Gardening
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A Hour at Fairchild | Part I
It’s really difficult to visit Fairchild Tropical Botanic Gardens in only an hour, but we did. Thankfully we were already familiar with the park otherwise I can’t imagine recommending anyone not familiar to visit it in only an hour. Really, you should spend half the day there if possible. It’s even more fun when they have their tropical ice cream vendors there! We started off with the vines on the west side of the park near the road. This is a chalice vine, a succulent-like vine that we once grew in our garden in Ft. Lauderdale. I wrote about the jade vine over on Sprout Dispatch on Monday. I’m not…
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The Ruby Mize Azalea Garden | SFA Botanic Gardens
On the west side of University drive and directly across from the Gayla Mize garden is the Ruby Mize Azalea Garden. Unfortunately we were about a month too early for the spectacular blooms of the azaleas, but it was still a nice walk through the small garden here. A camellia that I didn’t catch the name of. More camellias! If only we could keep the deer off of our remaining camelia in our yard… A magnolia bud. Camellia japonica ‘Kujaku-tsubaki’ Camellia ‘Spring Mist’ It was definitely the transition time for the end of the camellias and the beginning of the azaleas. Next year we’ll have to plant to visit east…
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The Gayla Mize Garden | SFA Botanic Gardens
On the far east side of the Stephen F. Austin campus is a wooded area that is home to a newer garden in the SFA Botanic Gardens, the Gayla Mize garden. It is definitely a work in progress with new plantings that are only a few years old, but you can see the potential it has in the upcoming years. Camellia yuhsienensis Euonymus phellomanus I didn’t take nearly as many pictures as I thought over in this garden, but it was a lovely walk. Lots of interesting species plants from various parts of the world, even a sassafras species from China that we didn’t know about. Back beyond the garden…
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A Basket of Carrots
This morning I pulled the carrots and daikon radishes in order to make room for tomatoes here in a few weeks. We’ve eaten a few carrots since they matured (planted them in October I believe) but haven’t really done a whole lot with them otherwise. It took me about two hours to peel them—really, I just finished peeling them a few minutes ago. Chris will blanch and freeze them tonight so we can eat them later on in the year. The daikon radishes had bolted, among the many other winter vegetables that have bolted in the last few weeks. The biggest and longest daikon! I’ll probably take some to work…
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Blossoms
I wish that these blossoms would last longer than I know they will. The magnolia might be ‘Ann’, but we’re not sure. The tag disappeared off of the tree, however it might be lingering somewhere in our piles of garden tags and information….somewhere. The two ‘Yellow Bird’ magnolias have not bloomed yet. Even so, only one will. The second one was rammed down by a buck and we left it to determine if would sprout back in the spring. I’m still tempted to rip it out and put a bigger one back in its place. We have a ‘Jane’ magnolia as well but it hasn’t bloomed yet either. Down the…
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The Next Garden Phase
With spring weather appearing Chris and I have been outside in the yard working furiously on various projects. Our current project is what will hopefully be a quick perimeter flower bed around the man-cave. This area had previously been landscaped as per evidence we’ve found in the bed: soaker hoses, old stumps, telephone poles acting as a border, pieces of green plant tape, and other miscellaneous items garden related. We still had plenty of stone left from the other flower gardens that needed to be put to use and they have worked out perfectly for this section. Standing back further in the driveway, the new bed really does tie together…
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Spring…around the corner??
It sure seems that way with our forecast for the next 10 days being in the 60s and 70s. Even if spring isn’t around the corner, I think some plants in the yard believe it is. The crocus we planted last year are sprouting and blooming out in the right-of-way. In the edible garden a lot of our greens are bolting. There’s a plethora of yellow blooms out there, so much so that they are attracting our bees! One of the side by-products of the first trimester has been an aversion to vegetables. Therefore a lot of our greens have gone uneaten and I feel really guilty about that. I…
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The Angry Garden
As the video says, the garden wasn’t happy with a deep freeze. I’m already looking forward to the 70* weather that is predicted at the end of the week.
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Dock Building
Chris has been itching to rebuild the deck and extend it out over the water for a full-fledged dock since we moved in. He’s had the pieces for the base of the dock stashed under our carport for months, staining them as he could. Finally, before Christmas he put them together and waited until today to install them in the water. Next he’ll cut the boards for the top and install them, staining them afterwards. Eventually he’ll put the deck in too! Several months ago he bought two Adirondack chairs online, put them together and stained them. They look fabulous and will look even more fabulous when they are on…
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Winter Solstice
Yesterday while it wasn’t raining and the air was a perfect 75* and balmy, I took a series of short videos around the garden. I was searching for the beauty that is hiding somewhere amongst the dead and brown in the garden. It’s there, you just have to look a bit harder. Today we’re expecting rains for the solstice and a continuation of some warmth with maybe a dip down into the 50s and 60s, but nothing like it was two weeks ago. This is my kind of winter. We’re going to spend solstice doing some final Christmas shopping, and I’m going to do a little housework and then some…