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…

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…

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.

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…

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

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…

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.

Back in Florida I grew a pineapple lily, I think I got in a trade, in a pot for several years until we sold all of our plants when we moved away. I’ve been drooling over some that I’ve been seeing lately at a few local nurseries and finally last weekend I broke down and bought one at Arbor Gate when we went to their fruit tree sale (got an apricot….and a magnolia, I know, not a fruit tree but we need to replace a tree we cut down). I have no idea which species or hybrid of Eucomis this is as the pot wasn’t labeled. I’m not sure as…

Between one of our neighbors and our property is a raised flower bed lined in brick. Part of it is falling down and it straddles the property line. Eventually we’ll remove the bed—another project for another month—but several clumps of bulbs came up a month or so ago and now they are finally blooming. Turns out they appear to be paperwhites. We’ll likely relocate the ones that are on our side to another part of the yard. Aside from some other random plants in the bed there’s also a dogwood which is unfortunately not on our side. I bet it’ll be pretty come spring! So happy for warm weather and…