While I Was Gone

Posted on January 17, 2023 by Tina

Vacations are great, especially when parents meet up with an adult child living in a far-flung place. We connected with that character-of-a-child in Vienna, Austria, not quite mid-way between where he lives and where we live, adding a side jaunt to Salzburg (with him), and a week-long dash of Paris before Austria. I won’t get out the white sheet to hang on the wall and bore you with my vacation slides, but I will lament my freeze-damaged garden with readers who probably suffered the same, or something similar.

While I enjoyed balmy 40s F in Vienna, Austin dipped to 15 F overnight and remained below freezing for several days over the Christmas weekend. The garden is now a palette of brown, beige, and grey, bits of green suggesting that life exists.

This Purple Heart, Tradescantia pallida, reflects my feeling about the garden when I arrived home and got my first look!

Native plants and those from Mexico or Western U.S will be fine. In fact, all of the annual Texas wildflowers are green and gearing up for a nice show,

Blue Curls or Caterpillars, *Phacelia congesta*. I have scads of these throughout my front garden.

Evergreen native perennials, even if freezer-burned, are returning from their roots or flushing out new foliage. I’m also seeing a few blooms pop up. Yay!

Native to Arizona, Globe Mallow, *Sphaeralcea ambigua,* is typically a cool season bloomer.

Some evergreen plants are truly evergreen. This young Softleaf Yucca, Yucca recurvifolia (left) and mature native Basketgrass, Nolina texana (right) are green year-round no matter how hot or cold,

…as is this Red Yucca, Hesperaloe parviflora. Huzzah for the green stalwarts!

The plant that suffers most are the clumps of Flax lily, Dianella tasmanica, in my back garden. This summer drought-tough non-native is the only plant that I always cover before a hard freeze. My peach of a sister-in-law prepared my garden and pipes for the freeze, but some plants just had to weather the cold, come what may.

Sad as this and the other flax lilies look, I’m already seeing some of their striped foliage emerging from the frozen apocalypse. Going forward, I guess I don’t actually need to cover these, which is great news!

The garden is in a dull state, but there are birds (chirping), squirrels (chasing) and even a few butterflies (flitting). The honeybees forage on warmer days.

Bright spots in my garden are silvery grasses. They’re not green and lush of the growing season, but they’re still full and graceful, moving in the breeze, rustling with the wind.

Since those cold, cold few days, Austin’s weather has been mild and dry. I returned from my trip during the first week of January and have worn shorts and t-shirts often. I’ve also begun the pruning process which will require time and patience to help the garden prepare for the upcoming growing season.

I have my work cut out for me in the next 6-8 weeks. Virtually everything will need pruning to the ground. What fun! Would that I could be a resident of old Versailles, France gazing out at the gardens, concerned only with court intrigue and how much powder to put on my wig!

Spring in Fall

Posted on December 5, 2022 by Tina

According to the calendar, autumn is in place, with winter just around the bend. Maybe someone should remind one of my Columbine plants and some eager Spiderworts that they’re supposed to be resting right now.

This Yellow Columbine, Aquilegia chrysantha, has blossomed over the last few weeks.

These are spring flowers which usually bloom from March through May. On occasion, this particular specimen has gifted some pretties in early fall, but I don’t recall it ever flowering this late in the season.

The yellow plays peek-a-boo with foliage of Red Spider Lily, *Lycoris radiata.*

The two fairy-like blooms complement ground-cover greens with yellow cheer. The spring-like foliage, which will remain evergreen throughout winter, is that of Yellow Columbine, Spider Lily and Common Yarrow. A crisp of autumn is in place with the golden-tan leaf of an American Sycamore.

The spiderwort that I grow are all pass-a-long plants, so I don’t know their exact heritage. Because they tend to be tall, I’ve always assumed they’re some hybrid of Giant Spiderwort, Tradescantia gigantea. I’ve seen the occasional bloom in December and January, but those are usually short, the stems and flowers low to the ground. In my front garden, a couple of clumps of Spiderwort have grown tall and are blooming, as if time skipped the gloom of winter and joyfully leaped to March and April.

