The Annual April Affair - Color Echoes

Coral honeysuckle and Lady Banks rose have a brief affair each spring, meeting on the patio arch, vine twined around cane, the yellow interior of the honeysuckle tubes finding its reflection in the yellow of each rose blossom. For a few days the Tulipa clusiana blooms echoed the yellow & coral color in the partial shade at their feet. Their affair is passionate but brief because the rose blooms once a year - like that of George and Doris in Same Time, Next Year, and like theirs- a romance you can count on to return with vigor every spring.

But the timing changes a little from year to year and this romance didn't last until the 15th - no 2010 GBBD appearance for them!
Rosa banksiae 'Lutea' became mine in early 2001, kept captive in containers at the previous Austin house and finally planted in this garden and joined by Lonicera sempervirens in October 2006. The petals fell from many of the Lady Banks over the weekend and I pruned the rose back this afternoon.

All the better to see the pearly clematis winding its way through the rose canes - clearly happy after a long cool winter and some good rains.

Garden Blogger Bloom Day, January 2010

When the amaryllis bud refused to unfold and the rain pelted down, I thought January Garden Bloom Day was a wash. But inspiration hit after I took the camera and an umbrella outside.

Just under the wire, here's my parody tribute to the great Fats Waller for May Dreams Carol and Blooming Day:





It's only 90 seconds but Philo and I fit in a lot of photos - we hope you enjoy it!

Go to Carol's blog for the January Garden Bloggers Bloom Day Roundup.

Blooms of Late December

On the official bloomingday the 15th of December, the word wasn't Flower but Flour - it makes me happy to send a few homemade cookies with the Christmas presents to our families. Last week's chilly weather also put me in the mood to stay close to the warm oven and use old favorite recipes while watching vintage movies like Casablanca and Heaven Knows, Mr Allison. World War 2 movies somehow connect to Christmas holidays from childhood - maybe that's what played on TV during those weeks off from school?

Today those packages have reached their destinations, we're almost ready for Christmas and who needs the oven to keep warm when the thermometer reads 69F?

Time for the Solstice T-shirt designed by my son, a few garden tools and a camera



I'd found ranunculus bulbs in a bargain bin on a recent trip to the big box hardware. I'd already planted bags of mixed colors, but these were pink and destined for the Pink Entrance Garden. The chart on the package showed planting in zone 8 as October to December, giving me just a few more days to get them into the ground. My new Diamond Hoe was still shiny and unused - trying it out was a good reason to go outside. Soon the bulbs were planted and the diamond hoe worked exactly the way it was supposed to in the parking strip.

Instead of another session with the leaf rake, I'd rather take notice of the flowers today. After a couple of freezes the survivors are the tiny flowers - white oxalis buried in pecan leaves
Creeping phlox in the front bed
Deep rose Gaura unstoppable in the Pink entrance garden
Seedlings of cilantro and larkspur sprouting near starts of Lunaria
Cold changed the roses- magenta tones appeared on the buds of the Mutabilis rose
Cold deepened the pink of 'Belinda's Dream'
and turned 'Julia Child' buds from butter yellow to orange sherbet

The coral honeysuckle still holds on to old leaves turned yellow even as new leaves and buds unfold. The hummingbirds are long gone - they'll never sip from these flowers and the goldfinches aren't interested in nectar.
The floweriest part of the garden is on the north side of the shed
The stems of the paperwhites Narcissus flopped down in the cold, but most of the individual blossoms remain intact
Only a few flowers of Camellia sasanqua 'Shishi Gashira' are left to drop rosy petals
But the new Camellia japonica 'Morning Glow' is just now beginning to bloom - two flowers are open today.

How odd to live in a place where something like this blooms for Christmas!
However you celebrate, Dear Friends, may your days be merry and bright.

Annie

Garden Bloggers Bloom Day, June 2009

Welcome to Garden Blogger Bloom Day the monthly Floral Circus presided over by May Dreams Carol. Guess it's time to take a break from writing about what the Divas of the Dirt have been up to lately and write about what's in bloom at Circus~Cercis. Holding our GBBD meetings on the 15th of the month didn't work out for a few flowers - the White Delphinium ignored the calendar and bloomed for two weeks around the 1st of the month.

You missed 'Best of Friends' when it was at its prettiest - this photo is from May 24th. This pretty passalong daylily from Pam/Digging still opens flowers, but when temperatures graze 100°F every day, the flower color is paler.
You totally missed my new 'Devonshire' daylily bought at the Austin Hemerocallis Show and Sale. It had three stalks, each with lots of buds but they finished last week.


