Gardening

  • Gardening

    Mason Bees & Scoping Out the Honey Bees

    This is the back of our middle building, the shed/carport/my studio building. When we had our inspection last year before moving in the inspector mentioned that bees had been boring holes into the wood on the back of the building along the top near the roof. I mentioned this to Chris after we moved in but we never really saw the bees and coupled with the busyness of moving into we didn’t investigate into it. A few weeks ago I noticed that what I suspected to be mason bees hovering in the area. Since then we realized they were heavily utilizing that area and sure enough Chris found them chomping…

  • Gardening

    Bee Day!

    We got up this morning, stopped for breakfast tacos at the gas station, and drove through rural Montgomery and Grimes Counties to get to R. Weaver Apiaries just outside of Navasota. If you are looking for bluebonnets, you Texans out there, FM 2 in Grimes County has a ton of bluebonnets in the ranch pastures, sweeping vistas of them. Very beautiful! The bees were very quiet on our way home, not a buzz, and then, as you see in the video above we put them into the hive. They are doing well, bees flitting about the garden right now. We’re doing a bunch of yard work today so we’ll be…

  • Gardening

    The Veggie Garden Is In! (Almost)

    It was crunch time this last weekend and we made it a sprint by getting our vegetable garden in, well at least most of it. We brought in some dirt to even out the surface of where we chose to put the garden. The front yard is much larger than our back yard, and the only flat surface in the backyard would have been over our septic drainfield which is a total no-go for planting. So, up front the garden went. This is also a great sunny space with a bit of dappled shade for the hot summer afternoons. I became ‘one’ with the posthole digger over the course of…

  • Gardening

    The Hungry Caterpillars

    Last weekend I noticed a black swallowtail caterpillar on my dill. I had planted some dill in the space that is to be Phase II of our flower garden, but for now that space was serving as a makeshift vegetable garden. The dill had sprouted up from one of the large pots we had grown garlic in last year so I transplanted it to the ground instead. With the longer day lengths and increased heat it has already jumped into flowering. When I finally got around to taking photos I noticed smaller instars of the caterpillars! They are soooo cute, right? There’s a small mound of parsley right next to…

  • Gardening

    Daffodils

    I had begun to wonder if the daffodils would bloom. We planted some in late Fall but it was early Winter by the time we managed to get a few other bags of bulbs in the ground. I kept the label that came with the bags but it seems these are only the ‘Trumpet Mix’ and nothing more specific than that. Let’s hope that they rebloom next year.

  • Gardening

    Spring in My Brother’s Garden

    I hadn’t been up to DFW to see my family since Christmas, (keeping your head down and working in the garden every weekend for three months straight will do that to you), so a couple of weekends ago I drove up to see my grandmother whose mental condition (and physical) had deteriorated more recently. I also hadn’t been to my brother’s house recently to see the changes in his garden so I decided to stop by and check it out. The weather was beautiful, sunshine and late springtime temperatures instead of late winter temperatures. Of course my nephew Grayson came along for the garden tour. My brother lives in a…

  • Gardening

    Jack-in-the-pulpit

    Chris ordered several interesting native plants for our garden and jack-in-the-pulpits were some of the ones that we received. They came to us as tiny corms and sprouted faster than I expected. It would be really cool to have them naturalize in our more shady and moist areas of the yard. This is a pretty interesting write up as is

  • Gardening

    Macadamia Seeds

    Chris’ dad and step-mom went to Hawaii a few months ago and brought back a package with two macadamia tree seeds. Despite that we’re in zone 9A, barely, we definitely get some chill hours here that only 30 minutes down the road into the urban heart of Houston does not get. We’re at the north end of a zone that allows us to grow avocados (apparently Fantastic is the cultivar that does best here) so I thought we’d give it a try and grow the macadamias out and see what happens. We soaked them overnight as per the package directions….well, actually it was a few days because I forgot to…

  • Creative,  Gardening

    Creating with the Family

    Part of my family was in town over the weekend and on Saturday we went to the Calendar Garden for a class in which we would create our own garden markers out of clay. This was the real deal—real pottery clay, real glaze, and it would be fired in a kiln by the artist who hosted the class. Sweet! I haven’t used real clay since high school and as I worked with the clay it all came back to me easily. Made me wish I had my own potting wheel and kiln! My niece and nephew came along with me, my mom, and sister-in-law and they were good for the…

  • Gardening

    Peach and Citrus Flowers

    The trees know it is spring. It may be the second week of February but here in Texas it is warm and enjoyable. The sun is setting later, the bees are buzzing, an occasional hummingbird comes our way. These are the days to savor.