{"id":3547,"date":"2010-03-17T19:34:26","date_gmt":"2010-03-18T00:34:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/gardenlog\/?p=3547"},"modified":"2018-08-15T18:51:21","modified_gmt":"2018-08-15T23:51:21","slug":"week-11-wearing-the-green","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/weekly-comparison\/week-11-wearing-the-green\/","title":{"rendered":"Week 11: Wearing the Green"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nAlmost every tree began leafing out this week. For many gardeners, daffodils and crocuses speak the language of early Spring. Redbuds and bluebonnets shout out this is Spring in central Texas. For those of us who suffer through Austin’s hot, dry, dusty summers that blinding green of unfurling leaves leaves us a little breathless. Spring green. Nope it’s not all cacti and cattle drives down here.\n<\/p>\n

\nI’m never ready for the trees to leaf out in my yard. I can’t imagine life without them in July but in mid-March most of my annual are just sending up their flower stalks and the roses are budding. I want another month of sunlight. I want full sun all day at least until the nights stop dipping into the 30s.\n<\/p>\n

\"Austin
2010-03-17. I never manage to clean up all the leaf litter from the red oaks before they start leafing out again. In the lower right hand corner you can see the severe freeze damage to my sago palm.<\/i><\/p>\n

\nThe red oaks and the cedar elms compete for first. The smaller trees–fig, Japanese persimmon, pomegranate, loquat, and vitex–all are sprouting new growth. Laggards include the ginkgo, the crape myrtles, and the pecan. The Texas persimmon, which lost its leaves for the first time in 14 years, is leafing out. Only the live oaks are marching to a different tune. They are “evergreen” but turn a disturbing brown in Spring as their new leaves push out the old, like a child losing milk teeth.\n<\/p>\n

\nThe trees aren’t the only ones wearing the green. Root-hardy perennials are finally proving that they survived January 2010’s hard freeze. Fresh little shoots appear at the base of the duranta, Mexican mint marigold, zexmenia, crocosmia, and gladiolus. Only the bulbine remains silent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"Austin
2010-03-17. The cedar elms are leafing out well before the larkspur or bluebonnets are in full bloom. Spiderwort and irises are in flower as well as some minor bulbs. The pecan tree is the last to leaf out and the larkspur self sow around it.<\/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":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3547"}],"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=3547"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3547\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5762,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3547\/revisions\/5762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}