Still Posting After All These Years

This post, Still Posting After All These Years, was written by Annie in Austin for her Transplantable Rose blog

The Transplantable Rose turned eight years old last week. Eight years is long enough for two presidential terms. Eight years covers all the grades in an old-fashioned grammar school, and is also long enough to change a 13-year-old child into a fully-fledged, 21-year-old adult.
Did my blog change in eight years? The format changed as Blogger evolved but that’s about all. 

But blogging did change something in this blogger’s mind and habits.

Before the Transplantable Rose ever started I took a reasonable number of garden photos, sometimes emailing them to family & friends in other states. After joining millions of other people and starting the blog on June 7, 2006, I took more photos, sometimes with a specific post in mind… sometimes “just in case”. Beginning in February 2007, there were a disproportionate number of photos taken around the 15th of each month due to May Dreams Carol and her Garden Blogger Bloom Day meme.

The number of posts on the Transplantable Rose goes up slowly now, but the number of photos has increased. Maybe this has also happened to you? It seems our cameras and camera phones and memory cards have become the main way to record and remember everything.

A random dip into my image files pulls up thousands of mostly mediocre digital images of family & friends, local events, images of baked goods, a snap of the plate after trying a new recipe, beautiful flowers, ugly flowers, clouds, interesting insects and animals, hailstorms, tomatoes from the garden, squirrels, flowering shrubs, receipts, birds, rain falling from the veranda, rain in rain gauges, rain running down rain chains, rain drops on flowers, flowering trees, stages of home improvement, etc. etc. etc.

Even a crummy photo can be invaluable for reminding us where and when something happened.

Blogiversary is a silly word, but maybe a useful one. I had no time to write a post for the June 7^th date - two genealogy projects had taken over my life. But taking a picture is fast, so there are photos taken over the past eleven days, and they fit into the usual June categories. Beautiful flowers, tomatoes, interesting animals, flowering shrubs, and squirrels

Two passalong plants from Pam/Digging fill this photo – that’s ‘Peter’s Purple’ Monarda with the daylily ‘Best of Friends’. I like both plants very much as individuals and they’re doing well in this bed. But looking at the color clash in this photo makes me wish I had a better spot for ‘Best of Friends’

Hidden behind ‘Best of Friends’ is ‘Prairie Blue Eyes’ – perfect with the monarda, but a much less robust daylily.

Hemerocallis citrina, the scented, citron daylily, is a pale lemon color that goes with almost anything. But it doesn’t open until day is almost done, and the flowers close as the sun comes up.

As always we’ve had to fight for every tomato and are not winning the battle. Birds and squirrels got at least 2/3 of the fruit in spite of using bird nets and picking the fruit green to ripen inside.

A few days ago this one was ours – this 14oz Black Krim tomato turned from green to dark red inside. It was  interesting outside

And absolutely delicious inside.

In Illinois a perennial started out small. The majority survived, bulked up over a few years, were divided, moved around and shared. In Central Texas, perennials are often purchased, a few survive to be divided, but around half of them begin to decline after 3 or 4 years and then choose death over life in Austin.  (If you doubt this, come over and I’ll show you my plant spreadsheets.)

As a result I really, really appreciate the reseeding annuals like Bluebonnets, Nemophila/Baby Blue Eyes, Brazos Penstemon/ Penstemon tenuis, annual Poppies, French Hollyhocks/Malva sylvestris ‘Zebrina’,  Verbena bonariensis, Salvia coccinea/Hummingbird sages, Larkspur, orange Cosmos, Datura, tropical milkweed Asclepias curassavica, Blue Pea vine, Cypress vine… each in turning add spice to the garden from early spring until frost. I like to add a few starter plants of Calibrachoa/Million Bells and Angelonia to the mix. Here’s one of the triangle beds:

One perennial that did survive is the Hardy hibiscus- AKA Rose Mallow - named ‘Blue River II’ for its origin along the Blue River in Oklahoma. The flowers are large and pure white, but only last one day. With more ground moisture the plant is doing well this June. A photo of ‘Blue River II’ appeared in my first post – this one bloomed yesterday and I liked how translucent it looked with the sun coming through from the back of the flower.

An anole on the burgundy-leaved canna caught my eye but he was pretty far away –

As I approached he hopped onto a nearby post. I clicked the button just before he jumped into the foliage. The photo wasn’t good or special, but zooming in on the image showed something interesting… his tail was brown instead of green. This article makes it seem likely that this lizard’s original tail was damaged and the replacement is made differently.

