The Back Garden in June

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Summer is the time for gardens, even here in Texas. It’s hot, but mornings and evenings are lovely, if a bit sticky, and a shady garden is a welcoming place to spend some time. My back garden, in contrast with my sun-blasted front garden, is mostly shade. A few spots in the garden enjoy hours of sun and that’s where the back garden flower-power resides. June is in the rear window and it’s thoroughly July with its endless sunshine and no break from the heat, but a busy few weeks and poor blogging management means that this June post is late!

The northeast corner of my garden resides mostly in shade, only bits of dappled light reach this garden. The cheery chairs are comfy to rest in, provided the birds haven’t delivered too much poop upon the seats!

Easing out of the chairs, the pathway takes me to the pond and on to surrounding gardens.

We built the pond in 2008 and I’ve never regretted its addition to the garden.

I thought it would be a high maintenance addition, but a once-per-year cleaning is the only work involved, aside from adding regular water during the hottest time of year. The pond is the focal point of this back garden. Bubbling over limestone rocks from the small fall, lush green lilies and Pickerel Weed, Pontederia cordata, which shade fish and provide for pollinators, cooling, reflecting water, the fish that swim and the birds that bathe, in addition to the critters that visit during the night hours, all conspire to bring together the important qualities of a garden. It is both restful and alive.

Only one lily, ‘Colorado’, bloomed this day.

June is daylilies month. I don’t know the name or history of this variety; these particular ones descend from a few that my mother-in-law gave me years ago. Orange has never been a favorite color, but I adore these lilies: cheery, gaudy and eye-popping! Over time, I’ve added other plants that bloom orange and each have settled in as favorites. I guess that indicates, at least in a garden setting, orange is a favorite color!

I used to grow a patch of these lilies in the front garden; they sat in morning sun and afternoon shade and delivered seasonal orange crush. When that patch lost its afternoon shade, the poor lilies fried, so I moved most to the back garden pond area,

…and others to the opposite end of the back garden. Both areas receive about five hours of sun during the summer months, though at different times of the day.

Mexican Feathergrass, Nassella tenuissima, grow alongside the lilies in both areas and the two together–the silvery feathergrass and the lilies, with their Kelly-green grassy foliage, is a wining combination. The slender lily stems and brilliant pops of orange are a welcome sight every June and occasionally in late summer when there’s significant rain.

The pebbled path skirts the pond, then curves to this spot, where I stand, garden in front of me, limestone patio under my feet and enclosed catio at my back.

A few steps to my right and I have a good view of the central and largest area of my back garden. I focused this garden for autumn color and texture, so late spring and early summer mostly showcase foliage. The pink blooms are the mallow flowers, Rock Rose, Pavonia lasiopetala.

The musical Bewick’s Wren family who nested in a house at this spot in spring were still active with chick rearing in early June. This adult, meal for its chicks firmly held in beak, often perched on the metal hose stand, prior to taking the chicks’ meals to their house. I don’t know that the adults loved my presence, but they didn’t seem to mind me too much. They felt quite differently about the cats (and expressed themselves vociferously), who were safely stowed away in the catio!

Birds safe, cats entertained!

The pathway turns left from the catio, borders the main garden, and heads toward the back corner of our property where the honeybees live. I grow lots of Turk’s Cap, Malvaviscus arboreus var. drummondii, in both the front and back gardens. The wide leaves are lush all summer and crimson “caps” attract many kinds of pollinators, including the honeybees.

The pink blooms in this photo are Four O’Clocks, Mirabilis jalapa. A non-native, hardy perennial, these beauties open late in the day, closing by noon the next day, and attract a variety of pollinators, with particular benefit to the night time pollinators.

The central garden is book-ended by the pond (not visible) and the patio-to-beehive pathway. The back of this garden hosts several small, native trees: Roughleaf Dogwood, Cornus drummondii, Yaupon Holly, Ilix vomitoria, and Retama, Parkinsonia aculeata. The mix in the garden are native perennials with some evergreen, non-native Giant Liriope, Liriope muscari.

Many, if not most, of the plants I grow are pass-along plants, meaning that someone, at sometime, shared a seed, or cutting, or clump of plant with roots. As well, most, if not all of my plants are tough, requiring little care or irrigation. My biggest problem is that lots of my plants seed out with great gusto. Weeding is ongoing, and a tolerance for a certain level of serendipity is a must. My garden “style” is akin to an English cottage garden, so the tumble of foliage and flowers is appropriate, though I try to keep things in check. Or, so I tell myself…

On the other side of the pathway at the southwestern section of the garden, the summer blooms bask in afternoon sun.

