{"id":1631,"date":"2007-10-29T14:22:50","date_gmt":"2007-10-29T20:22:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/192.168.1.5\/gardens\/gardenlog\/?p=1631"},"modified":"2017-07-19T19:37:10","modified_gmt":"2017-07-20T00:37:10","slug":"week-43-1022-1028","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/weekly-comparison\/week-43-1022-1028\/","title":{"rendered":"Week 43: 10\/22 – 10\/28"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dateline: 2010<\/h4>\n


\nThe weather remains unseasonably hot, high 80s and into the 90s. Normal for this time of year is high 70s. It remains very dry. Anywhere I water, seeds sprout. Only the false dayflowers and the baby blue eyes put in much of an appearance. On the one hand this is good because I can get ahead of the self sown seeds and sow my saved seeds instead.<\/p>\n

The white boneset is in full bloom and the flowers attract bees and small butterflies so that the bush looks animated. The rose ‘Red Cascade’ finally put a cane over the fence (it prefers to creep on the ground) and is blooming just as I pictured it years ago.<\/p>\n

I’ve mowed back the ruellia and horseherb. I beginning to see the bones of the garden again and this makes me all excited about building new beds and planting.<\/p>\n

Dateline: 2007<\/h4>\n

I haven’t updated my Week by Week in the Garden<\/a> for almost six weeks primarily because nothing much has happened lately. The weather dried out by the second week of September and Austin has been left hot and dry. The blue skies have been great but the temperatures were above normal and the garden soon got a dusty, withered look; my allergies are acting up. The cedar elms have not yet turned color and dropped their leaves. The self-sown overwintering annuals haven’t sprouted. (This time last year I was digging up scores of bluebonnet seedlings to share with my neighborhood elementary school.) Finally Monday (10\/22) a cold front came through, a blessed rain fell, and autumn arrived in Central Texas. The high temperatures dropped from the mid-90s of the previous week to the mid-70s. I could barely refrain from dancing a little jig and must confess that once or twice I burst into song.<\/p>\n

This has been the perfect week to be working hard in the garden. Morning temperatures make me want to snuggle under a blanket but as soon as I’m out digging in the garden I feel great. Everything perked up with the rain and it is so much easier to prepare the beds for fall and turn the compost piles. AJM’s mother is visiting from England and almost every day we’ve visited some nursery where she always insists on buying me something. She’s bought me strawberry plants at Gardens<\/a>, a pomegranate at The Great Outdoors<\/a>, maiden grass at Barton Springs Nursery<\/a>, and pinks and wintergreen at The Natural Gardener<\/a>.<\/p>\n

AJM took off work on our anniversary and the three of us drove to Lost Maples<\/a>. Unfortunately, none of the trees had changed color but we were all excited to see some longhorn steer and a herd of bison on the drive out.
\n<\/p>\n

Dateline: 2006<\/h4>\n

\"Antigonon
2006-10-26. Fall colors are a bit different in the south…Antigonon leptopus (coral vine) and glossy abelia twine together in a natural bouquet.<\/i><\/p>\n

The week began quite chilly with lows in the 40s, but sunny, making Sunday (10\/22) perfect weather for Austin’s first ever Rolling Stones concert. AJM baked a pot roast in our new oven and I built a fire.<\/p>\n

As I write this (10\/25) a luxurious, drizzly rain has been falling all afternoon. This is the kind of rain Austin needs–a rain that will soak into our hard-as-rock clay and recharge the aquifer instead of running off the surface and causing massive flooding. The high today was 70F. Tomorrow it will be 87F and then another cold front should sweep in after heavy thunderstorms dropping temperatures back to 70F.<\/p>\n

More of the cosmos I planted in September have started flowering. The plants are only about 20 inches tall. The St. Augustine grass is starting to fill in but the lawn (if I can be so arrogant as to call it that) still has plenty of bare patches. The basil looks like its on steroids and the rosemary is flowering! It flowers only in the winter for me probably because it gets more sun this time of year.<\/p>\n

Overall the garden looks green right now with few flowers. The four o’clocks, the oleander, the coral vine (Antigonon leptopus) and the hyacinth bean vine are also flowering, but nothing showy. I still haven’t done anything in the garden this month; however, tomorrow I’ll try to dig up some bluebonnet seedlings that I’m donating to Becker Elementary School<\/a>.<\/p>\n

First flower: Aster ericoides (10\/23).<\/p>\n

Dateline: 2002<\/strong>
\nOctober 27, 2002
\nThis is the first day in ten that it isn’t raining. We’ve had more than 5 inches.<\/p>\n

Dateline: 1999<\/strong>
\nOctober 30, 1999
\nIt rains! Our first really good rain since July 20? It is a slow steady rain for several hours, from the time we leave for CM at 9AM to after lunch. We got over an inch of rain.<\/p>\n

Dateline: 1997<\/strong>
\nOctober 27, 1997
\nThe first real cold front. Yesterday the low was 69F and today the high was supposed to be 65F.<\/p>\n

Dateline: 1996<\/strong>
\nOctober 26, 1996
\nThe weather has been warm and heavy. Thunderstorms threaten. It drizzles on and off, but it never rains enough to do any good.<\/p>\n

Dateline: 1995<\/strong>
\nMonday October 23, 1995
\nWhen I went to bed last night with the windows open, I could feel the change in the weather blown in by a moist southeasterly wind. I can’t remember the last time I smelled moisture in the air. This morning wet, black clouds rolled low over the city. Very nice. In some places it drizzled. At lunch the wind change and cold weather blew in from the north.<\/p>\n

October 28, 1995
\nIt’s been twenty days since we’ve mowed. The weather has been so dry that the grass is dormant–half brown and half hay green.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"


2007-10-24. Lost Maples. No fall color yet in the trees here or at home. However, the colors of the grasses and sky epitomize the Central Texas autumn palette. It’s not all cactus in Texas.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[17],"tags":[45,295],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1631"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1631"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1631\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5523,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1631\/revisions\/5523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}