April's Timetable - Texas in Bloom

By the time it is mid April in Texas, most questions surrounding Wildflowers:Will They or Won't They? have been answered for another year, and it is all over but the bluebonnet trampling, as folks scramble to take photos surrounded by all that heavenly blue.

Though the majority of my bluebonnets bloomed early, I have a few other native specimens that seem to be taking an opposite tack. These perennial procrastinators are still cruising along, content to remain on Bloom Watch status.

Case in point - Bauhinia, or Anacacho orchids are in full bloom around town, including on the University of Texas campus where several gorgeous specimens are providing beauty over by the Art buildings.  On the tree growing in our significantly more shaded setting however, the buds are just beginning to appear.

Orchid flowers on the way

Same goes for what I believe to be a small stand of Roughleaf dogwood (Cornus drummondii) also growing here in deep shade.  Unlike photos of specimens growing in more sunny open areas, our dogwoods sport eensy white flowers I find nearly impossible to capture in a photograph. Even showing you the buds proved tricky as April breezes seem to somehow be attached to, or, triggered by the presence of my camera.  Every time I pick the one up, the other picks up as well.

These dogwood multiply via suckers.  We are slowly getting a small thicket of them.

An onion that decided to sprout last summer morphed in a very few days from pantry staple to garden candidate.  After planting, the stalk hung around aimlessly for months but the payoff is finally on the horizon. When it comes to alliums I like their flowers in the garden almost as much as I enjoy eating the parts I routinely slice or saute for dinner.

Compost bin or garden bed?  Once onions sprout, they can swing either way.

Speaking of eating, several culinary sages I planted a couple of years ago to use in the kitchen (Salvia officinalis) sent up bloom stalks for the first time this year.  I had no idea these plants flowered and clipped a few stems to try and prolong the plant's usefulness as an herb.  Looking at the shape and color of the stem and blooms their kinship to other salvias is obvious.

I thought about sprinkling these on a salad but put them in my kitchen window instead.

Blogger Debra from Under the Pecan Leaves recently featured some wonderful shots of tiny white waxy flowers appearing on a more mature native persimmon tree she put in after beginning to grow persimmon seedlings.  Her post reminded me I'd noticed a persimmon here for the first time last season (Diospyros texana), surprised originally by the fruit and then by the attention lavished upon said fruit by a territorial mockingbird.

I checked for flowers now that I knew to look, and despite the lingering presence of maturing fruit on the tree, sure enough there they were.  Blink-and-you'll-miss-them small, yet packed with promise.

Besides blossoms, tiny galls indicate some symbiotic insect or organism has been busy working nearby.  It makes for some alarmingly tortuous looking leaves, but is nothing that will harm the tree long term.

I've heard galls compared to bug bites on humans.  Irritating but rarely significant. By the time you notice the bite, the culprit is long gone.  I'm choosing to interpret this activity as a positive reminder that growing native flora supports the life cycles of multiple interdependent fauna.

Native plant whisperer and garden blogger Tina, from My Gardener Says, generously shared several salvia lyrata plants after I went all fan girl crush on hers last year.  I'd been concerned to show their progress here previously, unsure I'd planted them in spots where they would flourish, but several bloom stalks later and I'm happy to be enjoying these blossoms in person at last.

With their deeply colored veining, I'm seeing lyreleaf sage as a great native substitute for what is an old Austin landscaping and garden standby, Ajuga.

The sage grows a bit taller, and with only a handful in play currently I'm not pulling out my ajuga plants just yet. I do hold high hopes for the salvia lyrata to seed out and produce a dense stand of sage to eventually be used in ajuga's stead.  Or maybe in combination?  I have a very hard time pulling out happy plants, even when they aren't native.

Finally, while you may be weary beyond measure of the constant stream of anole photos featured here, I should warn you I am only getting started.  I don't think I ever spotted an anole I didn't try to photograph.  They pose so adorably - resistance is futile.

 Happy Trails!

A season for surprises

I would never pretend to know the names of most of the plants growing here. My inability to recall which plant is what extends even to perennials I've personally planted here over the past several decades.  In my defense, there are a lot of plant possibilities to consider for the varying microclimates that can occur on even a mid-sized suburban plot, especially as you get a little further away from the center of town.  In these hills just south and west of Austin, there exists every planting and growing situation you can imagine.

Coming into the game a blank slate, as I began to try gardening here I had a very steep learning curve.  Figuring out what might work versus what was out of the question required a methodical approach.  I used nothing of the sort, wandering through each nursery and big box store willy-nilly, drawn to whatever looked best that day.  I read every identification and "requirements" tag and once purchased, completely ignored most of them.

If something was pretty I got one.  Sometimes more than one.  I bought a lot of plants that died.  A whole lot.  Was it any wonder I needed to forget?  Time passed and I grew more philosophical about my losses.  A few plant names I'd somehow always known and eventually I learned a few more. It got to the point where I could remember what to call Verbena without having to scrape too hard.

Some plants, small trees especially, have always been here and I either mis-identified them (you are shocked - I know!) or I simply never took the time to learn their name.  These little roughleaf dogwoods out back were persistently referred to for years as "you know, those bushes out back that aren't altheas".

So it was no surprise really, or at least it should not have been, when my daughter mentioned she thought the fruit on the small tree in front of where she parks is really pretty this year.  "Fruit?" I asked.  "What fruit?  Fruit where? What small tree!?".  So she took me out to see.

She is right.  The fruit on this small tree IS really pretty this year.  More remarkably, this is the first time any of us ever noticed ANY fruit on this tree. I'd never really looked closely at it, not once. All this time I'd idly assumed it was just another yaupon growing up under the live oaks.

Not even close.  This is a slightly sun starved specimen of Diospyros texana, the Texas persimmon.  I never noticed any flowers on this little tree (Next year! Next year I'll pay attention!) but the fruit are hard to ignore.

Can you imagine I had this beauty right under my nose all this time and never noticed it before?  Me neither.

Perhaps I garden too much with my head down and focus kept narrowed.  Clearly I need to look up and around more often and pay better attention to more than just the task at hand.

Farewell to March

I grabbed a few shots out back this morning (apparently I will NOT stay inside though I pay an increasingly higher price for each foray out of doors this time of year).

Folks, we need rain.  Here in Central Texas the temperatures are warming up, and with the wind blowing, the soil (and everything growing in it) is drying out fairly rapidly. I'm optimistic April will bring us some of the gentle watering everything needs.  However, my optimism is based on hope rather than any recent real world experience.  So just in case, as a reminder of what it all looks like here at the end of March, before the Hot Dry Season begins in earnest: