PLENTY OF THIS AND NOT SO MUCH OF THAT

I don't usually collect tickets but somehow on our recent trip there were so many I ended up keeping them. It reminds me of my first time abroad when I kept every little piece of foreign information that came into my hands.

Mostly they were rail, tram, boats, museum and palaces but there were 4 gardens among the visits.

July 6th found us on our way to the Côte d'Azur. We had to drop the car off at Nice airport before continuing on to Italy. But first I had plans for a visit to Le Jardin d'Eze, a few miles east of Nice. The garden is perched at the top of the medieval village of Eze.

Build after WW11 on the site of an old castle it was quite a hike up to the entrance along cobbled streets, some of them with the most beautiful bouganvillea.

Like many such villages in France the shops are now there for the tourists, who are plentiful. We had arrived towards the end of the afternoon so most visitors were heading back to the many tour buses parked below. We preferred to take the side streets which seem to hold no interest for most.

You can't help but marvel at the structure of the cobbled walls built with a type of limestone called 'La Turbie' and brought from the quarry to the village by mules.

We paid our 6€ entry fee and began the climb up steep steps.

Almost immediately came the spectacular view, looking down over the coastal road with Cap Ferrat in the distance.

This is a garden of cactus and succulents spilling down the rocky slope towards the red roof tops of the village.

I have to admit that with the whole of Europe in a heatwave and the late afternoon sun beating down on us it was almost a relief to take the pathway around the back-side of the garden and find ourselves in a shaded grotto. What a contrast.

Looking down over the graveyard and the viaduct which now links the two sides of the valley it was time to head back into the heat and more cactus.

Coupled with the incredible view and the village itself this garden is well worth a visit especially if you can get there in the morning before the heat and the crowds.
We headed back down the hill to the car. We had to find our hotel for the night.

Stay tuned for the gardens of Isola Bella and the Zurich Succulent Garden. ( Sukkulenten-Sammlung Zurich)

FIRST RESPONDERS

I got the surprise of my life today. I was out watering with the hose when I saw a patch of bright pink in the sea of brown. I dropped the hose and went over to see what it was. It was a clump of rain lilies. Where had they come from? Did I plant them last fall? I truly cannot remember doing it although I remember buying bulbs in the fall.

And why are they blooming now? This bed had not had any water for over a month. That is until I came home at the weekend and discovered a failure in the sprinkler system. I immediately watered the bed. Is that what triggered the flowering or was it coupled with a drop in humidity this week. Watering doesn't usually trigger flowering or maybe it does after a prolonged dry spell. My garden friend Pam Penick at Digging also had rain lilies blooming this week so this is not an isolated incidence. I wonder if they are the same species.
What an amazing response in less than 3 days.
But I have more first responders; the water lilies. Within a day of filling up the tank I had blooms and not just one but six.

Of course the Ruby crystal grass turned from dull to blue green in no time at all. It may be invasive but I am more than happy for its strength and determination to beat the Texas heat and lack of rain or irrigation. I think that this grass is tougher than Mexican feather grass and just about as invasive. Tough wins the day.

As I currently spend most of my mornings pulling out dead plants and cutting back others in attempt to save them, I am uplifted by these sights.

I COULD BARELY WAIT

I had been gone from home for over a month and could barely wait for dawn. I needed to get outside to see what my garden looked like. We were supposed to be home in daylight but a medical emergency of one of the passengers on our Heathrow to Austin flight was cause for our plane to turn around over the Atlantic and fly back to the closest airport-Glasgow. We arrived home in the dark.
I had already been forewarned by my neighbors that things were brown and the stock tanks were very low and I knew what that meant. Those plants like iris and papyrus sitting up high would be toast. Hopefully the water lilies would be OK.

This is the stock tank in the side entry which is in shade for most of the day. The water level was down from 2' to 8" but all the plants were still alive thanks to my floating islands. The only loss was the pump which was high and dry and had burnt itself out.  
I filled up the tank from the rain water barrel and after 24 hours things were looking better. I am so glad I put division of the Colorado water lily in here because I think I may have lost the one in the larger stock tank.

