Late this spring I purchased a bare root Peter’s Purple Monarda online (read “ebay”), it looked a bit sad on arrival but I planted it in the garden and hoped for the best. The summer was brutal and the Peter’s Purple didn’t make it, and with it being hard to find in local nurseries I gave up on trying it again. Luckily, Daphne Richards, who talked about Mojito on Central Texas Gardner (Thank you, Linda!), said she had some extras to dig up and give away from her large Peter’s Purple. Daphne wants to raise awareness for this bee balm and make it more readily available for central Texas. I jumped on the chance to try Peter’s Purple again after seeing how beautiful it looked when established, and painted her a quick portrait of her Augie Doggie as a thank you gift.

I’ll keep track of the Peter’s Purple, and will share more garden photos soon.

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5. My First Garden Blogger’s Bloom Day

On the 15th of every month, Carol from May Dreams Gardens hosts the Garden Blogger’s Bloom Day, where she invites garden bloggers from all over to show us what is blooming in their gardens.

I have been been looking at GBBD by the Austin garden bloggers for a couple of years now, but never participated because I didn’t think I had enough to show on any given bloom day. I’ve been slowly acquiring plants in the garden over the last few few years, and the number of plants that don’t die instantly is growing. I was finally excited to participate in GBBD today, so I got out my camera and patiently took some closeups that I was happy with.

I’m looking forward to sharing a lot more of my garden bloom photos next month!

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I always take photos long before I post them here, but better late than never!
I planted Pearly Gates Morning Glory along with Moonflower seeds back in the spring, and the vines soon covered the gazebo arch that I purchased in the spring of 2009. I was excited for blooms.

Soon, the vines went nutso and wouldn’t stop climbing, and the only blooms I saw were a few moonflowers later in the summer. They climbed into the neighbors tree and taller than the second story. I didn’t think the Pearly Gates morning glory had even made it.

Then, as Fall arrived I started seeing smaller white blooms in the evening that lasted to the next day, it took me a while to realize that these were the Pearly Gates blooms. The vines were freaking me out by climbing so far, and I didn’t want them to go to seed and spread all over the back yard like the purple morning glory that came over from the neighbor and spreads each year. That purple morning glory is a big pest! So, I tried digging up all of the roots of the Pearly Gates and moonflower. The Pearly Gates didn’t want to give up that easily and kept blooming for a few weeks after I dug up the roots…. freaaakky! Now I need to figure out how to get all of the dead vines out of the neighbor’s tree.

A couple of weeks ago we mulched and mulched, brought all of the pots in for the winter, and got everyone ready for their winter rest.

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R.I.P -
• Oregano
• Lemon balm
• English thyme
• Skullcap
• Blackfoot daisy

Not looking so great -
• Salvia greggii Theresa (purchased from the Wildflower Center)
• Lemon thyme (moved it to a new spot and it’s angry at me)

I did go out and plant winecup seeds after the mosquitoes subsided a little.
David helped build out the dry creek bed some more, I just need more rocks to fill it now.

I’ve decided that it’s time to stop looking at new plants. My garden is far too small to have much variety at all. I need to plant more of what I already have to create harmony with repetition. It’s a sad realization. I think I need to buy a new house already, one on a large plot, with tons of huge windows to look out on the beautiful gardens I’ll create. Or maybe, once I finish the back garden a bit more, I’ll start ripping out some grass in the front and make a new bed.

Even with the realizations that I should not be getting any new plants, I just “happened” upon a piece of what I think is purple (fuchsia?) trailing lantana. I love purple and fuchsia colors in my little garden. Maybe I’ll find a spot for this guy, if he takes root.

Also, happy first wedding anniversary to me and David!

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I thought that it was time to finally give up on the few oxblood lily bulbs that I purchased and planted back in 2008. The leaves always grew, but I never saw any hint of flowers.

It was! And then there were several of them, beautiful small pops of color, a lot smaller than I had expected. They are the same height as my rain lilies, I guess that a couple years of waiting had made my anticipation and imagination grow the oxbloods to some large majestic size.

I was elated regardless of their small size, I enjoyed seeing them every day that the blooms graced my miniature front garden. A few weeks later, one of my coworkers mentioned how she loves taking seeds off of her neighborhood plants, so I brought her a bunch of morning glory and four o’clock seeds. She thanked me by bringing a large bag of bulbs that she explained were from a dark red lily that grew all over her south Austin house. I showed her a photo of an oxblood lily and she said it was the same!

I’m planning to place these on the edges of my dry creek bed, and maybe I will move the ones from the front to the back as well. I now know that I have to be more patient with the smaller bulbs, and give them time to grow. I’m already excited to see the flowers again next year.

