubing!
Half the lights around the pond stopped working, and installing new light bulbs doesn't help. WTF??

Here's a closeup of 'Hot Cocoa'--the color's not exactly right, but you can kind of get the idea.

A couple more newbie roses: 'Red Fountain' and 'Wedding Cake.' And the watering system that gives them hope of survival despite La Niña.

The full list of new roses is:

Puerto Rico
Marchesa Bochella
Zepherine Drouhin
Mystery whitish rose with small flowers
Green rose
Wedding Cake
Hot Cocoa
Perle d'Or
Chestnut rose

Also on the list of good things, it's Crinum powellii season. We've got them all over the place, and they're helping to fill in the void left at the end of Peak Rose. Here they're trying to eat our back stoop.

The Big Picture

2011-04-06T21:52:00.004-05:00

My friend Kate said she wanted to see holistic sort of pictures of the yard. Seems kind of appropriate, since the last post was all closeups of roses.

But the awkward thing with photographs is that sometimes what looks really big and significant in real life looks small and puny and uninteresting in a picture. Especially at 7:00 in the morning. So you'll just have to trust me when I tell you our garden is fat with blossoms and is confettied in red, white, and pink petals. Even if you can't quite see if from the pictures.

You can't see them, but 'Fourth of July' is bursting with crimson flowers, and 'Cramoisi Superieur' is covered with blooms. It looks really pretty. Honest.

Still, at least you can see the front walkway that we (especially Matt) spent so much time on. Though it also looks better--more proportional and better integrated--in real life. Dammit.

And here's the whole house. Even if you can't see the flowers, you can tell that everything--bushes, trees, roses--is bigger and greener and plumper than ever before. So that's nice.

Even the color of the walkway is off--it matches better in real life. Geez Louise.

Last year's 'Cascade Falls' weeping baldcypress is leafing out nicely, even if it isn't much bigger. The 2-year-old chitalpa, on the other hand, is about 3 times taller than when we first planted it two years ago. Glory be, those things haul ass.

Finally, you can sort of kind of see some color--those pink dots at the foot of the chitalpa are our 'Archduke Charles' chinas, planted in the fall, I think, and already blooming their fool heads off.

See? This is exactly what I'm talking about. When I look at the rose bed, I see roses everywhere. When I look at this picture, I see a sickly expanse of lawn rimmed with some insignificant frowzy things that are mostly green.

WTF?!?

Okay, here's a rose that rarely disappoints. Mutablis. It's covered in a kind of festival of blooms. Not as intense as in real life, but you get the gist. When the Mutabilis hedge gets like this, it reminds me of some sort of medieval fair--the kind that probably never really happened, but scifi/fantasy writers like to imagine--different colored banners snapping in the breeze, lush green grass, brightly colored pavilions, ladies in flowy red and blue and purple silk gowns and men in kelly green tunics and hose--and everything colored with the intensity and clarity of stained glass. Very pretty, very bright and clean and spring-like, and just a wee bit gaudy.

Thank you, Mutabilis

And now for something quite sad: several months ago, some jerkoffs from the phone company decided to prune our trees (and only our trees, I might add, no one else's--conspiracy?). They literally halved our unfortunate ash by the garage (am thinking of pollarding--poor bastard--that's all it's good for now). But worst of all, they took an indiscriminate chainsaw to our 60+ year old pecan. Planted by Mr. M's long-deceased father.

The poor scalped thing now looks like this:

Several years ago, we had a tree pruner out to estimate doing our yard (I think he quoted $1200--ouch). I asked particularly about this tree, but he said that since it was just phone lines, the utility company was unlikely to mess with the tree. And then the business that I worked for closed, so I shelved any arboristy plans indefinitely. Now that we've got a couple of multiple amputees, I suppose we have no choice but to cough up the $1500+ and have the poor things taken care of. Ug. Not a good time for that sort of expense, what with the state budget being how it is and jobs being slashed left and right. Still, if we have to go live in a cardboard box, at least we will have done our duty at tree stewards before being evicted.

Spring: An Ambivalent Appreciation

2011-03-30T21:37:00.003-05:00

Spring is so complicated. My allergies have been bad enough to completely incapacitate me after yardwork two Sundays running, and Claritin can't begin to keep up. On the other hand, everything is so wonderfully densely green and juicy and pulsing with vitality. I can't decide if I hate or love this time of year.

Meanwhile, roses are popping into bloom all over the place. 'Fourth of July' is putting on its first buds. Matt, who hates moderns, grumbles about this viciously thorny rose a lot, so I'm doubly glad to see it bodying forth its streaky red awesomeness. FOJ: more than just a bad-ass lethal ninja weapon.

'Fourth of July'

'Madame Alfred Carriere' is just starting to bloom up on the gazebo. It's sporting a number of foamy pink blossoms, although when it comes to the gazebo, the flower bedizened 'Climbing Old Blush' is really where it's at right now. OB's individual flowers, though, can't compare to the delicacy and refinement of Mme AC's.

'Madame Alfred Carriere'

'Isabella Sprunt,' which is a comparatively new addition to the garden (planted last fall, I think), has put out a number of its unusually long, narrow buds, which prefigure the elongated buds of the hybrid teas. They open to pretty pale lemon blossoms.

'Isabella Sprunt'

Both of the 'Archduke Charles' that we planted last year are sporting many Valentine-colored pink-on-pink flowers. Part of me finds this combination a little too twee, but most of me thinks the overall effect is rather spectacular. Look at all those flowers on this little bitty shrub!

'Archduke Charles'

And then there's 'Sombreuil,' a big favorite of my husband's. We're growing it on one of the new trellises for privacy around the pond, and we ended up buying a rather expensive 5-gallon from It's a Jungle that had been trained up a plant stake. At the time, we weren't very happy about this, but it was the only 'Sombreuil' in town. Once we got it uncoiled and woven into the trellis, though, it was obvious that the extra $20 or so was totally worth it. It already fills out the trellis nicely, and it immediately popped into bloom, with several large, densely petaliferous, fragrant disk-like flowers.

'Sombreuil'

So that's spring in Central Texas: bursting with loveliness and color... that I can only see through bleary, itchy, inflamed eyes.

First Roses & Other Spring Things

2011-03-13T16:08:00.006-05:00

First Mutabilis blossom

We're starting to see the first roses of the season: two Chinas and a Polyantha, which makes sense (Chinas being one of the more rugged and floriferous classes of roses for Texas).

Our 'Mutabilis' hedge is looking incredibly dense and leafy and vigorous, and it's sporting one of the season's first blooms.

'Climbing Old Blush' bloomed heavily last spring and only indifferently after that, which is a bit unusual for this cultivar. I think a lot of roses bloomed so hard last spring that they wore themselves out and had to take the summer off. I'm not sure if I should be encouraged or not by the 5 or 6 blossoms COB is already sporting this March. Pace yourself, old thing. You don't want to fizzle in June.

The dense foliage and precocious flowers of 'Climbing Old Blush.'

And 'La Marne' has produced its first two flowers. LM ended up in our garden in some happenstancical way, and even though it's a doughty and productive rose, I can't seem to fall in love with it. The color, the flower shape, the flower size--it's all kind of meh. Still. Flowers are a nice thing. So carry on.

I do not love all my children equally. The neglected polyantha 'La Marne.'

Our trees are a good bit more cautious than our roses. Sophora affinis, X Chitalpa taskentensis, and Quercus polymorpha are all leafing out, but the others are either just at the swollen bud stage or else slumber on. Our s....l....o....w.... growing Ginkgo biloba has endearingly snubby little fat buds that are just starting to green up.

The fat little buds of the Ginkgo biloba

And our crinum are leafing out. They all appear to have survived the freezes: the 'Peachblow', 'Pink Parfait', and (oh, I always forget her name--Pauline Something, maybe?) that Matt gave me for Christmas, all the C. macowannii seedlings scattered around, the C. jagus and C. jagus scillifolia, the tentatively identified C. digweedii, the two red scabrums, the C. powelliis--white and pink--and the many 'Ellen Bosanquets' we have about the yard. The C. powelliis by the study door sort of glued themselves together to the top during our last freeze and I never cleaned them up; now their leaves are weirdly conjoined at the tips.

Crinum powelliis with their leaves glued together

And lastly, a perverse sort of a sign of spring, all the nasty old ligustrums that suffered freeze damage this winter are cutting their losses and dropping their necrotic leaves. I think the pattern of colors on this one is really rather pretty.

A dying ligustrum leaf

Roses of Interest

2011-03-11T22:37:00.000-06:00

I'm making a list of roses I covet. It's a long list.

Queen Victoria-related:
My dissertation (in what now seems like another lifetime) had to do with Queen Victoria, so I'd like to collect at least a few of the scores of plants named in her honor.

Reine Victoria (#1 - Tea, light yellow; 1837 - Vissley Vandaël, Paris, France - lost?)
Queen Victoria (#1 - Hybrid Perp, mauve; 1840 - Laffay, France)
Queen Victoria (#2 -Tea, salmon; 1844 — M. Bélot-Défougère, France - aka 'Souvenir d'un Ami')
Queen Victoria (#3 -Hybrid Perp, white/pink; 1850 - Fontaine/A. Paul, United Kingdom - aka 'La Reine à fleurs blanches' - lost?)
Queen Victoria (#4 - Hybrid Perp, white/blend; ca.1860- Jacques-Julien, Jules Margottin Père & Fils, France - aka 'White La Reine' Is this truly different from the one above? Lost?)
La Reine Victoria (#2 - Bourbon, carmine pink; 1872 - Joseph Schwartz, France - aka 'The Shell Rose')
Queen Victoria (#5 - Tea, light pink; 1872 - Eugène Labruyére - lost?)

On the left, the one 'La Reine Victoria' that is reliably commercially available today (Schwartz, 1872--pic from Apuldram Roses), and on the right, a cartoon from early in Victoria's reign, depicting her as "The Rose of England"

Kronprinzessin Viktoria (Bourbon, cream/yellow - 1888 - Vollert/Späth?, Germany - aka 'Yellow Souvenir de la Malmaison')

'Kronprinzessin Viktoria' - pic by frederic on helpmefind.com.

This is one I particularly want: 'Kronprinzessin Viktoria,' named for the queen's eldest daughter. It's the ivory-colored sport of the fabulous 'Souvenir de la Malmaison.' We've already got one rose named for this same individual in our garden: 'Kaiserin Friedrich,' which is the title she took when her husband, Friedrich, became the German emperor.

Other Long-Desired:
Fortune's Double Yellow ( species, yellow/copper/salmon; bef.1845 - Robert Fortune, UK)
Abraham Darby (shrub, apricot; 1985 - Austin, UK [AUScot])
Ballerina (Hybrid Musk, pink/white; 1937 - Bentall, UK)
Basye's Purple (rugosa, mauve; 1968 - Basye, US)
Basye's Blueberry (shrub, pink; 1982 - Basye, US)
Chestnut Rose (species, pink; R. roxburghii, Asia)
Eglantine Rose (species, light pink; R. sylvestris odora, Europe)
Green Rose (China, green; bef.1845, disc. Bambridge & Harrison, China)
Madame Hardy (Alba/Centifolia/Damask, white; 1832, Eugene/Julien-Alexandre Hardy, France, aka 'Felicite Hardy'. Extreme blackspot resistance)
Madame Plantier (China/Noisette[??], white; 1835, Plantier, France, aka 'The Bride's Rose')
Spice (Bermuda/China, white)
White Pearl in Red Dragon's Mouth (China, red w occasional white streaks; aka 'Chi Long Han Zhu')
Winecup (found rose, burgundy--put at Cl Cecile Brunner's feet)

Teas
Maman Cochet (light pink; 1892 - Scipion Cochet, aka "Mrs Morgan's Delight")
Mrs BR Cant (deep pink; 1901 - Benjamin R Cant & Sons, aka 'Mrs Benjamin R Cant')
Adam (pale pink; 1838 - Adam, Rheims, France, aka 'President')
Gloire de Dijon (Tea Noisette, pale salmon/pink; 1850 - Henri Jacotot, France, aka 'Glory John')
Général Galliéni (dark pink to yellow; 1899 - Gilbert Nabonnand, France)
Madame Wagram, Comtesse de Turenne (pink; 1894 - Alexandre Bernaix, France)
Perle des Jardins (yellow; 1874 - Antoine Levet, pere, France)
Tipsy Imperial Concubine (pink blend; 1982 - Hazel le Rougetel, found China)
Clementina Carbonieri (salmon/pink/yellow; 1913 - Gaetano Bonfiglioli & figlio, Italy)
Francis Dubreuil (dark red; 1894, Francis Dubreuil, France [in US, probably actually 'Barcelona'])
English Roses
Gentle Hermione (alternate: Queen of Sweden)
Tradescant (alternate: Falstaff)
A Shropshire Lad
Abraham Darby
Jude the Obscure
Crocus Rose (alternate: Glamis Castle)

Other
Hot Cocoa (brownish orange/red, Floribunda; 2003 - Carruth (Weeks) )
Honey Dijon (tan/yellow Grandiflora; 2005 - Sproul (Weeks))
Pearl d'Or (shrub; 1883 - Rambaux, Dubreuil, France)
Mme. Pierre Oger (Bourbon, pale pink; 1878 - Verdier, France)

Spring Moves Fast

2011-03-05T17:31:00.004-06:00

Spring! The snowflakes are blooming!