I certainly don’t mind seeing the Spiderwort. As weedy as they can become, I always welcome them in my garden. On warmer, sunny days, honeybees are busy nosing around in the blooms.

As well, a remnant of summer is hanging on in the form of a group of common sunflowers. This stalk is broken, but the bent piece maintains enough life in that section that it has bloomed prolifically since August, offering dabs of sunshine on dreary days.

This gardener firmly believes that gardens don’t always operate according to calendars and that plants have minds of their own.

Autumn Grasses

Posted on November 28, 2022 by Tina

Along with a bevy of flowery blooms, late summer and autumn showcases the graceful good looks of native grasses. Native grasses are attractive year-round but really strut their stuff in autumn. I’ve grown the shade-loving Inland Sea Oats, Chasmanthium latifolium for years and love them, but grasses requiring the intense Texas sun I could only admire in other gardens. Now that my front garden is sun-drenched, native grasses have a place and they have shined.

I’m besotted with Gulf Muhly, Muhlenbergia capillaris. I was never successful in growing these pink, frothy pretties, until appropriate, sunny conditions developed. I now have plenty of sun-baked spots and four new Gulf Muhly have nestled in nicely.

Two older Gulf Muhlies have grown well in another spot for a couple of years, but in my re-vamped sunshiny space, there are an additional four individuals. These muhlies are slender, shapely green throughout spring and summer, but in October, their pink-purple plumes add gauzy elegance and a swath of color in the last days of the growing season.

A closer view of this purple-pink magic.

I planted an arc of four muhlies, though only one has powered up the color in full. These have been in the ground less than a year and since this photo was taken, the other three, while still behind in the fluff, have filled out well. Gorgeous whether in sunny or cloudy conditions, they add softness and movement in the garden.

I have successfully grown a couple of Lindheimer’s or Big Muhly, Muhlenbergia lindheimeri, for a few years. Another beautiful plant year round, the lacelike plumes develop in autumn, catching the sun’s rays and swaying with the wind.

These three fit well together in the garden!

The halo of bright green behind the middle Big Muhly is a Bamboo Muhly, *Muhlenbergia dumosa.* Native to Arizona, it’s a large grass that grows well in sun and shade. The even-taller yellow flowers belong to Plateau Goldeneye

This is my oldest Big Muhly and it’s always a stunner.

Spring and summer silvery Mexican Feather Grass, Nassella tenuissima, have switched their colors to autumn toasty, with a hint of sage. These small grasses fit well in a variety of settings and like all the native grasses, are tough, hardy plants. I’ve had more luck with this grass in part-shade, but am pleased with how they’ve fared in full sun.

In the new sun garden I’ve added three Little Bluestem, Schizachyrium scoparium. I like this little grass, tidy and dainty, though confess some disappointment that its autumn color hasn’t yet materialized as advertised.

The photo is busy. The two Bluestems are overtaken by some pushy Rock Rose, *Pavonia lasiopetala.*

You can see the green clumps and the stems that shoot upwards in fall. There are even some cottony seed heads already formed on one of the plants.

This spot actually gets a little bit of fall shade as the angle of the sun is lower, so I’m in the process of moving the trio to a nearby spot which I think will get full sun in summer and fall. In fact, the third of the trio I’ve already moved:

This one has some nice burgundy/rusty foliage action, not fully in fall garb, but more in line with the typical autumn colors of Little Bluestem. This individual never developed its vertical stems because when I allow my younger cat, Lena, in the garden (supervised and only for a few minutes!) she loves to munch this particular grass.

Maybe Little Bluestem needs something eating it to get fall color??

This post completes a short series highlighting the autumn Texas garden delights of birds, blooms, pollinators, and grasses. Our summers are hot, but the payoff in utilizing native plants in our wonderfully long growing season is an autumn filled with color, movement, texture, and life. And isn’t that what’s a garden should be?