THE FIRST THOUSAND MILES- AUSTIN TO PHOENIX.

To stay I am addicted to gardening would be an understatement. I garden, I read books and magazines about gardens, I visit gardens, I visit nurseries everywhere. I search them out when I visit foreign countries, although I know I can't take any of those plants home, and I listen to podcasts about gardening,  When I leave my garden I do all of those things except the gardening part, although there have been times when I have taken plants with me. When we drive out west my eyes are constantly searching the roadsides for plants and even rocks!
The drive from Austin to Phoenix takes us through some interesting country; from the rolling Hill Country of the Edwards Plateau, into Chihuahuan desert areas of west Texas and New Mexico and finally the Sonoran desert in Arizona.
Our timing happened to coincide with monsoon rains so I was pleasantly surprised to see wildflowers on the Air B&B ranch, in Alpine, where we spent our first night. It was raining when we arrived so there was no chance to look around that evening but in the morning the air was clear.

We ate breakfast outside and then I walked around the area by our cabin. There was no garden just the scrubby ground you see here but the wildflowers growing there were amazing.

How exciting to see chocolate flowers, Berlandiera lyrata, growing in their native habitat. I grow this
plant with great success in my garden. One plant, growing in the sunken garden is more than 12 years old. There is no irrigation in the spot although I do occasionally pass the hose over the area. It has never reseeded in this area although that could be because I cut it back several times a year to prevent it getting too straggly.

Although I have never grown this plant I believe this is snake herb Dyschoriste linearis. I remember seeing it in an Austin garden once but can't recall seeing it in the nurseries. I like its compact nature and clearly this would be another good plant for the rock garden.

Here's another native I have never had in my garden and would love to have. Scarlet musk flower,  Nyctaginia capitata. Another native missing from our nurseries.

I had to call on Texas Flora on Facebook for an id on this plant. What a great resource for identifying unknown plants growing in Texas, although it is not exclusively for native plants. This is the Woolly paper flower, Psilotrope tagetina. According to my research it does grow on the Edwards Plateau and would make another good low-growing plant for my rock garden....if I could find it.

And wild gaura was plentiful.

Our second night was spent in Mesilla, New Mexico, in a delightful adobe casita.

The owners had built the small casita with traditional adobe bricks and lived in it while renovating the original adobe house that was on the property. That was where we spent the night.  Between the two was a shady courtyard where we sat in the evening to have a glass of wine.

I was rather left wishing we had a similar tree under which we could sit on summer evenings, although I know they are rather messy trees.

Continuing on our way we stopped at a rest area and I hopped out of the truck to take this photo of, what I thought was, a lovely tree. Great structure with gnarled bark and hanging purple blooms. I later learnt that it was the tamarisk, an invasive tree with a long tap root which enables it to live in these desert conditions. There have been ongoing attempts to eradicate this tree using a bark beetle and herbicides.

Then on to stop again at Texas Canyon, actually in Arizona, an area of precariously balanced rocks formed 50 million years ago when magma pushed up but didn't quite break through the earth's crust. Eventually both weather and chemical weathering produced the scene we see today.

And on into the Sonoran desert with the appearance of ocotillo, fully in leaf, and stately saguaro. Then we pulled off into the foothills of Tucson to visit my friend, Syd Teague, who had just relocated to Tucson last year. Syd created a beautiful garden in Austin in which it was abundantly clear to see she was a lover of desert plants. Over the past year she has created a new desert garden in the desert. While she may not need to worry about freezing temperatures and excessive rain gardening in the desert does not come without its challenges. For one many plants would not survive without some additional irrigation and then there are the desert critters.

Syd is holding a saguaro 'boot', a thick cork-like callus that forms within the flesh of the saguaro after the Gila woodpecker or flicker have excavated a nest. The 'boot' is so sturdy that it will survive on the ground long after the saguaro has rotted away to dust.

 

Although the property came with some trees and cactus Syd has added hundreds more as well as bringing in tons of rock and sculpting the land to form berms.

One large addition was this Texas ebony tree, Ebenopsis ebano. The tree is native to south Texas but I wonder how it would do here-or have I ever seen it at the nursery.

In a side courtyard area a familiar face soon to be cloaked in bougainvillea rather than fig ivy!

and the lovely green man I remember from her old garden. I wonder what he thinks about his new desert home.

The property backs to the golf course and makes full use of a borrowed landscape with a backdrop of mountains and green spaces.  Let someone else water and mow the grass!

If you look closely you will see that those tall cactus are not cactus at all but stone disappearing fountains. The tell-tale area of wetness on the rocks below is the only indication that they are not the real thing. There are three in all. Shortly after we left Syd sent me a photo of a bobcat drinking from one of them. It doesn't take wild life long to catch on. Just as long as they don't attract the javelinas!!

And finally a row of pots I remember from her Austin garden.

Thanks Syd for a wonderful visit to your new garden and for lunch. We needed to press on to our final destination of the day; our son and family in Phoenix. We had completed 1000 miles of a summer that would put 5000 miles on the clock!