Gaudy Redefined

 This post, "Gaudy Redefined" was written by Annie in Austin for her Transplantable Rose blog.

Seven years ago I started a blog on a whim, mostly so I could comment on other blogs (back then you needed a Blogger ID just to comment). I named the blog The Transplantable Rose and posted a photo of my white perennial hibiscus with the title "Define Gaudy". The Hibiscus 'Blue River II' is still alive but the ground warmed up slowly this spring, so we have buds instead of blooms this June 7th.

And a new Passalong Plant from Pam/Digging, called Monarda 'Peter's Purple', is currently wearing the crown as Most Gaudy. I have tried Monarda over & over since we moved to this house nearly nine years ago... only a couple of those plants lived at all and none bloomed until this powerhouse took root last summer.

A glance at the first few posts reminds me that plants can grow a great deal in seven years - the first triangle bed with the 'Little Gem' Magnolia was brand new in June 2006.

Yesterday there were 12 flowers open at once on a tree that is dwarf by Southern Magnolia standards, but still quite a presence in this small garden!

A post about the double Mock-Orange from my dad's garden showed it blooming in the newly-made Secret Garden. I took the photo for the blog, but it ended up being a memory - that Mock-Orange didn't make it through alternating days of flood & drought. But do you see that tiny fig tree close to the white iron fence? It is no longer tiny.

The Secret Garden seems a little more Secret today, with the now-large fig tree, crepe myrtle and pomegranate casting shade, borders on all the edges, a different bench and the usually-unhappy grass replaced by stepping stones & decomposed granite.

Another summer is on the way, perhaps preparing to draw its twin daggers of heat and drought to murder the plants I love. But just for today, I will celebrate that the garden is fuller, the shrubs are larger, a few tomatoes and peppers are getting ripe, the beds and borders are stuffed with plants native and adapted, the containers are stuffed with plants that are totally inappropriate and/or beloved for sentimental reasons, and the birds, insects, lizards, and squirrels think it's just swell.

I may not write often, but I'm not giving up yet. Year 8? Bring it on. 

 This post, "Gaudy Redefined" was written by Annie in Austin for her Transplantable Rose blog.

A Three Sisters Bloom Day for May 2012

 This post was written by me, Annie in Austin, for my Transplantable Rose Blog.


Philo and I enjoyed the flowers that bloomed here on the 15th but May 15th was not my target date this month. The truly important date came a few days later when my sisters popped in from Illinois for a long weekend. They really came to visit our Austin family, not to see plants, but I still wanted the garden to shine.

Josie and Hannah have visited Austin before but only in fall. This time my gardening sisters and I would have our own special Garden Bloom Day for May. Some favorite plants didn't cooperate... 'Julia Child' rose had just finished a bloom cycle and it's too early for the 'Acoma' crepe myrtles

 

but a few Magnolia buds looked promising

 

We planned on meeting other family members at local restaurants for some meals but in a pre-houseguest tizzy I also cooked old favorites like Shredded Chicken with Peppers and baked a Cheesecake. Philo and I could hardly wait for our beloved guests to arrive! 

The front-garden greeting committee included the Mutabilis Rose. This enormous shrub rose used to be in shade by mid-May, but since the recent demise of Arizona Ash #2, it's still in sun and has continued to bloom.

Although Hesperaloe is called Red Yucca, it sure looks fluorescent pink to me. That's why this native relative of asparagus grows in the Pink Entrance Garden with Cherry Skullcap at its feet. Things would have been even more gaudy but the 'Belinda's Dream' rose behind the Hesperaloe was Resting Between Engagements.

The Vitex agnus-castus/Chaste tree caught Josie's eye as she went to the veranda steps. It had started to open over the weekend, the shrub resembling the unrelated Butterfly bushes while the color and shape of the blooms look a little like lilacs.
Like many plants here, the look of the flower draws you to smell it, but Vitex flower heads have only a vaguely herby-meadowy smell rather than a scent worth making into perfumes. 

In a similar way you can be drawn to the beauty of many Salvias while being repelled by the funky smell. Mexican Mint marigold flowers are not as beautiful as salvias, but the foliage smells better in an inside vase.    

