A M0RNING IN THE GREENHOUSE

 "I'll just spend a little time in the greenhouse this morning while it is still cold outside" 

That little time turned into a whole day. If only I hadn't let it get so out of hand. I had good intentions when I started to take things inside last fall promising myself that I would keep plenty of space between each pot and nothing on the ground. Suddenly every bit of shelf space was filled, above and below and then the floor started to get crowded out. That pot of dwarf papyrus, the two branches of plumeria, a box of agaves which I had planned to take to Phoenix at Christmas, a bird of paradise I dug out from the edge of the path. Empty pots, pots of soil. No room to move in there. The first job was to move everything outside so I could work on the shelves.

Next was to organize the shelves moving a few things around. There is shade cloth and a cross vine growing over the greenhouse so the only really good sun is at the end. That is where I need to have my winter blooming cactus. Some have already started blooming and some are now making buds. I think they are going to be earlier this year than any before. 

I have several pots of lady finger cactus, Echinocereus pentalophus. All are beginning to make buds. If you aren't familiar with this plant the flowers are the most wonderful Thai-silk pink. But it will be a few weeks yet.

And more and more mammilarias.

I moved this plant up from the lower level and into a more sunny spot when I saw this bloom stalk.

And a euphorbia blooming. You know how tiny their flowers are and if it weren't for the fact that they are yellow you might even miss them.

Finding more scale on some cactus I broke off tidying and got the paint brush and alcohol out. I was not expecting to do that but it seemed like a priority.

I was sad to see I had almost missed these sprays for flowers on the copper Sedum nussbaumerianum. I felt rather badly that they had been under appreciated being on the lower shelf. The plant is rather straggly and needs a complete pruning. Not a job for today.

When I got down to moving the last pot which was on the floor by the door I discovered that the ants had come up through the bricks and into the pot. What next! It was the newly potted bird of paradise which I quickly removed and took outside far away from the garden. Then I put the kettle on to boil. I'll make their life unpleasant. 

I only have 3 orchids left and they are in much need of attention. I heard on a gardening program that an orchid needs at least 4 good strong leaves in order to bloom so there is a good chance that this one will soon send out a bloom stalk. One has a small stalk and the other only 3 leaves. Some nurturing is needed. I knew that orchids like to grow in clear pots. Don't they all come that way from the nursery. Their roots like light as they photosynthesize through them. I don't know why I was anxious to put the other two in clay pots even though they were so-called orchid pots. From now on its clear pots for my orchids. 

I have a couple of hanging baskets. The first is the Huernia schneideriana, which spent the summer hanging in the live oak tree, totally under appreciated. It will probably go back there again next year but will need some trimming as eventually the longer stems start to fail. In Arizona I saw this plant creeping along the ground and it will set down roots easily along the length of the stems.  

Finally a quick wash down hoping to make the ants more miserable and the greenhouse is ready to receive many plants that will have to come in during the upcoming inclement weather. 

Now a week later we begin to feel the start of the weather. It is 43° out there and for us bone chilling and damp. Tonight will probably be the first night of 7 nights of freezing temperature with some possibly in the single digits. Freezing rain is also in the forecast followed by snow next week. The heaters are on in the greenhouse and I have brought even the foxgloves inside. I have been nurturing these since they were 4" pots. You can't take the English out of the girl. She has to have her foxgloves. 

It will not be good as the garden is so far ahead. I have already picked daffodils and many of my vegetables that will not take even those low temperatures. Shiver , Shiver! I don't want to think about the possibility of a power failure due to this unusual weather. 

FRIDAY FLOWERS

I never expected my sunken garden and its surrounds to be a wildflower meadow but it seems that is exactly what I have. Does that disappoint me? Not really although I would love the wildflower meadow to be outside the main garden. But I love the profusion of blooms that greets me every morning when I step outside the door. Each new flower aiming beat the heat and fulfill its destiny-seeds.

And those seeds, wherever they fall, will create next year's garden. The coneflowers, Echinacea purpurea, are beginning to bloom alongside the gaura, Gaura lindheimeri. I have two varieties one pink and one white which seed around the garden and once they start blooming they bloom all summer long. And hidden among them I see the new leaves of the Mexican Bird of Paradise. It will be many weeks before that plant begins to bloom.

I didn't pull out as many of the mulleins as I said I would but they will not be long in the garden as they will soon enter into their rather messy phase. How I wish we could get the perennial kind that I see in English gardens. This one is my favorite although it is taking up more than its share of the sunken area.

Blue flax, Linum lewisii, with it long arching branches.

And scarlet flax, Linum rubrum, native to North Africa but naturalized in the USA. Always there is a plan to have more but always just a few develop.