Purple Coneflower, Echinacea purpurea, charm this garden, a worthy companion to the daylilies. This year, the coneflowers and daylilies flowered together–which is the goal–though often, one species blooms ahead of the other. The gardener works toward synchronicity, the garden plants do as they please.

Except for some rain this past weekend (Yay!), the dog days of summer have arrived. So what’s next for the garden? There will be blooms during the remainder of summer, quite a few, but many plants are settling in for their summer siesta: plenty of foliage, blooms resting. I’ll prune and shape plants that benefit in autumn from that effort, then relax and enjoy the blooming beasts of this hottest time of year.

The perennial garden is just that–perennial. There’s always something happening, always growth and change, always life renewing.

A Zizotes Find

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Late last summer as I walked my dog, I would regularly pass by a house that is owned by a local family. With no one in residence for at least a decade, owners who don’t maintain the property nor answer queries about the property, the front lawn has become a repository for plants–many native. In my shambling ambles with my old dog, I kept an eye on a plant that had situated itself at the edge of the unkempt lawn and that seem to sport milkweed-like foliage. My curiosity piqued, one evening I whipped out my phone, tapped my handy Seek app, and learned that this milkweed-like foliage belongs to Zizotes Milkweed, Asclepias oenotheroides, one of the native milkweeds of Central Texas.

I hated the thought that this precious pollinator plant would be subjected to the occasional mowing and resulting temporary destruction. So one morning, shovel in hand and bucket at the ready, I dug up the plant and skittered home with my plant booty.

True confessions: I am a plant thief.

The purloined Zizotes transplanted beautifully. I dug it up, reaching well into the soil with the shovel, as I didn’t have a clue about the root system. It turns out the plant enjoys a large bulb, with some spindly roots that radiate from the bulb. After I removed the plant from its original home, I potted it and set it in a dappled light area of my back garden, near a water source so that I would remember to water the newly set milkweed. I watched it for the remainder of summer, watering as necessary, admiring the plant’s resilience. My plan was to donate the plant to our neighborhood elementary school, which has a set of gardens, including a pollinator garden. The caretakers of the school garden were happy with the offer, but I insisted that we wait until October to plant, an ideal time to plant perennials here in Austin.

In October, before I left for a trip to Europe, the thriving milkweed was ready to join other plants in the pollinator garden and I contacted one of the volunteer caretakers of the gardens. She was appreciative, but worried that she might “kill” the plant. I assured her that the Zizotes proved a remarkably hardy critter, but she suggested that I keep the plant.

Well, I wasn’t inclined to argue with that! The Zizotes Milkweed now grows in my front garden, kept company by two volunteer Lyreleaf Sage, Salvia lyrata, and a host of other native plants nearby.

I’ve never seen Zizotes Milkweed plants for purchase in a nursery, though it’s possible that they’re included in some native plant seed packets. Zizotes is not the most attractive (to humans!) of milkweed plants; I’d guess that most nurseries wouldn’t carry it as most nursery customers are looking for “pretty” plants. The flowers are small, greenish-white and cluster along the main stem. I like these plants and find the diminutive blooms charming.

Since last summer’s milkweed discovery, I’ve found about eight other Zizotes Milkweed plants on the route I walk: five individual plants in a neighbor’s “hell strip” and one large one at the neighborhood school, alongside a walkway. The neighbors are refraining from mowing the milkweed, though it’d be nice if they weeded around the plants, but one can’t have everything, right? I asked for and received permission to dig up the school milkweed so that it wouldn’t continually be mowed throughout summer. The plant came out of the ground, bulb and roots intact, and as three individual plants! Woohoo! Within a couple of days, new leaf grow appeared. I love a tough plant!

I wish I’d taken a photo of the plants I removed from the school yard, as there was nothing left after the mowing but a few inches of shredded, raggedy stems. I rescued the milkweeds the day after the Austin Independent School District’s mowing crew did their worst. Now look at these three!

The name zizotes comes from Spanish, meaning “skin sores” because, like all milkweeds, the milky sap is toxic to humans and can cause skin irritation. According to the LBJWC (link in the first paragraph), Native Americans used the sap for as a poultice for skin rashes.