For more than 50 years a peony that once grew in my grandmother's garden has been divided and shared around the family. In Illinois, Peonies and Lilacs rule the month of May with both color and fragrance but they can't live here so I had to leave them behind.
Luckily, Grandma's peony still blooms in the gardens of my sisters and cousins. My sister Hannah cut three flowers that were just beginning to show petal color and tucked them into her suitcase. I recut them and put them in water, and the first one opened two days later. 

My sisters' daylilies bloom at the end of June and during July, but in Austin they flower in late April and May. The old-fashioned orange daylily bloomed with Larkspur in April but by the time my sisters came it was done and the larkspur was going to seed. 'Devonshire' had open flowers, with purple-blue supplied by Mealy blue sage.

 

I brought 'Prairie Blue Eyes' to Austin with me in 1999 and it still looks good. 

 

A passalong daylily from Pam Penick, 'Best of Friends', was having a spectacular year - nine stems with 8 huge flowers open at once

 The dwarf 'Vi's Apricot' daylily had been blooming for weeks, a passalong from a friend in Illinois. My sisters took divisions of this little flower home to plant in their gardens - even though Vi can no longer garden, her special plant will keep on blooming.

My sisters saw the buds of the citron daylily - the original plant didn't live through summer 2011 but I'd moved a small division near the house. One flower opened yesterday.

The Cenizo/Texas sage had popped some flowers - today it's covered in blooms

Hannah & Josie liked the 'Red Cascade' climbing mini-rose mixed into the Rosemary

They liked the two-tone flowers of 'Hot Lips' salvia

 

 

  

They wondered how tropical milkweed would do in Illinois

And liked the pure light blue of Plumbago with Purple oxalis

They were here when the Hydrangea x Bliss 'Sweet Carol' bloomed for the first time since 2008.

They got to see dwarf pomegranates forming

 and to see small Meyer's lemons growing on the tree behind the house

The garden was full of birds this week - we watched them from the breakfast room and in the garden- here's a white-winged dove herding a fledgling under cover

And before they left, they encountered a genuinely lovely Southern scent - Magnolia blossoms on the 'Little Gem' tree.

 

We had a wonderful time but the few days went by in a blur - the entire family group liked Trudy's patio

 But all too soon they were rolling the suitcases away 

Now it seems like summer instead of May... yesterday we got the first tomatoes of 2012. 

This post was written by Annie in Austin for her Transplantable Rose Blog... probably much too late for the roundup of GBBD posts by May Dreams Carol 

Ed May 25, 2012. The complete list is now up at Annie's Addendum. 

Foliage Followup for September 2010

Way too much of the foliage in my garden gives testimony to the drought, hail, drought, rain, heat, flood, insects and animal damage that are out to get it. But while getting my GBBD post together, I noticed some interesting foliage, too and decided to join Pam/Digging's Foliage Followup.

The emphasis may have been on the Oxblood Lilies yesterday, but today it's all about the way the Persian Shield/ Strobilanthes dyerianus looks with the glossy camellia leaves in the shade of a pecan tree.
Sharing Garden Diana also featured her magnolia on her GBBD post, but I'm not sure what kind of magnolia she has. This is my 'Little Gem', with the aggregate seed heads in various stages of development. I wanted to catch that fuzzy, rusty color underneath the leaves. A regular, full-sized Southern Magnolia would never fit in my small garden so 'Little Gem' was pressed into service and I really like this small tree. I'd still prefer the plain green-leaved gigantic magnolia if we had more space, but the fuzzy brown color is not without charm.
This trio of succulents lives on the patio table. At left is a "Ghost Plant" -some species of Graptopetalum in a planter my husband made out of a rock. In the center is a Passalong plant from DivaoftheDirt Mindy - she gave me a few leaves in 2009 to root. It's called Donkey Ears - I guess it's a kind of Kalanchoe. At right a little sedum-type plant came with the label "Cobweb Houseleek". It lived through winter in this cool pot I found when out with Suburban-Wildlife Dawn in 2008.
The last plant is more of a hope for foliage than actual foliage! Last winter was so harsh that succulents were killed - including most of an Agave macroculmis from Yucca-Do that I'd had for years. After the mushy parts were cut off, three pieces of leaves were left. I stood them up in this well drained, partly shaded bed under a holly and occasionally hit them with the hose. One piece rotted quickly, but right now one of the pieces seems to be tight in the ground. Is it even possible for a new agave plant to grow from a leaf?

