Absolutely April

This post about my garden in Austin, Texas was written by Annie in Austin for her Transplantable Rose blog.

Three weeks can make a big difference in the garden! Since that last post the garden plant spreadsheet shows fewer plants with question marks next to their names.
The Barbados Cherries appear to be alive. They also appear to be about 6" tall now. But you don't want to see that photo and I don't want to take it. Averted eyes is the way to carry on while the boxwoods decide exactly where they'll regrow - don't want to take that photo either.

This photo of the ice-and-freeze damaged Oleander was taken at the beginning of April. It grows near the steps from the house to the drive so it was very hard to not only avert my eyes but to refrain from picking up the lopping shears.

 


Sometimes the best thing to do is nothing. Early last week tiny green leaves began to sprout along the oleander trunk and by Thursday it was clear which branches were doing well and where to make the cuts. I don't think there will be flowers this spring, but the Oleander should live and grow.

So let's ignore the battered shrubs and let them recover in private. As to the rest of the garden? Even though we're still in drought, something about the long cold rest seems to have benefited the roses - they're shouting that it is now Absolutely April.
'Julia Child' opens new flowers every morning, standing nearly 5-ft tall, with scores of buds still swelling, surrounded by self-sown poppies and larkspurs, by Four-nerve daisies and the last bluebonnets.
 

I've read that this rose was chosen by Julia Child herself to bear her name, because it looked like butter.




I still don't have a positive ID on the pink climber that came with the house, but 'Climbing Pink Peace' seems to be a possibility. My husband Philo built a wooden trellis over the gate and the rose has stretched out and up to cover it.

 

A few big blossoms joined white 'Climbing Iceberg' in a bowl.



This apricot mini-rose finally looks established - last spring it had two flowers.

The frozen Rosa mutabilis quickly outgrew the damage and is reblooming in its patio container.

The color of the clematis next to the back door is hard to describe - it goes through so many changes from bud to blown blossom.



The Oakleaf Hydrangea flaunts something between a bud and a flower.



Up in front most of the native plants in the parkway strip are waking up and thinking about buds, but only the Damianita is in full bloom.



The Texas Mountain Laurel flowers froze in March 2014, but the shrubs are already making buds for Spring 2015.



Fingers crossed these new plants of Damianita, purple skullcap, creeping phlox and Blackfoot daisies can take hold in a new bed up front.



Tomorrow's forecast promises temperatures in the nineties so the individual flowers don't last too long, but April has been absolutely lovely for a while.



This post about my garden in Austin, Texas was written by Annie in Austin for her Transplantable Rose blog. 

Garden Bloggers Bloom Day February 2012

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

February 2011 kept us below freezing for 3 straight days, killing some plants and damaging many. So far this February of 2012 has given us cool temperatures rather than freezing cold nights, and there has been some rain. Although the amount of rain that has fallen on my garden is much less than those official measurements from Austin Bergstrom Airport or Camp Mabry, in combination with no nights below 27°F, it was enough to pump up more blooms than usual for February.

There's a complete list of what's in bloom today at Annie's Addendum - the Shrimp Plants, Four-Nerve Daisies, Rosemary, Pineapple Sage, Creeping Phlox and Loropetalum are on the list for another month.

In many winters the Mexican Honeysuckle/Justicia spicigera acts like perennials do in the North, freezing completely to ground level. But this year it has experienced minimum dieback and is in bloom for February

The Sweet Olive/Osmanthus fragrans is quite wonderful right now. In a good year it will be in bloom from late fall until mid-spring. Last year the flowers opened but the scent didn't carry through the parched air, then deep cold froze off the ends of each branch. This year there's new growth and the shrubs are covered in tiny flowers, never showy, but as the name promised - they are fragrant.

One bluebonnet/Lupinus texensis is open today with buds forming on other plants scattered in a few beds.

