Well, it looks pretty to me
Damianita foliage coming back after drought
Why am I showing you a brown, twiggy, half-dead looking plant? Because I’m thrilled to see sprigs of greenery sprouting from those dead-looking twigs. Interplanted with Mexican feathergrass, damianita lines the hell-strip of my yard along the curb. It’s a tough, trouble-free plant with a marvelous spring show of mustard-yellow flowers.
Here is what it looked like last spring.
Then the summer of 2006 happened: it never rained after July 4th weekend, temperatures soared to 100 day after day, and my sprinklers didn’t reach curbside. I didn’t worry. The damianita had always pulled through summer just fine. But in August I was dismayed to see them wither into brown lumps. Their beautiful, fine-textured, evergreen foliage just disappeared. I gave them up for dead.
But not entirely, I suppose. Last week I trimmed them by half, just to get rid of most of the dead branches until it got cool enough to replace them. Looking carefully at the cut stems, I thought I detected a hint of green inside. Then we got a few rainy days, and lo and behold, new leaves appeared. A resurrection!
OK, OK, so now I truly believe it: damianita really is one tough plant.
Meanwhile, my young kidneywood tree is blooming like crazy, thanks to the rains. Because of its airy foliage, I find it a difficult tree to photograph. But Annie seemed interested, so I’m trying again.
Kidneywood tree in bloom
I’ve also noticed that a lot of plants I thought were done for are starting to sprout new leaves. Yay for rain!
Yes! And yea for tough plants too. It’s very clear after this summer which those are. —Pam
I sure am interested – but now believe one reason the Kidneywood looks stunning is that it’s in front of your house, where it shows up beautifully against the siding. The Damianita is certainly tough! Since we had the rain on Sunday night, the grass is greening up and the Moon Vine rebloomed but I have no dramatic tales like this one.
I can admire the tough plants, and certainly find them useful, but they hardly ever evoke an emotional response. So plants like Damianita, Zexmenia, Lantana, Crepe Myrtles or Anisacanthus will get my respect but I can’t force myself to love them just because they’ll stay alive. True love still means irises, magnolias, lilacs, tulips, lilies, roses and gardenias, as impractical and impossible as that may be!
Annie
Hmm. That’s an interesting distinction. Admiration or love? I have a lot of warm fuzzies for tough plants like salvia and damianita (and they are really pretty too), but maybe that’s not love. On the other hand, I do love gardens with a regional beauty, and in that case, the tough plants fill the bill. I guess one way to decide what you love best is to imagine moving away and leaving your garden. What would you take with you? I’ll have to think about that one. —Pam
That yellow flower is just gorgeous!
All of these are new to me and look very exotic – must be one benefit of all that heat you have. 😉
Yes, they were exotic to me too when I moved here from N.C., where it was all azaleas, camellias, and pines. It took me about a year to get used to the rugged, drier landscape of central Texas, but now I think our local plants are lovely. Still, like you, I enjoy looking at far-away gardens for the thrill of the exotic. —Pam
Maybe because I’ve only gardened in Texas, I’ve never developed obsessions with plants that simply don’t like it here. The plants I love are the tough ones, the ones that bloom even without rain. I do look at pictures or visit gardens in other places, the Pacific Northwest or England, and sigh over things that can never be in my garden. But I come home and putter over my salvias and agaves. — Susan
Hear, hear! —Pam
I already wrote one post and then erased it – how can I talk about this without getting you Heart of Texas gals mad at me?
Susan is probably right, that gardening only in this state has formed an appreciation in you for native plants, while I’ve gardened in Carolina for a few years, and then gardened in Illinois for over 25 years, then gardened on two completely different kinds of terrain in Austin, first spending 5 years on a sunny, hilly, western Austin canyon, then taking on this clay and decrepit old trees two years ago.
I’ve had an intimate, connection to all kinds of trees, plants & flowers, the kind of relationship that develops when you see and touch them at all times of the day and in all seasons. We’ve been to botanic gardens and public gardens in Washington State and Washington, DC, in Ontario, Canada and Vancouver Island, Canada, in South Dakota and Missouri, in South Carolina, Wisconsin, Michigan, scores of visits to gardens in Illinois, and have been to a few public gardens in Texas. So I’ve seen a lot of landscapes and had a lot of time to develop preferences. It’s not a choice, just a fact: I can like and admire, but cannot love the Hill Country kind of garden. On the other hand, do you know Mayfield or the Hartman Garden at Zilker? Love at first sight.
Annie
You’ve been around, Annie! I grew up in upstate South Carolina, and its landscape definitely figures in my ideal of garden beauty. In fact, I still have a thing for sasanqua camellias, dogwoods, and pines. I just can’t grow them here. But the gardens of one’s childhood are never forgotten. I can understand your allegiance to the lusher plants you’ve always been able to grow. —Pam