Zanthan Gardens
Weblog of a Central Austin Garden

Before I met the Austin Garden Bloggers I didn’t have any gardening friends. For years my gardening has been a solitary pursuit. The only person I knew who shared my passion was AJM’s mom, and she lives in England. AJM admires the garden and will pitch in with big projects like cutting up tree limbs but in his spare time he’d rather be training for triathlons or programming or cooking.

The community I found among garden bloggers has been very encouraging. Kathy Purdy of Cold Climate Gardening and bill of prairie point were among the first people to leave comments on my blog and we’ve maintained a dialog across our blogs for years. Last week (as most of you already know), I had the privilege finally to meet Kathy in the flesh, reconnect with some of the other Austin Garden Bloggers and meet the latest addition to our informal club. Maybe coming down off all the excitement of last week’s socializing contributed in part to the grumpiness in my previous post. Annie of the Transplantable Rose, intuitive that she is, might have sensed it because she volunteered to help me out in the garden yesterday.

I’ve never had anyone garden with me before. I’m hoping Annie, who brought her garden fork, wasn’t too disappointed when I relegated her to the position of under-gardener. I was just so pleased to have someone to talk to while I was working that I would have been happy she done nothing but sit in a chair and keep me company. Instead she handed me tools and buckets as I gingerly made my way through the stump garden trying not to step on any plants and teased bulbs out of holes filled with rock, clay as hard as adobe, and tree roots. And she wrote down the harvesting stats. After four hours, we had dug up only two clumps of about 150 bulbs (60 of which were too tiny to flower). This is not particularly faster or slower than I work alone; however, it was a lot more fun.

You might reckon that we were easily distracted by:
1. conversation
2. my difficulty in keeping on task
3. my temporarily losing the map which shows where each clump is planted
4. my inability to finish a thought without interrupting myself with five other thoughts
5. a break for cake and coffee

And you’d be right on all counts.

PS. Annie, thanks for the chocolate cookies. They were yummy.

I don’t really think of myself as a gardener, not in the sense of designing with plants or creating beautiful garden spaces. I just like to putter around outside, especially if it means digging in the dirt. I’m turned on by turning compost. I like growing plants from seeds and collecting seeds from plants. Most of all I like harvesting crops from the earth, like potatoes, or flower bulbs. My most extensive collection of bulbs is my oxblood lily, Rhodophiala bifida, collection. Someone called it my signature flower. I like that.

In 1995, I dug up 64 bulbs in my front lawn, 28 of which were flowering size and the rest which were very small and took several years to flower. Today, as near as I can make out, I have over 1400 bulbs in about 64 different clumps. The growth is, well, exponential. And that was great when I had only 100, then 200, then 400. But this year I’ve reached the breaking point. Not only do I not have enough room in the garden to plant them, I don’t have the time to dig the holes, to divide them, count them, catalog them, and find people to take them. (Calling Austin bloggers. Also, Steve and Bill. Will they grow up in North Texas?)

Clump 2002e-13 was in serious need of dividing. From 13 bulbs to 128 bulbs in five years: almost a 10-fold increase.

I read somewhere that oxblood lilies don’t need dividing. Although it is true they will continue to live for years with complete neglect, the bulbs will get smaller and smaller crowding each other out and eventually the flowers will decrease. That’s one reason I take counts and keep records– to track when I planted each clump and how big the bulbs were and how many flowers each produced and the habits of the plants (multi-stems, seeds, more offsets than flowers). This year I lost track. I don’t like not knowing. It makes me feel uneasy and not in control. I even had four clumps left over from last year I never got replanted. That’s bad management! This year I’m going to have to be brutal. In the past, I saved every sliver of a bulb and put it in the nursery where it might take four or five years to reach flowering size. Today, into the compost pile. (Oh! that hurt!) I must focus my attention only on the clumps that need dividing most desperately.

