Posts
"Digging With the Divas" was the title of a little magazine article I wrote back in 2002 - I felt compelled to share the tale of our group of women who garden together in Austin. The website followed in 2003 and each January I write about what we did in the garden the previous year. The 2007 Diary is now up on the Divas of the Dirt website.
This story meanders from our January planning meeting, always held at a local Austin restaurant, through seven individual Diva projects, summer outings and a Christmas party. There are pages and pages of chit-chat between we Austin gardeners with lots of photos so it might be fun for those of you who are stuck inside. Sometimes I need a pinch to see if this is a dream - I get to be both Glinda, one of the Divas of the Dirt and Annie in Austin, one of the Austin Gardenbloggers? Yes! Lucky me!
It's already February 1st and there's 
When the Chatto/Lloyd book arrived, I was already engrossed in this Christmas gift from some Left-Coast members of our family. Michael Palin's Diaries from the Monty Python years has been completely fascinating - he was my favorite Python, and the diary is not only about the show and the movies, but his at-the-time thoughts about whatever was happening in the world. He's only a few years older than I am, so reading what he saw and thought starts reverberations in the memories of what I saw and thought in the years 1969 to 1979. 
This is wonderful! And while you're all busy reading and writing, I can be outside...it's really windy but not terribly cold. I'm not doing anything worth blogging about - photos of someone shoving pots around the patio would be as exciting as a video of reorganizing the towel closet. I sure don't want to write about picking weeds out of gravel! I seem to spend a lot of time just standing in the yard under the shadows of the leafless pecan branches, looking and thinking or maybe not thinking. 
After removing all the frosted and faded flowers from the camellia, I couldn't resist playing with the blossoms.
The freezes get a few flowers each time but not all of them are browned, and there are many buds still coming. Last year the last flowers opened in late March.
The small, brown and fuzzy buds are starting to swell on the Michelia figo, promises of small flowers and an elusive banana fragrance from this small member of the Magnolia family. 
Today I went to three nurseries - looking for another Rosa 'mutablilis'. We bought a large mutabilis for the front of the house last fall and I want a smaller plant near the patio. When I walked out to the car I noticed that this white passalong iris had opened in the pink garden near the driveway. 
In the meantime, I like looking at this lovely Cyclamen from my friend Dawn, who blogs at 
Friday and Saturday nights were relatively cold for Central Texas - down to 26 degrees F/minus 3.3 C. Before the freeze I hauled 4 potted roses and a few other containers inside the garage where the plumerias wait for spring. 
A few hours later the sun had warmed the patio so I buzzed out to look at the camellia - the open flowers were frozen, but there's a good chance the buds will be okay. I counted at least 2 dozen buds still unopened. The flowers look interesting - like faded fabric flowers pinned onto a real shrub. 
As I passed the patio table I got the idea to first pull off some yellowed or black-spotted leaves, clip off dead twigs and remove dried tree leaves from the surface of the soil. 
Hmmm - with the leaves gone I could see a funny sort of depression in this container - aha! A squirrel planted a pecan about 6-inches down. It had begun to split open, ready to germinate.
With dozens of seedlings popping up in every border we're not likely to run out of 'Coral Nymph', so the Cape Cod weeder is fetched to tease this one out before it overshadows the intended inhabitant. 
I'm pretty sure these pretty, fresh-looking leaves belong to Ranunculus. Julie of the Human Flower Project wrote 
On the way back to the patio I stopped to admire more green leaves - they look similar because they're also in the Buttercup/Ranunculacea family - these leaves belong to Anemone coronaria - not the 
Back at the table I took a photo of the nuts, feeling that it was a good idea to be the bumblebee today, stopping to groom the roses and admire the tiny red leaf buds. If I'd kept walking the ant-trail with those pots, instead of roses there would soon be a pecan tree growing in one pot and an oak tree in the other. Darn it - the camera shut itself off before I got a good shot - weren't there some batteries in the desk drawer? 
Nope - no camera batteries in the desk drawer, but as long as I'm in the office I'll check email and oh, yeah - maybe google around and see if I can find out where to buy something called a concave cutter. 
We find 
I also notice Philo examining the array of tools and looking out at the plant nursery. He has "that look" - and I know we'll be back for another visit.
The Pineapple sage and Hummingbird salvia froze to the ground, along with the five cupheas. The clematis looks dormant and we've raked up the leaves on pecan and crepe myrtle trees. What you see clinging to the pecan branches are the open husks left after the nuts fell to the ground. We've never seen this happen before - in previous years the squirrels took all the husks while they were green.
To have pansies in bloom here isn’t a surprise – it’s the norm. On Saturday morning we 
Four hanging baskets of pansies line up along the veranda. They can tolerate most cold snaps without too much damage, but growth is very slow.
The ‘Julia Child’ and ‘Mutabilis’ roses have green leaves and no flowers, as do two of the ‘Champagne’ mini-roses and a pale pink mini-rose from my daughter. And every rose in the garden shows some sign of blackspot. But one of the ‘Champagne’ roses has a couple of buds, and Carol’s rules say buds count!
The small plant of Scabiosa ‘Butterfly Blue’ doesn’t mind what we call winter here. Faded flowers and new buds surround one open bloom.
The Camellia sasanqua ‘Shishi Gashira’ holds onto one last hot pink flower.
The light red Camellia japonica ‘Pius X’ started its show this past week. I took this photo through yet another basket of pansies. Then I held petals of the two camellias together for a color comparison.
The sasanqua petals at the bottom are a rosier pink, while the ‘Pius X’ tends toward sour cherry color – less pink and more red.
Austin gardeners force paperrwhite narcissus bulbs for indoor bloom but I ignore the usual advice to discard the bulbs after bloom, choosing to plug the bloomed-out bulbs into a borders and let them rebuild. The tiny daffodils may flower outdoors in subsequent winters. This clump came in kit form a few years ago and has bloomed three years in a row.
A plant of the purple oxalis blooms in a sheltered spot near the house wall.
This white oxalis blooms in a bowl on the veranda
Cold has darkened the leaves on a trailing white lantana but the tiny flowers are undaunted.
Under the house eaves, one expanding bud from the unnamed pink climbing rose is rather startling to see.
Inside the house the 
The peach-colored Thanksgiving cactus, the red cyclamen and the faithful coral pelargonium/geranium bloom on the windowsill ...
while the