Spring! Spring! Spring!

It's not yet Peak Rose, but all sorts of things are booming and sprouting and leafing out.

For example, 'Hot Cocoa' is putting on this season's first flowers.  Believe it or not, this is actually an accurate depiction of the color.  Matt hates it, but I find it strange and entrancing.  Even more than most roses, HC's color varies with the weather--cooler temperatures bring out the browny-silvery-lilacy tones that lurk under the orangey-red.

 

A lovely 'Hot Cocoa' bloom

'Green Rose' was one of our first roses to pop into bloom, and it's kept it up admirably.  Interesting, as the "flowers" fade, they turn kind of straw-colored, which is the only time they're terribly visible. 

'Green Rose'--what can I say? We like floral oddities.

Meanwhile, Tulipa clusiana 'Tinka' materialized almost overnight. I had no idea they had even sprouted, when suddenly, they were in full bloom.  Unlike many T. clusianas, this cultivar has warm golden yellow accents.

T. clusiana 'Tinka'

The Iris virginiana slip that I bought 2-3 years ago from Madrone Nursery has finally bloomed.  It's a long, leggy thing, with a bright blue bloom.

Iris virginiana--purportedly, an unusually salt-tolerant variety, which will come in handy when the sea levels rise, but not much before

Poppies!  Last year we sowed whole heap of Papaver somniferum from my Aunt P. I think we maybe got one small, sad bloom? Not a good year for the wildflowers--beastly drought.  But this year, all of last year's frustrated seeds went nuts, and we have an impenetrable thicket of poppies. I've been checking on them (almost) daily, but one managed to bloom without my seeing it. Nevermind--there are about 50 more buds in on the way.

A blue-green forest of poppies, heavy with buds

'Mlle Franziska Kruger'--I'm not actually nuts about the quilled, wadded look that Mlle FK specializes in, but the colors are so very pretty--she's almost as changeable as Mutabilis.

One of Mlle Franziska Kruger's scrunched up flowers

And I caught 'Isabella Sprunt' about 30 seconds too late.  Her flowers spend a long time as slender, elegant, very Tea-ish buds, then open into quite elegant and formal blooms... for about 5 minutes.  After which they turn into this rather untidy thing, and by the next day, half the petals will have dropped.  Still, that pale butter color is nice.  But if you have to choose between them, don't hesitate: go with 'Ducher.'

The mayfly-like flowers of 'Isabella Sprunt'

It seems like every spring, a different rose delights and surprises me.  This year, it's 'Kaiserin Friedrich.'  As a climber, she goes straight up--long, straight, limbs that withstand bending and weaving better than the average rose (I hate it when you're trying to thread a rose through a trellis and you have to bend... bend... bend--and at the last minute, it snaps).  But her upward tendencies mean the blooms are a bit thin around her knees--she has (so far--we're in her 2nd year) few lateral branches to break into bloom.  However.  She has a decent load of blooms at the top, and I think she's starting to do a little more branching, so hopefully the trellis will fill in.  But above all, how nifty are these flowers?  Check out the ruffled margins on the petals of these buds.

The precisely fluted petals of two 'Kaiserin Friedrich' rose buds

They'd be fussy if it weren't for the obvious toughness and vitality of the plant itself.  And look at the lovely range of colors: cream to soft yellow to peach to pink with darker pink margins.  And that complex array of petals!  It brings a real touch of sophistication to our otherwise rough-and-tumble DIY sort of a garden.

A fully open 'Kaiserin Friedrich' blossom

Holy Cumulostratus!

This season's first bloom on 'Hot Cocoa,' showing its funky browny-orange-red coloring quite nicely.  When it heats up, the bush will keep blooming, but in a less iconoclastic camaro red.

EIGHT POINT SEVEN!

Last year, Elgin received approximately 15.3 inches the entire year.

Now it's only Feb 19, and we've received over half that amount already.

'Buff Beauty's' unusually pallid first bloom (trying to make a cultivar possessive is SUCH a pain.  You either end up with apostrophe congestion, which is the route I've chosen, or you have to lose the cultivar's single quotes altogether.  Dammit.)

Since the climate scientists who study La Niña are still, oddly, predicting a dry winter (what's left of it), this is probably a good thing; though, perversely, the persistent wetness has actually begun to freak me out a little.  I had buried memories of the Horrid Fungus that carried off so many of our roses back in 2007, but now that the ground seems to be permanently soggy, I'm remembering how aggressive and lethal that strain of canker/dieback/whatever-it-was could be.

My first jonquils ever (Narcissus jonquilla) are in bloom!  Hooray for these plucky little specks of yellow!  Now each bulb needs to replicate itself about 10 times, and we'll actually have a decent-sized stand.

Still, everybody looks healthy so far, and there's no rain forecast for the next several days, so hopefully what we're getting here is a nice quenching, not a drowning.

Chinese sacred lilies (Narcissus tazetta v. chinensis), a cheerful and reliable bloomer for us here in Elgin.

