Bouganvilla

At least this Bouganvilla is doing OKAY!

At the end of the long, not-as-hot-as-usual-but-it-sure-has-been-hot-lately summer, everything in my garden looks like….shit. Yeah, even with the mulch. The garden, now in it’s tenth year, has never been less productive; this year I got like one bucket of tomatoes, TWO (TWO!!!!) cucumbers (off, I dunno, 12 vines?) a handful of jalapenos, and a LOT of basil. But that is it. There is NO QUESTION that the money I spent on watering would have been better spent BUYING vegetables from the Farmers Market.

What gives?

I am thinking the my soil is getting tired, despite the CONTINUAL composting. I am not sure what to do!! Should I take a season OFF and re-dig and amend my beds? Should I let the ground lie fallow for a year? I am pretty sure that PART of my problem is BUGS; the pests just ruin everything. If I don’t plant these delicious, edible garden crops for a year or a season, will the pests go AWAY? The spider mites have been out of control for YEARS now, closely followed by the stink bugs.

Well, it is depressing! Plus, I know that if I take a year off, the Bermuda Grass will take over everything again, and I will have to start over again FROM SCRATCH; It will be a weeding nightmare.

On the OTHER hand, the bugs die in the winter, so if I am going to take a season OFF, maybe it should be the buggy SPRING. Stupid Bugs!!!

Tiger Swallowtail

More Late Gladiolas

Late Gladiolas

My gladiolas didn't bloom this year because, well, I THOUGHT it had rained enough for them, but actually I needed to water them more. So instead of blooming they all just withered. But this week, after the thousand inches of rain we have gotten, a few of my gladiolas have sent up flower shoots! The rain made them top heavy and they were falling over, so I had to put them in this vase. IS IT NOT GORGEOUS???

The First Poppy

The first poppy of the season, blooming amid the winter pansies.

One of the things that I learned from the most famous blogger in the world, DOOCE, is : If you don’t have time or the brain ability to post, you can just post a photo. It makes it seem like you are posting, but really, you are not actually having to spend much time on it, or think much.

I need to remember this, as I take 1000x more photos than I could ever use, plus, lots of times I don’t have time/brains to post. You see, I usually post at night. If I have a busy day of gardening, writing, and cleaning and cooking and generally being a genius, I often have NOTHING left by 9 PM. Like I sometimes can’t even make a sentence, I am so tired.

I realize that all I am capable of writing is incoherent nonsense, so I don’t post. This ESPECIALLY happens when I have been writing PAYING writing jobs that I have to EXERT myself over; lately I have been having more of those than usual. I REALLY have no brains left after those!

(It also occurs to me that I can REPOST the paying articles here too! So that you can see that I am ACTUALLY writing MORE than usual, not less!)

So, without further ado, here are some PHOTOS!

Mollie asleep in our new chair, that we got at a garage sale for $12!! TWELVE DOLLARS!! CAN YOU EVEN BELIEVE IT?!?!?!?!?

Gladiolas

This hybrid for some reason reminds me of my Grandmother; it hybridized in my garden, I planted solid colors and over the years they have bred. This one, obviously a hybrid of pink and yellow

A pure yellow

Here are some photos of my miraculous Gladiolas. I planted 50 more gladiola bulbs last week, too. MOST bulbs can’t take the Texas summer here (exceptions being German Iris, Rain-Lilys, and Amaryllis) but I have had luck with Gladiolas even though they generally DON’T do well here.

Here is a white and red and a yellow that you can barely see, behind

I think my “luck” is that I planted them in the only deep soil in my yard (there is one little pocket- I imagine maybe it is where are outhouse was a hundred years ago, that would explain the DEPTH of the soil there when everywhere else it is one inch deep.)

So if you plant these, plant them in deep, good soil, if you have any. I should mention, these aren’t blooming NOW, these bloom in the early summer. I just planted the BULBS now.

This insanely showy one is another hybrid, this time between yellow and purple

Flowering Shrubs that Adore the Brutal Climate of Central Texas

PLUMBAGO! This plant is low to the ground, generally, usually a foot or two high only. Plumbago loves the heat the sun the drought the shade. Plumbago LOVES TEXAS!

Typically, one one’s BLOG one posts pictures of blooms that are happening in real time, so I want to stress that these are pictures from last summer. But the time to PLANT these blooming shrubs is coming up, so I thought as an assist to gardening readers I would post about them NOW.

Plumbago is available at every nursery in town all year round, because damn, does this plant ever like it here! You can literally plant it anytime, though it is best to wait until after the January freezes (it looks like we are going to get a freeze tonight, as a matter of fact.)

Pride of Barbados will TAKE OVER YOUR FLOWERBEDS if you let it, it propagates like crazy. All you have to do, though, is pull up any unwanted babies, they pull right out off the ground.

PRIDE OF BARBADOS grows to be 4 to 5 feet tall, but its branches are thin and its leaves tiny, so it doesn't shade other flowers out that are planted nearby

Both of these plants die back in a freeze, and grow out again from the roots in the spring, which is AWESOME because that way they kind of stay the same size from year to year once they get reasonably big. So you can still plant zinnias and poppies, etc, around them and get the full effect of many colors. Also the red and orange of the Pride of Barbados contrasts beautifully with the pale blue of the Plumbago.

Blooms

Fluffy Poppies

Kitchen Geranium

This is the geranium that hangs in my kitchen

I wanted to have a red geranium hanging in my kitchen this winter, because it is so Victorian, as is my house. I mean, my house is Victorian in AGE and ERA; it is a workingman’s simple shack however, and other than being made entirely out of ACTUAL BOARDS OF WOOD (rather than press-board) , I don’t think anyone looking at it would identify it as a “Victorian”.

But my kitchen ceiling has a stove- hole for the woodstove. It has a painted piece of tin nailed over the hole. The Geranium is a nice touch. (I think I should paint it.)

I have discovered that you can’t keep a Geranium happy inside, even in a sunny window (well maybe in a southern exposure window; my kitchen window faces East however.) What you have to do is have a Greenhouse and TWO geraniums. While one recovers in the greenhouse, the other can be in the kitchen, and you just switch them out every now and then.

Today is so warm and sunny, I am just going to hang the geranium outside. The predicted temperature today is 77˚!!! That is just WRONG! I refuse any temperature warmer than 70˚. It’s JANUARY for Crying out loud!

Winter Sunset

Winter Sunset over Central Market