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I’d been looking for garden plant markers on and off for a while but never found any that I truly loved. Occasionally, I would keep the little plastic tags that came with the plants I bought, but they weren’t pretty so most of the time I would end up tossing them, and then kicking myself for not remembering what exactly I had bought or where I had planted it.

Last weekend, I got to work and made my own painted stone garden markers! I love how they turned out, and they were so fun to make that I’m planning on making more for my etsy shop.

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Our neighbors were so excited to see that, before we left for vacation, David and I pulled up all of the weeds from the mailbox bed that had been growing for years, and planted several mirabilis jalapa.

We also mulched and placed small river rocks for a border. It looks about 100x better than weeds. The seedlings came from my one mirabilis jalapa that I started from seed in 2009. The one that I thought died in the frost of 2010, that one came back and grew even larger than before, and produced many seedlings in the spring. Pulling up the seedlings isn’t fun, but easy and I tolerate it because I adore the little blooms. Their color is like candy for my eyes and the smell is just as sweet.

Speaking of four O’clocks, I saw them everywhere while on vacation in Istanbul. There were many different colored ones and even broken colors, but I didn’t detect as much of a scent on them as mine has.

I learned to properly deadhead my roses recently, and they rewarded me by growing like crazy and blooming up a storm. I should do this more often!

My rainlilies have been blooming more often than I’ve ever seen them, which makes me excited and giddy, and some of my daylilies are still blooming on and off.

Quick rundown on news from the back garden:

• the tomatoes are slowing down now because of the heat, but I snapped some photos of the ones I picked
• The new catnip is growing well with large leaves
• the mints (spearmint, chocolate mint) are still growing (in pots) though their leaf size is smaller than before which seems to be a trend when I grow mints
• Rosemary plants, lavender, and salvia greggi look great but no blooms (salvia greggi bloomed last year)
• My grass circle was looking good before my vacation, but now is overtaken with weeds, I don’t even know if any real grass still lives
• Elfin thyme died in the pot while I was on vacation
• Morning glories and moonflower vine grew like crazy, I even saw my first moon flower!
• I got a hibiscus that I need to re-pot, but it’s looking good and growing
• The meyer lemon lost all leaves and fruit while I was on vacation, but with the rains it put on all new leaves again, it’s starting to bloom now
• Black potato vine looks like it needed more water than what it got while I was gone, but they are alive
• Lemon thyme and English thyme, look okay in pots, but aren’t thriving
• Lemon balm is growing well
• As is lemon grass
• Lemon basil isn’t growing that well, I suspect the moonflower and morning glories are creating too much shade
• Mexican Oregano is also growing slower than I had hoped
• My other oregano is spreading but I’d like it to get fuller
• Black and Blue salvia is doing great
• Bronze Fennel died completely

I wish I had a lower failure rate, I seem to kill too many plants that I buy.

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Best of Friends wasn’t from one of those bags, I got this from an online vendor, and they are perfect.

Metaphor, from the same vendor, also perfect.

Breathless Beauty was one from the bag of dead roots from the big box store. Surprisingly, it was what the bag said it would be. It’s also my tallest daylily currently, one of them has bloom stalks that keep bending over to the ground because the blooms are too heavy for it to stay upright, annoying. This one is not my favorite color, but David seems to like it.

Rose Passion, from the bag of roots. It’s cute enough but not evergreen. Sometimes the colors come out broken or fade really badly.

The last bag of roots I bought was supposed to be Moonlit Masquerade, but it wasn’t. Somehow, instead of one random variety, I got two random ones and I have no idea what they are. The bright yellow/orange one I saw bloom last year. I didn’t like it last year, and the yellow and orange seemed out of place since I had nothing in those colors. This year, this orange one is really growing on me, the colors are so bright that they glow, and seeing several blooms per day brings a smile to my face. The new mystery daylily that popped up this year is more of a pinkish purple color. At first I thought it was the Metaphor, but it’s smaller in height and bloom size, and the color looks more solid. I think it’s pretty, whatever it is.

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Before I get to the garden photos, welcome to the new blog url! Yay, woohoo, streamers, and balloons! though I hope that the move was for the most part seamless and that you didn’t even notice (except for updating your RSS feed).

On to the greenery, sweet cherry tomato.

Green zebra, my favorite this year.

Tomatoes, three Buddha, a bee, and a peek at our new AC unit.

Planted a lemon balm after none of the seeds germinated.

