Anticipating Autumn

Though the calendar reads "September" and we've enjoyed a welcome sampler of rainy spells interspersed with some cooler mornings, it is not yet reliably Autumn per se in the Austin area.  We are stuck for a few more weeks in what is more accurately described as protracted Summer.

Early signs of Autumn abound, but those have been well described and beautifully displayed in posts on multiple other (excellent) local garden blogs.

Schoolhouse and pink rain lilies popping up cheerfully in response to long awaited September rains?  Yup. Those have already been blogged about. Several times.

Turk's cap in bloom? Posted elsewhere. Beautyberry bushes and Pidgeonberry eponymously decked out?  Duly noted and reported on other sites.

Inland Sea Oat seed heads shown to their best backlit advantage?  Uh huh, saw that already. Datura blooms?  Photographed in daylight as well as in the moon's golden glow.  Garlic chives?  With and without bees. Lindheimer's senna? Various salvias and Leadwort plumbago?  All shown in flower and exquisitely documented elsewhere.

The usual suspects have definitely already gotten their fair share of the attention.

I wanted to post, but didn't see where I'd gain traction posting more (and not necessarily better) photographs of the plants already listed alongside various lame versions of "what she said".  My frustration mounted. Had I missed Autumn's boat? Was this territory too familiar, too well trod?  Had those other (better organized) bloggers covered alpha all the way to omega?  Couldn't I find one single as-yet unsung wonder left out there waiting its turn in the spotlight?

I groused, I deleted, I muttered. I was about to give up when, scrolling through my most recent photos, I saw both the plants and the light. There were a few also-rans out there not yet covered. Team captains had chosen their favorites first, but there were definitely other players remaining. So here they are, in no particular order, "latter but not least" additions, my own nominees to the lineup of late summer/early autumn stars designate for Central Texas in September.

To kick things off, a native, Texas Kidneywood (Eysenhardtia texana), which is currently flaunting a scent so pronounced it demands attention.

And attention it gets.  The flower spikes open a few at a time, advancing in numbers day by day until the entire tree becomes a fully loaded, heavily scented pollinator magnet.  Gray Hairstreak (Strymon melinus) butterflies favor it, nectaring alongside honeybees,

all sorts of native bees, bee mimics,

and even wasps.  Like this blue-winged Scolia dubia. They all spend hours darting in and out amongst the flowers, drinking their fill.

Scolia dubia- female blue winged digger wasp.

All that traffic drew even more attention, including that of the local anole population (Anolis carolinensis).

Using their coloration disguise to full advantage, they are lurking in proximity to branch ends in numbers, hoping to snap up a delicious meal all their own from amongst the winged visitors.

In fact, anoles can be seen everywhere these days including this little lip smacker perched on a flower spike of H. Duelberg salvia.

The delicate pink blossoms of Coral Vine, (Antigonon leptopus) are visited all day by pollinators of every stripe....

followed by even more anoles.  Dinner's on!

Non-native but well adapted and widely appreciated south of I-10, Firebush (Hamelia patens) comes back from the roots and kicks into high gear during our very hottest weather.  As the arrival of summer's heat was delayed, it got off to a slow start this year.  Unlike many other plants that went leggy with a vengeance, this seasonal beauty has only grown to half its usual spread and height.

I don't mind a bit.  I like it small or tall, and look forward to when glowing embers at branch ends are lighting up the bed it graces.  Hummingbirds love this plant though you'll have to take my word for that.  The delayed timing this year must be wreaking havoc with their usual feeding habits.

Beleaguered but persistent Fall Obedient plant is finally attempting blooms. Physotegia virginiana likes things wet, but the weeks of heat with no rain that followed spring's bounty took their toll.  This is a tough native however, and good year or bad, I know these will always come back for more.

This little patch of Virginia dayflower, (Commelina virginica) is blooming for a few hours daily, but it is new for me in this spot and I haven't watched it long enough to know if the current show will be reliable year to year.