Everything seems to happen at once here in the spring. One day, we're sitting around the pond, contemplating the skeletal wreck of our garden by the tawdry orange glow of the sulfur streetlights (I really hate those lights). The next day, there are snowflakes (the botanical kind--Leucojum sp.--not the meterological ones) and cemetery irises (Iris albicans), the roses are covered in tufts of red and bronzy leaves, and the crinums are poking their little green snouts out of the decaying remnants of last year's leaves.

...and the Montezuma cypress is putting out new leaves. It never actually dropped last year's dead leaves, curiously enough.

Meanwhile, Matt & I are sprinting to keep up. We recently finished the last of our trellises and cemented them in around the pond, and I hoed and raked and shaped the berm that will become our grass-n-roses bed.

Two of the new trellises, with two severely ailing 'Sky Pencil' hollies. I wouldn't have thought a holly would mind a wee bit of a freeze, but these were evidently feeling... fragile.

All three new trellises. Matt is in the process of de-rusting and painting our old iron stove.

We're trying to plant up the new beds (pond + grass-n-roses), tackle the bermudagrass (I hate that stuff worse than sulfur lights), mulch everything, and finish off the new front walkway to use up the pile of crushed granite leftover from the pond terrace. Oh, and repair and build on to our irrigation system.

It's a lot of stuff. Matt says we should take a break once we're done with that before buying more giant piles of mulch/dirt/sand/rocks that we then have to shovel somewhere. It's a radical proposition, but I have reluctantly agreed to give this a try.

In any event, today's installment was putting groundcloth under the new front walk, and shoveling as much sand and gravel was we could endure to hold it in place. (This turned out to not be as much gravel as it used to be. We're a lot older than we were about 4 months ago when we were last shoveling gravel. Ow. Gardening can be hard on the body.)

New front walk. The stones are not in their final configuration--just holding the groundcloth down.

We also planted a 'Red Fountain' rose on one of the pond trellises, placed a 'Puerto Rico' to block the right side of the AC unit, moved a misplaced 'Paul Neyron,' and planted three Lindheimer's muhly (Muhlenbergia lindheimeri) in the grass-n-roses bed (which is nice, because now it's a proper "grass-n-roses" bed instead of, as before, just an "n-rose" bed, containing exactly one 'Mrs. Dudley Cross' rose--and a heaping pile of bermudagrass.)

A Lindheimer's muhly in the new grass-n-roses bed. And, in the lower left corner, the inevitable bermudagrass. Ug.

In other weather news...

2011-02-12T07:46:00.004-06:00

I've been so preoccupied with the cold lately, that I haven't given much thought to rain. We've had a lot of cold, dry spells where the air felt freeze-dried, and we've had a few sudden bursts of precipitation. What does it all add up to?

From the U.S. Drought Monitor for 8 Feb. 2011

Apparently, at least here in Bastrop County (blue X above), it adds up to a "moderate drought" (the tan patches on the map). Ditto for Travis and Williamson.

As a side note, does it seem like 33 months out of every 36 we're in a drought here in Central Texas? Maybe we should stop thinking of this as a place that gets rain. Maybe we should move into biodomes, like colonists on Mars, and recycle all our bodily waste. That way, we won't be disappointed by the lack of precipitation. It's not drought, we'll say to each other; that's just the way it is. It never rains here.

So when's this moderate drought going to break? I checked in with the good folks at the NOAA's Seasonal Drought Outlook, and their website said, "Dear Texas: It never rains here. Go build a biodome."

No, not really. They just posted this infographic:

Drought outlook for 3 Feb - 11 Apr, 2011.

So. Time to fix that irrigation pipe that froze last week and think about turning some of those sprinklers back on. It's going to be a parched and dusty spring.

Punxsutawney Phil, You Let Us Down

2011-02-04T17:32:00.003-06:00

Does this look like an "early spring" to you, Phil?

Our house, looking alarmingly like a Thomas Kinkade^TM cottage. Incidentally: best Kinkade painting ever. Yes, that's Cthulhu.

For two years running, we've had real, actual, honest-to-goodness snow. It's so weird! But exciting!

Plus, we get to stay home from work.

The back yard and greenhouse were covered.

The pond was half iced, and then the ice was covered in snow.

And all the streets in Elgin were blanketed.

By early afternoon, though, the sun was out and most of the snow had melted, allowing us to take stock.

The cordia finally froze, which is a bummer. Last year's winter dealt it a major setback, and it had j-u-u-u-u-s-t start to recover by autumn.

Also, the succession of hard freezes 86ed the burgeoning signs of spring around the yard. It killed the cemetery iris (Iris albicans) buds, finally persuaded the indomitable miniature rose 'Green Ice' to drop its last flowers of the season, and took out our first few Chinese sacred lily blossoms.

A portrait of carnage: the cordia to the top left, a blighted iris bud in the middle

It's not all due to the snow storm, though. Many of our tender perennials survived earlier freezes this year that just toyed with frigidity. The temperature dipped down for a few hours and then popped back up, and many of our plants were able to scrape by on the heat reserved in the moist earth or radiated off of our house or patios. But the last week or so has frozen like it meant it--hard freezes at night in the 20s and below, staying near or below 32 all day. And such wind--it was exactly like DeSmet in The Long Winter. Exactly. I had to wear two scarves to work--one under my coat to seal it up, and another outside to protect my face. A crinum or shrimp plant or salvia just isn't meant to take that kind of punishment. They're going to be hitting the snooze button until late March, I think.

So now we really are in the doldrums of winter--at least for another few weeks or so.

Icicles on the fountain last week

Mighty Trellises

2011-01-30T15:30:00.000-06:00

So this is what Matt & I have been working on for the past several weeks:

Trellis plans. Click to enlarge

We're in the process of making 5 trellises: two for the climbers along the driveway (in the rose bed) and 3 to add a little privacy around the pond/terrace.

They are, as you can see, mighty and rugged beasts, with chunky zinc, aluminum, and steel hardware. By the time we completed our fourth trellis (yesterday), we had reduced the process to an exact science that takes about 2-1/2 hours per trellis. Feel free to use our plans, if you like, with the usual legal caveats: blah blah at your own risk, blah blah agree to hold harmless, blah blah promise to donate kidney to authors if requested at unspecified future date.

We needed big trellises, both for privacy and because they need to hold big plants: 'New Dawn' rose, which had entirely consumed the dinky wire trellis we bought as a stop-gap measure a couple of years ago; 'Red Fountain', a robust 'Don Juan'/'Blaze offspring'; and evergreen wisteria (Millettia reticulata).

Since the livestock panels we use in the bottom came free with the house, we thought we could assemble these puppies on the cheap--just a little inexpensive lumber and some screws.

Ha.

Between the hardware and the lumber, each trellis cost over $100.

Yeek. This is one reason the project has taken several weeks and still isn't complete.

Still, I don't think we could have easily bought a pre-fab trellis of comparable size and toughness for less.

Supplies
Here's what we used for each trellis with their (estimated) prices:

(6) 10' sections of 1 × 6" treated pine ($5/6 ea)
(20) L-shaped rigid ties ($1.30 ea)
(160) 1" lath screws ($5/6 per 170-pack)
~(30) 2-1/2" carriage bolts ($0.36 ea)
(4) 3" carriage bolts ($0.38 ea)**
~(60) 7/16" flat washers ($4/5 per 50-pack)*
~(30) 7/16" hex nuts ($4/5 per 100-pack)***
nails or staples to tack wire panels in place
3' × 4' wire livestock panels, e.g. hogwire or cattle panels
2 regular-sized bags of sacrete/quickrete ($2.50 ea)

*Note that we used a combination of 5/16" and 7/16" nuts and bolts. Oops. Do try not to repeat our goofup--it just makes things confusing. The 7/16" nuts are more stylishly blocky, so I'd recommend using them.

**If you can find 2-3/4" carriage bolts, that might be easier--we had to use a C-clamp to press the boards close enough to be able to fasten the nuts to the bolts. On the crosspieces around the wire panel we had to use 3" bolts, though they're longer than needed for the rest of the trellis.

***If you have small, accident-prone children running around, consider using acorn nuts to avoid potential scratching and scrapings.

Here are the lengths of wood we used:
(1) 45-1/4" (top front)
(5) 34" (all other crosspieces)
(2) 120-1/2" (back legs)
(2) 114-3/4" (front legs)

To Assemble:
(1) Cut all wood
(2) Lay out front with most attractive sides of wood facing up
(3) Screw together using rigid ties
(4) Lay out back side--may want to lay it on top of front as template
(5) Screw back together using rigid ties
(6) Use staples or nail to tack wire panel to inside of back.
(7) Place front side over wire on top of back side--like an unpleasantly lignous giant Oreo.
(8) Drill holes and attach front to back using bolts, like this: bolt head, washer, trellis, washer, nut. Use the 3" bolts for the middle and bottom crosspieces.

The wood is cut into lengths with fractions because (as we realized partway through the first trellis) 1 × 6" doesn't mean that it is actually 1 inch thick or 6 inches wide. And since we had certain other measurements we wanted to retain (e.g. the height of the upper window, the length and width of the wire section, and the height of the wire section above the ground), other lengths had to go a little goofy.

Which reminds me: what is it about lumber these days? Our trellises look like they come from the dendrological equivalent of crack babies. Every time we go to the hardware store, we spend a good 15 minutes plowing through the lumber pile trying to find a handful of pieces that aren't completely crapped out. And in the end, the best treated pine we can find is spongy, knot-riddled, gouged, and splitting. And the knots are extra-specially unwholesome-looking: pitted, dark, and cavernous. Is there some secret store somewhere that only the truly hardcore know about where one can buy lumber that doesn't decompose while you look at it?

Anyway, we got the first two assembled, and Matt used his post-hole diggers to dig a hole...

...a very, VERY deep hole. I like to think that it was our little way of honoring Hu Jintao's visit, since it allowed us to peep at his homeland on the other side of the planet.

Then we tied a string to two stakes and used a level to try to get the blasted things to be parallel and perpendicular in the appropriate dimensions so we could cement them in. That wasn't fun. Matt gave his arsenal of swear words quite the workout that day.

But in the end: voila! Two new trellises.

We'll install stained glass windows in the top portions of the trellises... once I make the stained glass windows. Someday. Eventually. Just any day now.

I'm hoping we can get the remaining three trellises in the ground this week and then ~~take a well-deserved break~~ start work on the front walkway. Or the extensions to the irrigation system. Or begin planting the new beds. Or mulch the yard...

Cemeteries for Christmas

2011-01-15T19:35:00.000-06:00

A decaying house we passed on our cemetery trip. Seemed to fit the theme, and I love the colors.

Okay, this should be the last in my series on mid-winter procrastination. For those who are NOT fans of cemeteries, we'll be returning to regularly scheduled house & garden programming shortly (coming soon: You too can mass-produce monster trellises!).

Somehow or other, neither of our families ended up celebrating Christmas on Christmas this year, so we were at loose ends. We love having major holiday meals at Chinese restaurants--it feels so transgressive to forgo the turkey and have dan-dan noodles instead--so we did dinner at T&S Seafood on N. Lamar in Austin. (And, I might add, they amply repaid our trust in them, proffering up a rapture-inducing Christmas dinner of salt and pepper shrimp, calamari, and combination seafood on flat rice noodles. Ooooh so yummy.) And to work up an appetite, we hit a bunch of tiny local cemeteries in the bitter, freezing cold.

We saw:
Manda Methodist
Kimbro Community
New Sweden
Rose Hill
Saul
Kimbro Family (sort of)
Shiller

Manda Methodist was the first scheduled stop on our tour. It pretty well gives the flavor of a lot of the cemeteries on our stop--lots of flat farmland, not a lot of trees. I've never been to Iowa or Kansas, but I imagine they look much like this.

The sparse little Manda cemetery in the foreground; siloes in the background. This is the resting place of "Mother" B. Bengtson, 1835-1899.

Based on this tombstone alone, these folks have had a good 180 or so years to plant some trees (nothing fancy--some nice tough cottonwoods or cedars or even hackberries would soften things up nicely)--but they evidently like their cemeteries open and clean and flat.