Where to begin? Instead of anticipating my inventory and looking forward to dividing my bulbs and multiplying my holdings, I just stare at the faded flower stalks with a heavy heart. The task at hand seems overwhelming. I attribute my garden grumpiness to the weather. We’ve gone from an unusually cool and rainy summer to an unusually hot and dry fall. Temperatures are still in the 90s and we haven’t had a good rain for three weeks. It’s hot out there and I’m not having any fun tackling fall gardening tasks. I admit that I was completely spoiled by our great summer. But this is October and I get cranky when the grass dries up in the heat and none of the self-sowers have sprouted and the pecans are filled with webworms and the caterpillars are attacking the roses and I haven’t finished turning the compost pile or weeding the meadow. I don’t have time to deal with any of it because I have all these bulbs to divide. Yep, I’m cranky and tired of the heat and wanting a little breath of crisp northern air to liven me and the garden up.

Does this mean I threw in the trowel? Indeed it does not. We gardeners are made of sterner stuff. We press on. Bad moods pass and when the weather turns so will my mood.

Last week I was alarmed when all the tadpoles disappeared from the pond what seemed like overnight. This happened about the same time the water suddenly cleared and I wondered if a chemical imbalance had occurred and killed off the tadpoles. Would dead tadpoles float to the top of the pond or sink to the bottom? Was it possible that the tadpoles had morphed into toads and hopped out of the pond? Maybe some of them, but they were all of different sizes so it seemed, to me, unlikely that they all turned tail at once.

This morning while watering the squash and beans I noticed a little movement in the dark mulch. Cricket? No smaller. I got down on my hands and knees and there were several teeny, tiny toads. (At least I assume they’re toads.) Are these my little tadpoles all grown up? If so, what a proud nursemaid am I!

People often tell me that I’m observant and keep good records. I feel that it’s just the opposite. I never seem to catch the significant details. And I always end up with more questions than answers.

Once a year (although never at the same time of year in my garden), the Sago palm sends up new fronds.

Sago palms are VERY slow growing plants. As such, they are rather expensive.

I started out with a very small plant about ten years ago.

Sago palms are not true palms, but cycads–a very primitive type of plant which has survived a lot. We need survivors here in central Texas. Their deep green fronds give them a very tropical appearance but, in fact, these native of Japan do not like to be overwatered or have wet feet. I’ve found mine to be extremely drought-tolerant. However, if they are in full Texas sun and the temperatures are in the high 90s or 100s, the fronds tend to get sunburned. Mine is planted where it gets some afternoon shade.

Sago palms are often used as potted plants. They can stand temperatures as low as 20F degrees (some people say 15F) which means that they have no problem surviving outside in the ground during most Austin winters.

Commenting on the September Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day post, Yolanda Elizabet of Bliss said, “I’ve noticed that a little bit of rain makes all the difference in Austin, TX.” How right she is! Maybe some of you, especially those of you suffering from drought this year, are tired of hearing me exult in Austin’s rain this summer. Longtime readers of Zanthan Gardens might remember that a year ago, when Austin was in the middle of a devastating drought I posted a video of what was left of my garden. My garden was fried. Half my roses died. The fall rains had not come. Even my oxblood lilies were holding out for better times.

I look at that video now and want to cry all over again. I can’t believe I was able to go on, to walk back out in the garden and keep weeding and watering and tending and hoping.

Then in March 2007 it began raining and continued raining for the following six months. Austin’s lakes are overflowing. In the first six months of the year we had almost doubled the amount of rain we normally get. The 100 degree day was a rarity in the summer of 2007. This was the best summer in my memory of 30 summers spent in Austin.

Several people have encouraged me to make another video to show the rejuvenation of the garden and here it is. Pictures from September 2006 are followed by the same shot in September 2007. In both years the photos were taken in the second week of September.

