Two Bad Winters in a Row

This winter was supposed to be different! I was sure there would be less frost damage because the wimpy plants had bailed after the very unusual 13ºF of January 2010, right? The covers and lights used on the in-ground Meyer's Lemon & Mexican Lime trees helped keep the stems alive, but they'd still lost all their leaves and had no fruit in 2010.

We had space for the two medium-size plumerias, a ginger, Stapelias, the allspice bush, staghorn fern and the smaller lemon inside the house & garage. So if we had a normal winter, all should be well.

But the big plumeria had grown too tall to fit inside the garage.... what to do, what to do?

I decided to ignore the citrus - they no longer fit inside their N-sulate fabric pillowcases - and in November I took that fabric, ripped out the stitches and tried a different idea. The rain barrel had been moved and the little brick-lined sun-catching cove next to the chimney was accessible. I sewed the fabric into one large curtain and Philo put a rod close up against the wall over the window. My idea was to shove the too-tall plumeria and more marginal plants against the window, using the curtain to trap any heat that escaped through the glass from the house, counting on additional heat being captured and released from the bricks.
Winter came, things froze, and you know, the idea worked great as long as the low temperatures were in the mid-2o's - that plumeria still had leaves 10 days ago!

Then last week, as the north was buried in 2-feet of snow, we were hit with a long-lasting cold snap, going down to 14ºF or 15ºF . A power glitch hit Monday, while we were still warm - and it was farewell, computer! On Tuesday February 1st, before the cold came, I piled burlap bags around the pots and swagged a big sheet across the bottom of the curtain. We unplugged the birdbath fountain so the motor wouldn't burn out... and crossed our fingers.

The wind howled all night long, whipping things around the yard and unsettling the sleepers as the temperatures dropped. With daylight on Wednesday we could see the wind had flipped the yellow adirondack chair and tossed a patio umbrella across the yard like a javelin. The wind kept pulling the curtain off the plants. Each time I'd go out to tuck them in the wind would whip the clothes off again. There was no sun in the cove, so no extra heat gathered by the bricks.

The temperatures stayed below freezing so we set up makeshift birdbaths, tapping out the ice blocks and refilling with warm water when the water froze. Rolling brown-outs didn't hit our neighborhood too hard but Vertie's neighborhood didn't have power stay on long enough to keep warm
The power was more stable the next day, and early Friday about an inch of snow lay softly on the garden, looking extremely decorative for awhile- and melting by Saturday as we returned to the 50's or 60's.
Another cold snap is predicted for this coming Tuesday night, so today I went around with the camera. With luck, the plants that usually lose their tops, go dormant and return -the Mexican mint marigold, cupheas, Mexican honeysuckle, crinum lilies, salvias, etc. - will still come back in spring. But I have no experience with other plants that were new in 2010 - will the Lion's Tail or the two Abutilons live? How about the pink Malvaviscus?

Can these blackened Shrimp Plants spring new life from the roots?

Will the frozen Meyer's Lemon drop this set of leaves and have the strength to releaf two springs in a row?

The asparagus ferns in the hanging baskets don't look too bad, but I was fooled last year

I brushed my hand across one and the resulting shower of fern bits does not bode well for their longterm survival

An African aloe from Pam/Digging that survived January 2010 looks bad - and feels mushy.

The native Barbados Cherries and the two dwarf pomegranates are already dropping their leaves

Inside the fabric tent the Thai Lime looks good at the base but frost damage shows on leaves at the top. I still don't know if any parts of the tall plumeria will live. The fragrant ginger always loses its top so that doesn't worry me yet, and the 'Dorota Blue' scutellaria looks fine, as does the Scilla peruviana in the front container.
It seems the curtain idea is a qualified success so far - and if there had been a better system for keeping the curtain tight in wind it might have been a real success.
The evergreens that made it last winter look alright so far... and there are still flowers! The pansies weren't impressed by a mere 15 degrees -

Nor was the parsley - although the Sweet marjoram behind it was shocked

And if the Variegated ginger could talk, it might have thanked me for bringing it into the garage.

Garden Bloggers Bloom Day, July 2009

There isn't much to see here at Circus~Cercis this month - having flowers bloom is less of a goal than keeping a core of life in the garden, in the hope that rain and normal temperatures will return to Central Texas someday. I cannot bear to let you see the sunny front yard and it's too depressing to look closely in the back. Maybe we can peek between our fingers at a few bright spots...well actually most of the survivors aren't in bright spots, but are in semi-shade, like the orange crocosmia and purple setcreasia above.




In the filtered shade on the patio where the containers get water a fragrant yellow Plumeria blooms with a few red flowers produced by the Spicy Jatropha bought in South Austin last fall.

The two white 'Acoma' crepe myrtles carry on - providing a hideout for a green garden spider and some dappled shade for a white Echinacea. (Click on the photo to enlarge it.) The coneflower looks much better as a tiny blur in the background...up close the petals have brown edges.

