Pond Plants

Top right: aquatic mint, water clover. Left: sweet flag, Thalia, creeping Jenny. Bottom right: blue pickerel, waterlily, Louisiana iris.

Got paid Thursday. Halleluja! Time to buy some pond plants!

You'll remember that we already had one pond plant, a 'Full Eclipse' Louisiana iris.

Now we've also got some for filtering and oxygenating (the workhorses) and some for prettiness (the divas).

Workhorses:
Shelf plants:
-- Variegated sweet flag - Acorus calamus 'Variegatus'
-- Aquatic mint - Mentha aquatica
-- Creeping jenny - Lysimachia nummularia
-- Water clover - Marselia mutica

Submerged filter plants:
-- some handfuls of water poppy - Hydrocleys nymphoides
-- some handfuls of hornwort - Ceratophyllum sp.
-- some handfuls of Elodea canadensis

Divas:
-- Blue pickerel - Pontederia chordata
-- Thalia dealbata (2. Because they're so pretty.)
-- a nameless tropical waterlily (d'oh! I had meant to only buy hardies-$$-but I pulled from the wrong tank-$$$)

Foreground: Louisiana iris. Middle: tropical water lily. Back: creeping Jenny, variegated sweet flag, Thalia.

This was not a cheap trip to the pond store (especially not when one accidentally buys a tropical waterlily--they're $40 a pop!), but I doubt I've even got 10% of the surface of the pond covered with foliage. The internets (especially the sellers of pond plants--imagine that) recommend 50-70% coverage.

Well, it's quite handsome, anyway. No idea what the flowers will be like. $40 worth of loveliness, I hope.

In other news, the Crinum x powellii is loaded with flowers. I like the decadent dangliness of its spent flowers. It makes me think of an antebellum lady of impeccable breeding with a habit of surreptitiously stepping out of an evening and returning in the wee hours with a rollicking hangover and love bites that she has to cover with her shawl. Refined yet simultaneously raffish. Elegant, but disreputable.

Crinum x powellii and oak-leaf hydrangea

In Which the Pond Finally Freaking Works

Duck stands proudly astride functioning waterfall above (mostly) level pond

You may remember that we had a great deal of difficulty finishing off the pond. We dug it, sanded it, carpeted it, lined it, and filled it, only to discover that when the water was at the very edge on the east side, it was still 10 inches from the top on the west side. It seems we have a little sloping problem, which we had somehow never noticed before.

Fixing the problem necessitated building a levee on the low side, draining the pond, removing the rocks, shifting the liner, and re-filling the pond. This took a while, but this weekend we finally got it done and miraculously level-ish.

Let's pause a moment to bask in it: ahhhhhh...

Isn't it nice? And the soft splashing sounds all moist and cool and fertile. And it's BIG.

We've even put in our first water plant, a dark indigo Louisiana iris called 'Full Eclipse.'

from http://www.louisianairis.com/registrars/index-F.htm

(See bottom right of pic below.)

Louisiana iris in the pot in the bottom right corner

As you can see, however, the whole thing still isn't done. Matt got the waterfall running again this morning, and he began placing rocks around the edge, but we have a LOT of rockwork left to do/buy.

The really difficult bit is figuring out how to get the horizontal rocks on top of the levees to stay put. Since they're sitting on top of rubber liner, I don't think mortar or glue will work. My folks were in town today, and Dad (the engineer) recommended that we rest long, narrow rocks on the underwater ledges, and set the horizontal rocks on top of them. You obviously wouldn't want to step on this arrangement, but that's probably as secure was we're going to get. I wish I knew how other pond makers solve this problem.

You can see around the waterfall that Matt had kind of tentatively begun doing that. But of course, it will require buying one whole hell of a lot more rock. Not a project we will be finalizing anytime soon. But really, what is "final,"anyway? Nothing's ever done until it's dead, right? By which measure, our entire property is positively luminous with green and vibrant life.