Like the Firebush, October showstopper Giant Cosmos (Cosmos sulphureous), while only half its usual six foot size this year, is budding out.

Just beginning to appear, Goldeneye (Viguiera dentata) flower heads are small but expanding daily.

There you have it -  my add-ons to the pantheon of reliable late summer to early autumn bloomers in the central Texas area.  Taken in total they provide heat weary Texans with assurance weather is on the way better aligned with the calendar's insistence.

This year has certainly been one for the record books.  What about your garden spaces?  Seeing any surprises in your late summer garden after all our weird weather this year?  I'm sure there are wonderful plants I've overlooked or simply don't enjoy success with here. Lycoris radiata have been reported in bloom a few miles from me, but mine have yet to show.  Are you noticing other emerging changes?  Feel free to list them in the comments section.

Let's keep building the list!

Expectations

Climate is what you expect, while weather is what you actually get.  (Thanks to David C. of It's A Dry Heat for that succinct axiom).  

I'd put in multiple passalong plants, spread seed, and planted any number of four inch beauties-to-be during the last weeks of September following on the heels of a four inch soaking rain.  I put in a few more four inch plants and spread more seed the first week of October, expecting ongoing cooler temperatures and gentle rains to serve as my staunch allies in getting them established.  

Why pin so many hopes (and a significant cash outlay) on an October start? Conventional wisdom holds that in Texas at least, it is always best to get all plantings, even natives, well established before the return of summer's Death Star.  We all "know" that October is when the Death Star finally exits, stage right.  

So it follows that plants started in October have the best shot to get growing before any threat of freezing weather occurs. More importantly, they also have the best chance to get roots established before the sun, heat, and dry winds of summer return.  "October starts for happy plants" is a lesson reinforced through years of experience here, and aside from "use natives!" most of my gardening success relies heavily upon the truth of that timing.

This year unfortunately once October rolled around, the weather systems in play weren't quite finished applying the Hot/Dry treatment to the Central Texas area.  With multiple days featuring highs in the 90's along with drying winds and zero precipitation, seedlings and transplants alike were suffering. And I was suffering right along with them.

The options?  Run our supplemental watering system once per week as allotted under the current restrictions keeping my fingers crossed not too many plants would die.  The alternative was to hand water everything, knowing it was the most reliable way to support those new-to-here plants until we saw a return to "normal":cooler wetter weather.

Successful gardening requires the gardener to do a few unpleasant things.  I accept that, but I don't go gracefully.  I griped, I whined, I growled and grumbled.  This hot dry weather was not good for my plant babies. This hot dry weather was not what I signed up for when I turned the calendar page to October.  This hot dry weather was the epitome of everything that was wrong about trying to do anything beautiful in this part of the country.  How, I asked anyone in earshot, could I possibly be expected to work under these conditions?!?  This is October for pete's sake.  October is when the weather is supposed to work WITH us.

Because unfortunately, the areas where I'd put in new plants and spread seeds, were all over the place.  Front yard, back yard, along the edges and smack in the middle of existing beds. Areas including the deer path we are trying to fill in, which has a several inch layer of Slip'NSlide like, not-going-anywhere, live oak leaves on a slope.  A slope I had to carefully traverse while on one leg of the trip at least, carrying two large (heavy!) filled to the brim watering cans.  

And traverse I did.  Back.  And forth.  Standing smacking at mosquitoes while the watering cans filled s-l-o-w-l-y from the nearly emptied rain barrels. Glowering at the sun.  Muttering at the forecast.  

Then today dawned wet and cloudy.  It rained.  It cooled off again. Considerably. And... it continues to rain with colorful rain blobs the predominant feature for our weather map, assuring more to come.  

I am truly sorry for the thousands of music festival fans who will be dealing with a very soggy second Saturday of ACL.  But for the gardeners in our area? This is precisely what needed to happen and not a moment too soon.  A rainy cool day in October?  

This is precisely what I was expecting.

