Weekend roundup

[caption id="attachment_264" align="alignnone" width="625"] Kiki[/caption]

Perhaps you'd like to buy a flower?
But I could never sell.
If you would like to borrow
Until the daffodil
Unties her yellow bonnet
Beneath the village door,
Until the bees, from clover rows
Their hock and sherry draw,
Why, I will lend until just then,
But not an hour more!

--Emily Dickinson, To Buy a Flower

What we did: My better half toiled, yet again, on the front courtyard garden. It'll be ready by Superbowl Sunday. Pictures to follow.

I started clearing up the front garden bed, where this amazing vine grows in splendour:

[caption id="attachment_252" align="alignnone" width="563"] The majestic Bignonia capreolata, Crossvine (N)[/caption]

Meet Bignonia capreolata, also known as the Crossvine. A native plant for this region, left to us by the predecessors of this house (they left us quite a few lovely native plants to enjoy). While turning over the soil in this front garden bed in preparation for seed sowing, I discovered a little daughter of the mother, and couldn't pass up the chance to welcome her into what we hope will be a haven for all manner of native insects and bees, butterflies, and of course, a haven for us human folk as well. I found what should be a comfy spot for our - ha - little Bignonia. She'll take full sun or part sun, any sort of soil although she prefers a neutral ph. Once established, she's drought tolerant. She loves a wooden fence to grow on. Hummingbirds and bees love her. She's perfection. And here she is, in her little new home:



Take another look, go on:

[caption id="attachment_254" align="alignnone" width="625"] Little Bignonia Capreolata, in her new digs.[/caption]

To give you a better sense of perspective, she's in the sort of South-East-ish corner of the back garden, by the gate that leads to the magical meadow and the bayou (a post on that magical place will come soon).

[caption id="attachment_255" align="alignnone" width="625"] Home, sweet, home.[/caption]

Sweet journeying, little Bignonia. Also, Oxalis violacea has made a few sweet appearances around the garden, in front and back:

[caption id="attachment_256" align="alignnone" width="625"] Oxalis Violacea[/caption]

Last weekend, I planted fava beans, since I was itching to do something with our rather woeful looking raised beds:

[caption id="attachment_257" align="alignnone" width="500"] Oh, woe is me.[/caption]

Very little has happened this winter. I hear that it's been far less sunny than other gardeners remember in previous years. It has also been much cooler. Two exceptions to our rather dormant set of plants here are the lettuces and rocket in the back, and the green onions in the front. Oh - the green onions are rather a cheat on my part. They're from the grocery store, and sat in our fridge before I decided to stick them in the ground and see what they'd do. So far, they're doing beautifully! Behold:

[caption id="attachment_258" align="alignnone" width="500"] Grocery green onions.[/caption]

This little 4x4 patch makes me smile. These lettuces and arugula have survived multiple hard freezes, with a bit of help from us:



Can you see this and not smile? Or this:

[caption id="attachment_261" align="alignnone" width="625"] Smiling lettuces.[/caption]

There, you're smiling back at them now, aren't you? Funny, how lettuces can do that.

So, anyway, I planted these fava beans into some of the empty spaces of the square foot garden. But I had a couple of left over seeds that I had stashed in a pot, and decided to put those into the ground today.

[caption id="attachment_262" align="alignnone" width="625"] Holding all the promise of the universe. Two fava beans with a dear little worm. Three's company, too.[/caption]

These mighty creatures are nitrogen fixers, and don't need staking, to boot! So, do cross your fingers and send a little prayer their way, that they'll flourish. Here's their little place:

[caption id="attachment_263" align="alignnone" width="625"] Peace out.[/caption]

See you in Arcadia!

 

Dreaming and doodling on paper

O killing north wind, cease!
Come, south wind, that awakenest love!
Blow through my garden,
And let its odours flow,
And the Beloved shall feed among the flowers.

-- St. John of the Cross

[caption id="attachment_245" align="alignnone" width="625"] Perennial dreams[/caption]

A first spring in a first home; a first garden plan for the front. Consisting of natives: sunflowers, sago, turks' cap, prairie clover, coreposis, rudbeckias, crossvine, coneflower, and other butterfly and bee-loving plants, hardy in Houston: rue, amaranth, bachelors' buttons.

Now you see it...

[caption id="attachment_235" align="alignnone" width="563"] The better half toils[/caption]

Now, you don't!