Is this a Swedish thing, I wonder? Because we're in the Swedish hinterlands of the Austin area, settled by Germans, Bohemians, and most of all, Swedes. The area is now thinly populated, and to an outsider like me, its Swedish heritage is pretty well obliterated, outside of cemeteries. There aren't any Swedish restaurants, for example, nor have I heard of any big Swedish festivals, or any Swedish language communities (unlike Castroville, for example, with its Alsatian architecture and food, or Cestohowa/Panna Maria, with its dwindling community of elderly Silesian speakers). The Swedes just left behind tombstones, street names, and one old church. (If I'm mistaken about this, I'd love to be corrected. How awesome would a Texas-country-Swedish cafe be?)

To be fair to Manda, there are a few trees toward the back, by the hay bales. But it's mostly just open and windswept. And there's plenty of room for new additions, which is rather sad. Families like the one above and especially the mighty Forsdahls made arrangements for whole clans of descendants to be buried together; but the their family compounds are mostly empty. They must have died out or moved away. Or perhaps they're just exceptionally long-lived and the descendants haven't had to make use of their family plots yet. But that's not how it feels. It feels well-tended but sterile--a relic of fruitless dreams and plans from a nearly forgotten era. It feels like the kids moved off to Austin or Dallas or San Antonio and married there and had children there and are now buried near their own nuclear families.

After much misdirection and confusion, we also eventually found the Kimbro Community cemetery, which, with its single cedar, manages to be even flatter and bleaker than Manda.

It does, however, have recent interments, which is nice. And someone regularly changes some of the silk flowers (but not all, which is interesting. What did the deceased do to deserve this final revenge on the part of the flower distributor?) Also, there's a view of the picturesque New Sweden church from this cemetery. Can you see a tiny pointy thing more or less in the middle of the horizon? That's it!

The spare and tidy Kimbro Community cemetery. Home to many a Swenson and Jacobson, including Christina & Ola Swenson, born in Malmo, Sweden, in the old century.

Next we visited the much more extensive New Sweden cemetery, where, to my delight, we found tombstones in Swedish, like the one below, which I cannot decipher, beyond "Har hv... J Edwin Sanderstrom..."

Or this interestingly austere marker. I like to think that it says "Here lies an impassioned bibliophile," but I imagine the book is meant more as a religious symbol than as a testament to S. August Anderson's love of the written word.

New Sweden was the only place that had those awesome old ceramic photographs inset into the headstones--and only one at that.

Mr. Stenholm, New Sweden cemetery:

"Although he sleeps, / His memory doth live, / And cheering comfort / To his mourners give;[sic] / He followed virtue as his truest guide; / Lived as a Christian -- / As a Christian died"
Thanks to our recent research, I've asked Matt to make sure that nothing on my tombstone rhymes. I love these old black-and-white photos, though.

While searching for the elusive Kimbro Family cemetery (in somebody's sorghum field on FM 1660--we could only glimpse it from afar), we stumbled on the Saul cemetery, which is distinctive for its love of fancy ironwork, its pleasant woody backdrop along Brushy Creek, and the slaves purported to be buried there in unmarked graves.

I'm not exactly clear on what purpose these gates serve, but they certainly are interestingly... complicated. I asked Matt if we should erect some of these around us when we croak--y'know, to keep out the riff-raff--but he said "No."

We also found--deep in the back end of beyond--Rose Hill cemetery, unnervingly located down this scary path marked by a crooked sign and bare tree.

Rose Hill appears to have been a German settlement, and someone appears to be in the process of restoring it. Broken tombstones, like the one below, are marked.

While other stones appear to have been neatly patched back together with cement.

And all the graves here rated fresh silk flowers. All this effort is very touching and romantic--what a nice thing to do, prolonging the frail relicts of the dead and preserving a link to history.

But the best find of the day was Shiller. We stumbled upon it by accident--I don't think it even has a historical marker. It's weedy and overgrown and full of trees, which is exactly how we like our cemeteries.

It's like Where's Waldo for little Pugsley and Wednesday Addams--can you spot the cemetery?

It appears to be full of Czechs, as most of the tombstones are in Czech. This one, for the baby Josef, says "Zde. odpciva v panu zesnuly. Josef. Vincenc. Syn. F. a M. RIPL. Mar 2o cervna, 1895 Zemr 14 cervna, 1895."

It was a gorgeously blue there, despite the cold, and the trees and rolling pale gold pastures made a much more picturesque setting for this cemetery than most of the others.

Like so many of these early settlements, this one seems to have lost a disproportionate number of infants and small children, and there are many of these in this cemetery, their markers rising out of the dead weeds in an appropriately plaintive fashion.

Sparkly San Antonio

2011-01-06T19:32:00.005-06:00

I've been AWOL since early December--busy month. So here's the first installment in the backlog: our annual trip to San Antonio to see the Christmas lights on the riverwalk.

We spent the night at the St. Anthony Wyndham, which is a few blocks from the river (and therefore a little cheaper than the places that are directly on the water). It was built around the turn of the last century, and as you can see from the lobby, it's très chi-chi.

The bit we liked best, though, was the doorbell.

Each room room has a brass plate with a button on the outside; push the button, and a clapper chimes on a couple of pieces of metal inside. We know this because we were fascinated by it and pushed the button over... and over... and over... Our poor neighbors.

I would pay good money to buy such a device and install it on our front door--so cool, so analog, so fin-de-siècle.

This is mostly what we came to see: the lovely lights blinking in the trees and reflecting in swirls on the water. We never found a camera setting that could really capture all the color, but this trippy picture was oddly the best. Drink enough overpriced margaritas, and this is roughly what the riverwalk looks like.

The next day, we visited the San Antonio Botanical Garden.

It was in the throes of a lovely explosion of fall color. I think--but wouldn't swear to it--that these are chalk maples--Acer leucoderm.

The baldcypresses were also changing, which looks especially nice against clumps of palmettos.

I always like visiting the fachwerk house they have on the grounds. They had to replace or resurface the plaster and replace the roof, but the beams are original. I'm not sure what kind of wood they are, but these gnarled old beams are neat.

Although it was quite crisp out, a number of plants were in flower, like this Turk's cap (Malvaviscus arboreus).*

*Actually, technically, a giant Turk's cap, Malvaviscus arboreus var. drummondii--good catch, Bob!

RELEASE THE PIEKAKEN!

2010-12-31T18:03:00.006-06:00

We had our annual holiday dinner with the Ks in mid-December. Last year, we had a Flaming Feast--everything, from cocktails to salads to dessert--was flambéed.

This year, inspired by the egregious but amazing cherpumple, our theme was Food Inside of Other Food.

The idea was that you stuff one food item with another complete food item--not with a filling or a sauce, but with another made food.

For the entree, I ordered a turducken, which we had never had before. To my delight, it came packed in dry ice. I've also never had dry ice before. I poured water on it, and it filled the sink with fog, which poured out over the side of the counter.

The Ks brought appetizers and cocktails. The appetizer was a "cake" compounded of other appetizers, then frosted in cream cheese. Not only layers of appetizers, but also layers of irony: it looks like dessert, but isn't, and it's made of things they thought were very cool and highbrow in the 1950s, like ham rolls and meat paste. Presumably, these are things that accompany martinis well, can compete with the taste of cigarette smoke, and are easy to clean off of mink stoles. They are also surprisingly tasty, especially all at once.

And Keith invented a cocktail for us that really took the theme seriously--it's cooled with ice cubes flavored with rum extract, among other things. Inside each ice cube was a piece of fruit, and inside of that was a rum-soaked raisin. It was a bit sweet and fruity, which is good for me, but not too sweet, which is good for everyone else. If I get the recipe from him, I'll post it here.

Kate also had the challenge of making a stuffed salad and sides. She made a spinach salad inside an apple and a baked bell pepper stuffed with sausage, rice, and--the kicker--stuffed mushrooms.

The recipe with the most promise for future development was the po-chiles--baked potatoes with jalapeño poppers inside. I think the challenge is to get a potato small enough to not overwhelm the popper, yet big enough to retain its structural integrity when hollowed out and stuffed. The other challenge is to cook the popper enough beforehand to take the raw edge off, but to leave enough rawness that chile/cheese juice soak into the potato as it's baked.

The very best of the sides was an almond in a date wrapped in bacon. It was like candy plus bacon with extra crunch. Perhaps you think you've never wanted something to taste like candy + bacon? My how behind the times you are! See candied bacon, Mo's bacon chocolate bar. It lights up almost all of your gustatory pleasure sensors at once.

And, finally, the piecaken.

The original recipe, the cherpumple, is made with a cherry pie, a pumpkin pie, and an apple pie.

This combination doesn't appeal to me, so I made some readjustments and dubbed my towering Frankenzert the "piecaken." (What's the -en stand for? asked my inquisitive husband. It's made out of pies and cakes--there's no -en. I told him it was a reference to the turducken, and he said But there's no chicken in it either. I give up.)

Here it is in its pre-frosted glory, the layers glued together with a whipped ganache.

Here's what it's made of: a brownie pie baked inside of a marzipan cake; a Russian cheesecake baked inside of a chocolate-sour cream cake; and spirited brown sugar pecan pie baked inside of a Madeira cake. Whipped chocolate ganache between the layers, mocha French buttercream frosting the outside.

Ay caramba.

Matt is awed and appalled by the piecaken. I used corn cob holders to keep the saran wrap off of the frosting.

And here you can see all the layers. I thought I had a high tolerance for sweet stuff, but seeing this much piled together actually made me faintly ill. Individually, the components were yummy; together they project a dismaying image of death and tooth decay.

Still, it does look pretty. And if you've got the twelve or so hours to spare in preparation, it will certainly amaze your guests. It also embodies every worst stereotype about Americans (it took 3 trips to the grocery store, so its carbon footprint is something awful), so I would recommend hiding it away if any Europeans drop by for a visit. A small throw blanket should suffice to cover it. Or a queen-sized sheet, at the most.

For the innocent, the eager, and the doomed, here is the recipe for the piecaken.

PIECAKEN
Bake the pies a day in advance and allow them to cool on the counter (not in the fridge).

ONE. Bon Appetit's Spirited Brown Sugar Pecan Pie

1 7.5-oz pie shells, room temp
2 c dark brown sugar, packed
4 lg eggs, large
1/4 c unsalted butter, melted
1 Tbs Scotch whisky
2 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp cinnamon
2 c pecan halves
whipped cream

Preheat oven to 350°F. Line 9-inch glass pie dish with dough. Crimp edge decoratively. Whisk sugar, eggs, butter, Scotch, vanilla, and cinnamon in large bowl to blend. Mix in nuts. Pour filling into dough-lined dish.

Bake pie until filling is slightly puffed and set in center, covering edges with foil if browning too quickly, about 40 minutes. Cool pie completely at room temperature. Cut into wedges and serve with whipped cream.

TWO. Gourmet's Russian Tea Room Cheesecake

2-1/2 8-oz pkg cream cheese softened
1-1/4 sticks unsalted butter softened
1-1/2 c sugar [reduce to1c]
8 lg eggs, large separated
2 tsp lemon zest
2 Tbs lemon juice
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp orange-blossom water
1/2 tsp almond extract
1/4 c cornstarch

Preheat oven to 350°F.

Butter bottom and side of springform pan. Line bottom with round of parchment and butter round. Butter 1 side of parchment strip and fit unbuttered side of strip against buttered side of pan. (Strip will extend 2 inches above rim of pan.)

Beat together cream cheese, butter, 3/4 cup sugar, egg yolks, zest, juice, vanilla, orange-flower water, and almond extract in a large bowl with an electric mixer at medium speed until creamy, about 2 minutes in a standing mixer or 3 minutes with a handheld. Add cornstarch and mix at low speed until just combined.

Beat egg whites in another large bowl with cleaned beaters at medium speed until whites just hold soft peaks. Add remaining 3/4 cup sugar, 1 tablespoon at a time, beating, then increase speed to high and continue beating until meringue holds stiff, glossy peaks, about 2 minutes in standing mixer or 3 minutes with handheld.

Fold one fourth of whites into cream cheese mixture to lighten, then fold in remaining whites gently but thoroughly.

Line outside of springform pan with foil (covering bottom and about 1 inch up side) to waterproof. Pour batter into pan and gently smooth top. Bake in a hot water bath in middle of oven until top is golden but cake trembles slightly when pan is shaken gently, 55 to 65 minutes. (Cheesecake will rise in oven, but then will fall slightly and set as it cools.) Transfer springform pan to a rack to cool completely, then chill, loosely covered, at least 8 hours.

THREE. The Family Kitchen's Brownie Pie

1 pie shells
1/2 c Flour
1 stick butter melted
1/2 c cocoa powder
3 eggs, large
1/2 c sugar
1/2 c dark brown sugar
1/4 tsp Salt
1 tsp vanilla extract
FOR TOPPING:
1/2 c pecans chopped, roasted
1/3 c chocolate chips milk or dark
caramel sauce warmed

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Roast chopped pecans in preheated oven for 5 -7 minutes, or until fragrant.