Not such a welcome sight at the other tanks. The small tank had no water in it at all and the larger one was down to 10" I quickly filled it up but don't hold out too much hope for these plants.

I filled up the larger tank and removed all the dead material from the surface. I wonder if that hint of green will mean that there is still life in the iris.

And the papyrus.

The native water lily had already put out new leaves by morning. Now it is time to spruce up the floating plants and wait and see what happens.

There is little of value left in the vegetable garden. Just a couple of peppers and eggplant to nurse back in the hope of a few late summer vegs. There is much work to do in all parts of the garden; dead and dying plants but the worst shock came in the bathroom garden. The pittosporums were burn to a crisp. This one really hurts.

They have been there for the life of the garden and have seen some terrible summers. What happened? When David investigated the sprinklers he discovered that it was human error. The box had been reprogrammed but never set! Neither this garden nor the English garden received any water for a month. Not sure if the plants will make a comeback but I have too much to do to worry about them at the moment.

COME TO TEA!

You know how much the English love their tea. Apart from our morning cuppa I usually put the kettle on around 4pm which is official 'tea time'. On Sunday I pulled out all the stops and served a special tea to celebrate a friend's birthday.

There are many different kinds of teas served in England. You may have been introduced to afternoon tea when watching Downton Abbey. The Dowager countess liked to invite a lady friend over to tea when she wanted to discuss something or maybe do a little prying. That was a fairly simple affair with maybe a small sandwich and cake and cups of tea and taken sitting on a chair with plates on knees or on a small side table. That is called low tea.

For this occasion my tea was mixture of Low tea, Royal tea and Devon cream tea! Royal tea named, not because the queen was in attendance, and she was, but because I served a little bubbly to start with.

We have Anne, Duchesse of Bedford, lady in waiting to Queen Victoria, to thank for this little ritual. With the ever lengthening time between luncheon and dinner she felt the need for a little snack and ordered a few sandwiches and cakes to be delivered to her room. She then suggested the idea of tea time to Queen Victoria who would invite ladies over to take tea with her.

But this wasn't an all ladies event at our house. We had gentlemen too, although it was the ladies who got together for a photograph while the men did the gossiping!

They may not have served all the things on my tea-time table but you would have been sure to see a selection of sandwiches and small cakes.

And maybe some meringues.

Undoubtedly there would be scones too. At one time the famous Devon tea consisted of scones with jam and clotted cream and was only served in the West Country. But such a delicious tea was sure to be adopted by other counties and now you can find a cream tea in many other counties and naming it after their own county.
I have to thank my friend the internet for many of these recipes. Want to know what was on the table.

Roasted red pepper and goat cheese sandwiches
Egg mayonnaise and chive sandwiches
Smoked salmon and cream cheese cucumber bites
Mushroom vol au vents
Curried chicken mayonnaise with grapes, dried cranberries, pecans and green onions on rounds of Granny Smith apples.
Watermelon cubes with pomegranate balsamic vinegar

Currant scones with strawberry jam and Devon cream
Shortbread fingers,
Meringues with cream and strawberries
Strawberries stuffed with sweetened cream cheese.

Earl Grey and English breakfast tea.

Next time you are thinking of celebrating a friend's birthday why not throw here a Royal tea.

LASTING IMPRESSIONS

No one likes to write about the bad things that go on in their garden. They really like to share the pretty photos of their garden design and flowers. No one has a perfect garden and no one is exempt from things that go wrong.
Not everything is rosy in my garden. It has been more than 2 months since the horrendous hail storm that battered our garden for more than ten minutes. The garden has made a good recovery and the plentiful rain has helped enormously. We were lucky it was in May because many plants were only just starting to grow. The worst hit of all were the cactus and succulents. This damage will never go away.

But it isn't just a matter of the unsightly. Many of the severely damaged plants are starting to fail. It's as though they have post traumatic stress. This plant bravely put out two new pads which are now hanging loosely. It was such a beauty too.