Vertical rocks resting on the underwater ledge; horizontal rocks resting upon them

But even in its infant state, I think this pond contains much awesomeness, and I'm just itching to get some waterlilies and a lotus or two--oooh! and a Thalia!--to provide even more awesomeness.

On other topics, I'm throwing in some more pix of oak-leaf hydrangeas because I've waited so long for these to bloom, and they look so very pretty. In the picture below, you can see the difference between the (unnamed) Peckerwood cultivar on the left and the (unnamed) Great Outdoors cultivar on the right. HUGE difference. Caveat emptor.

Cultivar from Peckerwood on left; from Great Outdoors on right

And one more pic, just for the sheer joie de vivre of the thing. You may be wondering, "what's with all the fuzzy ivory stuff behind the flowers?" Interestingly, those are the actual fertile flowers. The showy bits that look like flowers are infertile pseudo-flowers with bracts instead of petals. Bizarre arrangement--not sure where Mother Nature was going with that one, but I suppose there must be some good reason for it.

So much pretty...

Oak-Leaf Hydrangea Blooms

The oak-leaf hydrangea is finally blooming!

Isn't it pretty?

The Peckerwood cultivar of oak-leaf hydrangea (H. quercifolia)

And look how big it is--the flower heads are ~8 inches long.

Peckerwood specimen in back; Great Outdoors in front

Interestingly, our two different OLH specimens produce vastly different flowers. The big one above came from Peckerwood (seems appropriate, somehow), while the older shrub below came from Great Outdoors.

Little bitty oak-leaf hydrangea flower

Astonishing difference, no? The one from GO is half the size or less than the one from Peckerwood. Unfortunately, neither was labeled by cultivar--just "Oak-leaf hydrangea." So all I can recommend to future OLH buyers is to buy them in late Apr/early May while they're in bloom.

This is very nice, and very cool and green and pretty--but imagine what they'll look like next year, when they're (I hope) twice the size!

Lots of Roses...

...Not a Lot of Narrative

We've taken a few cuttings of interesting roses, and tomorrow we'll be working on building the eastside pond levee, but beyond that we haven't been doing much in the garden beyond wandering around in bewildered pleasure, saying, "Ooooo! Look at that!"

Here on the blog, too, I'm going to let the plants do all the work, while I nurse a Cuba libre and ponder the ineffable niceness of April.

Look at '4th of July'! I don't care if it is a modern--I love that rose, with its exuberant explosions of red.

A particularly pretty '4th of July' blossom

Here it is on the trellis. Yeah, it clashes with 'Cramoisi.' Let's just pretend that it's a deliberate, stylish, cutting-edge color dissonance, and not a failed piece of wishful thinking, shall we?

'4th of July' on the left; 'Cramoisi Superieur' on the right, standing in a thick puddle of its own petals

And speaking of reds, check out this gorgeous maroon climber in our neighbor's yard. He said it used to be 'Blue Girl' (possibly the world's most violently photoshopped rose--gadzooks), but the plant died back and was reborn as this loveliness (middle rose), which I presume is 'Dr. Huey,' commonly used as a rootstock here in N. America for roses too evolutionarily challenged to stand on their own one foot. Mr. M kindly let us have cuttings, so hopefully we'll have one of our own soon.

'Dr Huey' (presumptive) in the middle. I love that color.

And speaking of colors I love, 'Buff Beauty' is beginning to hit its stride.

One of the fragrant, delicately shaded blooms on 'Buff Beauty'

Meanwhile, 'Graham Thomas' is reminding us, with great, lovely cupfuls of golden yellow, why we put up with his rangy, black-spot-riddled ass.

This is why.