Through the Garden Gate, Monday April 27, 2009

Cindy From My Corner of Katy had an interesting idea a few weeks ago, to take a look though her garden gate every Monday. When she asked her readers to share the views from their gates, Robin from Get Grounded joined in. I'm not organized enough to do this very often, Cindy, but I'd like to join in today.

If you've got time for a fast spin around the back yard, grab the handle and swing open the gate.

Look to the right, and the last flowers on the tall pink climbing rose lean down, tempting you to see if they have a scent. (They do!)


Look to the left and you see a long border along the fence, anchored by two 'Acoma' crepe myrtles. They're now fully leafed out but aren't showing buds yet. You can see a wooden framework in the vegetable patch along the back fence - those tomatoes and peppers better hurry and make fruit fast before the heat settles in and gets them.

Colors like yellows and violets and silvers and whites hang out along the fence on our left, punctuated by orange and purples. The creamy yellow Bicolor iris and buttery yellow 'Julia Child' rose both have flowers and this week we see another flower in a sharper yellow hue.
It's the small reblooming daylily 'Happy Returns', looking pretty bouncy, with 'Perfume Deep Purple' Nicotiana and Setcreasea/"Purple Heart" behind it.
Now pivot and turn right, and you'll see the long axis of the back garden. The two triangle beds cut across the axis at center left and the fountain, herb troughs, umbrella table and chairs cluster on the patio in the middle right. Look hard and you might see a bright spot of color way back past the garden shed under the partially leafed-out pecans.

Let's walk to that end to take a closer look - the red is in the bulb bed against the opposite fence. A few years ago I rounded up Amaryllis bulbs leftover from previous holidays, remnants of Easter lilies, stray oxalis, hitchhiking gladiolis and occasional bargain bulb 'rescues' and stuck them all into this well-drained, raised bed. Sometimes the bulbs just send up leaves, sometimes they disappear and sometimes they bloom. Four of the amaryllis have bloom stalks this week.

We'll turn around and head back with the shady back fence on our right. Oh, look at the poor Michelia figo/Banana shrub, valiantly trying to recover from that fierce hailstorm on March 25th. Damaged leaves are dropping, but new ones are forming.
Just past the Michelia a passalong Siberian iris is in bloom. There are only a few flowers left today but I caught the clump at its peak last week.


This is not a large garden -just a 12-foot jog to the left can land you near the patio. A couple of flowers decorate the Pineapple guava in the terracotta pot. The hail drastically pruned the Coral honeysuckle, stripping off many leaves and all open flowers. Over the last month it's recovered well enough to lightly rebloom.

Oh, look! Down in the gravel at the base of the arch there are unexpected leaves and a flower. I was sure the squirrels ate the Tulipa clusiana bulbs when nothing appeared by mid-April. They're so late they should be Tulipa tarda, instead. But tardy does not mean unwelcome!

We're heading back now, past Philo's yellow chair, past the smaller triangle bed with those tenacious yellow snapdragons, past the Spanish lavender and the Sweet lavender, and past the larger triangle bed with the 'Little Gem' Magnolia.


Some buds are swelling on the magnolia now - with luck these remaining flowers can open normally. Although the hail didn't knock all leaves completely off the tree, it sure left them looking ragged.

Out the gate we go, past a hanging basket planted with a Calabrachoa in bright, desert-y colors.
Your car's in the drive, hidden around the corner on your left, past the Pink Entrance Garden. But do you really have to leave? A hummingbird zoomed next to my ear when I was snapping off spent blossoms from those fragrant purple iris. If we sit on the bench sipping coffee and tea, he might come back.