2. Combine sugars and melted butter in a large bowl. Whisk until well-incorporated. Add eggs, one at a time, until incorporated. Add cocoa powder and whisk until incorporated. Add flour and salt, whisk until incorportated. Add vanilla and whisk again.

3. Roll out pie crust in a pie plate. Trim and crimp edges. Pour brownie batter in pie crust. Bake at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes. Pie is done when toothpick is inserted into the middle of the pie and comes out clean.

4. Just as soon as the pie comes out of the oven, top with chocolate chips, pecans and caramel. Warm caramel first in the microwave before drizzling on top of pie.

FOR THE CAKES.
Once one of the batters is made, spread a little at the bottom of a springform pan whose bottom is lined with parchment paper.

Carefully release the pie from its pie pan, and smear some batter along its slanty edges. Then place the be-smeared pie right-side up in the batter in the springform pan. Top with remaining batter.

Bake according to cake recipe.

FOUR. Williams-Sonoma's Marzipan Cake

DOUBLE THIS RECIPE
1 c sugar
6 oz marzipan
1-1/2 sticks unsalted butter room temp
1/4 tsp almond extract
5 eggs, large room temp
3/4 c all-purpose flour plus 2 Tbs
1-1/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp Salt

Preheat an oven to 350°F. Butter an 8 1/2-by-
4 1/2-by-2 1/2-inch loaf pan and dust with flour. Tap out the excess flour.

Using an electric mixer or food processor fitted with the metal blade, pulverize together the sugar and marzipan until the mixture is in fine pieces. If a food processor was used, transfer the mixture to a large bowl.

Add the butter and almond extract and mix until light and fluffy, 1 to 2 minutes. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition until thoroughly combined. Sift together the flour, baking powder and salt over the egg mixture and beat in just until thoroughly blended.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan. Bake until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean and the top springs back when lightly pressed, about 1 1/4 hours. Transfer the pan to a wire rack and let cool for 15 minutes. Run a knife blade around the edge of the cake and invert onto the rack. Lift off the pan and cool the cake upright on the rack for at least 30 minutes before serving. Serves 8 to 10.

Adapted from Williams-Sonoma Seasonal Celebration Series,Spring,by Joanne Weir (Time-Life Books, 1997).

FIVE. Williams-Sonoma's Sour Cream-Chocolate Bundt Cake

2-1/4 c all-purpose flour
1 c unsweetened cocoa
2 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp Salt
2 sticks unsalted butter
1-1/2 c granulated sugar
4 eggs, large lightly beaten
1 tsp vanilla extract
1-1/2 c sour cream
6 oz bittersweet chocolate melted and cooled

Have all the ingredients at room temperature.

Position a rack in the center of an oven and preheat to 325°F. Grease and flour a decorative 10-cup Bundt® pan.

To make the cake, over a sheet of waxed paper, sift together the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda and salt; repeat until well blended. Set aside.

In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the flat beater, beat the butter on medium speed until smooth and creamy, 30 to 45 seconds. Reduce the speed to low and gradually add the granulated sugar, beating until blended. Increase the speed to medium-high and continue beating, occasionally scraping down the sides of the bowl, until the mixture is light and fluffy, 3 to 5 minutes. Add the eggs a little at a time, beating each addition until incorporated before adding more, until the mixture is thick and creamy, 1 to 2 minutes; stop mixer occasionally and scrape down the sides of the bowl. Beat in the vanilla. Reduce the speed to low and fold in the flour mixture in three additions, alternating with the sour cream and beginning and ending with the flour, until just blended and no lumps of flour remain. Then gently fold in the chocolate.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan, spreading the batter so the sides are about 1 inch higher than the center. Bake until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean, about 1 hour. Transfer to a wire rack and cool the cake upright in the pan for 10 minutes.

SIX. Madeira Cake (source?)

175 g butter, unsalted room temp
175 g sugar
3 lg eggs, large
250 g flour, self-rising
1/2 tsp baking powder
pinch Salt
3 Tbs whole milk
1 lemon lemon zest
sugar for topping (skip)
candied peel for topping (skip)

Preheat oven to 350F (180C)

Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time and beat thoroughly to incorporate after each addition. Sift the flour, baking powder and salt together into a bowl then fold into the creamed butter and egg mixture. Add the lemon zest and mix in well. Add enough of the milk to form a soft batter then turn into a 15cm cake tin that's been thoroughly greased.

Sift a little caster sugar over the top of the cake then place in an oven pre-heated to 180°C and bake for about 20 minutes, then lay the slices of peel on top. Return to the oven and continue cooking for a further 45 minutes, or until the top of the cake is golden and a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake emerges cleanly.

Allow to cool in the tin for 10 minutes, then turn onto a wire rack and allow to cool completely.

SEVEN. Mocha French Buttercream

MAKE 1-AND-A-HALF THE QUANTITY.
8 egg yolks 2 tablespoons instant powdered coffee
1 pound unsalted butter, preferably espresso
softened ½ cup water
1 ¼ cups sugar 2 tablespoons dark rum

Beat the 8 egg yolks in a large bowl with a whisk or rotary or electric beater until they are thick and lemon colored. In another bowl. cream the pound of softened butter until light and fluffy.

Combine the sugar, coffee and water in a small saucepan, and bring to a boil Over moderate heat, stirring until the sugar and coffee dissolve. Boil briskly without stirring until the syrup thickens and reaches a temperature of 236 on a candy the thermometer, or until a drop spooned into cold water immediately forms a soft ball.

Immediately pour the hot syrup in a thin stream into the egg yolks, beating constantly. Continue beating for 10-15 minutes longer, until the mixture cools to room temperature and becomes a thick, smooth cream. Then beat in the creamed butter, 1 tablespoon or so at a time, and finally stir in the rum. Cover the bowl and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes, or until the cream is firm enough to spread easily.

EIGHT. Whipped Ganache

About 18 ounces good quality dark and bittersweet baking chocolate
an equal quantity of heavy cream

Chop chocolate and place in blender.

Bring cream to a boil and pour over chocolate. Let sit 5 minutes. Blend until smooth.

Cool in the fridge to something approaching room temperature. Beat in an electric mixer a long time till fluffy.

TO ASSEMBLE.
Put bottom pie-cake layer on cake plate. Smear top with half of whipped ganache, making sure it is level.

Top with second layer, and smear that with remaining ganache.

Top that with third layer. Smear entire thing with Mocha buttercream. Eat. Or not.

There you go. Easy peasy.

The Ks spent the night, so the following morning we got to introduce them to Dos Amigos' pork carnitas tacos, one of the best things in the known universe. Have you been to Dos Amigos on a Sunday to try their pork carnitas tacos? No? Go! Go!

Mager Cemetery

2010-11-26T15:23:00.007-06:00

"The Mager grade school once stood adjacent to this cemetery. The water supply was furnished by the well which still stands south of the cemetery. The school house had also served for a [??? as a place?]"

Matt & I like cemeteries. We're not big-time hobbyists taking rubbings or doing systematic regional surveys--not that there's anything wrong with that--but we just have a casual but long-term affection for old cemeteries. New ones you can keep, with their sharp-edged headstones tidily flush with the ground so that the dead in no way impede the lawnmowers of the maintenance crews. But old ones, with their curiously mawkish or curiously morbid inscriptions, their often puzzling imagery, their fascinating old names, and their decades-old plantings thriving on human fertilizer--old cemeteries we quite like.

We were in a roving sort of mood today, so we decided to motor off into the countryside and see what we could find. We were going to start in Coupland just because it's close, but their cemetery is treeless, which Matt disapproves of, so instead we turned east of toward Beyersville.

(Yeah, you know, "Beyersville." No? Actually, we've been here 3 years, and this is the first time we've heard about it either. Nor its sister metropolis, Structure. I doubt if together they have a population of 50 people. We never found Structure (or else we drove through it without realizing?) but Beyersville appears to be a tiny knot of ancient clapboard houses on a hill and--inexplicably--a mini-storage business. That's it.)

Anyway, long story short, we stumbled upon this neat little German cemetery just outside of Beyersville. In its suburbs, as it were. It's called Mager Cemetery, and it has a nice grove of nearly leafless trees, a pretty view of an unassuming little swale and some rolling pasture, and a bunch of naturalized old bulbs.

The light was so intense that photographing was rather difficult, but everything was brown or leafless or spare, which made the whole thing interestingly desolate and lonely.

It's all empty farmland out there for miles and miles--very few trees, very thinly settled.

Sam Wernli[?], 1859 - 1916

The area was settled by Germans (Mager was a German family that founded the cemetery), and some of the tombstones are actually in German, like that of little Reuben Wm. Mager, who died in 1926, just a few months old. It says (I think):

Shlaf wohl von deinen / Lieben fern, bis wir uns/wiedersehn, beim Herrn

Little Reuben William Mager, 1925 - 1926

Babelfish, ever helpful, translates this as:

Sleep probably of yours/love far, until we/again-long yourself, with the gentleman

Very touching sentiment.

A few of the tombstones have attracted lichen, though the organisms evidently draw a heavy distinction between the rough decorative finish in the center of this stone and the smooth finish in the margins. Headstone designers, take note: rough stone around the edges, smooth stone where the writing is would be a better arrangement.

Sophie Harms, Mother. 1886 - 1906.

One of the many things I like about old cemeteries is how people were able to mark graves with a living tree or shrub, instead of one of those awful sterile little metal vases sticking up out of the ground holding plastic flowers. And since the people were buried in things that were capable of decay, and they were, themselves, allowed to decay instead of being pumped full of nasty chemicals, fifty or a hundred years later, their plants still flourish. Though the people are gone, their substance has been reabsorbed into the living, breathing world around them. Much better than being mummified in a horrible cement bunker, though I suppose Nefertiti and Hatsepshut and Akhenaten and all the rest would disagree with me about that.

In this cemetery, a century after her premature death, little 4-year-old Clara Walther has transubstantiated into a glossy-limbed crape myrtle.

Clara Walther, 1906 - 1910

And a couple of folks have sprouted venerable old rose bushes, including one that I suspect is a swamp rose (Rosa palustris).

Long-lived Barbara Thonig, 1832 - 1922

I don't know what kind of rose this is, nor whom it marks--I'd like to take cuttings of both, though, and return in the spring to see them in bloom.

Karl Shlenfeldt, 1879 - 1908

Mager was our big find for the day--Coupland, Butler, and Structure (if we ever passed it) didn't turn up anything good, at least not from FM 1468, 419, or 696.

However, when I looked up Beyersville back at the house, I found a list of nearby communities:

Beaukiss, TX (6.8 miles SE)
Carlson, TX (9.3 miles SW)
Conoley, TX (10.1 miles ENE)
Frame Switch, TX (8.5 miles WNW)
Lund, TX (8.2 miles SSW)
Noack, TX (3.6 miles NNE)
Norman, TX (9.9 miles W)
Normans Crossing, TX (9.7 miles W)
Rices Crossing, TX (8 miles WSW)
Sandoval, TX (9.3 miles NNE)
Shiloh, TX (7.6 miles E)
Siloam, TX (6.4 miles SSE)
Thrall, TX (6 miles NNE)
Type, TX (4.7 miles SSW)
Waterloo, TX (9.6 miles NNW)
Wuthrich Hill, TX (8.2 miles NNW)

Surely, there are bound to be a few more good cemeteries in Type, Frame Switch, or Noack, right?

WHAT a Nice Weekend!

2010-11-14T19:01:00.005-06:00

It was beautifully Novermbery this weekend--very grey and dull gold. The sky was all mottled and sulky, and all over town leaves are turning. A good color scheme for the sort of chic, minimalist, neo-60s interior design I would never have. It would make a very elegant sofa.

Yesterday, Matt shoveled all the remaining crushed granite around the flagstones on the terrace. He does a much better job than I do: somehow, his section is much firmer and stabler than mine. (Matt is generally better than I am at manipulating and arranging physical objects--he just knows how to make them go.) In this case, I think he used water to help pack the granite in and fill in any voids.

Meanwhile, I installed the remaining landscape lights--we replaced the uplights on the Montezuma cypress and 'Purple Robe' black locust with lower wattage lights (the existing lights were a little too... much) and added a few more pathlights.

What this means is: the terrace is done! Huzzah! The entire pond project still has several more phases, but the terrace part: finis.