In shape, GT always reminds me of 'Madame Joseph Schwartz' and her sister rose, 'Duchesse de Brabant,' though they don't seem to be related at all. (GT has a lot of pretty recent ancestry, though he is a few generations away from a very pretty China Gallica* called 'Duchesse de Montebello')

'Duchesse de Brabant'

This is the first spring here at Chez M for 'Kaiserin Friedrich' (whose name I tend to misspell. In any German word, I'm never sure if it's going to be "i before e" or "e before i"). This is a very nuanced, very dainty-looking cultivar that is a cross between 'Gloire de Dijon' and 'Perle des Jardins.' It's young yet, but it's already had a few blooms

Pretty 'Kaiserin Friedrich.' Like its namesake, it's tougher than you might expect.

There are other things happening in the garden besides roses, of course. I bought 2 different kinds of blue-eyed grass this year (first time I've seen them in the nursery trade, though have often coveted them in the wild). The big one in the back came from the Antique Rose Emporium, while the small, pale, and rather weedy one up front came from the LadyBird Johnson Wildflower Center plant sale.

Two Sisyrinchium.

Gah! The oak-leaf hydrangea still isn't in bloom!

Its slow-developing flower heads have teasing me for the past month. Bloom already! I've waited two years for hydrangeas blossoms in the shade garden. Are we there yet?

Arrrrgh! Not yet!

And finally, can you spot the flower?

It's the funkstastic mutant, 'Green Rose.' It's currently named Rosa chinensis var. viridiflora, but it used to be called Rosa monstrosa and 'The Green Monster,' which seems a little harsh. It has no petals, but grows a flower's worth of sepals in rosette form. A rose for people with a taste for subtlety. Or a perverse sense of humor.

The 'Green Rose.' It does what it says, it says what it does.

* Duchesse de Montebello is listed on HelpMeFind.com as a China, but elsewhere--much more plausibly--as a Gallica. Not only are its color & form unChinalike, but it's apparently not remontant, which is incredibly weird for a China.

Springliness

'Purple Robe' black locust (Robinia pseudoacacia)

Things move fast in the spring, and there's much to report, garden-wise.

The Pond is Carpeted
We ordered up 3 cu.yds. of sand from good ol' Bert's Dirts on Thursday. That's way more sand than we needed for the pond (by about 2.25 cu.yds.), but we've got a big walkway to lay down, plus we need to take up the kitchen patio and re-lay it properly. So that sand won't go to waste.

In any event, we put 1-2" on all of the pond's horizontal surfaces as a cushion/protection against sharp pointy things. Then we spread out our carpet remnants and the ones given us by our nice neighbor, Ms. D. Even our combined remnants were not enough, but another neighbor, Mr. H., dropped by to offer us his carpet remnants, so now I think we're solid. How lucky was that?--2 different neighbors had spare carpet at just the time we needed it.

The carpet (fuzzy side up) is our cheapola underlayment. I'm hoping this week to lay out the (painfully large pile of) ooftish for the 45 mm rubber liner. Which is pretty darn exciting--after a month or so of it being a stagnant mudhole, we're on the cusp of turning this pond thing around.

There will almost certainly be a series of further delays once we have the plastic down: we'll need to look into pumps/filters, that lovely fountain I want, fish, plants, a rock edging, getting electricity out to the pond to run everything, and in the very vague and distant future, a crushed granite terracey-thing and lighting around the edges. Oh, and landscaping all around.

But I think that by next weekend it will at least contain water, which will be pretty cool too. Our 'Purple Robe' blacklocust (Robinia pseudoacacia) is just starting to bloom with great plummy, languid, wisteria-like blossoms--how lovely to have them hanging gracefully over the water!

Rose Season Begins in Earnest
The best of the bunch: still 'Ducher,' a dense green shrub absolutely head to toe in pretty lemony-white rosettes.

'Ducher,' laden with blooms

Other goodies: Second best is probably 'Duchesse de Brabant,' with 'Georgetown Tea' close behind. Reliable and graceful 'Duchesse' bears many fairly uniform bowls of clear pink, while GT's blooms are constantly mutable and surprising--each a different shade or combination of shades of pink, and their shapes ranging from pointy proto-hybrid-teas to Bourbonesque cabbages.