Rose ‘Julia Child’, so abundantly in bloom in April, was deadheaded and now has a second flush of flowers. The heat didn’t hit until June and we’ve had some rain so some larkspurs are still alive to add a blue-violet contrast to the butter yellow. And something about this year’s weather has encouraged blooms on the purple coneflowers - looking almost normal instead of the wimpy plants of recent years.

Success with ‘Peter’s Purple’ Monarda made me want to try another monarda with mildew resistance that showed up at the Natural Gardener – this is ‘Jacob Cline’. So far, so good!

The ‘Peter’s Purple’ monarda/Beebalm bloomed for weeks then started to look ratty. It’s been deadheaded and there are new flowerheads forming in the axils.

The Rose of Sharon grew taller and had many flowers this year but every photo I took looked bad. Yesterday morning I saw the shrub shaking violently so I grabbed the camera and went out. My archenemy was comfortably encamped in the center of the Rose of Sharon, picking and munching the flowers. I’ve had no luck stopping squirrels from eating tomatoes and flowers, and he’ll never have to answer for those crimes in court, but I can’t stop using the camera to gather evidence.

This post, Still Posting After All These Years, was written by Annie in Austin for her Transplantable Rose blog

Garden Bloggers Bloom Day May 2013

This post was written by Annie in Austin for her Transplantable Rose blog.

The May garden has few surprises, but unexpectedly cool nights, days under 90°F  and some rain in the last month have made the garden look greener than usual. Funny thing - although the rain wasn't heavy enough to refill the reservoirs and it didn't sink deep enough for the trees and shrubs, there was enough near the surface to pump up the grass paths around the Trapezoid Walk.

In other years the daylilies have been in full swing by mid-May. In this odd year, the passalong dwarf daylily 'Vi's Apricot' has some flowers - here mingling with the annual larkspur:

 Another passalong, the Orange Daylily/Ditch Lily from Gardener of Good & Evil, has bloomed with more larkspur, a patch of Salvia farinacea started with shared plants from Rock Rose, and a brand new 'Silky Yellow' tropical Milkweed from The Natural Gardener...

 Other varieties like the 'Best of Friends' from Pam at Digging have made buds but none are open yet. Our weather is now changing from damp to dry with temperatures soaring up into the 90's F - sure hope all these buds won't be blasted!

Seedlings from the annual larkspur turn up all over the garden each year in late winter. Some seedlings are weeded out - many are left to bloom in the spots they have chosen - larkspur popped up with the Oakleaf Hydrangea. This variety is 'Snow Queen' and the plant is in bloom for the third spring in a row.

  
Salvia coccinea, Hummingbird sage, also seeds around. I planted the lavender but these Hummingbird sages not only planted themselves - they've selected their own color scheme. Behind the scrim of salvias and lavender you can glimpse the climbing mini-rose, 'Red Cascade'.

Also self-selecting are the annual poppies. This one turned up in a hypertufa trough on the patio.

Near the trough are two small native wildflowers that were purchased and planted so we could see them from the table. Four nerve daisy blooms most of the year but the Blue-eyed grass usually makes a short visit. The unusual weather has kept it blooming.

A couple of feet away is a little tapestry composed of Silver ponyfoot, White-flowering sedum and a wandering Ice Plant.

After seeing Renee Studebaker's garden on tour last year, I came home and pruned the fig tree and the pomegranate tree in the Secret Garden, hoping to make them more productive. That pruning also gave more sun to the Pineapple Guava and it has more flowers than ever before! Will there be fruit this year?

Another shrub in bloom now is a fragrant, double, yellow oleander, growing in a bottomless wooden box. Twelve years ago this large shrub arrived as a one-foot-tall rooted cutting from Plant Delights. If you want to grow one, check out the current Plant Delights catalog.

Near the Sweetheart Arch the Shasta daisies have started, backed up by Salvia 'Hot Lips', Salvia guaranitica and Salvia guaranitica 'Black and Blue'. I like the way the rusty reddish brown of the arch at right is echoed by the burgundy-leaved cannas on the left

When the flowers are in bloom the insects are blooming, too! These 'Bush Early Girl' tomatoes are making fruit in the vegetable garden near the cilantro, which has mostly gone to flower. I saw ladybug larvae on the cilantro (Good) but also saw a cluster of tomato-wrecking Leaf-footed stink bug young-uns on a patio plant (Bad). The ladybug larvae are still there, but the stinkbug offspring are departed.

From what I can gather from various sources online, this cute little Shiny Flea Beetle appears to be of Texas origin and seems to specialize in Scuttelaria - the Skullcaps. It seems to be more of a problem in places like Florida, where it is not native... but with 6 kinds of Scuttelaria in this garden, I'd better keep an eye on it. (Looks like friends on the Texas GardenWeb are also seeing these little beetles on their skullcaps.)

