Zanthan Gardens
Week by Week in the Garden: Week 22: 5/28 – 6/3

June 3rd, 2011
Week 22: 5/28 – 6/3

2011-05-31. 2011 Texas Drought.

Dateline: 2011

According to the National Weather Service, “The warm spring from March to May was the 10th driest ever at Camp Mabry and the warmest since 1854.” Worse than the heat, the drought is now exceptional. Most of May felt like August. We did get one lovely heavy rain two weeks ago but my rain barrels are already empty and the pond is quickly evaporating.

Speaking of the pond, Monday (5/30) AJM noticed a heron stalking around. The fish are in hiding. Or eaten. We can’t tell yet how many fish have been taken. We didn’t see any for a few days. Then a couple peeked out. We’ve put the netting up again until they have a chance to recover and the pond water clears up again. When critters chase the fish, they stir up the water and the pond gets all mucky.

First flowers: Asclepias curassavica (6/1); water lily ‘Helvola” (6/1).

Dateline: 2010

2010-05-29. Tomato harvest begins. Farbo Goldheart, Arkansas Traveller, and Jaune Flamme. (Notice the searing sunlight.)

Time as an element in the garden is never so apparent as when I’m away. Garden time feels like the antithesis of the military’s “Hurry up and wait.” In the garden, it’s “Wait. Wait. Wait. Bam!”

I’ve been waiting for two years for my first raspberries to ripen and for the globe artichoke to bloom. Both events happened while I was away for a week. The birds enjoyed the raspberries. Without water the artichoke heads drooped and snapped their stems. If a watched tomato never ripens, the unwatched ones quickly become juicy and ready to fall off the vine. The tomato plants are almost to the top of the tomato palace but only the ‘Arkansas Traveller’ is still flowering.

May is usually one of Austin’s rainiest months but the rain has mostly deserted us in 2010. Luckily, we received more than an inch the weekend before we left and I hurriedly mulched everything I could so the garden survived pretty well on its own. I lost only a couple of small plants in 4-inch pots that I’d just bought. We are entrenched in first summer; high temperatures are consistently in the mid-90s.

I was surprised to see a few bluebonnets still blooming. Lots of larkspur is left but seeds of both have dropped ruining my seed selection for this year. One crape myrtle ‘Catawba’ is in bud; the other has powdery mildew. All the roses except ‘Red Cascade’ have stopped blooming. The water lilies have started blooming. My dependable LA lily flowered and faded in my absence. Some ‘New Gold’ lantana that I never expected to see again is blooming. The vitex, which I cut back severely after January’s freeze is blooming better than ever. The Sago palm has sent up a huge spray of new fronds. The oleander, plumbago, and duranta are all still struggling back from their roots and have yet to flower. The banana plants are leafing out. (I still have some in a bag that I need to replant.) A few Shirley poppies still have flowers, all of them white. The flowers dominating this week are Rudbeckia hirta, Hibiscus syriacus, retama (Jerusalem thorn), and Hesperaloe parviflora.

Dateline: 2008

2008-06-03. Searing hot Cosmos sulphureus mirrors the weather.

I stepped off the plane at 2PM Sunday (6/1) to 100F degree heat and wondered what in the world I was doing in Austin, Texas. I’d spent the Tuesday before I left watering heavily and bringing all the potted plants inside or under the shade of the patio. In just four days the garden had gone from green lush summer to dry crispy summer. Ready to be pulled out: summer squash, sweet peas, nasturtiums, strawberries, and Swiss chard. All the bluebonnet seedlings that sprouted after the last rain have died; there will be no oversummering bluebonnets this year. However, the lilies are still flowering.

One plant is going gangbusters in this heat, the oleander. I don’t ever think I’ve seen it look so full and loaded with flowers. It’s worth a post of its own.

Austin is sweltering under August-like temperatures, 10F degrees above normal for June. The asterisks indicate record breakers this week.
95 (5/28); 94 (5/29); 96 (5/30); 99 (5/31); 100* (6/1); 101* (6/2); 100* (6/3).

First flower: Nasturtium (6/2). One small flower opened just before all the plants died. The ‘Bangkok Yellow’ canna in the pond are flowering, too, but the ones in the ground beat them for first flower this year.

Dateline: 2007

2007-06-02. Canna ‘Bangkok Yellow’. All the tropical plants are hitting their stride. They’ve been wondering where summer was. Well, this week it’s arrived.
Heavy. This week the air weighed down on us, smothering humid air. The perfumes of summer flower are thickly sweet–the magnolia, the four o’clocks, the datura. And the trees have put on so much growth this spring that the green. seemed heavy. As the days heated up, the moisture steamed up from the soaked lawns, mosquitos swarming in the mulch. Jungle days. Blackspot and mildew days.

Austin really has two summers. This first summer is a true southern one, green and sultry–dragonfly days and lightning bug nights. These are screened porch sitting, hammock swinging, iced tea swigging, ice cream licking, watermelon seed spitting days. I could embrace our southern summer. It’s the other summer I don’t like–the southwestern summer. Scorching 100 degree days. Brown, dry, and dead. Maybe we won’t have one this year.