A particularly cabbagey "Georgetown Tea"

Viewed from up the street, one of 'Cramoisi Superieurs' is superimposed on top of 'Duchesse'--I'm surprised at how much I like the combination of colors. Cramoisi is a dark pinky-purply red, and Duchesse is a bright middle pink--you'd think the combination would be revoltingly Valentinesy, but for whatever reason (perhaps the unfussy nature of these two roses?), it's really just very, very harmonious.

Lovely and amazing 'Souvenir de la Malmaison' has put on its first blooms--great, huge cabbagey things in the most restrained pale pink possible.

'Climbing Old Blush' is just starting to pop--the gazebo is positively roofed with rosebuds, and I'm very much looking forward to the full show.

'Climbing Old Blush' blooming on the gazebo

Also, the hedge of 'Mutabilis' roses is in full flower. Most of the pictures I took came out lousy, but the color was surprisingly good on this one:

A young 'Mutabilis' rose

Payoff
Some of last year's plants are putting on their first proper show. The last of the cemetery irises are still in bloom, and to my surprise the Drimiopsis and a wood violet both appear to be making a comeback.

The oak-leaf hydrangea that was so desolate all last year is full of new leaves and even its first flower buds. We bought a second OLH at the Peckerwood open house, and it's doing much better than the first, even though it's smaller--more flower buds and no sulky foliage. Not sure if this is due to weather or to an inherent superiority of the Peckerwood strain.

An oak-leaf hydrangea (Hydrangea quercifolia) bud

In addition, the columbine are taller and bushier than they were last year. The one below was a stowaway in the Japanese maple's pot, and now it looks like it's trying to strangle the poor maple.

Columbines smothering a Japanese maple

And the 'Purple Robe' black locust is rewarding us again with gorgeous panicles of plummy, fragrant flowers. It's odd that you don't see more of these around. Funny to think that we got it by chance and just chunked it in the ground to see. And now it's giving us so much gorgeousness.

'Purple Robe' black locust

New Plants
We bought a couple of 'Archduke Charleses' in our recent visit to the Antique Rose Emporium--they're already full of flowers, a bit bigger than Cramoisi's. They're going to make a little hedge to bracket the far end of the kitchen patio--it currently just sort of peters out in this rather disheartening way.

Blossoms on our new 'Archduke Charles'

We also picked up a blue-eyed grass (Sisyrinchium sp.) I had bought two 4" BEG at the LBJ Wildflower plant sale, but they are kinda scraggley, weedy things with tiny, pale blooms. The one from ARE has tidier, more attractive foliage and larger, deep indigo blooms. I wish I'd bought more.

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'

A Pleasant Afternoon Outside?!?

It was, actually.

Thus the astonishing power of shade. Matt's installing a sprinkler system in the shade garden to coddle some of our pickier cultivars. I'm especially concerned about the oak-leaf hydrangea, which is sensitive to drought and doesn't yet have much of a root system; the cordia, which needs to establish a root system and needs to grow quickly to replace our decrepit ligustrum; and the tiny wisp of a palmetto (one sad, scrawny little leaf), which, if it keeps a positive mental outlook, eats right, and gets plenty of exercise, could someday form a very nice component of our privacy screen. The Iris virginiana and the Japanese maples are also looking a bit dubious about life here in Elgin, so I wanted to reassure them. Eventually, this ghastly drought will end. For the shade bed, it ends now.

So, in my role as consultant/cheerleader, I perched on the porch glider and, you know, consulted. And what was really mindblowing and amazing was that it was nice. There were breezes, some of them cool. There was gently filtered light. And the temperature just wasn't particularly oppressive--maybe 85F or so degrees in the shade, compared to 95+ in the sun (this was in the early afternoon--it's probably closer to 101F now in the sun. And I'm no longer outside). And before Matt buried the system, he had to test it, which I felt wasn't reason to enough to get up off of the porch glider. I may have looked slightly crazy to the neighbors sitting blithely under the spray, but lemme tell you--the kids are on to something. Playing--or in my case, lolling--under sprinklers feels good. And all of this pleasure is due, ultimately--well, largely to Matt--but other than that, to the power of our giant cottonwood. Hail cottonwood! Long may you reign, Father of Gardens!