[caption id="attachment_238" align="alignnone" width="563"] Space![/caption]

I was for keeping the wooden trellis, but it was rotting at the base. The wood is stored in the garage, waiting for another purpose, another life. We've been filling in the space that the stones took up with soil dug out from the front courtyard garden. Digging those stones was no easy feat, as my tired self clearly and rather compromisingly shows:

[caption id="attachment_241" align="alignnone" width="563"] Stopping to rest, every two seconds.[/caption]

Making a compost bin

[caption id="attachment_201" align="alignnone" width="563"] Garden mascot, garden gnome.[/caption]

My better half made a composter today. Squee!

We have three trees in the tiny little patch of earth on this planet we call home: a native bald cypress and two live oaks - one in the front, and one at back. These trees provide an amazing quantity of leaves throughout the year, which we are hoping to help find their way back into the ground. Composting will help this along.

[caption id="attachment_202" align="alignnone" width="563"] A magnificent resource to be blessed with: leaves![/caption]

What Nature takes a long while to do, we could possibly speed up just a little bit, seeing as we're not going to be here as long as She.

[caption id="attachment_203" align="alignnone" width="563"] Food, glorious food![/caption]

There are a thousand and one ways to make compost bins, and this is what we came up with. First, we picked a spot - a large, shady, corner of the garden, bordered by fences and by one side of the garage. Although it's rather tucked away, I love the let-it-be and wait-and-see quality of this space. With just a little nudge here and there, this could become a rather magical spot in the future. This is also only one of two places in the garden that I've seen earthworms. Having dappled shade and privacy also makes this a great spot for a compost pile.



Better half hammered down four metal garden stakes, three feet tall, into the earth.



We also placed three additional stakes for stability on three sides. Using a roll of sturdy wire fencing, also three feet high, we attached the fencing to the stakes very simply with small bits of wire, thusly:





And, in next to no time, the thing was done!

[caption id="attachment_209" align="alignnone" width="563"] Awaiting compost scraps and leaves![/caption]

We filled her up straight away.





By all accounts, we'll need to find a way to chop the leaves up in order to speed up the process. For now, this bin and a pitchfork will give us a great start.

I'd like to leave you with a song by Tom Paxton, the great American folksinger. Not quite a complete cycle as composting, but with the same Spirit of creativity and harmony with the world. Enjoy, and see you in Arcadia!

[audio mp3="http://coahuilagarden.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/08-The-Mountain-May-Be-Higher.mp3"][/audio]

 

Rosemary in retrospect

We gather plants as we've gathered others in our lives, animate and inanimate - cats, second hand dishes, repurposed glass jars, clothes, kitchen rags. Sometimes we seek out our plants, and sometimes the plants end up on our doorstep, plants that have been forsaken or orphaned, or are awaiting a fate that does not have space for their care. This post is about the former; orphaned plants in our home can form a post all on its own!

After the lemongrass, the second plant to go into the ground, from being a migrant just as we were, in pots, migrating with us, pots and roots and all, is one of two Rosemary plants. Her origins: I snipped cuttings out of her mother plant, a healthy bush I saw in a hotel garden parking lot in Atlanta, GA, in the summer of 2007. I placed several of the cuttings in a paper cup filled with water, snapped on the plastic lid, stuck the lot of it in my handbag, and drove back with it and my other half, to New York City. And there, at home in our tiny little apartment, we did our best to root the cuttings. Several died, but one or two took.

[caption id="attachment_188" align="alignnone" width="500"] The tiny Rosemary, with a much larger Meenbo.[/caption]

Something out of nothing - a brand new, independent plant from its mother. It wasn't at all easy, loving plants as much as we do (and did), trying to keep them alive through all seasons, in front of just four windows that received only so much sunlight throughout the year. But we tracked that sunlight for our plants' sakes, as surely as our beloved felines tracked it for their enjoyment.



We moved the plants and their roots in their pots around, following the path of the sun. And, despite the harsh winters and the dry interiors and the ever-present threat of spider mites, most of our plants held on, survived, and some even thrived. So, placing Rosemary into the ground a few days ago was a momentous occasion. In 2011, she looked like this:

[caption id="attachment_190" align="alignnone" width="500"] Rosemary, Summer of 2011, on the window sill with lemon pickle curing, in NYC.[/caption]

And, before she went into the earth here at the Coahuila garden in Houston, she looked very stately, indeed:

[caption id="attachment_191" align="alignnone" width="500"] Rosemary, 2013 November.[/caption]

Ah, a cat is never far away from our garden.