Our friends Kate & Keith joined us for dinner to celebrate the inauguration of the terrace. Matt's grandfather had given us a whole bunch of frozen venison, including three "doe hams." So we had grilled venison ham with asparagus and mushroom Israeli couscous and spinach-cranberry salad. Keith handled the grilling of the venison while I finished the couscous, which turned out to be a good thing. Venison ham is a weird cut. I think it's actually any of several cuts of meat from the deer's haunches, since the first doe ham, which we marinated and roasted in the oven last week, was a solid chunk, while the one we served the Ks was a sort of long thin chain of meat, shaped kind of like a sirloin flap for fajitas, only lumpier. I knew I was going to have trouble using a meat thermometer with such a thin, irregular piece of meat, and I was afraid of overcooking it. Keith managed it nevertheless, and it turned out very tender and flavorful.

Then we sat around the fire, listened to the fountain, and chatted about this and that.

And then this morning Matt & I biked over to Dos Amigos for some delicioso pork carnitas tacos.

The weather was beautiful all day, so while Matt worked on his greenhouse, I tidied the climbing roses a bit and painted some stones as markers for some of the crinums and tender perennials.

All in all, a very good weekend.

Grilled Venison Ham Recipe
Marinate the venison for 8 hours in ~1/2 c olive oil, ~1/2 c wine (I had white on hand, but red might make more sense), 5-6 sprigs rosemary, 1-1/2 tsp salt, and 1-1/2 tsp ground black pepper.

Using a very sharp knife, lard the ham with chunks or pieces of bacon. (We used bacon chunks that we bought last spring at Dzuik's in Castroville.) Larding involves cutting small (~3/4") deep incisions in the thick part of the meat and then stuffing a piece of bacon into each.

Heat the grill to medium-high. Grill until a thermometer inserted in the thick part of the meat reads 150F (medium).

Let the meat rest for 10 minutes, and then slice thinly.

Just Me and Mr Shovel

2010-11-09T22:20:00.003-06:00

There were big doings around the pond last weekend. Here is a hint:

Something has changed--but what is it?

To be a little more explicit, this is what it used to look like:

Great big honkin dirt pile on right--4 cu. yds.

Now it looks like this:

That dirt pile is ALL GONE.

Where did it all go? In the new beds around the pond:

The new beds wrap around the pond, are interrupted by the baby bur oak, and then follow the walk around to the shade patio

We plan to put the barbecue pit here, behind a trellis.

We've been having fires on the terrace at night.

And I moved it all by myself. Zoiks, that was a lot of hard labor. And we have to do it all over again with the crushed granite to fill in the patio. :-(

Worth it, though. Love, love, love the pond, terrace, and beds.

Awesome Freaky Rose

2010-11-04T18:38:00.003-05:00

A couple of days ago, I wondered on this blog which roses would end up populating our still-in-progress pond beds.

The answer came a little sooner than expected: deliciously weird floribunda 'Wedding Cake' (Ralph Moore, 2006).

It's rather rare, but Rogue Valley Roses offered it as wait-listed. It wasn't much of a wait, though, because I signed up yesterday and got an email offering the rose today. I hadn't actually meant to commit quite so soon, but what the hell.

Here's one of the very few pictures I was able to find online:

Photo posted by the_dark_lady on gardenweb. You can see a few more pix at helpmefind.com

Isn't it nifty, with those odd greeny undertones near the center?

It is a modern (that sound you hear in the background is Matt pretending to gag--he doesn't think much of moderns) and a relative unknown, so it's a bit of a risk, but as rose dorks I think we have a responsibility toward the peculiar and fabulous. And I, for one, do my duty.

Scary Black Foam and Other Pond Endeavors

2010-11-02T21:56:00.004-05:00

We put it off as long as we decently could, but it was finally time to dismantle the waterfall that came with the property and rebuild it in a new, shiny, more waterproof fashion.

The three key elements for this project were:

a large scrap of pond liner
a lever + Matt's muscles
pond foam

You can see all three (minus the muscles) in the pic below. We used the liner scrap to make a sort of diaper beneath the top layers of rock. The hope is that any water that doesn't drop straight into the pond will collect in the diaper and drain into the pond from behind the waterfall.

The waterfall rock pile, in the middle of our reconstruction efforts.

Many months ago, Bob from Draco Gardens had suggested the use of puffy foam-in-a-can to stick the rocks to the edge of the pond. It was only later that I discovered that foam-in-a-can actually comes in a special pond flavor (i.e. black) to blend in with the liner.

It's like Easy Cheese, only black!

It's useful stuff, but watching an oozy black blob suddenly erupting from within the crevices of the waterfall is a little unnerving. Reminded me of some low-budget horror film about The Thing from the Swamp (actually, I think it was Creepshow II. How the hell I know anything about Creepshow II is a mystery to me, but there it is.) Ultimately, we will need to cut off the excess foam, but we're letting it cure first.

So after putting the diaper in place and using the foam to create a channel on the main tongue of the waterfall, Matt worked on levering the massive top rock back into place. What's weird is that this actually worked. One man and a stick. Moved that giant rock several feet. Kind of amazing. Am now so unimpressed by ancient Egyptians and their weenie little pyramids.

Matt, showing the ancient Egyptians how to get stuff done

We still need to put more rocks on the waterfall tongue, cut off the extra foam, and put more foam inside the waterfall to control the water, and there are more big rocks to be levered into place somehow. Nevertheless, we're very close to having a working waterfall here. How the fish will enjoy all that water circulation and oxygenation!

At the same time that Matt was levering like mad, I was shoveling. We bought 4 cubic yards of topsoil from Bert's Dirts and 3 cu yds of crushed granite to finish off the terrace and build up the bed around the pond. Matt didn't want my help with the boulders (he seems convinced--perhaps not entirely without reason--that I would find a way to drop one of those 400-lb boulders on my own head. I'd argue the point, but I've still got a knot on my right foot from where I dropped a flagstone on myself a month ago. Ouch.) So I worked on the dirt. I shoveled about 1.5 cu yds of the soil into the new bed (will add pic later), which filled the existing part about 2/3. We still need to edge about as much space again, so there is more shoveling in my future.

...hooray.

7 cubic yards of stuff that needs to be shoveled. Oh my God.

But after that--more roses! Will it be the eglantine rose? 'Abraham Darby'? 'Mme Wagram'? 'Bayse's Purple'? 'White Pearl in Red Dragon's Mouth'? 'Wedding Cake'? 'Honey Dijon'? 'Tipsy Imperial Concubine'?

(Actually, I can pretty much guarantee that it will involve 'Tipsy Imperial Concubine.' That's a name too good to pass up, nevermind that it's a rather prettyish old Tea rose.)

Unrelated Addendum: Guess what's happening right now? It's raining! For the first time in over a month! I love rain!

Llama Poop, Firepit, Farewell to a Fish

2010-10-17T12:52:00.004-05:00

Something like 10 years ago, my husband had access to a copious supply of llama manure. He used it on his gourd vines, and they grew an absolute treat.

Now that we're adding new beds, I thought I'd see if I could find a local source for the good stuff. The South Central Llama Association was able to hook me up with some charming local farmers and their fetching camelids who let us shovel away all the brown gold we wanted. I think they were slightly disappointed that we didn't take more.

Llama poop

Llama poop is funny stuff. It comes in large, dry pellets that smell like a petting zoo (much less stinky than cow, horse, or chicken poop, for instance--more like goats or sheep, I guess?). They're very compact, and they neither squoosh nor crumble when stepped on. Kind of remarkable, really--might be suitable as insulation on the space shuttle.

The poop isn't composted. This seems risky, but there will be a lull of at least one or two months before the plants start to go in, so it should at least be weathered by then. Also, interestingly, the llama farmers actually grow their tomatoes and peppers in raised beds filled with nothing but fresh llama poop and a little sand! Apparently, it doesn't burn the way other kinds of manure do. Odd, but convenient.

You can see the poop in action below: we're wrapping a new bed around the pond, and we've sprinkled the area generously with llama offerings. Next paycheck (probably) we'll buy topsoil and mulch to raise the bed to the level of the pond ledge and hide all the black pond liner.

I can't remember if I've actually shown any pictures of our rock in action. Lovingly hand laid by local artisans (i.e. Matt & me). It was not quite as much work as it looks like, but it was fully every bit as expensive as you might imagine.

We put down groundcloth to keep back the weeds, added 1-2" sand, and laid the rocks on top. In that same paycheck in which we buy topsoil, we'll also buy crushed granite to fill everything in. Till then, the patio's a little dangerous--the rocks aren't at all stable yet, and they like to suddenly pop up and tip you over, as my scraped ankles and elbows attest.

Matt & I have started using it, all the same. The nights have been so beautiful all month that we've been lighting up the fire pit and sitting out by the pond. So serene. It's so strange to really do nothing--not read, not mess around on the internet--nothing. Just look at the stars, watch the fire, and listen to the water. I think it might be good for me.

Our other essential pond project is a modest amount of landscape lighting. We don't often get random drunks or zombies straying across the property, but should one lumber on over, I don't want them falling in the pond. Also, it's slightly easier to balance safely on the flagstones if you can see them (the flagstones, that is, not the zombies. Though those too, come to think of it).

We've got the transformer, wires, and a handful of fixtures, but we need about 10 more path lights and we still need to hook it all together. Still, you can see the two that will go at the edge of the terrace in the picture below. Hopefully, they'll be fairly unobtrusive but still effective. I'm not looking for the full-on LET-THERE-BE-LIIIIIIIIIIIIGHT!!!! Effect--just some subtle glowy spots to prevent bloodshed.

Meanwhile, amidst all this progress, some sad news: I can't find Safety First anywhere. I've looked for him every time I've been out there, but no sign so far. We haven't lost any of our adults up to the point--I wouldn't have thought the cautious Safety First would have been the first to go. But perhaps he sacrificed himself heroically, distracting a voracious heron that was eying the small fry. If so, it was not in vain--I counted over 30 baby/adolescent fish yesterday. You may be gone, Safety First, but your legacy lives on.

San Francisco Botanical Garden at Strybing Arboretum

2010-09-23T21:13:00.013-05:00

San Francisco Trip, Part 2

Eucalyptus bark. I couldn't believe how huge these things get in CA. And they're everywhere.

Our other big hort excursion in SF was the San Francisco Botanical Garden at Golden Gate Park. Wow, was that humbling. In general, I'm glad that I majored in horticulture rather than botany, but on trips like this, I remember the drawbacks to a horticentric education: my plant knowledge is so location specific. If I had spent more time studying plant taxonomy & morphology, I wouldn't be so utterly bewildered when dropped in an alien ecosystem.

Fortunately, the signage at the SFBG was really pretty good, and we were able to identify most of the plants were interested in. And these were many. Most would probably fry in our heat, but I'd like to try at least a few.

We started out in the prehistoric plants section, where, interestingly, the plants are said to be microchipped.

Presumably, some are so valuable that people steal them. Perhaps this nifty sago--I know big cycads can be worth a lot of money, and this one has an especially ferny quality to it.

Cycas pectinata. Tight like Fort Knox?

Or this neat tree fern--someone would pay a lot for that black quill-like bark, right?

Dicksonia squarrosa

There was also a dwarf equisetum in this area. It's native to only the very top of the US, and it's listed as endangered in a few states. This blows my mind. It's possible to endanger an equisetum? How? With plutonium?

Equisetum scirpoides: adorable, grass-like, and ancient

Elsewhere in the garden, we found this Cuphea nudicostata, which Matt would like to grow. It has the nicest deep cherry red flowers. Green is my favorite color, but I never do get tired of deep cherry red.

Cuphea nudicostata - unusually large flowers for a cuphea

In a similar vein, I was delighted by the big fuzzy spikes of the red velvet sage, Salvia confertiflora.

Salvia confertiflora. That has to grow here, right? All salvias grow in Texas.

Then there's this elegant Kashmir cypress, Cupressus torulosa var. cashmeriana.

Cupressus torulosa var. cashmeriana

Dave's Garden only has two members growing this one, but one is in Houston. So there's hope! It's got the most artistic-looking flat zig-zaggy leaves, and I love its graceful droopiness.

Kashmir cypress leaves

Then there are the plants I'm not even going to try. This beautiful dome-shaped tree, Maytenus boaria. It's from the cloud forests of Chile. It looks like it doesn't know the meaning of the word "August."

The delicately ferny foliage of the Maytenus boaria

This exuberantly flowered little tree with the absurd moniker of Fremontodendron. It goes from sulphur yellow (in the background) to that awesome peachy-orange in the foreground. Despite the leathery leaves, it just doesn't feel to me like it could live here.

Fremontodendron 'California Glory'

And finally, awesome though it is, I have no hope at all for this beautiful and unexpected orange passionflower, Passiflora parritae. Apparently, it drops its flowers once the temperature reaches 90 degrees F. Beautiful, but wimpy.

The beautiful but finicky Passiflora parritae

Falling Piers, Muir Woods, & the Taxodiaceae

2010-09-21T21:48:00.006-05:00

San Francisco Vacation, Part 1

We just got back from our vacation to San Francisco--phew! There was a lot to see in a small space of time. I wore holes in my feet and caught a cold, but we saw a lot of lovely things, at some scrumptious food, and enjoyed just being in a place that was so very different from our everyday lives.