I went lemon crazy and got some Lemon Grass, my cat LOVES to chew on this. Now I have to learn to cook with it.

Did I mention that I went lemon crazy? Lemon basil, Mrs. Burns.

I saw mexican oregano in other people’s gardens and I fell in love. I got this one and it started blooming right away.

I picked up another oregano but it didn’t have a tag. I thought it was Greek Oregano, but now I’m not sure, it grows very low to the grown with fuzzy leaves. I’ll post a better photo of it soon.

I admired Black and Blue salvia for a while, David picked it out, I was glad. It’s been blooming all over, and we’ve been spotting several different types of butterflies in the garden recently.

I had some catnip that I placed in a large pot (next to the bee, next to the Black and Blue salvia) and it’s been stunted. It hasn’t died or grown, for months! I don’t know what to do with it. Instead, I bought another and it’s been growing great, my darling cat is happy now.

Pretty shot of the sweet potato vine Blackie.

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I planted sweet basil, persian basil, catnip, and lemon balm seeds. They germinated and grew well, until they started disappearing. Over Twitter, Daphne Richards from Central Texas Gardener suggested that I use BT, because it could have been caterpillars eating the seedlings.

I also planted giant white moonflower vine and “pearly gates” morning glory seeds. I thought the whites would look good together, and blend nicely with the violet morning glory volunteers that are going to be spreading more every year if I don’t stop pulling them.

Mistakenly, I only planted one bronze fennel, let’s see how long he lasts before he gets eaten up completely.

One of my favorite things to do, is to look down on the garden from my second story master bedroom window. It’s a good way for me to look at the whole composition. I took some photos of the developing design from above.

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In the first week of March, this year, I went out and got two new tomatoes (sweet cherry and green zebra) to put in my Earthbox. Around that time, I also picked up a bronze fennel, and a meyer lemon tree that was full of blooms and several fruit. My dream was to be overflowing with lemons at any given time of the year.

I’ve been taking photos of the garden regularly, and I’ll try to blog about all of them in order. It’ll be helpful to me, keeping track and being organized, while allowing me to go back and compare how things have failed or flourished.

I planted 3 small Mexican feather grass, one of which died promptly. I potted up the Meyer lemon so that I could move him in during the winter. It was covered in fragrant blooms and several baby lemons when I purchased it, but I wasn’t gentle enough when repotting because he dropped all blooms, the fruit, and a large percentage of leaves. It took several weeks of me worrying before new leaves start growing again.

Nothing had quite woken up yet, in the garden, so it was time to get to work. Inspired by garden design portfolios I found online, and with all of the free/found rocks that I had gathered over time (minus the one bag or two of marble chips that I bought), I started creating more shapes and structure to the garden. I picked up some elfin thyme to put between the flat stones (some died, one piece lived, need to keep trying).

The garden bees that I created out of bowling balls were happy, placed in their new surroundings. I added some lanterns on shepherd’s hooks for height. The Buddha statues sits on top of the birdbath now, the birdbath that had developed a crack and I never saw any birds using it, even when there was any water in there. I picked up two lovely Buddha busts and placed them around the herbs, for now.

Whenever I drag David to the nurseries with me I feel guilty and encourage him to pick out some plants that he thinks look interesting. He usually only likes succulents or things he can eat. But this time, he picked out two ‘Blackie’ Sweet Potato Vine, that we put up on the fence. They look great and have already put out violet flowers. Speaking of things to eat, the mint that I got back in 2008 looked pitiful, unrecognizable, and smelled bland. I was afraid to really taste it, worried that there was something horribly wrong with it. Or what if another plant had started to grow in that same spot. Once upon a time I had dreams of being able to use tons of fresh and dried mint in the kitchen… I bought another plant and placed it in a large pot, hoping that it will do better this time. Also not doing great, the catnip that I placed in the same sized pot as the new mint. I haven’t figured out what I’m doing wrong.

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I finished these over the winter, but I was waiting until spring so that I could take photos of the bees enjoying the garden.

If you remember when we left off last time, I had just finished creating the time-consuming wings. I then laid out all of my finished parts, the painted bowling balls, both sets of finished wings, and the finished antenna.

One bee at a time, I filled the antenna (thumb) hole with with silicone caulk. I tried using liquid nail at first, but this did not dry. I placed and positioned both antenna in the hole.

Without disturbing the antenna, I filled the wing (finger) holes with silicone caulk. The window screen wings went in first, because I liked the way the hardware cloth looked on top of them. The hardware cloth wings went in second. I made sure to clean off any excess caulk. Everything still needed to dry, so I used masking tape to hold all of the parts in place, in the exact positions that I wanted them to be in.