Before and After (s)

While I was growing up we openly acknowledged my Mom had a pretty substantial magazine habit.  She allowed herself a couple of subscriptions to tide her over, but most of the magazines at our house were the ones she bought herself as a "little extra treat" during her weekly trips to the grocery store.

My mother read her magazines like she read the daily newspaper.  Cover to cover. After her first read through she would go back and work any word puzzles and take any tests proffered.  She never tore them apart - that would have offended her deep respect for the printed word.

Having grown up during the Depression, my Mom was a saver by nature.  There was no paper recycling those days which meant rather than toss out something she'd paid for, she held on to most of her magazines indefinitely.  On the surface of it her rationale for keeping them was quite utilitarian.

Naturally she never knew when something she'd read in a magazine might come in handy.  Some periodicals had recipes she wanted to try, others had decorating ideas she might eventually want to implement.  She wouldn't be able to tell in advance when she'd want to put hands on a particular article, so she needed to keep them all.  Just in case.

Eventually, when the cast offs had drifted to the far back of our overstuffed magazine holder, I would casually, carefully slide a targeted magazine out to take to my room to read in private.  There was no real need for subterfuge - these were all mainstream women's magazines and they were benign as the day is long.  My stealth was a self imposed discipline because that's the kind of quirky kid I was.

Once I got the magazine to my room I'd close my door, hop up on my bed and impatiently page past the vast majority of the articles.  I ignored recipes and household tips alike. What I was after, what completely captured my imagination, was any article featuring a makeover.  More specifically I was searching for "Before and After" shots.

I would pore over the photographs for long stretches, examining them carefully, looking for the discernible differences large and small.  This was decades before Photoshop so aside from lighting, cropping and altering poses, it was much harder to fool the eye with after effects or tricks.  Most of the makeovers - women's haircuts, make-up, redone rooms, pieces of furniture - whatever the subject of the renovation might be - represented more a study in why this was not just different, but better than that.

Fast forward four decades and I'm still a sucker for the "Before and After" format.  One of the few regrets I have in doing my own gardening and landscaping is when I forget and don't get a "before" shot.  There's nothing I like better after my work is done than to critically review whatever changes I made, deciding whether they are merely different, or actually represent an improvement.  (I'm typically fine with either but the distinction still fascinates me.).

Here's a for instance.

Along our hilly curbside hell zone, the border between our mixed plantings and the neighbor's turf lawn spends most of the hottest months as a visual "oh so you think you're some sort of a gardener?" rebuke.  The overgrowth reminds me ten months of the year that so far the score is Bermuda Grass 99 : Gardener 1.  No wonder I typically head the other direction as I leave the driveway.  Going that way is uphill in every sense of the word.

But.  Every year once the temperatures dip into whatever passes for "workable" I dig out the area and remove every bit of Bermuda root I can find.  This limits what I can plant here, because candidates not only have to tolerate the strangling effect of the grass but also the disruptive effects of my digging it all out prior to replanting.

Here is what is looks like most of the year.  "Before", in spades.

I cheated - this is only a "sorta before".  This is actually after I'd pulled a lot of the longest grass runners off the top.

Unfortunate, I know.  I try not to let this area make me feel bad about myself.  But take a second look at how this corner appears "After" my Sisyphean Bermuda removal efforts.

Not everybody's ideal but better, yeah?

Ahhhh.  It's a nice view while it lasts.  

One of the handful of plantings that survives the extreme heat and occasional shut down of the sprinkler system over here is not a native or even a near neighbor, but an adaptive plant I bought one four inch pot of as an experiment many years ago.

These little pointers are Dyckia, a genus of the Bromeliad family.  One of the more ancient forms, these originally hail from South America where they reportedly form mats even at high altitudes.

I'm not aware of the species name.  If the pots at the nursery were marked I failed to make a note.  (I do that all the time thinking I'll remember after I get things in the ground and I so do NOT and always kick myself after.) I think they might be Dyckia choristaminae because they stay very small.  Granted, these dyckia are not particularly showy specimens.  They stay under six inches and don't display variegated color or send out bloom stalks either one.

