Winter bees and flowers
January 08, 2019 Just because it’s winter doesn’t mean bees disappear. Warm winter days draw them back into the garden, where cool-season flowers lure them with nectar and pollen. Mahonia flowers in the winter here in Texas. This is ‘Marvel’, a new-to-me mahonia I’m trialing from Southern Living Plant Collection ...
Japanese maple turns red 3 weeks early
November 28, 2018 The species Japanese maple (Acer palmatum) at the front corner of our house reliably goes scarlet in December, turning red to match the Christmas balls I hang on an agave by the front door. But this year the color change came three weeks early compared to last ...
Fall flowers before an early freeze
November 20, 2018 Well, fall perennial color was pretty while it lasted. Austin’s first freeze arrived 3 weeks early last week and took out all my plants in full bloom, including forsythia sage (Salvia madrensis) and white mistflower (Ageratina havanensis). I have friends whose Salvia madrensis is still blooming, so ...
Garden Spark 2018 season concludes; 2019 season TBA soon!
October 22, 2018 Hey, garden friends! My 2018 season of Garden Spark talks concluded last Thursday with a terrific talk by designer/author Susan Morrison about small-garden design. Thanks to everyone who braved waterlogged Austin’s wet streets to attend! After Susan’s talk and booksigning (her latest book is The Less Is ...
Oxblood lilies are baaaaack!
September 13, 2018 Five inches of rain soaked the soil last week, and the oxblood lilies (Rhodophiala bifida) have raised their celebratory red flags in response. Popping up from dormancy seemingly overnight, they’ve splashed color along the front of the raised beds in the back garden. The herald of the ...
3rd hottest summer in Austin’s history inching to a close
September 03, 2018 Have you heard any whimpering — or hopefully just stoic silence — from your Central Texas gardening friends this summer? Here’s why: we’ve been hammered by the Death Star and no rain for months now. It’s officially the 3rd hottest summer on record (as measured from June ...
Garden powers through a Texas heat wave
July 24, 2018 Arizona-level heat is plaguing us here in Austin this week. Temps reached 110 F (43.3 C) yesterday, and we’re cooling down to “only” 101-105 F all the rest of this week. The Death Star is on high beam! The garden must power through, as must we all, ...
Fawning over this new baby in the garden
May 31, 2018 As my daughter pulled the trash bin out to the driveway yesterday, bumping it along the stepping-stone path, she nearly stepped on a newborn fawn who was trying hard to remain unseen. He or she lay half concealed amid the variegated flax lily lining the path, a ...
Early summer color coming on
May 28, 2018 Mexican oregano, vitex, and ‘Vertigo’ pennisetum harmonize in shades of purple. Since the Austin Garden Bloggers Fling tour in early May, when 92 bloggers trooped through my garden, a purple explosion has occurred. So many plants are in full bloom now that weren’t then, and that pains ...
Bloom spikes!
May 19, 2018 This is the bloom-spikiest spring I can remember in Austin. All over town, agaves, sotols, aloes, hesperaloes, mangaves, manfredas, and yuccas are sending up flowering wands or blooming candelabras. My own garden is no exception, but the spikes I’m most excited by are towering over two Texas ...
Screech owlets have flown the coop
May 18, 2018 The three screech owlets in our owl box fledged this week. We’ve spotted one of them in the crape myrtle — the red-hued Moltres, my daughter thinks. Its red coloring is more visible in the last photo below. (The other two chicks are named Articuno and Zapdos ...
Screech owl family – more pics!
May 14, 2018 The owl channel is playing 24/7 in our garden as the screech owl chicks grow more active. They are close to fledging, I think, and Mama and Papa Owl are kept busy night after night, bringing them tasty morsels of tree roaches, mice, moths, lizards, and whatever ...
Austin Garden Bloggers Fling kicks off today!
May 03, 2018 For two years now, my fellow bloggers Diana Kirby and Laura Wills and I have been planning a big event for garden bloggers called Garden Bloggers Fling. This weekend is when it finally happens — rain or shine! Garden Bloggers Fling is 3-1/2 days of private and ...
Screech owl pair await nighttime owlet feeding
April 29, 2018 Yesterday, to our excitement, we spotted Lucy and Desi, our nesting screech owl pair, perched in live oak trees near the owl box. I’d suspected that their chicks had hatched and were getting bigger because Lucy was spending a lot of time in the doorway of the ...
Does my garden look tasty to does?
April 25, 2018 Does the aloe that’s flowering like a coral-colored candelabra look yummy? Does that yucca bloom spike look tasty? Does the yellow bulbine look succulicious? Does the yellow puffball on the goldenball leadtree (Leucaena retusa) — the first time it’s ever bloomed! — look scrumptious? Probably not, actually ...
Sparkler sedge is back, plus more great foliage
April 16, 2018 Today is Foliage Follow-Up, a celebration of great foliage plants on the day after Bloom Day, and I’m celebrating the return to nurseries all over Austin of one of my favorite foliage plants for dry shade or morning sun: ‘Sparkler’ sedge (Carex phyllocephala ‘Sparkler’). For the past ...