Being plant dorks with a limited time, we managed to miss Alcatrez and Chinatown, but we did see Muir Woods and the botanical garden at Golden Gate Park.

I think this was Matt's Favorite Thing from the whole trip:

It's a sign that warns you not to walk on the rickety old part of the pier because it could fall down under your weight... and then pieces of it might hit a passing swimmer. Please: Think of the swimmers.

And I made an exciting culinary discovery within the first couple of hours of being in the city: Vietnamese pancakes, or banh xeo.

I've never noticed them on the menus of local Vietnamese places, but they're scrumptious crispy crepey confections, just slightly sweet, with a stir-fried savory filling. Yummy.

Butmy favorite part was probably Muir Woods. We took this pretty road to get there.

Muir Woods is populated by coast redwoods (Sequoia sempervirens), which are the tallest trees in the world. They are not, however, the most massive trees in the world: those are their cousins, giant redwoods (Sequoiadendron giganteum). Giant redwoods are the ones you can drive cars through. While coast redwoods are no slouches in the diameter department, the tree below may be the widest we saw in the park.

I was interested to see that the National Park Service still describes redwoods as members of the Taxodiaceae. That family was named for one of my favorite tree species, Taxodium distichum or baldcypress. Sadly for the honor of my favorite tree and my home state (it's the state tree of Louisiana), recent genetic research caused that family to be dissolved into the larger cypress family, the Cupressaceae (for the curious, here's a phylogenetic tree of the Cupressaceae, showing the genera it currently contains).

But baldcypresses and redwoods share a certain something or other that sets them apart from their cypressy cousins, like junipers, Italian cypresses, and arborvitae. Even baldcypresses have an august, primordial quality, and that same narrow, linear form. Below you can see an impressive example of the deeply furrowed bark that is characteristic of the former family.

And this tree--in addition to being covered in interesting aqua-colored lichen--exhibits the same graceful flare at its base as baldcypresses do.

Nevertheless, folks who know a great deal more than I do about botany, plant physiology, and genetics seem persuaded that the new classification is the most accurate. And it does now put the tallest tree, the most massive tree, and the longest lived tree (Fitzroya cupressoides) in the same family, which is kind of neat.

We took the main trail, which is paved and very congested, and took the first turnoff (Ocean View? Something like that). That trail goes up the mountain by way of a bunch of steps and is WAY quieter than the main trail. It's less lush, but there are no joggers up there (there were joggers on the main trail! Galumphing along, getting underfoot, and generally harshing the redwood mellow). The Ocean View runs into the Lost Trail, which takes you to the Fern Creek trail, which, by innumerable knee-jarring stairs, takes you back down to the main trail. The beauty of this route is that you get lots of quality alone time with the trees, and at the end of your exertions, you're rewarded with the best of the trees--the ones in the part of the trail that runs along Fern Creek at the base of the mountain. These are the biggest, most lush, and most mossy and lichenous of the lot. And the creek's beautiful too.

Many of the trees in the park are hollow, which doesn't seem to bother them one bit.

And, of course, there are fallen trees, which form an important part of the forest ecosystem. They also look really neat.

There were other interesting plants in the park. These dessicated ferns glowed in the dim forest light.

And there was moss everywhere, making everything look soft and green and fertile.

...More to follow...

ADDENDUM:
Bob asked if we saw any Pacific black-tailed deer while in Muir Woods. In fact, we did (or at least we saw a deer with a black tail--presume it's the PBTD), and we even snapped a picture:

Click picture for larger version

It looked at us inquisitively, determined we did not have any food, and slouched off in a huff. Or something like that, anyway.

TNLA 2010

2010-08-22T20:38:00.006-05:00

Neat little 'Gator Aloe' in an arrangement of cute little succulents

Matt's company went to the annual Texas Nurseryman and Landscaper's Association in San Antonio, and kindly allowed me to tag along.

It's always fun to see the hort industry showing off a little (this time, there were, among other things, two fountains--one a giant dolphin and the other a giant seahorse--standing about 18 feet apart and spitting great, arching streams of water into one anothers' basins. It was really... something. As Matt pointed out with an excitement that might not have been entirely genuine, People could get married under there.) Seahorses aside though, it wasn't quite as fun as last year. I couldn't decide if this was because I'd seen it all before, or if there really were slightly fewer interesting displays. Possibly a combination of the two. Still, there was much to absorb.

I was sorry not to see any of those funky green-and-purple petunias from last year (the "Petunia Sophistica"series, I think they were called), nor the unusually dark plumbago ('Imperial Blue'?) nor the yaupon holly that was meant to compete with 'Will Fleming.' (Ilex vomitoria 'Scarlet's Peak').

On the other hand, very cute Magnolia grandiflora 'Teddy Bear,' the new 'Little Gem' competitor, is still going strong. At least one grower is still pushing the nifty purple-leaved mimosa 'Summer Chocolate' (Albrizia julibrissen). And I saw a few vendors again sporting 'Summer Red' maples with their colorful new foliage, purported to grow everywhere.

Things that are new or caught my eye included:

a weeping blue atlas cedar (Cedrus atlantica 'Glauca Pendula'). Totally funky architectural fun--but not sure where I could put it. We're short on alpine plantings here at Chez M. I'm pretty sure that you have to train them to look like the pic--otherwise, they grow into huge formless Snuffuluffaguses.
Agave neomexicana, a grey/fern-green New Mexico century plant.
a thornless paloverde (X Parkinsonia--Matt particularly liked)
'Delta Jazz,' a crape myrtle with very dark purple leaves. Looked a bit droopy though--not sure how tough it is
Weird, bowl-leaved 'Maraca Portulaca' (Portulaca molokiniensis)
Gator aloe--species not given
Purple verbena 'Royale Chambray'--might be good for the blue-and-purple bed
a bronze loquat (Eriobotrya deflexa)--stiff, serrate leaves with bronzy new growth
A cute little hen-n-chicks with purple leaf tips (Sempervivum tectorum--cultivar?)
A lavender star tree (Grewia occidentalis) Never heard of this one before at all. Probably wouldn't live in Austin--was standing right next to a great big jacaranda. Sigh. I would dearly love to grow my own jacaranda...
A river birch purported to grow in Austin, with the graceful name of 'Dura-heat.' I am skeptical, but if it I were a small, flop-eared animal, one of my ears would have perked up hopefully.
Unhidden hidden lilies--who knew?!? These curcuma flowers stood proudly erect a good foot above their foliage. Gasp! One cultivar sported the a super-stylish green-and-purple color combo ('Choco Zebra').
And a bunch of David Austin roses. According to their wholesale catalog, one of their three offices is located somewhere in "Texas, America." Where? Do they have display gardens? I would totally love to see. At present, we only have 'Graham Thomas' in our yard but I'd love some more--especially the sinfully fragrant 'Abraham Darby.'
Dark, broody, scab-red antherium

Martian-looking maraca portulaca in a display of succulents

The interestingly stiff, serrated leaves of the bronze loquat, Eriobotrya deflexa. Grows in Florida. Not sure about Austin. Dave's Garden claims it goes up to 8b.

Lavender star tree. Grewia occidentalis. Alas, it maxes out at 9a (so close!)

Unhidden curcumas. These may include 'Chiang Mai Pink,' 'Khmer Snow,' 'Red Lip,' 'Royal Purple,' 'Siam Pearl'

Neat dark red antherium. Unfortunately, tooth-gnashingly, not labeled.

Interesting green and white ceramic fountains from a pottery place in The Woodlands

A really meretricious fountain. There is a light in the hole, and water comes out from there. Two bowing and courtseying European children round out this perplexing ensemble.

Calling Plant Nerds

2010-08-16T19:47:00.007-05:00

Less talk, more action? Scroll to the bottom for the bit about the petition.

The Problem
Russia is on the verge of bulldozing a major plant collection in Pavlovsk. According to the Guardian (initial story| follow-up), which has been following the story, this is the world's oldest germplasm collection, with the world's largest fruit collection. They claim, moreover, that over 90% of the plants in the collection are not found in any other plant collection. There are 100 varieties of gooseberries, of raspberries, and of cherries, 1,000 varieties of strawberries from 40 countries, apples from 35 countries, 893 varieties of blackcurrants from 30 countries, and plums from 12 countries (BBC, change.org, Nature).

The Pavlovsk station--from the BBC, who got it from Cary Fowler of the Global Crop Diversity Trust

Why It Matters
One summer during college, I interned at a research center in Oregon that was affiliated with a germplasm collection center. When I was there, a couple of researchers had just returned from a major plant collection trip to China, where they gathered scores of rare and unusual species and varieties of Rubus (the blackberry and raspberry genus). There were thornless specimens, specimens with giant simple palmate leaves, and many other oddities, often unrecognizable to my eyes as a Rubus at all.

Why is this significant? Because about 30% of China's landmass is affected by desertification, and 36% of its virgin forests are under pressure. This is what plant germplasm collections do: perserve fragments of diversity in the form of seeds, tissue, and whole plants. They include ancestors or near-ancestors of cultivated crops as well a far-flung wild cousins.

This would be valuable even in a world rich with healthy, robust ecosystems that act as natural seed banks: from these strange relatives we can get new flavors, colors (like purple carrots), desirable traits (like thornlessness), hardiness, and disease resistance, among other qualities. The National Clonal Germplasm Repository in Corvallis made interesting and promising specimens available to the small fruit breeders at my research station, who worked on/funded research that would be useful to Oregon's farmers (mostly for freezing--the big money in fruit is in processing. If you want a good strawberry, choose a variety that was grown for freezing, not for fresh sale. Fresh fruit are bred for storage first; flavor is an ancillary consideration. Flavor and color are much more important to the processing industry.)

In our world, though, with its besieged wild places, germplasm collections are even more important as a hedge against extinction. This is why the uniqueness of the Palovsk collection makes its potential loss so alarming. It is impossible to know what challenges future generations will face--what diseases will threaten their crops, what meteorological catastrophes may occur, what technologies may require changes in how we raise plants or the kinds of plants we raise, or what new medical uses may be discovered for rare and wild plants. Germplasm is a sort of global nest egg--an insurance policy against the unknown.

For all of these reasons, the potential destruction of the Pavlovsk center (which apparently cannot readily be moved owing to the volume of live specimens) would be a catastrophe--things that are unique or extremely rare would be irrevocably lost--so that a bunch of robber baron oligarchs can have pool parties behind the closed gates of a new private housing development. (That last bit may be unfair. I don't actually know the income bracket of the prospective new homeowners--only that it is a private housing development.)

Do Something
To this end, the Global Crop Diversity Trust (an international organization that promotes crop diversity and food security) has put together a petition that you can sign to be submitted to the Russian government. There is also, for the tweeters among us, a movement afoot on Twitter to do... whatever it is Twitter does. This is described at the petition link above and in the second Guardian article.

Plant nerds and all people who like eating, please consider signing, tweeting, and generally making a rumpus for a worthwhile strawberry-lovin' cause.

Back to the Pond

2010-08-15T13:04:00.004-05:00

We've pretty well let the pond sit for most of July and early August. Come to think of it, we haven't put a lot of effort into the rest of the house/yard either. It, as Ella Fitzgerald so justly observed, is too damn hot. Plus, it's been the season of niecephews: the first of the next generation of both my and my husband's nuclear families were born during the past month (Hello to little Delilah (b. Jul 11) and Andrew (b. Aug 13)!)

But various friends and family members keep threatening to come and see the pond, even in its present, tattered, unfinished, and semi-functional state. So. Time for the next big push: time to buy some stones.

We went to a number of different stone suppliers in town, trying to match the flat, orangey rocks that came with the property and that now partially encircle the pond. After some initial disappointment, we found a good match at Jacobs and Son way out on 620: apparently, we've got something called "Texas Bronze cotton rock," which comes from the San Saba region. So we measured the remaining exposed bits of pond liner and the terrace in front of the pond, and we bought (yeek!) 4 tons of rock, to be delivered this Tuesday. So moving that into place will no doubt be a breeze.

A pallet of Texas Bronze; pic from the Jacobs & Son site. We ordered 3 of these.

A note on the geology: Jacobs and Son lists this as a "cotton rock." The internet draws a blank on "Texas Bronze cotton rock," but cotton rock in general is supposed to be a whitish limestone. So here's the question: have we rimmed our pond in limestone (which would explain the pH problems)? If so, why is it such a brittle and crumbly rock? And what to make of the fact that it's not remotely cotton colored? All are mysteries.

And speaking of pH, I mentioned an entry or two ago that the pond plants looked like hell--even more tip burn and general poutiness than usual, plus the waterlilies were sadly puny and diminished. So it was clearly time to undertake a late summer cleaning of the pond. Bother. So I removed dead leaves and flowers, fertilized the prima donnas (which I really didn't want to do, but they were looking so depressed), and once again tackled the pH.