Is anyone else still watering their tomatoes? If mine stopped setting fruit I'd let them go, but both 'Early Girl' and 'Juliet' keep making flowers and tiny tomatoes and such valor deserves a little water and a great deal of appreciation.

The volunteer pattypan squash has flowers, too, and the few squash it's produced have been delicious. Last night our dinner menu gave a nod to Bastille Day, with one pattypan squash sliced and sautéed with onion and green pepper, then added to some cubed chicken that had been poached with herbs. I filled a few crêpes with this mixture, topped them with a cheese and wine sauce and served them with salad that had a couple of tomatoes from the garden in it.

There's a list of everything with a flower at my Annie's Addendum blog. Garden Bloggers Bloom Day (AKA GBBD) is the invention of Carol at May Dreams Gardens. For links to the many gardeners worldwide who are part of GBBD, please go to Carol's Blog.

Decisions Were Made

Living in a sub-tropical climate tempts one to grow a lot of marginal plants, so some Austin folk build frames across the back of their houses each autumn, covering the wood or plastic skeleton in heavy plastic using open house windows to add enough warm air to keep slightly tender plants alive. Luckily, Philo was uninterested in building a temporary greenhouse, forcing me to Decide.

We used a dolly to roll the yellow plumeria into the garage, where it now fills a corner with 7-feet tall by 4-feet wide branches. I started this plumeria from a stick in 2001, and at the beginning of each winter it has dropped its leaves and stayed dormant in the garage.
In spring of 2005, a kind NE Austin gardener named Jane gave me a cutting from one of her red plumerias. Once it was well-rooted and repotted, the new one began to grow, reaching 30 inches by late fall 2005, when it joined the bigger one in the garage. But just like my kids, this baby would not go to sleep, refusing to go dormant. Moved outside again in spring, it branched out, bloomed, and grew quickly to over 5-feet tall. This year, I’m trying an experiment, letting the Plumeria stay awake for the winter in the breakfast room.
We should probably start referring to this space as the conservatory – the Meyer’s Lemon is also inside near the windows. Christopher from Hawaii suggested that we keep this lemon tree as a potted plant, and buy a new one for the ground. This idea made sense to my husband, and with 7 almost-ripe lemons on it along with a new batch of pea-sized fruit, I couldn’t bear to leave it outside!
On the windowsill in the photo you can see the little Aloe, safe because Pam/Digging warned me it was tender. Last winter, a pink tropical Hibiscus spent the winter in the breakfast room but it wasn't happy, developing both mealybugs and aphids. I set this plant close to the back wall near a window, but won’t let that Hibiscus inside this winter. There was a good spot for the Hedychium coronaria [Hawaiian White Ginger] near the back fence, so a big chunk from the patio container went there, with lots of amendments, a good watering, and leaf mulch piled around the base. The 'Best of Friends' daylily from Pam was planted, too, but the rest of the garden had to be left to chance.
On Thursday three clumps of Bengal Tiger cannas were in bloom, the non-blooming Brugmansia stood a foot taller than it had been in the spring, while the various Cupheas were blooming and still attracting bees and butterflies. A large Fennel plant also offered flowers to the butterflies.
I was still wearing shorts and sandals on Wednesday, as I finally got my act together, hoping the precautions were not really necessary. Over the last few years we’ve heard many frost or freeze warnings that never actually delivered the expected blow, but this time, the predictions were quite accurate. The Friday landscape showed the changes, with all the canna leaves a tobacco color, the top of the Brugmansia floppy, and both fennel and the cupheas shriveled and browned. I was actually glad to see the peppers and tomatoes wilted by the freeze, and the basil put out of its misery. Cleaning up a big mess is sometimes easier than fidgety maintenance!

Now the Christmas tree is assembled, with lights in place, ready for decorating. We’re enjoying our happy kitchen-conservatory, and thanks to the big freeze, I’m moving forward again.

Austin Tropicalesque

Sometimes my attempts at tropical flowers don’t work – my Brugmansia/Angel Trumpet still looks like a big weed, unwilling to bloom the way Hanna’s did on July 8th. Other exotic flowers are happy in my garden. Here are a pale yellow Plumeria flower , a rose-red Plumeria flower, a Hawaiian white ginger/Hedychium coronarium bloom and a Loquat tree/Eriobotrya japonica. The Plumeria flowers are also called frangipani and both colors smell wonderful. The white ginger smells wonderful. When they bloom in winter, the flowers of the Loquat smell wonderful. They all have big, tropical leaves, and make sitting on the patio seem like a vacation.

When the temperatures approach freezing, the Plumerias leave the patio, moving to their winter quarters in the garage, fasting and abstaining from fluids until spring. The ginger will usually die down to the ground, and sleep until April, protected by mulch, but the Loquat tree can take cold weather to 10º F. We’ve been lucky enough to get flowers every winter, but getting fruit is very chancy – just one dip into the mid-20’s can be the end of that year’s loquat crop. It would be cool to get the fruit, but we like the tree whether we get any loquats or not.