(The botanical name of the insect was misspelled on original photo so this was edited with redone photos and added links, May 19, 2013)


There's another type of insect larva that hasn't appeared this year, although I've certainly tried to attract them by growing milkweed in many close-together beds and borders. Maybe the Monarch butterflies skipped my garden this spring because they heard about the Titan School Garden here in Austin!   

More photos and the complete list of what is in bloom with botanical names can be found at Annie's Addendum.

Links to Garden Bloom Day posts from all over can be found at the May Dreams Garden Blog. Happy May Dreams, Carol!

This post, Garden Bloggers Bloom Day May 2013, was written by Annie in Austin for her Transplantable Rose Blog.

Daylilies of June

Would you be excited to know that two of my Irish great-grandparents were married in Worcester, Massachusetts in August of 1873? Not even if I used a photo of Rudbeckia 'Irish Eyes' as a come-on? That's what I thought.
Would you be eager to read about a great-grandmother from the other side of my family whose previously unknown sister Verona suddenly appeared in a record? Could comparing the endurance of immigrant farmers' wives in Michigan to the endurance of violas blooming in Austin heat turn genealogy into gardening?
I'll bet such tidbits of family history could interest other gardeners at some times of the year...

but not when it's June in Austin and the first tomatoes have turned red-orange! With threatened highs of 100°F this weekend, tomato season may end before it ever gets going...

Attention must be paid when 'Royal Wedding' sweet peas refuse to stop opening fragrant flowers in spite of weeks of heat, climbing high on the obelisk

I love how they've artistically twined and arranged themselves against a background of 'Little Gem' magnolias
The travails of the ancestors must wait while I bemoan the way insect-chomped leaves on 'Belinda's Dream' make the rose look more like 'Belinda's Nightmare'
And even though the leaves on 'Julia Child' have been julienned, this shrub rose keeps blooming
How can anyone resist the flower-laden, bustling growth of Mexican oregano/Poliomintha bustamanta - its lavender-tinted blooms positively glowing in sunOr resist the way heat can put the lips on 'Hot Lips' Salvia?
I can't keep from smiling at the sight of coneflower gentlemen on parade with zaftig daylily-ladies on their spindly arms
When it's daylily time in Austin the experienced gardener knows that Hemerocallis means beautiful for a day, and taking photos cannot be postponed. This week Lori's old-fashioned ditch lily/Hemerocallis fulva and the small yellow 'Happy Returns' were out of bloom. The ditch lily blooms just once a year, but the 'Happy Returns' should have another flush of flower scapes this summer, depending on the weather.

Some people (like onetime Austinite Jean) have moved into a house where daylilies already grew in the garden but mine got here because I brought them, bought them or a division was bestowed upon me by a friend.

Pam/Digging gave me a start of 'Best of Friends' a few years ago. I divided it last year and was surprised to see how different the petal color looks in each bed. I'm not sure if it's sun, soil, fertilizer or a combination of factors that is responsible, but the plant that blooms in afternoon sun looks like this:

while the plant that blooms in afternoon shade looks like this:

This small rebloomer was bought in Wisconsin long ago - I couldn't leave 'Pinocchio' behind in Illinois:

A hybrid bought last year called 'Devonshire' made it through last year's drought and has three bloom stalks this June Its large flowers have great substance but you'll have to ask someone like Rock Rose or MSS of Zanthan whether they really look like England's famous Devonshire Cream!
An old, old passalong daylily with scented flowers that open in late afternoon is Hemerocallis citrina - looking especially dramatic this year with sufficient moisture to pump up the burgundy-leaved cannas in the background. We had 1.1 inches of rain on Wednesday evening - very welcome!

'Prairie Blue Eyes' traveled with us from Illinois, too - the more fashionable daylilies seem to be the fancier cultivars but my heart belongs to the plainer, green-eyed flowers like this one.

And here is the the little rebloomer from Illinois that I cherish most - a descendant of 'Stella d'Oro' going by the name of Hemerocallis 'Vi's Apricot' - a memory of a wonderful friend.
Last year there were still daylily flowers for Garden Blogger Bloom Day on June 15th but this year? Maybe it's a good thing they had their photos taken today.