I'm also rather excited about having a more formal irrigation system with actual sprinkler heads--it seems so bourgeois and la-di-da. One or two paychecks down the line, I'll buy a 12-station timer as well, which we will eventually use to control irrigation throughout the property from one centralized, automated location. S-e-x-y!

That said, the hope is that after this area is a bit more established, we won't need to use the system very often. I do feel a bit guilty watching all that precious water arching profligately through the air. But we are in the middle of a drought, so even xeriscapes need water these days. And it isn't as though we're watering our lawn, anyway. Just our young trees, shrubs, and perennials that will ultimately help to cool the property, consume CO₂, and, uh, do other productive things for Planet Earth. Provide earthworm shelter or something. Yep. No rationalization here.

Surviving a CSA
Or, What Do I Do with All These Zucchini, Pattypans, and Oriental Cucumbers?
To return to what is, for the summer, my domain (the indoors), I joined a CSA (community supported agriculture) a couple of weeks ago. The interesting thing about this project--and it is very much a project--is that I'm forced to come up with ways to eat things that I--let alone Matt--would never ordinarily eat. So it's an adventure!

We get a box every week, plus eggs every other week and an extra--jelly, pesto, &c--on intervening weeks. Thus far, we've gotten some good stuff (tomatoes, potatoes, onions, carrots, and garlic), some indifferent stuff (Oriental cucumbers, zucchini), and some horrors (beets, chard, yellow squash! Bleh!)

I'm rather proud of the interesting ways of prepping veggies that I've tried. Zucchini became chocolate chip zucchini bread--oh hell yeah! Tasted like chocolate chip cookies. One batch of beets became beet-and-tasso consomme (adapted from epicurious)--which was surprisingly tasty. Probably helps that they were golden beets, so the soup didn't look like blood--always a plus. Last night I broke out the mandoline to make fritto misto out of the squash and zucchini (adapted from astray.com, plus dill and smoked salt). It was delectable--crispy, salty; so good, I didn't even make a dipping sauce--that would have obscured the flavor. The bacon-zucchini quiche wasn't half bad, either. Thing about zucchini--if you slice it thinly enough, it loses both flavor and texture, and then what's to complain about? And the squash-lemon-poppyseed muffins are okay, too (loosely adapted from a GardenWeb forum). Not fantastic, but better than a kick in the head.

And there have been the bombs. Underdone stuffed pattypans, overly charred chard, inedible chard-based eggs sardou, dreary little cucumber sandwiches--I must be the only person in the world who can't make a decent cucumber sandwich.

For this week, I've used up most of my Oriental cukes in a cucumber-based gazpacho (threw in the last of the yellow cherry tomatoes, too), and I'll be tackling a beet risotto for dinner. Hopefully, the sherry and parmesan will join forces to mask the fact that beets taste like dirt.

Big Plans

We have made good progress on the fascia. Matt is, as we speak, banging the new bits above the front porch, and I spent all yesterday painting the effing things. (And, once again, I have paint in my hair. This is yet another inconvenience attendant upon having frizzy hair. Stupid DNA.)

So we're getting quite close to being done--Matt may finish it up today, even. That just leaves the purchase and installation of the gutters themselves--surely that can't be more annoying than the demolition, painting, and installation of fascia?

Study Curtains
So we can turn our attention to other house projects. Matt wants us to focus on the interior for a while, and Mom has generously pledged to lead the study curtain initiative, so that will be our next big thing.