Some notes. (Sorry no audio.)
1) I have not watered my lawn this year, nor do I feed it any commercial fertilizers. I give it coffee grounds from Starbucks and fill in any patchy places with Texas Native hardwood mulch.
2) I probably spent less than $50 on new plants in 2007. I bought 100 daffodil bulbs, a 4-inch pot of Lindheimer senna, a 4-inch rudbeckia, 3 4-inch pots of Mexican wire grass, a packet of orange cosmos, two packets of sunflowers and sweet peas, and 4 4-inch pots of summer vegetables. Since May my garden has been torn up in the construction of the failed garden house and so I’ve had neither time nor money to invest in new plants. I hope to do my main planting this fall which is the best time in to plant in Austin anyway. Thus, the growth you see is mostly from plants that survived the 2006 drought.
3) Not all plants liked the rain. Half the lavender died out and most of the bearded iris rotted away. I garden on the side of Austin that is over rich black clay. Xeriscape plants generally require very good drainage. Even without actual rain, many Mediterranean plants dislike Austin’s high humidity: they will wilt, mildew, and succumb to rot and bugs.
4) I need to do some serious weeding and pruning now, don’t I?

What will 2008 bring? The forecast for the last week of September in Austin’s predict that highs will remain in the low 90s and there will be no rain. For us that’s a typical beginning of fall.

I planted a packet of orange cosmos, Cosmos sulphureus, early last summer and the seeds sprouted and grew during our very rainy June. When I returned from vacation in July, the meadow was populated with lots of cheerful orange flowers growing on plants with a branching habit about three feet (1m) tall and wide. Those plants are just now starting to look a bit ragged.

In their place Super Cosmos has sprung up. These are orange cosmos on an incredibly thick stalk. The first one shot up to almost 6 feet before flowering. I had to stake it, as it was leaning precariously. I thought this was just a freak but all the orange cosmos coming up now are following the same pattern.

All these cosmos were planted at the same time from the same seed packet in the same location. I have not fed them anything. (Most wildflowers thrive on poor soils; feed them and you’ll get a lot of green and few flowers.) I have not given them supplemental water, as we’ve had so much rain this year. And yet they look like different plants. Were there different varieties in the seed packet? Did the early sprouting type have a different habit. Are they responding to the different amounts of rain we received at different times over the summer? Or did the ones that sprout earlier grow differently because of the time of year they were growing? I read once that cosmos grow best after the summer equinox. Certainly the plants that sprouted before the equinox behaved quite differently than these that sprouted after.

This is the first year I’ve grown orange cosmos. (Pam/Digging assures me it won’t be the last as they are prolific self-sowers.) So I have no basis for comparison. How do your orange cosmos grow? Short and wide? Or tall and straight?

Carol at May Dreams Gardens invites us to tell her what’s blooming in our gardens on the 15th of each month.

2007

April and September are the two big months for bloom in my Austin garden. In September, hurricane rains alternating with cold fronts blowing down the plains states bring the garden back to life after summer, beginning with the oxblood lilies. If you missed the oxblood lily day here at Zanthan Gardens, look at yesterday’s post.

This year we’ve had so much rain that the garden has been in high gear since March. The vines have been especially happy.

The coral vine has covered the fence and climbed over twenty feet into my neighbor’s cedar elm.

Most of the four o’clocks died back in the heat of summer but the hot pink one is fighting it out with the cypress vine to see which is the most aggressive.

That honor goes to Podranea ricasoliana variously called the pink trumpet vine, Port St Johns Creeper, and desert willow vine, the latter because the flower looks similar to a the desert willow. This south African native is on the banned list in Australia. I think it should be in Texas, too. I see one flower about to open. I might have to wait until late afternoon to see if it will qualify for Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day this September.

The rose ‘Prosperity’ looks almost ivory in the early morning autumn sunlight. This flower is barely an inch and a half (4cm) across. In the spring the flowers have more blush pink tones. I find that roses often have more intense colors in the spring when the highs are in the 60s and 70s than in the fall when they are in the 90s. She’s the only rose which got can dieback last year that I managed to save. She used to half a dozen arching canes and now is down to one scraggly one. But she’s been blooming for the last couple of weeks so I hope she’s making a comeback.