[caption id="attachment_196" align="alignnone" width="500"] Kiki and the Rosemary[/caption]

From what we read, Rosemary likes a well-draining, sandy-ish soil, and flowers throughout the winter and into spring here. We'd like to place as many useful plants in the front garden as we can get away with, so the hope is that she shall be the first of many.

In the ground, she suddenly looked so small, and somewhat vulnerable:



But she's been doing well, despite the freezing temperatures we've had recently. Rosemary, the second of our migrating plants to find her permanent home.



See you in Arcadia!

First harvest and November blooms

Mel Bartholomew, in his Square-Foot Gardening book, advises his readers to thin out seedlings before they grow too big. It makes perfect sense. However, I felt more than a twinge of guilt at the prospect. True, nothing in the plant world goes to waste: Mother Nature is incredibly efficient, amongst all her other superb qualities. Still, it seemed an illogical waste to me.

So, I hadn't been looking forward to thinning out the seedlings, until I discovered (rather brilliantly, I might add) that rather than letting the seedlings just return to the earth, I could eat them! share them with my better half! So, I set about snipping. It took a while. But it was worth it. Who knew that one, single, tiny sprout could provide such flavour and texture?

[caption id="attachment_155" align="alignnone" width="625"] Microgreens of cauliflower, swiss chard, beets, cilantro, dill, lettuce, and more.[/caption]

Nearly the size of microgreens. I ended up placing them in fresh salad rolls - the best way to have a salad: wrapped up in a little water-soaked skin and doused in some peanut sauce. And with all of that came an enormous sense of gratitude - that something so small could sustain beings so much larger, and clumsier, and non-photosynthesising as we are. Well, the garden is tended, the seedlings are small, but growing, and so we wait. And while we wait, here's what's blooming - or is about to bloom - in the back garden, in early November. Do click on the little pictures to yield larger ones:[gallery link="file" ids="171,169,168,167,165,164,160,159,157,110,112,161"]

We've been slow at getting the front sheltered garden going. There's a lot of hauling involved. But, it's coming along - this weekend will see to some work there.

Seedling roundup

The rain let up, both of us fixed to garden today, the sun was shining, and we had ourselves a few precious hours outside, working and pottering (he would say that he worked, while I pottered. Which wouldn't be exactly untrue...)

On Sunday it will be 2 weeks into our Winter Garden. Most of all the seeds sowed have sprung up, with the exception of some older seed stock I used with parsley and marigolds. Never mind - the extra space can be used to transfer some seedlings. Here's how things look, two weeks on:

[gallery link="file" ids="96,95,94,92,91,90,89,93,88"]

Marvellous.

We also started to attend to some small gardening jobs we've been meaning to do for some time. For instance, we gave our lemongrass plant a permanent home in the ground, like so:

[caption id="attachment_83" align="alignnone" width="625"] Lemongrass, by the corner of the breezeway and garage.[/caption]

And, we were finally able to return to working on the very first garden project we wanted to tackle after moving here - the front entryway garden.

We removed all of the Asparagus meyeri from the courtyard, and placed all plants in the front - for now. I'm a bit disheartened to know that this plant is considered invasive in some places. But they are rather beautiful plants, and for now, grace the shadier front garden bed. Before - and after:[gallery columns="2" ids="84,85"]

And I placed a Man From The East here, on some humble bricks, but He's an easy going fellow, so I know He'll be happy there. Thanks to my sister for leaving Ganesha behind.

[caption id="attachment_86" align="alignnone" width="625"] The Man from the East, bestowing all that's good.[/caption]

We'll be working on the entryway garden tomorrow and Sunday; more pictures to follow. I'd like to leave you with this lovely sight. Our parijata plant, Nyctanthes arbor-tristis, always flowers around this time of year, and has flourished mightily after moving down to Texas with us. This second bud emerged today:

[caption id="attachment_82" align="alignnone" width="625"] Nyctanthes arbor-tristis, with its coral-stemmed flower whose scent is so mysteriously spicy and honey-sweet.[/caption]

Sweet dreams to our beautiful, plant-filled world.