Foliage Day, March 2015

Posted on March 22, 2015 by Tina

The Wearing of the Green

An apt phrase for March in Texas if there ever was one, with apologies to revolutionaries everywhere. No doubt this ditty was sung in the past week somewhere in Austin, Texas, but my focus is on verdant foliage in my spring (officially!) garden. With thanks to Christina of Creating my own garden of the Hesperides for hosting Garden Bloggers’ Foliage Day, spring has most definitely sprung in my home town. Let’s take a quick stroll through this Texas spring garden, shall we?

The columbines are flowering, but their leaves are lush during fall, through winter and into spring bloom time. This little one is paired with a passalong daylily leaf, emerged from winter dormancy, which won’t bloom until early summer.

And this group of columbines leads in a nice foliage vignette which includes a potted American Century Plant, Agave americana and Cast Iron Plant, Aspidistra elatior.

I grow only the native Texas columbines, the Aquilegia chrysantha and the Aquilegia canadensis because others will fry to a crisp in the Texas summer heat.

Engelmann Daisy or Cutleaf Daisy, Engelmannia peristenia, sports deeply lobed fuzzy, gray-green foliage.

The bright yellow blooms will accompany the foliage later in the season.

Lyreleaf Sage, Salvia lyrata, is attractive year round,

…and the foliage makes an excellent ground cover. I planted Lyreleaf as a groundcover in the area where my honeybee hives are located. The plants withstand moderate foot traffic and we can place our beekeeping equipment on the rosettes with little negative impact, as long as the Lyreleaf are not blooming or setting seed.

And once the blooms open, the bees don’t need to travel far for gathering nectar and pollen.

Glorious in burgundy rimmed foliage are the leaves of the Martha Gonzales Rose.

There are currently only a couple of roses open, but I love the color of the tender, new leaves.

Golden Groundsel, Packera obovata, is in full blooming mode, but its foliage demonstrates a bit of a split-personality. Most of the year, the plant acts as a low ground cover with ovate, serrated leaves hugging the ground. As the bloom stalks shoot upward to their flowering ends, the leaves along the stalk form lance-shaped and fern-like.

It’s a foliage twofer.

One of my favorite plants for shade/part-shade is the White Yarrow, Achillea millefolium. It’s always lush, elegant and beautifully spring-green.

I know many people suffer oak allergies and I am sympathetic to their sniffling and stuffed-headed misery, but the pollen tassels on the Shumard Oak, Quercus shumardii, are golden and gorgeous.

I look forward to seeing them every year.

This Shumard branch shows off its new chartreuse leaves,

…accessorized with a tassel skirt, amidst a background full of the stunning native small tree, Mountain Laurel, Sophora secundiflora. The dark green leaves of the Laurel are punctuated by clusters of the signature fragrant, deep purple blooms. Nothing speaks early spring in Austin like that pairing!

What foliage do you sing about this bonny March? Have a look at foliage from gardens everywhere by visiting Garden Bloggers’ Foliage Day and happy spring to Northern Hemisphere gardeners and a good autumn to gardeners in the Southern Hemisphere .

All Hail Hymenoxys

Posted on March 19, 2015 by Tina

All hail, indeed!! For those gardeners living in Texas and northwestward states to Colorado, as well as southward into Mexico, it’s a tough proposition to find a longer blooming, better-behaved, cheery daisy to place in the garden than the perennial Hymenoxys, Tetraneuris scaposa.

Commonly called Four-nerve Daisy (because of the veins inside the petals, which the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center describes as “dark purple,” but look green to me),

…it’s also known as Stemmy Four-nerve Daisy, Yellow Daisy, and Bitterweed. It’s a ray of sunshine, year-round, in the home garden or along the highway.

I first planted Hymenoxys over 20 years ago in a spot in my backyard when I began the conversion from a high-maintenance lawn to a low-maintenance, native plants garden. The one I planted didn’t last long and that was because I planted it in a shady spot. I’ve made lots of mistakes like that over the years and (hopefully) have learned from those mistakes. That’s the best garden education there is–screw up, learn, redo correctly. Or at least redo; some of us take longer to learn than others of us. Over the years, I was enamored and distracted with other aster perennials and never replanted Hymenoxys in my gardens. When I designed the long, narrow Driveway Garden in spring 2014, I purchased and planted three Hymenoxys daisies. I knew they would be great additions to this garden,

…and so they are. These sweet, dancing-in-the-breezes daisies have bloomed non-stop since being popped in the ground a year ago.