I’m disappointed that ‘Heritage’ isn’t blooming today; she looked so lovely at the beginning of the month. Most of the other roses are flowering or trying to.

The garlic chives are still attracting wasps, bees, and moths. The orange cosmos are beckoning to the butterflies. As is the Duranta erecta.

Nerium oleander ‘Shari D.’ in full bloom.

• Abelia grandiflora
• Allium tuberosum
• Antigonon leptopus
• Asclepias curassavica
• asparagus fern
• Canna–unknown red from seed
• chili pequin–very few flowers but covered in fruit
• Cosmos sulphureus
• Dolichos lablab
• Duranta erecta
• Hibiscus syriacus
• Ipomoea quamoclit (cypress vine)
• Lagerstroemia indica–both the watermelon pink and the ‘Catawba’
• Lantana ‘New Gold’
• Lindheimer senna
• Malvaviscus arboreus
• Mirabilis jalapa pink
• Oenothera speciosa (pink evening primrose)
• Oxalis drummondii
• Oxalis triangularis
• Nerium oleander ‘Turner’s Shari D.’ — full, gorgeous bloom
• Plumbago auriculata
• Podranea ricasoliana
• Rhaphiolepis indica–Indian hawthorn
• rose ‘Blush Noisette–smothered by the cypress vine
• rose ‘Ducher’
• rose ‘New Dawn’
• rose ‘Red Cascade’
• Rudbeckia hirta — fading
• Ruellia (Mexican petunia)–dependable this time of year
• Salvia farinacea–most rotted out this summer; one little sprout has a wan flower
• Salvia leucantha (Mexican bush sage)–everyone in Austin has huge gorgeous displays; I have one sickly one trying to escape the clutches of the cypress vine
• Tradescantia pallida/Setcreasia (purple heart)
• Tulbaghia violacea (society garlic) Thanks, Pam!
• widow’s tears
• Zephyranthes grandiflora

Early Morning Updates

One flower on the Podranea ricasoliana DID open!

One rainlily (Zephyranthes grandiflora) opened. Despite all the rain this year, 2007 has not been a good year for rainlilies at Zanthan Gardens. Either they need to dry out between rains or they are still suffering from last year’s drought.

Most surprising of all is that the Indian hawthorn is blooming.

Indian hawthorn is a spring blooming plant. I have never seen it bloom in the fall in my garden or anywhere else. Have you?

I didn’t get much firewood out of last week’s tree-trimming project only a pile a intensely ammonia-scented ground up chinaberry which am using on the paths and to cover the bare spots in the woods. Unlike the Christmas tree mulch which makes my yard smell like the Christmas for a month into the new year, chinaberry mulch makes the yard smell like the alley behind a bar. It started rotting almost immediately and the mold spores that fly up when I shovel it–yikes! I find it wise to use a face mask. I hope the face mask helps because I’m pretty sure this is the kind of mold which put me in the hospital with pneumonia 5 years ago.

Well today I was distracted from my set task of painting the front bedroom by the sound of chainsaws in my neighbor’s yard across the street. She is having her pecans trimmed. And I lucked out with a nice pile of pecan for the lugging home. Yes, it was as heavy as it looks. I don’t think I need to go to the gym and lift weights today. But it’s a good thing I do sometimes, or I would never be able to take advantage of the opportunities to glean. I can’t stand any waste. I come from thrifty stock.

Despite the sweat and toil, I do lift my head at times to look at the garden. Last week’s oxblood lilies have faded but as I suspected, they were just a preview of the main attraction. Yesterday’s inch of rain has set off the second wave. I’m going to have to devote at least one day to inventory. And then you friends of Zanthan Gardens, it will be time to glean from my garden.

2007-09-12. A second wave of oxblood lilies shooting up as the old ones fade.

As for gleaning, I think I’ve recommended the documentary The Gleaners and I. It’s about both rural and urban gleaning in France where Napoleonic law protects the rights of gleaners and enables them to pick through the orchards and fields after the main harvest. It is a little slow in spots but conceptually fascinating.

