Hot but not especially bothered

It took longer than expected this summer, but the temperatures have most definitely eased up into "hot enough for you?" range.  Faced with daily highs in the upper nineties and the occasional foray into triple digits, even established plants begin to look tired, especially those planted in full sun.  It is too late to prune, too early to plant and too hot to weed.  As a result, there's not a lot to post about this time of year.

Nothing much bothers with setting flowers in August under ordinary circumstances, and after our colder than usual winter, a lot of my usual late summer bloomers (most of them non-natives) are running several weeks late. The vast majority of my native plants have bloomed and set seed and are now content to coast and reserve their energies for cooler days to come.  The view outside is set for the season and at the risk of sounding like a piker, things in the garden just now are fairly boring.  That is what makes these exceptions so notable.

Garlic chives have taken advantage of their propagation dominance and are overrunning their bounds.  But.  They bloom in the heat of August, and though the cut stalks smell (and taste) like garlic?  The flowers at least look sweet, a bit like miniature lilies.

Another bed bully that at least partially redeems itself this time of year is mint.  I harvest a bit of it to use for tea, salads, and sauces, but mostly I appreciate how it holds up in the heat, blooming when little else will.  Bees seem to enjoy the tripartite spears and I can only imagine what a lovely top note that might give the resulting honey.  The white blooms in combination with the bluish green of the leaves and stems are as refreshing to the eyes as they are to the palate.

Then there are the annuals, typically much more well mannered. Specifically, the basils.  I cook with them some, but I plant a smattering of these in the garden each year just as much for their contrasting foliage, late summer blooms, and seeds.  Finches love basil and I enjoy watching the tiny birds hanging on to nodding stems as they work to harvest seed.  This year I planted purple,

Thai basil,

and the usual sweet green Basil.

I didn't spot the crab spider hiding behind the white blooms until after I enlarged the photo for editing. These little guys have fewer potential lairs this time of year so I'm happy he found a good spot. Did you know basil blossoms are as delicious as the leaves?  They are not only beautiful looking but quite tasty sprinkled into salads or arrayed atop sliced tomatoes for a more floral version of a Caprese salad.  Just be sure to shake the spiders out, first.

Last but certainly not least is a native workhorse, Prairie verbena (Glandularia bipinnatifida) which is apparently a distant relative to teak trees.  These purple blooms are central Texas garden standbys, persistently offering a bright splash of color to their surroundings from March through at least October, and occasionally blooming through until our first frost.  It is my tendency to take these little troopers a bit for granted because they are so reliable.  In mid to late August however they prove they are stars in their own right, as they shake off heat and drought in a beautiful way, inviting late Summer skippers into the garden.  Here, a verbena offering what I'm pretty sure is a Erynnis funeralis a midafternoon meal.

I haven't always done a great job of planning for year 'round beauty in my garden beds, but late August, even with its blaring afternoon heat and searing breezes, still holds plenty of rewards for any soul brave (or crazy) enough to venture out.  That suits me just fine. I grew up here and enjoy mad dogging it outside in the summertime no matter how toasty it gets.  Now, if I could only get a handle on my January and February views!

An experiment begins

I wrote not too long ago that I wanted to transplant several bed hogs that were taking more than their fair share of the sunny beds in the fenced back yard. One of the hoggiest of them all?  The garlic chives.

Nobody ought to ever have to buy more than one pot of garlic chives.  Even if you wanted an entire lot filled with them (which would certainly be striking in August when they set blooms) you could have that based upon divisions from one four inch pot in the space of just a few seasons.

Garlic chive clumps are easy to divide, every flower stalk sets a head full of seed with a high germination rate, and they don't seem particularly fussy about their growing conditions.

I plan to put that to the ultimate test.

I had a gap in a front bed, in plain and constant line of sight from the front door, and it has been bugging me for months.  I had a planter there before which I moved once summertime arrived because it was blocking the sprinkler for that bed.  Summer is not a great time to start a new plant anywhere, so I figured I would let the gap ride a while, knowing the perfect plant to fill in that spot would come to me.

But like I said - this gap was part of my front porch view, and guys, I like that view.  I view that view, dozens of times a day through the glass in our door and often, once the temperatures ease a bit, I find that view conducive to sitting with a glass of iced tea or chilled white wine, as I contemplate the goodness of life.  So that gap nagged at me.  It wanted me to fill it sooner rather than later, but with what?

Oho! Garlic chives! Of course!  A nice clump of strappy bright green leaves with the occasional spires of white blooms thrown up overhead in the heat of August, when little else is in bloom.

So I grabbed my favorite shovel, now dubbed "the wire killer" by The Hub after a few nasty run-ins with sprinkler wires, dug out a clump of garlic chives that were absolutely superfluous, and moved them out front.  Gap, meet your filler!

Then I had what just might turn out to be a slightly genius idea.  I'm always impressed with symbiotic plant combinations where one plant offers some benefit to the other.  Nature often does that effortlessly and I find that when I copy what Nature is up to, I often get great results.

MUNCHED

I took two or three of the outlier plants of my garlic chive clump and carefully placed them in among a patch of rain lilies that are routinely browsed down to stumps by our neighbor-herd deer.  My hopes are that the bulbs will coexist peacefully, and once the deer chomp down on tangy garlic chives mixed in with the delicious (to them) rain lilies, that they will find it distasteful.

The "ultimate test" nature of this pairing comes into play because it is August, and this particular corner of the mailbox planter does not get one drop of supplemental water.  Ever.  The rain lilies and opuntia established there survive because they are natives, and do just fine with whatever the Texas weather hands them.  In fact there is very little other than rocks and sandy soil under those lilies.  The stonework for the retaining wall is cracked, and when it rains, the water flows right through that corner and down the drive.

CHIVIFIED

I mixed in a some soil with the chives to hopefully hold a little more moisture while they get started.  I'll hand water the transplants until it looks like they are either going to make it or prove my idea to be just another misplaced gesture.  Fingers crossed the plants in combination will prove to be just the deer proofing needed.  I have a few singleton lilies here and there that I plan to pair with garlic chive plants when the Grand Transplantation Implementation happens later this year in cooler weather.  A garlic chive a day to keep Bambi away?  Here's hoping!

Phew!

We've been struggling with water issues lately.  The development we live in has assigned watering days and our duly designated day had notably featured such low water pressure that our sprinkler system was not functioning well, if at all.

This is not new to our area and there are folks here who simply let their lawns go unwatered in the summertime, resulting in a predictably sere look.  After we'd taken our grassy lawn out however, we'd gone to the trouble to fill the spaces with natives and close neighbors that would hopefully support a variety of bugs, birds and other critters.  So we weren't really OK with the idea of watching it all die off, even seasonally.

And yes, the natives do tolerate the heat and low water pretty well but there aren't many of them that tolerate heat and NO water, which is what the end of July through mid August had on offer.

Until last night that is.  Last night we got a little over an inch of rain at long last.  Every square foot of our property was well watered for the first time in weeks.  It reminded me of how difficult it is and always has been to farm or ranch or even garden in Central Texas, if rain is all you have to count on for watering.  Maybe it's just me but I honestly thought I heard our Meyer lemons giggling quietly this morning, giddy with relief.

A final note, apropos of nothing else?

This is why I keep garlic chives (Allium tuberosum) in several spots in my garden beds.  Not because they tolerate the heat (though they do), not because I use them in cooking (which I don't often enough), but rather because they do this on occasion:

Something about the abundance of delicate white blossoms leaves me a little weak in the knees.  I'm guessing I'll try to have some of these on hand anywhere I garden from here on out.