Seen here with coreopsis and California poppies.

I grew this achillea from seed 2 years ago. It was supposed to be a much darker color. Sometimes the seeds will surprise you.

And also this foxglove, Digitalis purpurea,  which has taken it three years to flower.

On a rather humid morning the chocolate flowers, Berlandiera lyrata, filled the air with its delicious fragrance. They can't help but draw attention to themselves.

Bee balm, Monarda 'Peter's Purple' enjoys far too much success in this garden to the point of crowding out other plants, including the iris it has surrounded.

And under the shade of the Yucca rostrata the shrimp plant, Justicia brandegeeana has been blooming for several months.

 And a surprise shrimp plant which suddenly appeared has been identified as the native Montell bractspike, Yeatesia platystegia,

And finally Brazilian verbena, Verbena bonariensis with prickly pear.

 I rely heavily on the sunken garden to seed itself so never know what will be growing there from year to year. Unfortunately last year I lost all but one pink skullcap and all the purple skullcap which had been a staple in this garden for nearly 15 years but gardeners learn to move on and like Wilkins Micawber I rely on the fact that "Something will turn up" and it usually does.
Have a great weekend.

FOXY

While trying to maintain an air of cheerfulness during these difficult time I want to show you some photos of my absolute favorite flower. The foxglove. Mine are incredibly early this year blooming a full month to a month and a half ahead of their normal schedule. I give you Digitalis purpurea 'Foxy'

I have learnt that they do better in pots, as our soil is very alkaline. I buy them in 4" pots very early in the season and pot them on first, into gallon pots and then into their final pot. They much prefer some nice quality soil like Fox Farm, so there is some expense involved in getting them to look good.

They say you can tell their color by looking at the underside of the leaf but I didn't notice any difference in them and it is rather like it used to be when you were having a baby. You needed to wait a while to find out what color. As you can see below when the blooms first appear they are not giving away any secrets.

Then suddenly a little color starts to show up in the flower bud and then all is revealed.

So this year they are all the same color which is a little disappointing as last year I had darker pink and white ones. At the same time their early arrival has been difficult for them because of swinging temperatures. They would really prefer a cool spring rather than the swings we have been having. First heat, then cold then stiff winds and now lots of heavy rain.
The older flowers are dropping much faster than usual.

My love of foxgloves goes back to my childhood and reading lots of stories about fairies. The markings on the inside of the bell were once thought to be the handprints of fairies.

There foxgloves in our garden
How careless they must be
To leave their gloves out hanging
For everyone to see.
Taken from, One Thousand Poems for Children.

Although wild foxgloves seed freely under the right conditions I don't believe there is viable seed in these. Therefore, as soon as the main flower spike has finished I will cut it off to give the side flowers chance to grow. Not so showy but still give a few more weeks of bloom.
                                                                              ~

YOUR GARDEN STYLE

I have met people who never look back. Maybe it is a function of age but I think mine was triggered by a box of photographs I inherited and by a sudden interest in genealogy. And, as a life-long gardener, I began to realize my younger self might have influenced my style of gardening.

From a very young age I loved wildflowers. You see me here with a bunch of straw at hay making time. At a similar age, on holiday in Devon, I wanted to pick the big white bindweed flowers growing along hedgerow. My father chastised me telling me I must leave them for others to enjoy! Bindweed? I ask you !! And there was the time my parents thought of taking over the lease on a pub in the countryside and I was thrilled to bits because the bank alongside the pub was full of primroses. It never happened... but I know I would have been thoroughly happy living where I could walk the country lanes. Making daisy chains, searching for four leaf clovers, marveling at the tiny flowers of scarlet pimpernel, the cowslips, buttercups, sucking the honey from the purple clover flowers, celandines and marsh marigolds growing in the brook and the seed heads of shepherd's purse. I have plenty of that on my septic field right now.  It was always about the native flowers growing around me.

Fast forward to arriving in Texas in early February1968, just in time for the wildflower season. This time no one telling me not to pick the flowers!

And I am still that lover of wild flowers today and it is reflected in my gardening style. It is a free-for-all cottage garden style.

The sunken garden May 2019

It's why I love the little puffball flowers of Barbara's buttons, Marshallia caespitosa.

April 2019

 The common corn poppy, Papaver rhoeas,  flowering in profusion.

Sunken graden 2019

 And weedy Love-in-a-Mist, Nigella sp.

And a summer flower of the English hedge row. Foxglove Digitalis purpurea,. I have tried growing them from seed with only modest success so I now buy them in 4" pots,early in the year, potting up as they grow larger until I can finally move them into their larger pots. I think they are going to bloom earlier this year as I see a flower spike starting. What color will they be? I have no idea although they say you can tell by looking at the underside of the leaf. If that is the case they will be all white.

