No Canned Salmon for Us

Well, we did have the fondue yesterday as planned, but nothing else went according to forecast. It was overcast all day, and we got a warm but vigorous wind, but as for rain, 50-mile-per-hour gusts, flooding, and other signs of the apocalypse--we got bupkes. I spent the entire day sitting on my front porch with my laptop, watching radar images of Ike slowly moving up, up, then over, over and away. Once--while I was turning on the irrigation system to water our drought-stricken plants--I felt a few tiny prickles that might have been rain drops. And that was it.

Filling up the upstairs tub with water was definitely overkill.

And the canned turkey? Matt suggested that if we'd been starving for 4 days, it probably would have tasted great. I'm not so sure. It's canned in water, so it has a bloated, gelatinous quality, rather like a drowned corpse. And it smells like cat food. We dipped a couple of pieces in the fondue, chewed reluctantly, and then Matt said, "Isn't there some leftover sausage in the fridge?"

Hurricane survival kit, now downgraded to all-purpose apocalypse survival kit. We'll be feeding the canned turkey to Po.

Fortunately, my Houston relatives fared nearly as well as we did. Mom & Dad's house sprang a leak, and there was some other less significant damage, but no flooding or tornadoes or downed trees or anything. And Mattchew & Bianca's brand-new house was fine. It has tons of windows that they had no time to board up, having closed on the house on Friday. Happily, these were unscathed.

Today was actually rather lovely up here in Elgin. A bit warm, but a nice breeze all day, deep blue September skies, and I finally did some stuff that needed to be done, which is rather satisfying. In defense of procrastination, I have to point out that finally doing these things wouldn't have been nearly as gratifying if I hadn't initially put them off until they weighed guiltily on my mind.

I planted a very lovely dark purple passionflower vine that we got from Grumpy Dave (the guy who runs Garden of the Ancients, this hippie commune-cum-nursery in northeast Austin, has a unique approach to customer service. He doesn't seem to get the rhythms of ordinary conversation, but, boy, get him started on the IRS--which he considers "treasonous"--or the outrages committed by cops, or the conspiray to silence Ron Paul, and he sure becomes voluble! And very, very indignant.)

This looks rather like the vine I bought from GD--I think it's Passiflora incarnata.

Anyway, I bought a particularly pretty, very dark purple passionflower from them. And now it's in the rose garden.

Here's why:

Distressingly huge empty blank space on our western wall

Our western wall looks all barren and mis-proportioned. It needs some sort of tall thing to join it to the ground. Hopefully, the 'Little Gem' magnolia at the front corner will grow in and take the edge off the edge, and the passionflower in the middle will make it all nicely tied together. Hopefully.

I also planted some dianthus by the front door in the two tiny little spots that I reserve for annuals. Not a big fan of annuals, generally, but I do make an exception for dianthus, especially dark red ones.

And I bought a couple more bags of decomposed granite to finish off the very end of the sidewalk. Happily, most of the stones do seem to have settled over time. The whole thing actually feels fairly solid. So apparently no special rock-settling skills are required after all.

I weeded the bur oak bed and gave it some more mulch. We didn't put any weed barrier down under that bed, and the bermudagrass has been popping up through the existing mulch like a fondue fork cuts through cheese (mmm... fondue...). However, it also has a bunch of oxblood lilies coming up. The yard had random OLs plopped in the middle of the lawn, in the shade bed, under the bananas--not good places for them. So last year we dug some up (and boy, was that ever a chore) and transplanted them. Huzzah for oxblood lilies!

The pioneers of our colony of oxblood lilies (Rhodophiala bifida)

I also gave a little mulchly love to our two most abused saplings: our Eve's necklace (Sophora affinis) and our pistache (Pistacia texensis--I think). While we were cherishing and mollycoddling the new baldcypress and magnolia and the invalid pear, these two scrawny orphans managed to cling to life with very little help from us whatsoever. As a reward, they each got an entire bag of fresh mulch to help fight back the ravenous bermudagrass.

And I sprayed Immunox. Credit to the toxic stuff: it seems to have staved off death (once again) for 'Wild Blue Yonder', which is not only alive, but even blooming the right color--a deep, jewel-tone magenta with a white eye. While it was out, I also spritzed 'New Dawn,' 'Autumn Damask,' 'The Fairy,' 'Lichterloh,' 'Belinda's Dream,' 'Mystery Pink Globes,' 'Mystery Red Pillar,' and 'Buff Beauty.' I don't think any of them really needed it (except the Red Pillar, which has a lesion I don't like the looks of), but it's been a rough year. They don't need black spot--let alone Horrid Fungus--on top of the general droughtly misery.