The only thing left was waiting patiently for everything to dry. As an extra step, I took some of the leftover paint and painted the dried caulk to blend in a little better. The bees were ready to go live out in the garden, and I still enjoy looking at them every day.

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I planted the jasminum sambac, eggplants, bell peppers and small Persian cucumbers.

To my surprise, the black krim were setting some fruit.

The volunteer morning glories (from the neighbor) were starting to bloom.

I found two volunteer spiderwort (?).

In the front, I mulched and used some decorative river rock.

This passion vine came through the fence from the neighbor’s and bloomed for me a few times before it was eaten up by caterpillars.

Cardinals would come out to play, but the worst of the summer was near.

In the front, I saw my first rain lily.

I got an earthbox and planted eggplant and basil (also a roma tomato that bit the dust fairly quickly because it was getting way too hot).

The Black Krim kept frying, and the squireles ate all but one of the ripening tomatoes. At least I got to taste my first Black Krim.

The other eggplant in the ground only gave me one eggplant, while the one in the earthbox gave me 20+.

First eggplant.

I got a “Coral Nymph” salvia, and it had blooms on it daily even in the terrible heat of that summer.

Not a plant, but we got a new light to replace the one the hail demolished.

Earthbox basil looked happy.

A purple salvia greggi that needed some more water.

In between the roses in the front, I planted one Four O’Clock that had survived from seed, even after the hail storm. I knew some people didn’t like them because they reseed like crazy, but I wanted to give it a shot. It filled in the space nicely and produced lovely little blooms, until the winter killed it off.

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It was raining a lot today, and when I got home the roses in the front were covered with blooms and rain droplets.

After the sun set, I looked out the french door at the garden and thought I saw a flying pixie. But it wasn’t a pixie. It was a snail, and it looked like it was being beamed up by an alien spaceship. But it wasn’t. It was crawling up the glass, making it’s way to the second story.

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I spent the winter reading, watching, and learning, and I started visiting local nurseries for the first time in 2009.

I made my first pesto using the Persian Basil planted the year before.

I tried to start about a million seeds. Moonflower, coral vine,
four o’clocks, basil, thyme, other herbs, other flowers, a ton of vegetable seeds. I even tried cuttings of Rosemary.

We had the old wood siding taken off of the front of the house and hardi put in. After the construction was done, we turned our attention to the two small strips of dirt near the front door. I bought 30 or so tiny (very tiny) bulbs of “Prairie Sunset” rain lilies, Daylilies: Best of Friends (online dailiy vendor), Metaphor (online daylily vendor), Breathless Beauty (crappy bag of dead mystery roots from big box store), Moonlit Masquerade(crappy bag of dead mystery roots from big box store), and Rose Passion (crappy bag of dead mystery roots from big box store). Two “Grand Primo” narcissus. Two red double knockout roses, and one pink knockout.

I didn’t have to wait long to be rewarded with blooms.

This daylily that bloomed from one of the big box store bag of crappy dead roots didn’t look anything like the labeled daylily it was supposed to be.

Right after enjoying my first few blooms, our house was severely damaged in a terrible hail storm on March 25th, 2009.

Most of the million seedlings died that day, but I went on planning the ones that looked like they could make it.

We had to have many things repaired replaced at our house (windows, roof, skylight, doors, siding), and the damaged plants that I had taken care of were moved away or killed by the construction. The back yard went back to square one. Dirt and nothing more.

Surprisingly, the front yard plants weren’t too badly damaged, and the roses kept on going.

The “Metaphor” daylilies bloomed a few times. But besides the small mystery orange/yellow daylily, and the “Metaphor” no other daylily bloomed in 2009.

My very eventful, and sometimes stressful spring 2009 ended.

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David and I bought our first house in the summer of 2007, and for the first time we had some very small pieces of land to call our own.

In the beginning, the house was such a big project that we neglected all of the green spaces, and soon all of that green died.

It took a year, but I finally started thinking about the outside spaces, and how I wanted them to look. At this point, I still didn’t know anything about plants.

My first plan consisted of grass and asian jasmine. I didn’t even think about changing the shapes that were already there in mulch and plastic edging. And so, David and I, uneducated about anything green and living, set out to waste some money buy some scraggly, mostly dead, looking St. Augustine sod because the season was ending, with about 8 starts of asian jasmine. We put down the sod, incorrectly, and I planted the asian jasmine in the mulched area to the right. Most of the grass died and none of the asian jasmine grew, at all. I read that they were drought tolerant, so I didn’t water them… much.