I don't have a name for this daffodil - perhaps it is 'February Gold'? Someone started it in this yard years ago and the bulbs turned up occasionally after we moved in and began to make a garden in 2004. We tucked them into different beds and borders and I like the way they look with morning light on the petals. This spiraea was also here when we bought the house. It's similar to the ones we called Bridal Wreath in Illinois, but the leaves are more oblong - perhaps it is the variety called Reeve's Spiraea. None of the flowers were open today, but the buds are formed.
The Carolina Jessamine/Gelsemium sempervirens had become a huge tangle last spring and in a normal year would have been pruned back. But once the heat struck, I hesitated to put any additional stress on the plant. Last month I gave it a drastic pruning, taking out deadwood and long vines. The timing meant many flower buds were also pruned but there are enough left to be pretty now.
Is anyone watching the new TV series "Smash"? The story centers on a stage musical about the life of Marilyn Monroe. Marilyn the Star had a reputation for being unpredictable and not showing up when you expected her. 'Marilyn's Choice' the Abutilon has been unpredictable, too - blooming in 2010 then refusing to present a single blossom in 2011. Now in February 2012 she has decided to bloom once more.

Two of the roses decided to bloom this February, too - 'Julia Child' has just begun a bloom cycle, but something about the weather has made the color less like butter and more like a peach.

The front Rosa 'Mutabilis' has taken advantage of a mild winter in a very big way - and even the individual flowers seem to be larger than usual. This rose has a fragrance but you usually have to be close to the flowers. The other day you could smell that rose smell while walking down the sidewalk to the mailbox.

Carol of May Dreams Gardens first invited bloggers to post about their blooms in February 2007 and she was pleased when more than a dozen bloggers gave links to posts. I was one of that group, with a list that included the yellow daffodils, Carolina Jessamine, pansies, the Coral Honeysuckle, Texas Mountain Laurel and the Salmon geranium found on today's list. Apparently there is something addictive in counting up the flowers! Five years later you'll find well over 100 links to posts for this February's Garden Bloggers Bloom Day.

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

Good Things Emerge in April

Last night the predicted temperatures ranged from low 40's to mid 30's F. We weren't worried that the vegetables would freeze, but tomato & pepper plants sometimes sulk after being that cold so we rigged up some sheets and curtains - hopefully for the last time this spring. Since the thermometer showed 38°F it was worth the effort.

Early this morning the tent was still up -that cloud of white is Philadelphus inodorus, the native Southern scentless mockorange, single-flowered, and a beautiful background shrub for a fence. We've just about finished playing 'Dead or Dormant' here at Circus~Cercis, with only a few plants whose fate is undecided. My head is telling me the big Bay Laurel is dead as a doornail, but my heart made me pretend it's dormant for now. Some plants don't need pretending - they're alive!

Whether called Clerodendrum ugandense, Rotheca myricoides 'Ugandense', Blue Butterfly Bush or Blue Glory Bower, it looks as if we'll have Blue Butterfly flowers here. Although the large container I bought last summer froze badly, one sprout has emerged and a few cuttings that I took last fall seem to be rooting.

Even better, the original plant that had looked like a goner after the February deep freezes was tougher than expected - three new sprouts are emerging.
In the long fence bed the Dietes bicolor/ Bicolor iris was alive, but barely half the blades were green. When I bought this plant it was labeled as a Butterfly Iris /Dietes grandiflora - that's the one I wanted, but Bicolor Iris is what I got. So a plant I didn't want in the first place was badly winterkilled two years in a row and it never even bloomed in 2010. I decided to just dig the whole thing up - even had the garden fork ready, then a closer look showed not just one but 4 flower stalks.
How could I trash a plant that was making such an effort? I set to work with garden scissors and spent 40 minutes making it presentable. A few days later the open flower still seems more interesting than beautiful, but the plant can stay for now. The 'Marilyn's Choice' abutilon was shrub-sized last December, then possibly dead in March and now just a few inches tall. But at least this abutilon is alive - unlike 'Patrick's' abutilon -definitely dead, not dormant.
Last spring the 'Ramona' clematis began to bloom almost exactly the same minute that the 'Julia Child' floribunda roses started - a spectacular combination. This year Ramona jumped the gun and was more than half open by last weekend. The many buds on 'Julia Child' were barely showing color yesterday: ... but today it looks as she's shouting Hey, Ramona - Wait for me!
Our Texas Superstar shrub rose 'Belinda's Dream' came through rough weather and is covered in buds - here's Belinda in the area rather grandly designated as The Pink Entrance Garden:
In 2006 I bought a 1-gallon pot with a starter plant of Weigela 'Rumba' at the closing sale for Howard Nursery on Koenig Lane. The stock was down to just a few plants so I picked it up for sentimental reasons - in Illinois we called it 'Cardinal Bush' - not expecting it to live long. But here it is, at 30" tall, slightly larger than last year, and blooming for the 5th spring not far from 'Belinda's Dream'.It's annoying that the Hesperaloe/ Red yucca at lower left has not been inspired to floral display by its neighbors... although alive and larger than last year, this native plant has produced the desired tall spires of coral-pink-red flowers only once in 6 springs.
I pruned the large Mutabilis rose quite severely in mid-February which only made it bloom more - and the scent in the front butterfly border is wonderful. This is its 4th year in the ground. See that spot of orange to the left of the birdbath base? It's a Texas Paintbrush, back for the 3rd spring.
Mutabilis, my sweet baby... Happy April & welcome back!