You've arrived just in time for the native Flame Acanthus blooming near the front door - another passalong from Pam/Digging.
At the end of the veranda these Blue Balloonflowers don't look too stressed yet... this is Platycodon grandiflora, carried to Texas from Illinois as tiny seedlings.
Cross the drive to the Pink Entrance Bed and see the first Coneflowers of the year- these are Echinacea 'Purple Stars', with natives pink gaura, Red yucca and pink skullcap, Mexican oregano, white trailing lantana, more balloonflowers and...one of the purple larkspurs which usually reseed in spring. In April 2008 they bloomed at 6' tall - this year only a few larkspur sprouted to bloom now.
In this border the Balloonflowers are Platycodon 'Miss Tilly'
Let's go see what's blooming inside the fence now - tropical milkweed in orange

It took the 'Acoma' crepe myrtles three years to reach the level of the fence - they look established now! That's a plumeria at left - no flowers but it has buds.
Down at ground level near the right crepe myrtle these passalong crocsmia from blogger MarthaChick are also in bud, rather than bloom. I let at least one of the wild sunflowers grow every summer on the edge of the vegetable garden. It doesn't seem to bother the tomatoes and peppers growing in the little garden behind it and shouldn't sunflower seeds for goldfinches count as a crop? .

The tomato crop isn't large but there are lots of 'Juliet' grape tomatoes and enough 'Early Girls' and 'Carmellos' so that one is ripe in time for dinner every day. I didn't plant the pattypan - it's one of those lasagna-composting bonuses from a chunk of squash added last fall. We've had two so far. The native coral honeysuckle has recovered from pruning and had begun a new bloom cycle.


Look at the shape of those flowers - no wonder the hummingbirds visit them.
The hummingbirds like the Salvia coccinea in the center of the back yard, too - that blur is a hummingbird and that lavender flower in the corner is another confused larkspur.
Sometimes the best color in an Austin heatwave is no color at all... it's White 'Fuji' balloonflowers and white coneflowers with silver gray Lambs Ears, a passalong from my friend Carole.
The color can be a surprise White Calla lily from a clump that hasn't bloomed in a few yearsIt's the White of the fragrant white abelia and the fluffy white crepe myrtles.



But my favorite is still White sails of the Blue River II Hibiscus, another plant carried from Illinois


The hibiscus reminds me of something else that slipped by in the last couple of weeks - my first blog post on June 7, 2006 was about them. These past three years of blogging have been great fun - thanks to all of you, especially MSS of Zanthan Gardens and Pam/Digging, the first garden bloggers I met and my inspirations from the beginning.

Carol will have links to all the GBBD participants and as usual, the list of all plants in bloom with my closest guesses at their proper botanical names can be found at Annie's Addendum.

Thought Pops, Edition 5: Buds to Iron Man to Rain

COMPANY IS COMING:

This Michelia figo was in bloom on April 3rd, 2008 when MSS of Zanthan Gardens brought MayDreams Carol to my garden but this year the flowers are open in March. We're expecting visitors in a few weeks and I hope a few flowers hold on so the guests can feel the silkiness of the petals and catch the fragrance that gives this plant its common name "Banana Shrub".

My April guests won't be here in time to drink in the grape soda scent of the "Big Drunk Bean" above (Nicknames for Sophora secundiflora include Mescal Bean, Big Drunk Bean and Texas Mountain Laurel) but this March guest buzzed in on time.

A month from now the Coral Honeysuckle/Lonicera sempervirens might still be blooming but the 'Lady Banks' rose/Rosa banksiae 'Lutea' will be done. The entwined green leaves enhance the metal arch year-round but this electric combination happens only briefly each spring.

ROBERT DOWNY JR
Philo was quite surprised when I moved Iron Man to the top of the queue because he didn't think it was my kind of movie. We watched it last night. It was pretty silly, and it sure would be great to see Jeff Bridges in a more Dude-like role instead of as a typecast power-driven executive with a shaved head. But I enjoyed most of it. Apparently any movie that has Robert Downey Jr in it is my kind of movie.

SLOW GARDENING
When our guests come the white iris will be done but the native Red Yucca above should be flaunting its first flowers along that stalk. In Spring 2005 I paid less than $2 for a tiny plant of Hesperaloe parviflora, but had no flower bed ready for it. The small plant grew and I repotted it into a larger container. Then in March 2007 Philo and I began the Pink Entrance Garden and the Hesperaloe had a home.
Could I have had instant impact by buying a blooming-size plant right away? Of course - but I would have lost the pleasure of seeing it grow and develop until it become mature enough to bloom.


PALM FLOWERS Do those weird yellow growths on the Mediterranean Fan Palm look like a promise of flowers to you? If Kerri hadn't blogged about flowers on her potted palm I might have thought it was some kind of fungus. Isn't it cool that an Illinois-born woman gardening in Austin, Texas can learn about Palm flowers from an Australian-born woman who gardens in upstate, snowbound, non-Mediterranean New York?


DRY SPRING IN TEXAS
The white iris (probably Iris albicans) are blooming in three borders - seen here with some snapdragons that just started reblooming after making it through a second winter.
In two facing borders the tall, fragrant, pale peach iris are in full bloom. Now 'Amethyst Fire' iris from Pam/Digging are in flower, too.
I hope Henry Mitchell is wrong, and that the perfection of the iris will not call down a major hailstorm. But if the iris must be sacrificed to make the clouds rain down on us so be it - we need rain that badly!
The Leucophyllum frutescens, AKA Cenizo AKA Purple Sage AKA Texas Barometer Bush says it might rain and so does Jim Spencer. And I have a new rain gauge ready to go.