Dateline: 2007
All of you non-Austinites are probably tired of oxblood lily photos but they came on strong in Week 36 this year, thanks to rains the preceding weekend. We do love our signature flower, even though it’s not a native Texan. I’ll post a photo of the meadow instead. It rarely looks this nice in the fall.

Despite our very mild and wet summer this year, the signs of fall sends the blood quickening in the veins of us southerners–just like spring for you northerners. I still shudder thinking about that horrible year 2000, the hottest week on record. On September 5, 2000 we hit the highest temperature ever recorded in Austin, 112F degrees (44.4C). We broke records for five days starting 9/1 (107), 9/2 (107), 9/3 (108), 9/4 (110) and 9/5 (112). What kind of autumn weather is that! So you can see why I’ve been so happy with 2007. This has been the best summer I’ve ever lived through in Austin. Weatherwise.

I even had two new flowers open this week: the diminuitive Oxalis drummondii, and the Salvia leucantha (Mexican bush sage). The latter is hidden under a huge mat of cypress vine. I almost didn’t see it. It needs to be relocated to the new sunny back yard. Almost every rose had at least a flower or two. And for the first time since I’ve lived here (14 years) the pecan tree is heavy with pecans. Usually the squirrels eat them green in August. I guess they’re getting enough food and water not to resort to that this year. About five persimmons have survived and are starting to turn orange. I’ve covered them with net because last year something ate them before I could. I was devastated. I also have quite a few bluebonnets which survived the summer. They often sprout when the seeds drop in May but those early starters usually die in the summer heat.

I’ve been buying seeds for the fall garden. I planted squash and bush beans and sunflowers–which I should have planted in August. It always seems too hot then. These are all new to my fall garden so I don’t know how they’ll do this late. I bought varieties with short maturation time. Our first freeze usually isn’t until Thanksgiving. I find in interesting that both Angelina (Oregon) and Carol (Indiana) have said that they’re packing in their vegetable gardens for the year. In Austin, this is a good time to start fall crops like broccoli, cabbages, snowpeas, and lettuce. I want to try some chard. Even if we don’t eat it, it’s so beautiful.

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Saturday (9/8) scores of oxblood lilies were in full bloom in the stump garden and along the south border. Last April when we started this project, I envisioned having the Austin Garden Bloggers over for an oxblood lily fest, us sitting in the garden house, sipping wine and nibbling dainties as the garden talk flowed.

At the very least, I would like to have a langorous Alicia Paulson weekend, where I could soak up the end-of-summer vibe in beautiful surroundings with congenial companions.

Instead, my lot in life seems to be to spend the rest of my days in the throes of one construction project or another. Will I ever live in a house that doesn’t look like a construction zone? I think not.

AJM spent Saturday unscrewing the panels off the back roof while I carted loads of chipped bark from last week’s tree-trimming from the driveway to the back yard. Slipping the panels off the roof was a bit unwieldy but not too difficult for the two of us. It felt good to be getting on with it after spending a month mulling over what we should do. The more we uncover, the more we discover. So we have to take garden house apart somewhat to figure out how to put it back together.

Someday, someday, though, I am going to sit back an enjoy my garden. Until I see a bed that needs weeding. Or some plants drooping from the heat and crying out for water. Or the compost pile which needs turning. Or leaves that need to be skimmed off the pond. Or some seeds I bought last month that should be started in the vegetable garden. Or that plant that Pam (Annie, Julie) gave me that I haven’t transplanted yet. Or those roses that should be pruned back. Or those tomatoes that should be tied up. Or that interesting wolf spider I saw that should be photographed and blogged.

No, really. Someday I’m going to sit back and enjoy it all.

I’m painting the front bedroom and bathroom in anticipation of Margaret’s visit in late October and this is what I found behind the CD cabinets. I think it is a wolf spider. Maybe it’s one reason we’ve hardly had any cockroaches this year. After some shrieking, I captured it and released it in the mini-woodland.