This week began and ended with heavy rains. Memorial Day (5/31) rain started at 3AM and grew heavy about 6AM washing out AJM’s triathlon. We learned that the pond will hold water. Sunday night (6/3), just as we decided to break down and turn the air conditioner on for the first time this year, a cold front blew in, followed an hour later by huge thunderstorm. The water didn’t have a chance to soak in despite my various terraces and berms. I really lament this wasted water and long for the day when we will have a rainwater collection system.

First flower: canna ‘Bangkok Yellow’ (5/28); Vitex agnus-castus (5/29); ruellia (5/31).

Dateline: 2006

2006-05-29. In early summer, the plants in Austin are still green. I like the way the scalloped leaves of the turks cap form a hedge that looks like layers of ruffles.

This has been an altogether pleasant week, cloudy most days and then some real rain on Wednesday and Thursday. We didn’t get as much as other parts of town, unfortunately, but Thursday was blessedly cooler with highs only about 82. Back to 92 today.

The oleander and crape myrtle are doing most of the blooming. The desert willow has a sprinkling of flowers, finally, and they complement the crape myrtle just as I hoped. The magnolia produced one more flower (this one opened) and the coral bean vine is flowering again. So is Tecoma stans. In stark contrast to previous years, only one black-eyed Susan (bearing two flowers) is blooming. The lawns really appreciated the rain (I’m so niggardly with my water). They look green and lush–and will until the sun comes out.

Dateline: 2005

Memorial Day weekend was accompanied by the usual thunderstorms. After a spell of record-breaking highs (97, 97, 94), the rain was welcome.

2005-05-30. Black-eyed Susans manage to look cheerful, even after being beaten down by heavy rains.

If it weren’t for the self-sown black-eyed Susan, the garden would be reduced to a bland jungle green punctuated by webworms. Every year the garden receives more and more shade; the flowers and the vegetable plot are struggling. And I’m struggling to maintain any interest in the garden. Summer looms threateningly; it’s the southern gardener’s winter.

But not quite yet…Some little glads I replanted are blooming nicely this week. As is the mystery rose “Caldwell Pink”. She really is happy only in the heat. The spring flowers have all gone to seed. Their brown and sodden remains make me feel guilty for not braving the mosquitoes to get the garden cleaned up. I’m amazed that the clump of bearded iris, ‘Cloud Ballet’, is still blooming!

I’ve seen a lot of fireflies this summer. Some years we don’t see them in our yard, even though they’re thick in the creeks.

Dateline: 2004

Record breaking high: 100F degrees (5/31).

Dateline: 2003

Record breaking high: 101F degrees (5/30).
First flower: canna ‘Bangkok Yellow (5/28).

Dateline: 2002

On years when the temperatures remain in the low 90s and we get rain, June can be a very colorful month in Austin. Summer flowering shrubs (crape myrtle, Rose of Sharon, yellow bells, oleander, and chaste tree) kick into high gear. Zinnias, gomphrena, pentas, and sunflowers brighten garden beds all over town.

Crape Myrtle June 6, 2002 Austin Texas zone 8
Last week’s inch of rain brought out the rainlilies and even my lawn looked presentable for a week or so.

It’s not unusual for recently self-sown bluebonnets to sprout after a heavy June rain. Unless you pamper the seedlings with water, or it’s an unusually cool and wet summer, these bluebonnets will die during the worst of summer. I have managed to keep some growing through the summer. They won’t flower until next Spring, though. Even if these early sprouts die, there will be plenty more after the September rains because the seed skins of bluebonnets have different thicknesses so that they don’t all germinate at the same time.

First flower: Datura (5/29).

Dateline: 1998

Record breaking high: 99F (6/1); 98F (6/2).
First flower: Lilium LA hybrid ‘Spirit’ (5/28); Hemerocallis ‘Gentle Shepherd’ (5/29); .

Dateline: 1997

Saturday May 31, 1997
More bad weather last night, but the front has blown through leaving a beautiful clear cool day.

AJM saws up the fallen branches from Tuesday’s storm. I turn the mulch pile and add the false dayflowers. Then I clean out the entire northwest corner and plant some of the ‘Velvet Queen’ sunflowers.

The black-eyed Susans are at their height, tumbling all over the west border. The cosmos and the larkspur hang on. But the poppies are finished. And the sweetpeas look ragged and past their prime. I just want to dig up everything.

The Rose of Sharon is in full bloom. All around town the retama (Parkinsonia aculeata) is laden with yellow flowers. I’ve never seen so many–it must be because of all the extra rain.

First flower: Platycodon, balloon flower (5/31).

Dateline: 1995

This is Memorial Day Flood week. We’ve had thunderstorms and flash flood conditions all week. Tuesday morning it rained from 2:30 to 4:30 AM; we received almost three inches. In the next 24 hours our cumulative total had climbed to five inches.

Wednesday afternoon was sunny. I transplanted five black-eyed Susans which were two to three inches high. But by Wednesday night at 10:PM it began pouring again. We lost electricity twice. This morning is again cool and sunny. I like these sunny day and rainy nights.

In many places around the county, the ground is saturated–the water is standing in fields or running off, eroding inclines and swelling creeks. When JQS and I walk by Blunn Creek on Monday after the first storm, the wooden bridge over the creek had been washed off its mooring.

First flower: Malvaviscus arboreus (5/28).

by M Sinclair Stevens