Here's what they'll look like, more or less. Velvet/velvetine/velour/chenille brown panels on the sides, the same material over the rods, and central panels made of opaque blue embroidered "silk" on the bottom and super-sheer brown gauze at the top.


Details:

• All to be hung on the same rod
• The brown panels to overlap the blue panels slightly (by an inch or so?)
• To be lined (to help with insulation)
  
• The south-facing window to have a second rod with an opaque sheet hung on it that can be pulled behind the brown-and-blue for extra insulation/sun-blocking in the summer--probably to be made of same brown velvet/velour/chenille
• To hang with about 1/2" clearance above window seat--to keep them out of cats' way
• blue panels to hang flat; brown to be more crunched
• 3 windows need curtains in the above pattern; door window to have a sheet stretched over 2 u-rods. Not sure if I meant for this to be brown or blue. Brown probly the better choice.
  

That's all the details I can think of, though Mom will undoubtedly have many more technical questions.

Still need to procure:

• brown fuzzy fabric--2.5 x the width of east side panels 10” of brown per side—consider ultrasuede. Maybe 8” per side for the side panels on south window
• sheer brown gauze
• lining fabric - confer with someone at Calico Corner
• rod for south window
• u-rods for window in door
• thread for all
• other curtain-related items I know not of?

Blue fabric sample

Update: Mom's Questions:
For the south side door and window-

• Are we doing the same treatment with the 2 sheers on both of these windows? WINDOW ONLY—for door, use gathered door curtain
• What fabric are you planning to use for the rod pocket for the south side? I am asking this because your drawing for the east side shows the brown fabric being used for the rod pocket. YES

For the east side window-

• Your blog for today says that the side brown panels will slightly overlap the center, sheer panel. I don't know how we can accomplish that since they are both on the same rod. SEW THEM OVER EACH OTHER 1-2 inches just over the rod pocket
• I am trying to remember the top sheer fabric. Is it the one that is a coordinate fabric to the blue fabric on the bottom? TOP FABRIC WILL BE SHEER BROWN; BENEATH IS BLUE.

To Do:

• Email a picture of the curtain rod you have as well as the fabric you have bought?
• Measure the 2 fabrics and tell me how much we bought?

Other Projects

We're also ramping up for more baseboard work. Somehow, we never finished the quarter-round in the dining room or living room. Matt bought some romex to wire in a couple more outlets in the den, and I bought and painted some quarter-round to go over it.

We're also looking at getting the first round of door hangings done in mid-May, which means increased work on the stripping front, starting tomorrow night. TEDIOUS. But necessary. The paint is really stubborn about coming out of those little crevices--every coat takes forever to process.

Once that's done, we're going to enlarge the pond, whose cracked plastic liner needs to be replaced anyway. We'll yank the ligustrum (which ate the pond liner in the first place) and dig a very, very, very big hole (see projection below.)


We went to a pond store in Austin for their advice on how to carry this project out (two layers of carpet remnants topped by 45mL rubber liner) and I was inspired. We may have to make the pond a wee bit larger than even in the picture above. The bigger the pond, the more powerful the effect. Little ponds aren't nearly so magically transformative. Plus, if it were more visible from the kitchen patio, we'd get even more pleasure from it.

While at the pond store, I impulse bought this nifty little spotted fellow: Drimiopsis maculata, a South African member of the hyacinth family (see the write-up at YuccaDo) I was reassured to find the plant at YuccaDo--I trust them to sell things that actually grow here. That pond store, on the other hand, was bursting with Japanese maples, fuschias (fuschias! I ask you!), and even those neat contorted filberts. I've never heard of growing filberts down here, but they had the face to charge $150 for a 5-gal! So I'm not entirely confident of their plant expertise, but the little Drimiopsis was just too cute. And the pot also held a stowaway palmetto, which is a nice bonus. I popped the two into the shade garden and am looking forward to seeing how they do.

Drimiopsis maculata ("spotted little soldiers")

Baby palmetto