This time I followed the advice of the Emerald Gardens guy, who said to pump out the top 10 or so inches and replace with fresh water. He also recommended stuffing pantyhose with peat moss and sinking them into the pond for a gentler, long-term buffering action. So I used 1 complete pair of pantyhose (the last in the house--if there's one thing I love about the aughts, it's the demise of pantyhose as a fashion accessory. Lemme tell you, the genie is never going back in that bottle.) I chopped each leg into thirds and made a seventh bundle out of the torso, and I put a piece of broken pavestone into each bundle. Then I deployed them around the pond. Some sank, and some floated for a while, looking like corpses that had been imperfectly hidden; we took to calling the little bundles jimmy hoffas. Eventually, they all sank to the bottom. Not sure it wouldn't have been just as effective to empty the peat bale directly into the pond and let the peat float loose, but the jimmy hoffas are at least a little tidier, if creepy.

And good news! As of this morning, the pH was down from a piping hot 9 or more acceptable solid 8. Let's see if it lasts. The fish continue to endure my experiments with admirable sang froid.

Meanwhile, we're also reshaping the prospective terrace (to bring it closer to the baby Burr oak so as to be able to lounge in shade, once it's big enough to make any), pounding in metal edging to shape the beds around the pond, and making some necessary and long-deferred extensions to the irrigation system (linking the primrose jasmine to the automated system and adding a sprinkler head for a particularly parched abelia in the shade bed).

We didn't finish anything--by 11, I could barely drag my braised and dripping carcass from one end of the yard to the other--but we made noble beginnings.

Lois, Belatedly

2010-08-07T08:21:00.003-05:00

A couple of weeks ago, Matt & I went to Houston to visit my brother & sister-in-law, who are expecting (shout-out to my small prospective nephew!).

As luck would have it, the day of our visit was also the second-to-last day when the Houston Museum of Natural Science's corpse flower (Amorphophallus titanum) would be on display. Naturally, as plant nerds, it was our clear duty to truck down there at 9:45 at night on a Sunday to take a gander.

Sadly, "Lois" was well past her prime by the time we got there. Even so, she was an impressive--if somewhat obscene--sight. (All arum lilies are at least a little obscene, from the flagrantly rampant antherium to the more modest calla lily, but Lois kicks it up a notch or two.)

You've all probably heard this on the news, but Lois is only the 2nd corpse flower to bloom in Texas, and only the 20-somethingth to bloom in the US (the 1st in Texas was at Stephen F Austin's arboretum in 2004--which we completely missed, much to my chagrin. Theirs is named "Big Jack," apparently). They're rare, ginormous (Lois is just a little adolescent), and unpredictable in their blooming.

There was no noticeable stench coming from Lois when we saw her, though it was hot, humid, and packed with people, so it's possible that her smell was drowned out by the people-smell.

In addition to an impressive--if now deflated--spadix (the central flower spike that puts the phallus in Amorphophallus--the name means "misshapen penis"), Lois also has a very nifty Elizabethan ruff in mottled Goth purple.

HMNS says Lois got close to 6 feet tall. You can see on the measuring stick above that by the time we got there, she'd wilted down to three.

For a nifty graphic of the growth stages of the corpse flower, see this pic from the Huntington Gardens (home of another corpse flower, named Stinky).

The HMNS opted not to fertilize Lois this go round:
This is Lois’s first time to bloom. She is young and small (7 yrs old, 30 pound tuber). Often the first blooms are not even fertile. Flowering uses a lot of the tuber’s stored reserves, and fruiting uses even more. We were advised by the head of the arboretum at Berkeley (they have several titan arums) not to pollinate her the first time around. When she has a much larger tuber, perhaps next time she blooms, we may attempt to pollinate her (we will have to get pollen from another botanical garden – it can be frozen apparently. Artificial insemination for plants!)

Lois pretty well stole the show, but we were also impressed by this disgusted-looking iguana in the butterfly center. He clearly thinks all the brouhaha is a complete crock.

Patented Rose Grabber, More Baby Fish

2010-07-31T16:31:00.004-05:00

Check out my patented Rose Grabbing Horticultural System:

Rose grabbers

I use one in each hand to grab fly-away bits of climbing roses and pull them down to be woven through the gazebo lattice. Obviously they are not, in fact, actually patented, and the method of manufacture is probably pretty self-explanatory. The only other thing you need to know is that it's best to use those dry cleaner coathangers that have a cardboard tube on the bottom: that way, the prongs that stuck into the tube form a convenient rose pushing platform on the opposite end from the hook. Because when you're engaged in rose-taming, sometimes you have to grab, and sometimes you have to push.

Weary Plants, Happy Fish
Meanwhile, the pond is getting clearer, according to some inexplicable internal agenda of its own. Some days it's murky, and some days it's clear. That's all I know. The plants are all starting to look a bit ragged (except the bulrushes, water hyssop, and water clover. Those guys are stout.) I'm not sure if it's the sustained high pH, my dislike of fertilization, or just the fact of its being practically August in Texas, but there's a lot of yellowing and undersized leaves and caterpillar damage and general whininess going on.

To put it in perspective, mind you, there's a lot of the same going on in the rest of the yard, too. We've had an unusually green and pleasant summer, but we've been consistently in the 90s for over month now, and the plants are starting to feel it. The chitalpa's grown into a giant shaggy monster, but the leaves are looking a bit mottled and dull. The Salvia vanhouttii are bloomless and naked from the knees down. The oak-leaf hydrangea blossoms are dark brown and battered. The red verbena are only blooming fitfully. The rose garden is chlorotic and droopy. And on, and on...

In the pond, though, I'm going to experiment with some remediation. I finally broke down and bought some pond plant fertilizer pellets :-( I really dislike the idea of adding any chemicals to the pond that are not strictly necessary, but all the water lilies--especially 'Colorado'--are looking really puny. So, fine. I'll fertilize the damn things. But I don't like it.

I also bought something called barley pellets at the nursery up the street, Bloomers. The copy on the bag was incredibly unpersuasive (it more or less said, "The peat in the pellets will break down and release hydrogen peroxide, which will cause the peat to break down, which will release hydrogen peroxide, which will cause the peat to break down..." Never explained why I would want hydrogen peroxide in my pond. Do I want hydrogen peroxide in my pond? I just don't know) but other sources have spoken of the mosquito-murdering, algae-defeating properties of barley straw, so here's hoping. We do have a lot of that nasty, stringy kind of algae that makes me think of the warriors' hair in Tolkien's Dead Marshes--whitish, wispy, and sinister. Plus with slime!

But slime and weenie plants notwithstanding, the fish are flourishing. They love it when I stir up the muck, so I did that and threw out some fish food in order to take a Census. All of the adult fish are accounted for, including the 2 shubunkins, and now that the water's clearer and the food made the fish extra friendly, I picked out some more identifying features on them all. Like: Safety First's big orange splodge has a sort of nibble taken out of it on the right side, so it's really shaped like a C, not like a circle. Unlike Big Olaf, Thor has a little white frosting on the top of his dorsal fin. Spooky is smaller than Crazy Eye. Bob's irregular white coloration on his belly comes highest up his sides near his head. Lynn's comes up highest on her sides by her tail. Jupiter and Drusilla are the shyest and sulkiest of the lot, even though Jupiter's head splodge is much nicer than Safety First's--bigger and more regularly ovoid. Big Olaf is about 5-1/2 inches long now!

But the biggest news is that I saw five--five!--orange babies at once. Holy cow. I can't give them all different names--they all look the same. I'll just call them Penelope 1 through 5.

There are also at least two babies with lighter orange sides & bellies that have dark grey streaks down their backs and black fins, and there are at least two dully browny-taupe ones that are really hard to see. I get where the Penelopes came from (perhaps I should have named them after the Sharons in Battlestar Galactica? They keep multiplying and I can't tell them apart or remember which one it was that shot Bill Adama), but the others are a complete mystery. Perhaps some neighbor is dumping his unwanted aquarium overflow in our pond?

At any rate, whatever weirdness is going on with the flora, the fauna are having a rockin' good time.

Blurry Pictures of Indistinct Fish

2010-07-18T10:45:00.007-05:00

Steven Strawn waterlily with Safety First (sarasa comet) and Thor or Big Olaf (red comets)

Sorry, folks. This is all I've got. Darn fish won't sit still or come up to the surface to be photographed. And the water's been very murky of late. Still, for the very interested, here are some pix of our pond's inhabitants.

I had the most luck photographing the baby orange fish Penelope, who is oddly fearless, and the sarasa comet Safety First. When I first introduced SF to the pond, he was the last to leave the plastic bag he came in and had to practically be poured into his new home (hence the name). Now he swims over to check things out at the least sign of disturbance, nibbles my toes affectionately (okay, that's probably hunger, not affection, but let's just pretend) and has even let me stroke his dorsal fin! What a great fish!

Safety First, who belied his name to become one of the pond's most intrepid explorers

Penelope was the second baby fish we spotted (after Pearl, who has been worryingly AWOL). She's got a light orange splodge down the length of her back, with a white head and tail. None of the grown ups have quite this coloring nor anything like this pattern. I can't help but wonder if some of our pond plants didn't bring a few hitchhiking fish eggs with them when I bought them.

Baby Penelope, who doesn't really look like any of her possible parents

Penelope's odd enough, but some of the other younguns... We've got a dark browny-orange fish with two big grey splodges on its head (as yet unnamed) and one or more dull taupe fish that lighten toward the tail and have black tips on their sheer fins. These in particular don't look like comets at all--they look like some completely different species. Where could they have come from?

A particularly egregious (and now highly doctored) photo of the back end of one of the mysterious brown baby fish

I was (sort of) able to finally capture a shubunkin, which are curiously mottled blue-grey fish. Not sure if this is Spooky or Crazy Eye--they're so elusive that I haven't learned to tell them apart.

A shubunkin and a red comet

And, after several months, I finally got a picture of Bob-or-Lynn, the two goldfish we got from Bob & Lynn at Draco Gardens. I eventually realized that you can tell them from Thor & Big Olaf because B&L are orange on the top and irregularly white on the bottom, while T&BO are orange all over. The difficulty, of course, is convincing them to roll over so I can see their bellies. You can definitely see a white splodge on the top goldfish here, so it's either Bob or Lynn.

Bob-or-Lynn and a friend

The first creatures to move in to the pond were the tadpoles--hundreds upon hundreds of them. We've already gone through several generations, which start out minuscule, like the one below: smaller than a peppercorn. They eventually become scores of tiny, adorable baby toads, and then I'm not really sure what happens to them, because we don't have as many adult toads as one would expect. I'm hoping that Claude, our resident 3-foot ribbon snake, doesn't have anything to do with it.

Tiny tadpoles love to rest on my feet and legs--perhaps they like my mammalian warm-bloodedness? They're cute, but they tickle.

Sometimes the fish congregate together in big groups, but they usually disperse rather quickly.

A cluster of goldfish

6-legged Pond Dwellers
To my surprise, I've discovered that bees seem to really love water hyssop (Bacopa sp., probably B. monnieri). Given all the bad news on the honeybee front these days, I think I'll buy some more of this stuff and give our melliferous friends a nice lakeside buffet. Also, it seems to be harder to drown water hyssop (and clover fern) than it is to drown creeping Jenny and aquatic mint, both of which have been relentlessly whiny since the heavy rains a couple of weeks ago.

Three bees were busy sipping nectar until I whipped out my camera. Then all but one fled. The last one is snuggling up against a stem (above) instead of in a flower. Good luck spotting him.

The other first and most enthusiastic of the pond denizens have been dragonflies and damselflies. I've been amazed at the diversity of colors--mostly electric blues and this lovely neon burgundy, a color I've never seen in dragonflies before.

My camera didn't really do justice to the jewel-like intensity of this dragonfly's coloring. He's a beauty.

And just this morning, this incredibly bright crimson fellow took possession of a Thalia stem and chased the others off.

We've also seen one or two bright green ones and green-headed damselflies with bright blue tips on their tails.

More Steven
And another picture of gorgeous waterlily 'Steven Strawn'. Because I love him. Our camera can't seem to quite capture his unique strawberries-and-cream coloring--he's more red and less pink than this picture would suggest.

'Steven Strawn': not that pink

Po & Izzy Go to School

2010-07-03T18:21:00.009-05:00

Obedience Training for Cats
As you may be aware (see A Dietary Indiscretion and Other Blunders), our two cats can sometimes be real pests. I mean, they're fuzzy and cute (especially Izzy), but they're also demanding, whiny, and attitudinal, and they do charming things like scratch door frames and ravel carpet and yowl at dinner time.

For people whose prior pets were limited to a well-beloved ficus and some parlor palms, this kind of behavior is infuriating, to say the least.