In fact if you aren't looking for them they really don't catch your eye.  What they do and keep doing to win my respect however, is they stubbornly slowly multiply, no matter their situation.  They repel deer, endure heat, drought, cold, and stiff competition. Additionally and more important for this area, they survive my pulling them out by the roots annually.  Dyckia I salute thee!  Maybe not a native, but Texas tough to be sure.

Now, indulge me a moment for one other Before and After just to prove a little point.  This before and after photo set includes a shout-out not only to my Hub (love you sweetie!) but also to Kat, author of the ever delightful Hill Country Mysteries.  Happiest 17th anniversary to you and Denny, Kat!  He's a lucky guy.

Both Kat and my Hub warned me in no uncertain terms the deer would take my decision to un-pot and transplant a root bound flame leaf sumac from the fenced back into the beds out front as an open invitation to browse.

According to local experts I might as well hang a "Come and Get It" sign on this one.

So, just to demonstrate that I can and do (on occasion) listen to what I'm told?  Ta daaaa.  Fencing.  Of a sort.  It is the best I could manage with materials on hand to if not deer proof the little tree, at least offer the discouraging word.  

Keep it moving, keep it moving.  Nothing to see eat here, Bambi.

Browsing aside, I have significant doubts this sumac will survive the transplantation process, especially if we have a hard winter as predicted.  However, if it survives and gets well established in this spot, then even the occasional chomp back by deer ought not prevent it from being a bit of a show-off in its own right.  The red display this tree could offer every Autumn will be a distracting visual treat to pleasantly distract me while I'm up at that corner pulling Bermuda grass out.  Again.

That's an "After" shot worth waiting for.

Accentuate the positives

After a few months under the influence of heat and drought I often fall into bad habits.  One of my worst is a tendency to focus on what isn't happening in my garden.

Like, when my oxblood lilies seemed to be the last kids in their class to bloom.

Today I am working on turning over a new leaf.  I am determined to spend more of my time concentrating on what is happening in my garden that I'm happy about.

I have some basil plants that overwintered in the greenhouse in a large plastic planter that I let go to seed.  I love basil, I love finches, and it turns out finches love basil seeds.  So after I gathered some seed to keep for the next planting cycle I left the pot set out close to our dedicated bird feeder.

It didn't take long before this guy showed up and started working the basil plants over pretty thoroughly.  I didn't want to disturb him so I kept my distance (which is another way of saying sorry these photos are not the clearest) but I had a great half hour watching him enjoy our shared bounty.

As do many central Texans I have a sort of hell strip along the street.  We took out all our lawn and put in all sorts of natives and near neighbors, mostly xeric specimens but this area bakes all summer long in the afternoon sun.  There is bermuda in the lawn next door and between the heat and the deer and the overrun I don't have a lot of luck with intricate garden composition in this span along the curb.  Rather than offering garden design it is a lot more like a leafy version of that reality show "Survivor".  Minus TV cameras, attractive host, or cash prizes.

By the end of the summer most of it looks like this:

You can kind of tell somebody tried to do something along here (if you squint and are in a gracious mood) but it is pretty clear that whatever the original plan was, the Bermuda grass ran away with the meeting and simply did its own thing.

Now after cooler weather and a bit of rain I determined it was time to get these areas back under control (at least temporarily).  It took hours of work and a trip or two to the nursery for supplies, but most of it now looks like this:

I'd always wanted to try out some mealy blue sage in one of the last areas to get full sun so I picked up two (on sale!) and placed them in front of a firecracker plant and cedar stump.   The firecracker plant is struggling (fist to sky:Bambi!), but made it through its first summer so trowels crossed the winter won't be harsh and mess with it too much.  By next year it I'm optimistic it will reliably pump out hummingbird attracting red blooms like a larger more established one further down the curb that has survived two mild winters so far.

