The Drowned Land of Ys

Green, green grass, dead trees, fluffy clouds

 We've received something like 10" of rain since the new year, so the countryside is lush with winter grasses.  I love, love, love the juxtaposition of dead trees with bright green grass--I think some part of me reads it as some sort of metaphor for rebirth or the indomitability of life or something.  Or maybe it's just really pretty.  The streams have been swelling, the roads have been flooding, and the farm ponds are brim-full.  

A swollen stream--possibly Walbarger Creek?

I love these ponds (or "tanks" as they're prosaically called around here). They're often dug into the side of inclines to catch the runoff and shored up on the far side with a retaining wall, so they look like an earthen basin set into the hill.

A gloomy island surrounded by a mirror-like moat

Right now, those basins are overflowing, and they're forming rushing, foaming little streams that snake across pastures and form impromptu fens in the low spots. Then they spill out of the fens, pour under the road, cross more pasture, and fill up another pond, before overflowing... and so on.    When you drive through the countryside, you're surrounded by a world of moving, brimming, gushing, living water.  Lovely. I tried to snap some pictures as I made my roundabout way back from the farmer's market yesterday (roundabout because the roads I would usually take were flooded), but the light was a little tricky.  Eh, well.  I did the best I could.

Green grass, cacti, overflowing ponds

What's odd is that some of these areas have been flooded since the previous inundation, over a week ago.  Especially along FM 973--trees have been up to their ankles in water this whole time. These trees were dying of drought for the past two years; now any that survived are drowning.  Hardly seems fair.

Flooded trees and pastures

There's a legend of a Breton city that was swallowed by the ocean--it's called "The Drowned City of Ys" (long story short: kings should avoid having orgy-loving daughters that traffic with the devil).   It's been on my mind lately because this area looks like a drowned land these days.  Only in this case, it's a good drowning (for the most part)--fat cows, green grass, filled ponds.

Twenty Percent More Color!

 

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'

Labor Day Fires 2011

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.

Latest Drought Map

Sweet Jesus.



Compare with previous drought maps on this blog:

May 2011

Feb 2011

Jan 2009

Mid-summer Acquisitions; Water Your Trees!

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.

How'd It Get to Be August So Soon?

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.

1. 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.
2. We just added some Mexican feathergrass to the grass-n-roses bed.
3. One of our lawn's many dead patches. It's so dead in the back yard that bare dirt is exposed.
4. We really need to buy a gate to hide the working area of the yard. Ah, money. Why aren't you made of rubber?
5. 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 :-(
6. Lotus 'Mrs. Perry D. Slocum' is back! Yay lotus!
7. New dwarf lotus 'Momo Botan' is having a rather slow start. Hang in there, little buddy.
8. We got the waterfall going! We need a bigger pump! And we need to hide the tubing!
9. 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:

1. Puerto Rico
2. Marchesa Bochella
3. Zepherine Drouhin
4. Mystery whitish rose with small flowers
5. Green rose
6. Wedding Cake
7. Hot Cocoa
8. Perle d'Or
9. 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.

In other weather news...

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

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

Spring Planting & Tidying

It's definitely spring. It was in the 70s today, leaf buds are swelling, and flower buds are appearing. So it was time to do a little maintenance, and also to plant some things that have been kicking around in the greenhouse.

We weeded, cut back the dead branches of tender perennials, and raked out beds. Among the new plants were an Italian parsley (I'm not a fan of annuals, but you simply can't buy flat-leaf parsley in Elgin--I had no choice), "Berggarten" sage, and peppermint. Sage can be a bit whiny if it gets too much water, but that hasn't been a big problem here at Chez M lately.

'Berrgarten' sage. You'd think it'd be "biergarten," but no. 'Berrgarten.'

On the strictly ornamental side, I put a 1-gallon almond verbena (Aloysia virgata) behind the porch swing to add privacy and its lovely amaretto fragrance. The internet promises that it can take part shade--and surely the internet would never lie, right? I also added an Allardii lavender to keep last year's (now quite seedy) Spanish lavender company. More or less picked the cultivar at random--completely unscientific.

Lavandula allardii--the dark horse lavender

Matt planted a 'Paul Neyron' rose by the A/C unit, an 'Isabella Sprunt' in the pole bed, and a mystery rose by the chitalpa. This was definitely a good choice--I hadn't realized how scrawny the A/C bed looked until we filled it in a little.

'Red' verbena. No shit.

I also put a picnic-red verbena by the front door (cultivar name? 'Red.' Creative, no?), and added another Ipheion uniflorum under the chitalpa. Matt let me add his 'Black and Blue' salvia to the Blue & Purple bed, which will hopefully help to give the bed a finished look. We also put in a purple aster, so that bed doesn't look so miserably neglected.

Ipheion uniflorum--Starflower. Originally from Argentina.

Only the (blech) 'Pink Knockout' (TM) is currently in bloom, though Souvenir de la M, Duchesse de B, and Georgetown Tea all have buds.

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.