I also sprayed our 'Moonglow' Asian pear. There are some signs of infection right at my most recent cuts (I don't think I have to tell you that I dipped my pruners in alcohol between each cut, so I know the infection didn't spread that way). I'm hoping to control the problem with chemicals, since pruning is obviously not working for me. I'll continue spraying 'Moonglow' and WBY for the rest of the growing season. There is a point, however, at which they are both going to have to grow a pair and starting fighting off pathogens themselves. I'm hoping that by spring they'll both have stronger root systems, and that this will do the trick. As you know, I put great faith in root health.

In fact, I should probably look for some good root fertilizer for the entire garden this fall. Something nice and organic and yummy for the soil, ideally.

BRING IT, IKE.

**Ike, courtesy of wunderground.com

So we're prepping for the latest hurricane badness here. We live about 200 miles from the Gulf, so there's not really that much prepping to do. (I was thinking of finally posting my "Creatures of Elgin" entry--I've been collecting pictures of the at-least-moderately interesting fauna here in Elgin--but coming right on the heels of my "Roses of Avenue F" entry it just seemed like too many lists.)

Wunderground gives us an 80% chance of rain Saturday (down from 100% as of yesterday, darn it). They're predicting 23-mph-ish winds. Ehn. Elgin's a windy place--if it's not over 35 mph, I'm not impressed. We'll drag the half-completed porch glider into the garage, I suppose, and Matt will batten down the greenhouses, but I think we'll both feel like mugs doing it.

I also went to Costco today, where I sheepishly filled my mongo-sized Costco cart with orangina, almond butter, Luna bars, extra-sharp cheddar, and other traditional hurricane necessaries. Despite growing up in New Orleans, I have no idea what to do in the way of hurricane provisions (nothing, you gullible nitwit! You live two hundred miles from the coast! You don't need any hurricane supplies at all.). One case of bottled water, or two? Which atrocious form of potted meat is least repellant when served room temperature on stale water crackers?--salmon, turkey, tuna, or "roast beef"? If I buy canned soup, can I heat it to palatability over a candle? Do I need to buy ice? (why ice? I don't know--it's like boiling water for women having a baby. I have no idea what it's for, but I have a strong impression it's essential. To keep the orangina cool if the power goes out?).

All I know for sure is that I'll be serving a cheese fondue at the height of the storm, since you cook fondue over a little gel-based burner that provides heat and light. We can lose all our utilities, but the fondue will carry on, unhindered.

I remember wanting to pick up a case or two of bottled water for Rita, but when I went to Target and Albertson's, the places were demolished. Nothing but a few forlorn packages of whole-wheat pitas in the bread aisle, and as for water, I had to content myself with a case of Gatorade. Which would have been very unsatisfactory for brushing one's teeth. This was, of course, right after Katrina, and everyone was feeling very vigilant. The intervening years seem to have taken the edge off (or else it's just that Costco stocks an absolute assload of stuff) because they still had bottled water up to the rafters. There were a few other paranoics and survivalists stocking up, though, so at least I was a doofus with company.

In other news, by 5:30 traffic had stacked up east of Manor on 290, and the unfortunate evacuees were just crawling along. I'm going to take back roads in to work tomorrow morning (Littig Rd to 969), although since Galvestonians are every bit as able to read maps as I am, they may fill up the side roads, too. None of my family are evacuating (which, given the state of the caulking in our shower, is probably just as well.) Mattchew & Bianca are closing on their new house in west Houston on Friday, so they naturally want to savor the joys of home ownership, hurricane or no hurricane. And Mom, Dad, and Grandpa are planning to ride it out, too (perhaps they peeped behind the shower curtain last time they visited and decided that no force of nature could compel them to face down that caulking?) They've never had any flood issues out in their neck of the prairie, so the greatest concern is presumably high winds and tornadoes.


**Holy Coriolis effect, that thing's big! I added the picture after writing the blog, just to have some eye candy. I don't think I'd looked at any radar pix in a couple of days, and it came as a bit of a shock. It's practically filling the entire Gulf! Er, Mr. Ike, sir, just kidding with the taunting and all. I think you're a very manly hurricane. Please don't throw a tornado at me. Although a little rain would be appreciated.