Painters Inside - Janitors Outside

For the past couple of weeks painting and rearranging the inside of the house has been more interesting than being outside or writing. I've enjoyed reading many of your posts but I haven't much to say about my garden right now.

Philo did most of the hard work - spending days balanced on ladders working on the raised ceilings and the gabled end walls while I puttered around at ground level, covering the color chosen by the previous owners - a mauve so pale it approached off white. This color looked fine with their stuff, but for three years it's been sucking the life out of our furniture. Now the stalactites of the sprayed-on popcorn ceiling have been banished, the floral pink stained glass skylight has been replaced with translucent white, the 'Belgian Waffle' paint is on the walls and for the first time the living room and halls feel as if they are entirely our own. It's fun playing house, reorganizing every bookshelf and cabinet, immersed in the details of what goes and what stays, swapping pictures between rooms, enjoying the harmonious effects.

Between the paint project and the August doldrums, our relationship with the garden has become janitorial rather than horticultural. We've gone out to prune bagworms from the pecans [as in the photo above], to mow grass, to water containers, and to prune trees so their branches clear the sidewalks. Although the tree guys did a fine job in March, record rainfall induced 6-to-8 feet of new growth on some overhanging limbs. I've watered borders and beds and new trees, but the grass has stayed green with no help from me - and it's so thick I can barely push the mower.

Even with few flowers in bloom now, some parts of the garden look fine because of the leaves. This purple foliage is prettier than many flowers - it's Persian Shield, Strobilanthes dyeranus.

You've probably seen Silver ponyfoot, a form of Dichondra, in the photos of Pam/Digging. Austin gardeners love this stuff! I brought a hanging basket of ponyfoot from the other house deck in 2004 and a few strands fell off and rooted near the herb bed in the back. They've gently increased and spread, and I like how the silver looks against the old sidewalk in the photo above.

Three years ago I bought another small pot of the Silver ponyfoot to put in this terra cotta bowl near the front steps, letting the ponyfoot drape over the edges and touch the ground. It tip-rooted and has spread into a silver carpet between the rocks and containers, softening the edges of the concrete drive.

When I lived in Illinois, flowering oxalis was grown as a houseplant or as a summer annual. Here it stays outside all year, both in the ground and in containers. But in many summers the heat and dryness overcome the white-flowering Oxalis, causing the leaves to fall off and sending the small bulbs into dormancy. This summer the oxalis has stayed green and it hasn't stopped blooming. I always tuck in an impatiens plant or two, ready to take over once the oxalis is asleep. That impatiens has had to fight for space and light in 2007.

The triangle bed is not showy but the plants please me when I go out to fill the birdbaths each day. On the obelisk the Blue Butterfly Pea keeps blooming by day, and the white moonflowers open in late afternoon. The purple at the left of the photo comes from the 'Black Knight' butterfly bush. Against the housewall in the background blue plumbago flowers harmonize while the rusty brown undersides of the 'Little Gem' Magnolia look ready for autumn.

I guess August is ending in green and purple, blue and silver and white - but wait until next month - September should arrive bearing gifts of red.