Garden Bloggers Bloom Day June 2010

The 'Blue River II' Hibiscus was the star of my first blog post on June 7, 2006. This year the ground warmed up slowly so there were no hibiscus flowers on June 7, 2010, but my Movealong plant came through for GBBD.
Four years ago I posted about two white 'Acoma' crepe myrtles that had been planted to soften a fence after 5 years of stressful living on a hot deck in terracotta containers. The left one looked like this in June 2006
And the right one looked so pitiful in 2006 that I wasn't sure it could ever turn from a scraggly shrub into a treeBut now they stand tall and in full bloom - so lovely that the recently murdered pink crepe on the other side of the fence barely impacts my garden
Back in 2006 I tried in vain to snap a photos of the hummingbirds on salvias - now the 'Provence' lavender brings them closer to the window
It's been a hot, buggy May & June, with enough rain for green grass and swarms of mosquitoes. Bird poop caterpillars (larvae of a Giant Swallowtail) reappeared on the Meyer's lemon - this one is full grown but there are new eggs for the next generation.
Does anyone know how to ID swallowtail butterflies? Is this adult Swallowtail on the Purple coneflowers the right kind to have laid the eggs on the lemon tree?
Still-blooming Burgundy oxalis and just-starting Blue Plumbago cuddle up with a tropical milkweed seedling that blew in from last year's plant. It's a little too close to the sidewalk but I'll let it stay here just in case Monarch butterflies show up.The cannas show buds just as daylily season winds down -
Flowers open daily on some the large daylilies but they'll run out of buds soon. Perovskia adds blue to Hemerocallis citrina, Hibiscus 'Blue River II' and 'Hot Lips' Salvia. I wonder if goldfinches can recognize the self-sown Sunflowers as the source of future treats. Can you see that bag of pecan caterpillars hanging to the lower left of the sunflower? How I wish for an archer to shoot an arrow through the webby stuff. Once the bag was opened wasps could have caterpillars as treats!
'Julia Child' made a few more butter-color roses under the white crepe myrtles. 'Belinda's Dream' made flowers, too- but they look way too ratty for photos.
In front a bluebonnet lurks in a patch of Blackfoot daisies, refusing to cry uncle to summer's heat.
In back an Orange Cosmos (maybe Cosmos sulphurea?) towers over a Texas Paintbrush in another patch of Blackfoot Daisies. Some of what grows in this garden came from a nursery or garden center. The plants that came from family and friends are called Passalong plants and those hauled from previous gardens could be called Movealong plants. But the cosmos falls in a different category. Last fall I saw enormous beds of these flowers in every stage of bud, bloom and gone-to-seed, growing outside of our favorite Korean Restaurant. A few seeds just happened to fall into my pocket and then I just happened to save them and just happened to plant them a few months ago. Can I call it a Snitchalong plant?

For the round-up of Garden Blogs see head Blogger-wrangler Carol at May Dreams Gardens.
To see the botanical name of every single thing I can find in bloom check the list at Annie's Addendum.