And in the interim, we've got a lot of blooming and greening. Our "lawn" (mostly clover at present, but what the hell; I'm sure the soil could use the nitrogen fixation) is lush and bright, our little grape hyacinths are blooming, the cemetery irises and Chinese sacred lilies are just finishing up their bloom cycles, and the snowflakes and jonquils are just getting started.

Dear little grape hyacinth (Muscari neglectum).  These are very cute, but are also rather thin on the ground at the moment.  Here's hoping they spread.

'Georgetown Tea,' 'Ducher,' 'Climbing Old Blush,' and especially 'Archduke Charles' and 'Mutabilis' are all in flower, to varying degrees. It's bright and springy and balmy.

Two of "Georgetown Tea's" fat, nodding blossoms

'Ducher'--one of our more bloomful roses right now.  'Ducher' is such a nice intermediate between formality and casual rusticity.

One of my better pictures of 'Cramoisi Superieur.'  You've no idea how much trouble I've had with that shade of red.  It's still not right, but at least it's in the neighborhood.

 Since we're apparently committed to spring now, Matt & I bought 8 (EIGHT!) cubic yards of compost and spread it all over the place.  Between that and the rain, I'm expecting to see joyous, exuberant plant growth all over the damn place.  (Note that we've cut back the grasses since snapping the pic below.)

OMG--so much compost.

Good winter.  Nice winter.  More like this, please!

Another not-bad pic of 'Cramoisi Superieur'--it's a little darker with stronger purply undertones, but still--it's sort of like this.

Pond Pump and Iris

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

Oh, so busy!

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)

SO MUCH STUFF is happening

Spring in the Shade Garden

A Japanese maple (Acer palmatum) leafs out

Today is brisk! The Sunset Valley Farmer's Market had less than half its usual stalls, and everyone there looked frostbitten and miserable. An veritable mistral is blowing--the guy who runs the nursery up the road told Matt that his neighbor's metal roof blew off in the wind--just peeled right off. My fingers kept getting numb while I snapped pictures, but so much is going on that I couldn't stop.

For example, I'm shocked to discover that our Japanese maples aren't dead. Their leaves got progressively crispier last summer till they finally burned off completely. Perhaps they just needed to acclimate?

Last year, Matt dug up some mystery bulbs from his family's property on the Brazos River. Turns out, some of them were snowflakes. What is interesting is that the flowers look a bit different from our other snowflakes--slimmer, more flared, more deeply lobed, and with pointier lobes. A different cultivar? A different species? Or just different growing conditions (eastside vs westside gardens)?

A skinnier snowflake: Leucojum aestivum?

The shade garden is seeing a lot of action. Things are poking their little heads out of the ground, popping into bloom, and putting on new leaves. Look at the lovely bright greenness of this patch of inland sea oats, for example.

First flush of inland sea oats (Chasmanthium latifolium)

Or look at the dark red of the shrimp plant we bought recently--particular grateful on such a forbiddingly grey day.

Dark red Justicia cultivar

Our 'New Dawn' abutilon finally put on a bunch of buds. I'm really impressed with abutilon--the weather's been incredibly capricious this month, but they're just blooming away merrily. There's a lot of vitality in these little plants.

A worm's eye view of Abutilon 'New Dawn'

Lots of Pictures of Trees in Bud
Our trees are full of buds and new leaves, which is always so reassuring. For example, after a very rocky summer, our Montezuma cypress (Taxodium mucronatum) is recharged and ready to go.

Montezuma cypress by the pond

This Lacey oak (Quercus laceyi) is full of little pink flower-like rosettes of leaves.

One of our Lacey oaks, expressing its feminine side

And our new weeping baldcypress, 'Cascade Falls' is continuing to bud out with undiminished vigor, much to my relief. Transporting it home from Austin sticking out of the back of my little Insight was rather nerve-wracking, and I was concerned that it would be traumatized. Seems pretty well-adjusted so far.

A zillion tiny green nubbins on the 'Cascade Falls' baldcypress (Taxodium distichum)

The Roses Are Back!
We dug up the two 'Knockout' roses and gave them to our friends Cathy, Kate, & Keith (thanks again for taking them!). So now we have more room for antiques: Madame Jo, here we come.

And among the antiques, we're j-u-u-u-s-t starting to see some new blooms and lots and lots of buds. Look at the roof of the gazebo: 'Climbing Old Blush' is covered in buds.


And inside, one timid little blossom has already opened.

The season's first flower of 'Climbing Old Blush'

'Georgetown Tea' last year's earliest bloomer and a really fantastic many-petalled plant, tucked away its first flower for this year deep in the middle of itself.