February 2020

Front courtyard April 2019

And the delicate blooms of Blue Gilia Gilia rigidula

March 2019

And of course our state flower the Texas bluebonnet.

And it can all become a little unruly after a while and that is why this year some changes are in order.

Herb garden May 2019

 I must endeavor to keep the pathways clear of all but the smallest and tidiest of plants. And that means alyssum, narrow leaf zinnias and possibly the daisy fleabane. Possibly the odd tidy grass and if there is space enough to walk by, the Verbena bonariensis. And I might just allow a few coreopsis and blanket flowers. This is not going to be easy.
For the moment I am excited to look at photographs from last year's spring and to know what is soon to come.

GOOD MORNING CLOUDY DAY

Who prays for a cloudy day. Someone who is a gardener, has had no measurable rain for weeks and brilliant clear sunshine day after day, and whose plants are down on their knees praying with her. Yes, we have had cool nights but that lack of rain has my ground so dry I can't even pull out the spent plants. My drip- irrigation watering system and burnt out soils cannot support such weather conditions. When promised rain, talked about so much by the weather man, failed to materialize I had to start doing some hand watering. Pots and vegetable beds twice a day just to keep them alive.

This is inside the entrance to the garden where there is a little shade from the overhead beams. An odd mixture of plants, you may think. Barrel cactus, agaves, foxgloves and the brugmansia ( A gifted cutting from my garden friend Lori two years ago). I repotted it this year so extra watering has been the order of the day, but also fighting off spider mites this year. Despite the bloom it really does not look as healthy as it should so I am trying hard to get it back in shape. A little less stress from the sun may help.

And the foxglove, Digitalis purpurea. I am so proud to have grown them from seed planted last fall. These ones in pots are further ahead than the ones that are growing in the ground which have not started to bloom yet. They are the flowers of my childhood, found growing in the hedgerows and fields of England, as well as the flowers of my childhood fairy stories. They will always have a place in my heart and my garden.

I could take a few more cloudy days like this one and a little rain.Maybe tomorrow.

YES! YOU CAN HAVE ALLIUMS

It's one plant I have never seen growing in a garden in Texas. Many years ago I bought a packet of allium bulbs. They were purple and looked quite large on the packet. They were no bigger than a nickle when they flowered.......one time and never to be seen again. I think they may have been drumstick alliums but they were too tiny to appreciate their blooms.

So when a gardening friend gave me some multiplying onions and they went to flower I thought to myself that they would look very attractive in the garden. And so they do. And the red admiral butterflies adore the flowers. And they come back year after year. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with white.

That's what I was saying when the first of my foxgloves started to open. A look of disappointment did pass across my face. I had picked up 6, 6" pots at my local nursery in January. I potted them up and actually took them over to my neighbors house to care for them while we were gone for the month of February. One thing an English girl has to have is her foxgloves.

But as the week wore on the flowers began to take on more of a pink tinge and today they are feeling extremely at home in the rain.

They have a little more pink in them than the flowers we call 'foxgloves' in Texas. That is the Penstemon cobaea, which I also have in my garden. You can see the resemblance.

I'm hoping there may be a diversity of color in the other 5 of my plants. Maybe something like this wild foxglove growing in a hedgerow in England.

The great thing about foxgloves is that for me they flower after all the bluebonnets and other early wildflowers have faded and they go on flowering well into May, sending up many bloom stalks on the one plant. They are well worth the effort of finding those 4" pots in the late winter.

BEFORE I REALLY GET GOING

Can you imagine how much I have to share about the gardens I visited on my travels? But wait, all in good time. I have my own garden and there were one or two nice surprises waiting for me when I got home.

I can have a little bit of England in Texas. Old Foxy foxglove, Digitalis sp. was blooming her head off. I have tried for years to grow this plant and finally this year opted to grow it in a pot. Count on me trying that again next year.

Monarda, Peter's Purple is a mass of blooms. There is a frenzy of bees and other insects around the plant. This plant should be in every Texas garden.

The lily pads had just about covered the stock tank pond and there was a bloom. This bloom is the hardy water lily, Nymphaea 'Colorado'

The twist-leaf yucca, Yucca recurvifolia,  was flowering. I moved this one into the garden a few years ago because there is no way a flower survives out in deer land.

And while I was gone tomatoes, Celebrity, Yellow pear, Black Krim, Yellow boy, Sweet 100. and peppers, Pinot noir, were ripening. Mmmm, nothing like a home grown tomato.

What a nice welcome home, garden.