I have already discarded many agaves and pruned off tens of lower leaves on the large agaves at the front. Most of those are A. weberi, with sturdier leaves, and have taken the pruning well, their leaves spreading down to cover the cuts.  Not so the A. desmettiana. I waited before pruning the two in pots at the front gate. But in the end I had to do it. I knew it would create the pineapple effect and it just doesn't look right.

I think they will have to go. One of the reasons I decided to cut back was pups growing underneath. I want to give them a chance to grow in a more upright fashion. The mother plant will remain until the fall. At least I won't have to worry about the pots over the winter.

There are split stems on all the trees and bushes. Some will not recover. This is my beautiful Felicia. She put on a brave show producing new leaves only to find she couldn't support their growth. Then she bloomed again but the flowers were puny and pale. Now she is just bare twigs. I'm not sure whether to cut her back now or wait until the late winter. Either way it will be to the ground as all the stems are in this state.

A similar fate beset my once fabulous sage. I have waited hoping that it would recover but apart from a few new leaves most of the plant is dead.

Just before the storm it looked like this.

The vegetable garden faired pretty badly too. This is the first year that I have had to buy tomatoes. Beaten to the ground I hoped for their recovery but it was too late in the season to set fruit for this year. There will only be two lemons this year as all the flowers were knocked off the trees. Only the little calamondin is making new flowers.

But in all this I have my wonderful gardening friends to thank for some garden gifts. From Cindy at My Corner of Katy came a big box of bluebonnet seeds along with frilled poppy seeds. None of my bluebonnets managed to mature seed because their leaves were pounded to death. It was a huge blooming year too which made me concerned that they were putting their everything into the bloom after the great fall and winter rains. But surely mother nature is smarter than that and doesn't put all her eggs in one basket. Without these seeds from Cindy there may have been a poor bloom next year.

From Rock'N Oaks Garden Club in San Antonio, who had just visited my garden the week before, a generous gift to replace some of my lost plants. I know the new Felicia rose I buy in the fall will have their name on it. As will the replacement of my Princess Diana Texas clematis.

And my Austin garden friends have brought me agave pups, an Eve's Necklace tree and perennials to take the place of bare spots in the garden.
Thank you all. What a wonderful community of gardeners I belong to.
And on a much brighter note the Easter lily cactus bloomed two days after the white ones. Such a pretty color.

DID I PUT OUT THE WELCOME MAT?

Unknowingly I put out the welcome mat for rabbits to come into my garden. Silly me!

These are all residents of the sunken garden and so is the real thing. I spotted him yesterday and he was there again today. I think he has moved in for good because he happened on an all day buffet.  He's quite amenable to having his photograph taken in exchange for having done quite a bit of nibbling among the gomphrena. If I thought the flowers were high enough to be out of his way I had to think again. He managed to cut through the stem to topple the flowers and he's very untidy leaving the evidence all over the place. He is rather cute in his baby phase.

When he moved over towards the pool giving it quite an intense stare I have to admit I was egging him on to go for a swim. No such luck. He scurried deeper into the jungle at the back of the garden. There is no hope unless the snake takes a fancy to a rabbit dinner.

Suddenly wildlife surrounds the garden. This week we have had, all at the same time, a turkey, a rabbit 3 bucks and a doe on the septic field. Today a doe with two fawns.

Getting up close to these guys without spooking them is much more difficult. I took this over the wall. See the rabbit near to the turkey. I think this is a bigger one than the one in the garden. Or is there more than one?

There is plenty for them to eat this year so the deer are busy grazing the septic field. The mother with one fawn. The other was spooked and went charging off into the trees.

But there was another invader in the garden this week. I saw him crawling up the wall and knew immediately what he was. The first time I learnt about him was in Zoology class in High School and the last time I saw one of these was when we lived in Hong Kong. That's exactly where he belongs; Asia. He likes to eat earthworms and is not welcome around here. Let me introduce you to this land planarian with an arrow-shaped head,  Bipalium kewense.

If you find one in your garden and decide to dispose of him let me warn you of this one thing. He reproduces by fragmentation. Yes, leave a little part of him behind and you will immediately have another. He's a little bit like a tapeworm, another nasty parasitic flatworm.
And I have more nasties to talk about but that's for another day.