Bloom Day & Genealogy

WHERE DO YOU THINK YOU ARE??
Maybe you recognized that line as a riff on the recent family history series "Who Do You Think You Are?" It was fun to see Twitter-friend Megan Smolenyak on the show, helping celebrities find out answers to mysteries of their family's past. My time and brain cells have been devoted more to genealogy than to gardening lately - and until last night's blessed 2-inches of rain fell, the gardening mostly consisted of watering.
Somehow old records suddenly appeared, solving some puzzles while sprinkling new question marks all over the charts.

Some of the findings are fun: A previously unknown great-grand-aunt appeared out of thin air on the Zoelle branch! Researching this name has produced such variations as Zolle, Zolla, Zoller, Zello, Seller & Colley.

Some of the findings are disturbing: so many death certificates had forms of tuberculosis as the cause of death that I started reading about its effects on Chicago in the late 1800's-early 1900's. Now I'm feeling emotionally overwhelmed with sympathy for my poor immigrant ancestors, many of them born before TB was recognized as infectious rather than an inherited tendency. Logic and reason remind me this happened so long ago that they'd all be dead by now... even without consumption to carry them off...how is it possible to mourn for and with people you never knew?


Enough of Family Trees for now! It's Garden Bloggers Bloom Day, begun by May Dreams Carol. Even in that relationship genealogy comes into play... I first found Carol in a web search- not through her garden blog, but at her Grandmother's Diary.



In other months my GBBD posts may feature plants that will only grow where winters are comparatively mild - Texas mountain laurel, Carolina jessamine, White ginger or bluebonnets.But sometimes a vignette like this one looks quite similar to some place 1200 miles away and a dozen years ago.


This little reblooming daylily, a recross of 'Stella d'Oro' called 'Vi's Apricot', used to flower in Illinois -
But it bloomed in July rather than May, and never at the feet of a 'Meyer's Improved' lemon tree!
Tomato blossoms are beautiful no matter where or when they bloom.

Calibrachoa and green beans are pretty universal, aren't they?

The so-called Ditch Lily (Hemerocallis fulva) really did grow in roadside drainage ditches in Illinois. It was so common that I didn't bother to bring a piece with me to Texas. It's been nearly 11 years since I saw one blooming but thanks to Good and Evil Lori this Wisconsin-born orange daylily opened flowers today.
And thanks to the inspiration of MSS of Zanthan Gardens, the daylilies opened with a cloud of 'Royal Wedding' sweet peas above them

In Illinois the yellow rose would have been 'Graham Thomas' instead of 'Julia Child', the pine was a dwarf Mugho Pine instead of an Italian Stone Pine and the pale purple bells of Mexican Oregano would never survive winter, but the vine in the background would be the same -a Clematis 'Ramona' eventually shows up in all my gardens, no matter where we live.

So does the light yellow daylily, Hemerocallis 'Happy Returns' - here with other old favorites blue larkspur, yarrow Achillea 'Moonshine', yellow snapdragons and Salvia farinacea. The main difference in this scene versus one in Illinois is that the rocks are free in Texas!

If I see a beloved plant from the past on the distressed/sale table there's a good chance I'll try to grow it here. This Oakleaf Hydrangea followed me home from Countryside Nursery last winter



But before anyone calls the Reality Police and tells them to stage an intervention, here is proof that I really do know where I am. This is Austin, Texas, where Salvia 'Black & Blue' grows like a weed

Where exotic fruits like Pineapple Guava are used as garden shrubs


And tender fruit trees like 'Wonderful' Pomegranate live through the winter and bloom

Where 'Celeste' figs grow uncovered and unprotected as landscape elements

Where a fragrant double yellow Oleander from Plant Delights
Combines with fragrant white Confederate jasmine

And a fragrant white 'Little Gem' magnolia to scent the air and make one feel like a superannuated Scarlet O'Hara

Austin is a place where odd lilies like Eucomis copy pineapples
A Justicia pretends to be a Shrimp

And Cuphea llaevea mimics a Bat's face

Where Pam's passalong Aloe can survive hail and cold in the shelter of a holly tree to bloom in the shade

Where wildflowers like Texas Paintbrush can be picked up at local nurseries to grow as container plants on the patio (last year's plants even seeded in the front lawn!)
And where the tender Rosa Mutabilis that I once sighed over in out-of-zone gardening books elbows out every other plant in the front border
Here's one more look at the 'Royal Wedding' Sweet peas, caught a few days ago as the sun came through their petals in early morning light. The seeds came from the Natural Gardener - a little gift when we bought our second rainbarrel last winter.


Happy Blooming Day! Celebrate by checking out the gardens linked to the GBBD post at May Dreams Gardens. Soon I'll get a list together of everything in bloom with botanical names at Annie's Addendum.

(The GBBD List is now up)