Very few Monarch butterflies came through my garden this past spring, adults wafting through the garden, nectaring on blooms. I noticed at one point that the zizotes disappeared. Did a monarch caterpillar eat it to the ground? I didn’t see that happen, but I certainly could have missed the action. The plant bounced back, up from roots and has grown and bloomed since. I’m hoping that my one plant will produce more Zizotes Milkweed plants, for my garden and to share with others.

Spring Migratory Birds

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Spring migration is over, most of the neo-tropical birds now settled in their breeding areas for summer’s chick raising. I didn’t have quite the numbers of migrants through my gardens this year. I don’t know if it’s that I simply didn’t see as many or if there weren’t as many; I hope it’s the first and not the second. That being said, it’s a challenge to watch the many flitty birds that visit my front garden, as I don’t have a unobtrusive spot in which to hide and observe. Lincoln and Chipping Sparrows showed up, as they scattered when I came into the garden. I saw busy, chatty Eastern Phoebes, and Great Crested and Crested Flycatchers; I usually heard them before seeing them and identified those (and others) using my Merlin app to identify calls and songs.

My back garden is still the best place to bird watch and it didn’t appoint. In an earlier post, I profiled a male Summer Tanager, Piranga rubra,

…and an Indigo Bunting, Passerina cyanea, who visited on the same day. I wonder if they coordinated, as red and blue go nicely together?

The tanagers usually show up in May and hang out near my beehive as they’re bee and wasp hunters. I’ve only seen an Indigo a couple of other times, so I was pleased with this pretty fella; he was obliging for the photo shoot. Both of these birds breed in the southern half of the US, the bunting with a wider range than the tanager. As a general rule, I only see these birds during spring or fall migration, though female Summer Tanagers have visited my gardens in summer months.

Painted Buntings also make an appearance in early May, usually for a couple of days. The only male Painted Bunting, Passerina ciris, that I saw this year was perched in my SIL’s Retama Tree, which sits outside one of our bedroom windows, offering close-ups of its lovely flowers and foliage at the window. I saw movement out the window, observed the handsome guy, ran for the camera, realized the battery was dead, said some bad words, replaced the battery, and by the time I returned for the shot, Mr. Gorgeous was semi-hiding in the pretty foliage and flowers of the Retama.

Harrumph!

On the brighter feathered side, two female Painted Buntings spent an afternoon noshing on seed fallen from the the safflower and sunflower feeders. They never were close enough to one another to acheive both in a photo, but this pretty one was still long enough for me to capture her nibbling on a seed. Her sister bird is just as attractive.

Two pairs of Common Yellowthroats, Geothlypis trichas, spent some time in my gardens over several weeks. This male, with his lemon yellow chest and jaunty black mask was all about bathing in the pond and fluttering dry in nearby shrubs. I never think these cuties the least bit common, despite their names.

The females Common Yellowthroats were hard to see, only allowing the briefest of glimpses as they bopped for seeds and insects in, out, and through undergrowth. One of the females finally emerged from the greens of the garden long enough for me to capture her in a few photos. She’s less colorful than her mate, but darling nonetheless and her yellow is just as lemony as her male partner. These tiny birds fly far for their breeding, as they are mostly out of Texas to raise their families.

I like this bird-on-bird photo!

We were gone for the first week of May and that’s a prime time for migrants through my gardens, including Baltimore, Bullock’s, and Orchard Orioles. This female Bullock’s Oriole, Icterus bullockii, was a late arrival and perched amiably on a metal bird just so I could catch a shot of her. She was only around one evening and I saw no other orioles this spring unless they all came through when I was traveling. I’m a bit sad about that, either the lack or orioles or my having missed them. Orioles are easy to spot in a garden owing to their bright colors! I hope this one is north of Texas now, somewhere in the central or western part of the country, preparing for or tending to some healthy chicks.

Hummingbirds are here, too, though no photos yet. They’ll hang out through summer nectaring on a variety of my plants, most of the tiny terrors leaving by late October. Resident birds are tending to growing chicks, or have already competed the intense part of parenting, and breeding season will wrap up soon for most species around here. It’ll be mostly the usual suspects until sometime in August, when new calls are heard, and young birds hatched far north of here, together with their parents, make their way southward again for winter, continuing the timeless migratory patterns their genetics demand.