Under the gravel I've scattered three different varieties of bluebonnet and corn poppy seed. With a lot of luck and a little rain, there will be all sorts of color and visual interest for the passersby before summertime's anarchy of heat kicks back in. And even if the seed don't germinate, the red firecracker blooms against the blue sage ought to be striking together.  But there I go getting ahead of myself.

As of today I'm appreciating the sage's blue blooms that are gorgeous all on their own.  And the fact that as of noon today a good three quarters of my hell strip looks a lot more like paradise.



 

Hope Springs Autumnal

Here at the agrodolce we've had a soaking rain for the second time in as many weeks.  In combination with (slightly) cooler temperatures, it has been heartening to see a lot of heat and drought stressed plants lifting their heads and putting on an end of the season show of what they can do when given a chance.

Mostly I'd been watching for a seasonal straggler that hadn't yet shown - the oxblood lily.  I only have a couple of these, and as I've read other bloggers talking about theirs in bloom I've been stewing, wondering where my blooms were, worrying they'd been accidentally unearthed without my noticing or worse - had been fatally attacked by some underground pest.

Today I spent hours out working my curbside beds, pulling back overgrown ground covers, weeding and prepping and putting out wildflower seeds.

Unfortunately around here, one of the few areas I have with full sun is alongside the street in a spot where I can't enjoy the view except for when I'm driving up to our house or simply, stubbornly, standing out in the street to see.   I work hard to get a good display going out there and really it is all for passersby or my across the street neighbors to enjoy.

I was sitting with a glass of water moodily wishing I had a sunny spot closer to the house, staring at the bed in front of me, when I finally noticed.

There she was right in front of me.  The oxblood lily was in bloom and by golly if I didn't nearly miss it.

Talk about ungrateful.  There it is doing its beauty in the field thing right by the front door and there I was barely four feet away not even paying attention.

Some of the most poetic portions of scripture address the idea of people having ears who don't hear and having eyes who don't see.   I'm sure grateful I quit stewing about what I was missing in time to see what I had.

Happy Second Day of Autumn!

Sure, sure.  Most people would indeed be wishing you a happy first day of Autumn.

Do we really want to waste time quibbling about whether it is more important to celebrate a first than a second day? All while cooler morning air evaporates into another stark reminder that Autumn in Central Texas is more a suggestion than seasonal change?

I thought not.

There will certainly be no shortage of internet foliage shots available if borrowed imagery is your deal.

And yet?  I find the color we get around these parts, the show that begins after a couple of welcomed rains in combination with cooled overnight air, though mostly of the Last Gasp Flowering variety? It is soothing and inspiring in its own way.

So if it is colored leaves you desire, please feel free to look elsewhere.  To follow is everything I've got to ease your summer weary eyes...

I listened, straining.

Shook my head

and listened once more.

It was then I heard her.

"I too, 

am Autumn's offering"

the Pomegranate was whispering

in my garden.

"Do I not embrace cooler mornings, 

eased afternoons,

respite from summer's braggadocio of heat?"

"I flower and fruit,

offering tribute to 

all that is,

has been,

or can be."

"You callously 

worship leaves

as they lose their life stream."

I heard her sigh.

"But I too,

I too am Autumn."

One Good Thing

deserves another...

Even though it is currently 95 degrees outside (wherefore art thou, Autumn?) we are slated for cool(er) temperatures and the real possibility of rain going into the weekend.

To my mind that sort of shift in the weather begs for the first batch of chili.  I like each pot of chili to hang around in the refrigerator at least overnight so the flavors have a chance to move past howdy-do all the way to being smitten with each other's company.

That means I'm getting a head start on Batch-The-First today.  Granted, my timing might be a leetle optimistic.  The forecast can change (just ask the DNC planners), my willpower might not hold past dinnertime tomorrow.  Modern life can be tricky.  Fortunately, chili is not.

How about you?  What is the first thing you think about making when it Fall hits your neck of the woods?

UPDATED Friday:  Folks I'm happy to report the cooler weather and rain arrived right on schedule.  Today I made a batch of our favorite cornbread and tonight?  Chili's on, y'all!