So fairly early on, we got the idea to train them, partly hoping that it would help channel all that energy, and partly just for the sheer pleasure of barking out an order and seeing them do what we tell them for once. We got a cat training book (Train Your Cat in 10 Minutes--or something like that) and got them reasonably competent at Sit and Come, but they were crap at duration, and everything else we tried to teach them (Jump, Stand, Stay, Get the Hell off the Counter You Spawn of the Demiurge) just left them confused.

Somewhere along the way, it occurred to me that my friend Cathy, who teaches dog training (specifically a kind of sport-dog training called "rally") might have some useful insights to offer.

Lucky for us, she was intrigued, and she's given us several training sessions plus lots of between-session advice. (We're propagating some roses for her, and we're going to do a little landscaping this fall, so we're not just takers--we're givers, too.)

Izzy is learning to target

Anyway, we had a session today, which made me realize how far the little stinkers have come.

Po stands. He was tired when we took the picture--usually his form is a little better than this.

They both know Stand, and Po can hold it for a really long time. They Sit and--especially Po--stay put as long as food appears to be in the offing. They both Twirl (go in a circle), though Izzy's is kinda rough. Po's been struggling with Lie down, so Cathy came up with a new way of teaching him (called capturing), and he was a real whiz. She also taught us a new way to try and make Po stop spazzing out at dinner time. She j-u-u-u-u-s-t got him to understand the first piece of the process today--we'll see how he does over the next few attempts.

Po learning to recline on command. So far, he's heavy on the reclining and light on the command part.

Here's what I've learned about training pets in general and cats in particular:

(1) It's really, really logical, but not at all intuitive. We have to break down what we want them to learn into a lot of little steps and provide a range of very finely calibrated responses. Everything Cathy tells us to do makes perfect sense--and I'd have never thought of any of it on my own.

(2) Coordinating my voice, hand gestures, clicking, and treat dispensing is astonishingly difficult. If I could dance or fence or do karate or had, in fact, any kind of physical skills whatsoever (typing doesn't seem to count), it might not be such a challenge, but it requires far more awareness of my physical presence than I would have ever expected.

(3) Learning this from a book kinda sucks. It makes a huge difference having a knowledgeable person watch you and give you feedback--explaining how your actions might be ambivalent or too complex or inadvertently teaching the wrong thing. Plus, Cathy's very good at coming up with alternate approaches when one thing doesn't work for a particular animal. Po, for example, responds well to the Stand hand signal, which is an up-pointing version of the Sit signal. But Cathy pointed out that Izzy's hesitant performance was probably due to a difficulty in distinguishing between the two signals, so I'm going to modify the signal for her.

(4) My friend knows a lot. Of course, I always assumed that she did know plenty of stuff (she has a JD, an MA, and and MBA), but I never realized how much there was to know when it came to pet training. But she's got a really astonishing depth of information and experience about the most minute aspects of training, from getting your pet to look you in the eye when you call (did you know you have to train some animals to do that?) to what kind of treats work best for training to what you have to do with your shoulders to get the best response from your pet. She's been a longtime horse rider and dog owner, so I shouldn't be surprised at how well she can read animals and how precisely she can intervene with them, but I totally underestimated the complexity of the subject.

(5) Cats can be trained! And not just by Hollywood animal trainers or that blond German who got chomped on by his own lion (name eludes me. There were two of them. In Las Vegas. Frosted hair, sparkly leisure suits?) Cathy tells me that Po is learning faster than some dogs she's trained. That's right--my cat is smart! He's kind of a grumpy, entitled jerk, but he's really, really smart!

Po does Twirl

(6) Which brings me to point 6, that training my cats makes me fonder of them. This is very useful (for the cats) when they scratch a door frame or knock one of Matt's Big Reds (Matt loves Big Red) onto the carpet. When they're being brats--which, alas, still happens--or needing expensive visits to the pet ER, it's helpful to reflect that the little hellions can do tricks on command and are smarter than dogs (Po is, anyway; Izzy... well, she's very cute) and generally have redeeming and people-pleasing qualities.

Anyway, I'm exceedingly grateful for the copious free advice and training Cathy's been giving us. If you're at all interested in dog training, you should definitely check her out at austindogsports.com. If she can achieve these kinds of results in her first attempt to train cats, her dog skills may well bend the laws of physics.

And in Other Things Zoological
Other happy things are happening at the Menagerie Chez M. Our fish made babies! (And after they'd only known each other for a couple of weeks, the little tramps. If I knew who was responsible, I'd rename them Jezebel and Casanova.) We've seen one little 3/4" white fish and one 3/4" yellowy one swimming about. We dubbed them Pearl and Penelope, respectively.

And then I recently learned that the nursery up the street actually sells both pond plants and fish, which is great because I wanted to diversify our fish collection with a couple of shubunkins. Matt said (because he is wise in his generation) that their coloring is too murky and they'll be impossible to see in our pond. This turned out to be true, but at least on those occasions that they pop up near the surface, we'll know who they are. The more different our fish look from one another, the more interesting I find them. A school of 15 gorgeous, iridescent, rainbow-striped fish that are all identical would be less interesting to me than my 12 ordinary little goldfish whom I can more or less call by name. (Or at least identify as being one of a few of individuals). Matt thinks the shubunkins are kind of freaky looking, or so I infer, because he named them Spooky and Crazy Eye.

Welcome to Chez M, Pearl, Penny, Spooky, and Crazy Eye!

Lotus Blossom

2010-06-19T16:37:00.006-05:00

'Mrs. Perry D. Slocum' lotus in bloom

'Mrs. Perry D. Slocum' has put on its first bloom--isn't it a treat? It's supposed to be heavily tinged with pink (see here), but its present pale lemon-butter color actually melds very nicely with everything else that's blooming in the pond.

'Mrs Perry D. Slocum' lotus, unusually devoid of pink

It had already dropped a petal or two in the water, causing Matt to uncharacteristically murmur, "Lotus petal, floating in the pond..." which sounds rather Eastern and poetic, but actually makes for a somewhat odd half a hiaku:

Lotus petal, float-
Ing in the pond...

Very pale 'Ellen Bosanquet' crinum

Our pondside crinum, which is supposed to be 'Ellen Bosanquet,' is also in bloom, though it too is a little off color--unusually pallid.

'Steven Strawn,' the fountain, and (in the way back) the blooming lotus

And my new fave, 'Steven Strawn' is blooming again. When water lily blossoms fade, they sink back into the water, where they take on an oddly poignant quality, like so many drowned Ophelias.

One living and two dead 'Steven Strawn' blooms

In the event that you were worried about the fish (in light of the pH weirdness), look! A fish! First one captured on... digital thingies. I actually saw at least 4 this morning (not sure how many of the orange comets I saw--they all look alike): at least 2 comets, plus Lena and Jupiter. None of them looked sulky or depressive, so I think they're all fine. Admittedly, it's hard to tell with fish.

They're hard to photograph, though, so I had to futz with the pic in Photoshop for the little fella to be visible at all. See the orange smear to the bottom right? That's him. Unfortunately, I'm not the world's most adroit Photoshopper, so now the picture's about as convincing as those photos of the Loch Ness Monster.

It's a fish! I swear!

pH Pain & Blissfully Pink

2010-06-12T14:47:00.007-05:00

Our new 'Steven Strawn' hardy water lily (Kirk Strawn, 1999)

What Gives, Pond?
The pond's pH problem is turning out to be more intransigent than I had expected. After discovering that the pH was 9.0, I went to one of our local pond shops and bought 3 bottles of Kent brand pH reducer. The pond folks said that 1 bottle should reduce the alkalinity of a pond our size by 1 whole point. I was to add 1 whole bottle, wait 24 hours, and re-test the water, repeating until we got down to around 7.

Well, I've used all three bottles of acid, and the pH is still 9.0. I started to wonder if maybe our pH kit was deranged just read everything at 9.0, so I tested our tap water: 8.0.

So somehow our pond is intensifying the alkalinity of the water that is added to it, possibly above 9.0 (since three bottles of acid failed to mellow the reading at all). Go figure. We haven't used any mortar yet, nor any easy cheese foam-in-a-can, and Dad says our rocks are sandstone, so I really have no idea what could be causing the problem.

I'm kind of out of patience with it. I don't want to get involved in some constant battle with the pond's own natural inclinations, having to buy and apply untold gallons of caustic chemicals and monitoring daily. That's not the point of Lake Laissez-Faire at all.

The folks at pond store #2 recommended dropping some pantyhose filled with peat in, as a gentler and more long-term solution. I'll give that a try, move the Sagittaria deeper into the shade, which may take some of the pressure off of it, and call it a done deal. As long as the fish don't go belly-up, I'm not going to spend a lot more energy on this one. If the pond is just determined to be alkaline, well, so be it.

Because There Were 6 Square Inches of Unoccupied Space
Meanwhile, my multiple trips to the pond store exposed me to this exceedingly and entrancingly lovely water lily, 'Steven Strawn.' I'm generally not wild about the color pink, but this combination of shades is awesome. Long story short: here it is, settling nicely into our pond, alkalinity notwithstanding.

Our first bloom of 'Steven Strawn'

Interestingly, 'Steven Strawn' is from the same breeder as one of our other lilies, 'Colorado' (Kirk Strawn,1994).

...and here it is again. It's a really pretty flower.

I think I've pretty much exhausted our lilyspace, though. We may actually be approaching that ideal 50-70% coverage.

In the front, maybe 'Queen of Siam,' 'Colorado' in the middle, and 'Steven Strawn' back behind the fountain

'Colorado' had a particularly nice bloom on it, as well.

'Colorado'

The Persistent Garden

2010-06-11T21:55:00.009-05:00

"Gardens are only temporary works of art which nature and time try ceaselessly to erase."

So I came across this striking sentence on the Sweetbay blog. It isn't how I usually think of gardens--I'm so interested in things like trees and antique roses in part because of their permanence, and part of the charm of bulbs like crinums and oxbloods is that they can persist after the the structures they were once planted around have crumbled--they're like little time capsules.

(To be fair, I think Sweetbay is more design focused than I am, so her conception of a garden is probably a lot more formal than mine. She seems to have a good bit more intentionality and nuance about what she puts in the ground than I do. I stumble across something pretty and stick it anyplace it'll fit. I figure a garden has survived if a couple of shrubs and a handful of bulbs are still with us.)

But at the same time, I'm only now coming to appreciate how much mutability is an integral part of a garden, which is part of why I was so struck by her statement. (The other reason is that it's a nice, resonant bit of epigram--it has that same sort of long, measured euphoniousness as the opening of 'Ode on a Grecian Urn'--"Thou foster-chiiiiild of Siiiilence and slow Tiiiiiime...") I think this has to do with the whole "grown up" thing. Like most kids, I used to assume that adults reached a sort of stasis by about 21 (hah!) and pretty much just plateaued for next 50-odd years. And even though I know this is complete bollocks and would be ghastly if it were true, I sometimes discover that I have failed to recalibrate some of my assumptions in light of this little epiphany.

So, for example, I'm unpleasantly surprised when I realize that a bed I went to great pains to install is too narrow or too short, or needs its major plantings dug up and replaced. So it turns out that adulthood is not about weighing your options, cogitating deeply, making the best, perfectest choice, and then living with it--like the Honeychurches' drawing room furniture in Room with a View--for the rest of your life.

As soothing as it would be to be infallible, it turns out that adulthood--and apparently garden design--is about taking your best guess, sticking a shovel in the ground, and screwing up. (Why did you plant those pink Echinacea in front of the red '4th of July' rose? Why did you give valuable rose garden space to that nameless orphan that turned out to be a totally charmless, formless magenta--ick--semi-double? Why did you make that walkway so skinny? Why are all your trees crooked? Should you have really planted that oak so close to the mutabilis? &c., &c. Arrrrgh!)

A writer named Kathryn Schulz, who is evidently also quite a good interviewer, has been doing a series for Slate on being wrong, which includes this encouraging quotation from Ira Glass: "If you do creative work, there's a sense that inspiration is this fairy dust that gets dropped on you, when in fact you can just manufacture inspiration through sheer brute force. You can simply produce enough material that the thing will arrive that seems inspired." Or, to translate into horticultural terms, keep transplanting that poor rose, and you'll eventually find a spot where it works.

But even if time & nature are eroding Sweetbay's garden, and wrongness is constantly subverting mine, sometime, every now and then, you're going to plant something strong and sturdy in the right spot and it's going to stay there for the next 100 years until someone from some future generation comes by and thinks, "Gosh, that's a nice, shady tree. I'm sure glad someone planted it here." Or "What a lovely old rosebush this is--they don't make them like this anymore." Or "These big old lilies are so fragrant--I wonder how long they've been here?" And that's good enough for me.

Future generations: feel free to admire our 'Little Gem' Magnolia grandiflora