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!

Happy National Wildflower Week!

I don't have much to add that hasn't already been said about the wisdom of using blooming native plants in your garden spaces.  To my mind, choosing wildflowers is its own reward.

Pink Evening Primrose and Winecup

Pink Evening Primrose seed pods

Purple Prairie Verbena and Pink Evening Primrose

The flowers make everybody happy, bees and birds and butterflies included.

Lemon Bee Balm

Native flowers push up and carry on through drought, and most of them laugh away deer.

Mexican Hat

There's one to survive in just about any microclimate you have on offer.

Yellow Coneflower 

Bluebonnets

Bluebonnet seed pods

As if that weren't enough, many natives either set easily gathered seed or multiply happily in place, creating an opportunity to share passalong plants with your family, friends and neighbors.

Hill Country Rain Lily

Rain Lily seed pods 

The next time you are considering adding a plant to your mix?  Do us all a favor.  Go wild!

Pokeweed

Happy National Wildflower Week everyone!  And Happy Mother's Day!  When you garden, it is no exaggeration to say you are mother to millions.  Here's hoping you will be feted and celebrated as you so richly deserve.

Scarcity and Desire

Growing up in Central Texas, I liked Pink Evening Primroses the best of all the spring flowers.  As a little girl, the masses of blossoms reminded me of the scene where Dorothy skips through a field of poppies in the movie, "The Wizard of Oz".

While most other people were waxing rapturous over the bluebonnets, it was the masses of pink flowers that I waited for with joyous anticipation.  Typically beginning their bloom phase later than the striking blue stalks of our state flower, the pink primrose patches lasted far longer, blooming well past the point when the oak pollen fell to negligible levels and I could venture out of doors again without concern for a supply of tissues for my nose.

After primroses, it was the appearance of Hill Country Rain Lilies I yearned for the most.  I was born during a historic draught.  As a young girl I picked up from the adults around me how desperately we needed precipitation.  It was no mystery why all but the most hardened hearts would quicken at the beautiful sight of tiny white flowers appearing alongside roads and fence rows in response to rain.  It was not only the beauty of the blooms that Texans welcomed, but also the life giving moisture that preceded them.

That was all forgotten however when I saw my first Winecup (Callirhoe involucrata).  Though I no longer remember exactly when or where it was I saw my first deep magenta bloom with the striking white center, I do know I fell immediately and deeply under its spell.

To this day I find them absolutely enchanting.  The shape, the color, the brevity of each flower's appearance.  I never get enough.

With my infatuation undiminished, it is a given that now I have my own outdoor spaces to manage, I've got a couple of winecup plants in our garden beds out back.  I had to move them from the front beds.  The deer like to eat them as much as I like looking at them.  Unfortunately, the only spots out back with enough sun and drainage in combination were already crowded. The winecups must fight for their place year to year.

But fight they do.  And perhaps it is precisely because of their relative scarcity that I still find myself  drawn time and time again to this particular scattering of blooms.

The Wine

by Sara Teasdale

I cannot die, who drank delight
 From the cup of the crescent moon,
And hungrily as men eat bread,
 Loved the scented nights of June.

The rest may die — but is there not
 Some shining strange escape for me
Who sought in Beauty the bright wine
 Of immortality?