Our first 'Georgetown Tea' blossom this year

Meanwhile, 'Ducher,' a rose I could never be brought to care about until I grew it myself, already has a good five or six blossoms and rafts of buds. After the indomitable miniature, 'Green Ice,' the redoubtable 'Ducher' is probably our garden's most floriferous rose--blooms early, blooms late, blooms often. And it has an easy, casual gracefulness, while nevertheless being surprisingly sturdy. Some roses are prone to bruises, browning, and insect damage, but 'Ducher' always looks fresh and bright and clean and slightly lemony. If Mrs Meyer's fancypants aromatherapeutic cleaning products came in rose form, they might look a little like 'Ducher.'

Darling 'Ducher'

Cruisin' Elgin

I took a nice, long, exploratory bike ride today. I haven't been able to bike much lately, largely because the weather has not coordinated well with my schedule. But it was a nice, moody, overcast day today, in the 60s, all of which is terrific for me (I'm no great fan of sunshine, personally).

So. I wanted to break out of our usual biking patterns (10th St to Ave C to the duck pond or Main and back again) and see some new things, which totally worked out. I went down 2nd heading east of downtown and found myself on Ila, Bill, QS Goins[!], and Louise (streets, not people), where they have lots of rockin' yard bling and an adventurous, DIY approach to home construction and decoration.

Unfortunately, my camera card was full, so the only pix I could take were with my phone.

But here are some of the interesting things I saw.

This exceptionally gloomy abandoned house and derelict property.

I love old ruins--they're so pleasantly, tantalizingly melancholy

This woodcutter's cottage. His house is entirely fenced in firewood. Having been raised in the suburbs, I utterly do not know what to make of it. Is that how he heats his house? Does he sell firewood for a living? Answer comes there none.

The woodcutter's inexplicable cottage

Signs of spring. Daffodils, flowering quince, and pears were in bloom all over town.

A very big, old pear in bloom

And finally, one of the awesome things about living in a small town: goats! In town!

The tiny white dot in the back is a goat. He has another goat pal lurking behind the brush pile.

You want to know something weird? I like bike riding. I mean, I like it. It was always one of the more tolerable forms of exercise, but I never liked exercise in any form--it's always been a disagreeable but necessary means to some end or other. But this--this is fun. I didn't want to stop. I don't know what to make of this--some chemical change in my brain? Something to do with aging? Or maybe it's just the mild weather--moving around is fun when the great outdoors doesn't feel like a gigantic griddle. Who knows? I hope it's a long-lasting condition, though.

Early spring planting
A couple of weeks ago, we visited Barton Springs [or Creek? I always forget which it is] Nursery in Austin, just for a little looksee, and of course they were having a sale and had all sorts of lovely things in bloom to tempt our color-starved eyes.

Salvia vanhouttii 'Burgundy'

But then it was freezing, and wet, and snowy(!), so our purchases have been hanging out in Matt's greenhouse ever since. It's still a bit early, but I gambled and popped our burgundy Vanhouttii salvias in the ground, a 'Marilyn's Choice' abutilon, a 'New Dawn' abutilon, a garden mint, a cardoon (well, why the hell not?), and a couple of shrimp plants: dark red and firecracker orange.

'Marilyn's Choice' abutilon--you can see why I couldn't resist putting it in the ground

And, because they're still in bloom & I want to appreciate them while I can, here are some more of our cemetery iris, Iris albicans

Dear Weather Gods...

...Thank you for sending the blizzard the week after we got our fireplace hooked up.

So I stayed home from work today with an upset tummy (PSA: Kids, don't eat undercooked chicken. Bad, bad idea...)

Turned out to be a good thing, really. Because it SNOWED!!!

Fortunately, the intestinal weirdness was not sufficiently severe to keep me from going out and documenting. Aside from the stimulation of seeing everything covered in white, I also learned some stuff. For example, snow is wet. When it's falling steadily, it will build up in your hair, melt, and make your head cold. Also, snow is sticky (who knew?). It sticks to the bottom of your shoes like clay, then suddenly drops off, leaving one foot 2 inches shorter than the other. Startling.

I persevered, nevertheless.

The Demesne

Snow-covered back yard & greenhouse

As you can see, it was never cold enough for the snow to stick to pavement--it just piled up in the grass.

Kitchen patio looks a lot better with the snow covering all the weeds

Snow highlights the contours on half-dug pond

10th Street in the snow

Shade patio in the snow.

Unfortunately, the snow coincided with garbage day, so a lot of my pictures feature bright blue trash cans that stand out beautifully against all that white.

Maybe I can fix that... Lemme just--wait a sec--there! Much better!


Chilly Flowers
We had a handful of early bloomers this year, and now they're being punished for their initiative, poor things.

Remember that nice iris from 2 days ago?

Frosted iris

Snowflake with snowflakes

Chinese sacred lilies weighted down with snow

And then I went back inside, curled up in my wool blanket on our squashy sofa in front of a cheerfully crackling hissing fire, lit a candle, and felt smugly snug. It was fun, but I'm glad we only do this once every 10 years.

Still working on the tile. Ordered it last week--just need to pick it up and schedule appointment with tile dude.