The first plan obviously didn’t work out and I found plants from the big box store that I thought would be fun to grow. I also spray painted the pots that had come with the house an aqua blue. I started reading about how to take care of the new plants I put into the pots.

My dad gave me some Persian basil seeds from my grandmother in Iran, I bought a grape tomato start, and a Jasminum Sambac, which I loved because the scent reminded me of Iran and the Mediterranean.

The grape tomato grew and produced about 80 tomatoes total, even though I didn’t know how to baby it very well.

And I learned that bonsai are way too much work.

I didn’t figure out until later why my basil weren’t getting bushy on their own, but I was able to make delicious pesto from my first basil plant.

I started a miniature compost been in a plastic tub.

My step-mom gave me a catnip plant for Mojito to enjoy.

I learned about fish emulsion and it made my plants very happy.

My step-mom also gave me an Encore azalea, but it didn’t make it very long after I planted it in the ground.

I bought a mint plant and also started collecting rocks from home construction sites because I started thinking about the layout again, not just plants I found at the store that I liked at that moment.

I started reading garden blogs from gardeners in Austin, and started learning more about native, naturalized and drought tolerant plants. I bought a few Oxblood Lily bulbs from a vendor online, after seeing how beautiful they were growing for the garden bloggers. My passion started to grow exponentially, and I was excited about gardening more in 2009.

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Mojito loves laying on dirty clothes right before they get thrown into the washer. Look at his mass amounts of fuzz!

During the remodeling downstairs, dust and dirt got into Mojie’s mass amounts of fuzz and caused his fur to mat up, we couldn’t help him remove of all of them so off to the groomers he went, for the second time in his life. He didn’t like it at first.

Then he started to enjoy it.

David loves this photo because it shows that our house is “actually lived in”. I, on the other hand, wish that I had picked up a bit more before this photo was taken.

Here’s another, and now you know that I don’t always put my shoes away.

I really love this new rug we got for the newly renovated living room. Have you looked at the before pictures?

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Just like we had a crazy hot summer in 2009, we had a crazy cold winter too (the neighbor’s water pipe burst). Yay, global warming. I lost a few plants in my garden, the jasminum sambac looks fairly dead but I’ve read that it could come back from the roots in Spring. Some of my herbs are nice and hardy, the rosemary, lavender, and thyme weren’t fazed by the cold temperatures, thankfully. I’ll have to remember that I will have a green garden again soon.

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Creating the wings for the bowling ball bees was the hardest part of the project, but they looked wonderful in the end. Be sure to have your window screen (8.5″) and hardware cloth (9.5″) squares cut and ready to go. Get your 20″ and 22″ lengths of wire and put them in two separate piles. Bend each wire into an oval shape, then bend the ends down 1.5″ to fit into the finger holes.

Your 20″ ovals will get the window screen sewn onto them using the fishing line. Center the copper wire over the screen because it is easier to sew from the underside of the wing. Then trim around the edges making sure not to cut too close to the fishing line.

The 22″ ovals will get the hardware cloth. This was trickier, and I found that the fishing line was not necessary to sow the hardware cloth onto the copper wire. You need to trim the edges of the hardware cloth first, and bend the wire ends over the copper wire to hold it in place. This leaves nice soft edges so that you don’t scrape yourself on the wire ends.

I was so excited to finish the wings and start assembling my bees, they were getting closer to the finish line!

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After the bowling balls were primed and dry, I started painting them yellow. You will need at least two coats. I had them sitting on the plastic and painted the top sides, waited for that to dry, then flipped them over and painted the other side. It would have been easier if I had propped each bowling ball on a small coffee can from the beginning, instead of crawling around the floor to paint them evenly.

While waiting for the paint to dry, I got started on the antenna by bending each of the 8.5″ lengths of wire slightly. I painted the wooden beads black with the exterior paint. After the paint dried, I put adhesive into one side of the bead hole and pushed the wire into it. After the adhesive dried, they needed a little bit of touch up paint.

Once the bowling balls were perfectly yellow and dried, it was time to lay out the pattern of the black bands. The Birds & Blooms article suggested using blue painters tape to lay out the curves, but I found that to be too frustrating. I got some black charcoal and used a freehand drawing method to get the lines on there. I was able to wipe off the charcoal with a damp cloth if I messed up, and redo it until I got nice curves. I also created wider bands and less of them than the Birds & Blooms example.

Once the curves were drawn, it was time to paint using the black exterior paint. This also required a couple of coats. When everything dried, I was able to wipe off the black charcoal residue with a damp cloth.

And the painting portion of this project is done! Next up, the wings.

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