Borne from an evergreen clump of slender grey-green foliage,

…the leafless stems, the ‘scape’ of scaposa, rise about 6-8 inches, topped by a single daisy. The stems show a slightly purple tinge (which I do see as purple),

….and in all phases of flower development, the blooms are attractive.

The petals are bright yellow and each ends in three lobes.

Hymenoxys is a perennial that works well in many styles of gardens, including sparse rock/succulent gardens and lush perennial beds. Hymenoxys is a small plant, so it’s best placed in the front of a bed, rather than behind something that will tower or flop over it. That’s one of the reasons I remembered Hymenoxys for my Driveway Garden–it’s very tidy and doesn’t grow huge like so many perennial shrubs. It fits well in a narrow spot.

It will seed out prolifically if planted in good soil. I don’t view that as a bad thing, though I’m sure I’ll eventually have to toss some seedlings into the compost because I won’t have any other spot in my gardens to plant the new additions. This past fall, I transplanted some seedlings from the mother plants,

…and they’ve flourished. Of course they have.

My patch of Hymenoxys bloomed all winter and that’s another great quality about this plant, its remarkably long bloom time.

Hymenoxys is tolerant of a variety of soil types and is heat and drought resistant during our long summers. The flowers attract pollinators–I’ve seen bees and butterflies at mine. Additionally, drum roll please, Hymenoxys is highly deer resistant.

Wow! The perfect plant!

Unless you’re not fond of pretty yellow flowers!

A Quirky Owl

Posted on March 17, 2015 by Tina

Since Mama Screech vanquished the squirrel-squatter, she appears to be settling in for brooding quite nicely. In the past 7 years of hosting these beautiful birds in my gardens, observance of the parent owls has been limited to early mornings (REALLY early) and evenings as one or the other parent quits the box for the nightly hunting forays. Typically, I can observe one, or both, owls only for a few minutes, mostly as flashes and ghostly quiet movements between trees.

The mama owls that I’ve had in my gardens stay inside the brood house during the day for some of the time once eggs are laid, but I have rarely seen the mammas peering out during the day, except for early evening as the sleepy heads are awakening from the daily snoozing and before they’re “on” as nocturnal critters. As the time approaches for the owlets to hatch, the mammas tend to spend more time in the brood box and once the owlets hatch (April-ish), mammas are in the box full-time, with dads posted in nearby trees, attending fatherly duties and keeping a close watch on their little owl families. It’s during this time that I have regularly seen the mammas, their little Screech Owl faces positioned in the hole of the box, for longer periods during the day. If birds are squawking, squirrels are curious, or there’s any action in the garden, the mammas appear and are alert and visible to ward off possible dangers facing their owlets.

Each year that owls have settled in and raised a family has proven different from the last. The first year, the owls were all over–I saw that couple and their offspring almost daily. Last year, the owls were shy and discreet and I barely knew they were in residence and that was true for both the parents and their owlets. Other years, I’ve regularly seen owls in nearby trees, sometimes not at all.

This year there is a different dynamic unfolding.

I fretted that Squirrel Nut-twerp would inhabit the box before the owls could lay their claim, but that’s no longer of much concern. Now I’m anxious that Mama isn’t getting a good day’s sleep as she prepares for motherhood. She’s awake and semi-awake, her little face perched in the hole throughout daylight hours. Here’s a brief pictorial of Mama Owl in her various moods these past few days:

pensive,

…curious,

…concerned,

…annoyed,

…and really annoyed.

My theory on her diurnal awake state is that she’s a new mama and is keeping close tabs on her surroundings–but I could be totally off-base. She’s not bothered by anything in particular–she watches the cats and dog when they stroll into her line of sight and pokes her head out when the birds are especially noisy, but seems nonplussed. One morning, I saw a squirrel (Nut-twerp?) scramble along the branch and stand on the top of the brood box. Mama Owl clicked her beak in warning and retreated into the box. The squirrel skittered off.

Mama Owl isn’t unduly upset with us humans, either. I had friends over Saturday evening, (for pi/pie day, what else??) and they all trooped out to look at the bees and the owl–she wasn’t fazed at all by being the center of attention and their oohing and ahhing at her darlingness. She just looked at us, unimpressed, and blinked her big sage-green eyes.

She’s retired into her box more in the last 24 hours, so I’m hoping she’s getting some much-needed rest. Mama work is hard–especially when you work the night-shift.

My Gardener Says…

Yeah, it's work, but it's less work than grass and far more interesting.

Foliage Day, March 2015

All Hail Hymenoxys

A Quirky Owl