A Three Sisters Bloom Day for May 2012

 This post was written by me, Annie in Austin, for my Transplantable Rose Blog.


Philo and I enjoyed the flowers that bloomed here on the 15th but May 15th was not my target date this month. The truly important date came a few days later when my sisters popped in from Illinois for a long weekend. They really came to visit our Austin family, not to see plants, but I still wanted the garden to shine.

Josie and Hannah have visited Austin before but only in fall. This time my gardening sisters and I would have our own special Garden Bloom Day for May. Some favorite plants didn't cooperate... 'Julia Child' rose had just finished a bloom cycle and it's too early for the 'Acoma' crepe myrtles

 

but a few Magnolia buds looked promising

 

We planned on meeting other family members at local restaurants for some meals but in a pre-houseguest tizzy I also cooked old favorites like Shredded Chicken with Peppers and baked a Cheesecake. Philo and I could hardly wait for our beloved guests to arrive! 

The front-garden greeting committee included the Mutabilis Rose. This enormous shrub rose used to be in shade by mid-May, but since the recent demise of Arizona Ash #2, it's still in sun and has continued to bloom.

Although Hesperaloe is called Red Yucca, it sure looks fluorescent pink to me. That's why this native relative of asparagus grows in the Pink Entrance Garden with Cherry Skullcap at its feet. Things would have been even more gaudy but the 'Belinda's Dream' rose behind the Hesperaloe was Resting Between Engagements.

The Vitex agnus-castus/Chaste tree caught Josie's eye as she went to the veranda steps. It had started to open over the weekend, the shrub resembling the unrelated Butterfly bushes while the color and shape of the blooms look a little like lilacs.
Like many plants here, the look of the flower draws you to smell it, but Vitex flower heads have only a vaguely herby-meadowy smell rather than a scent worth making into perfumes. 

In a similar way you can be drawn to the beauty of many Salvias while being repelled by the funky smell. Mexican Mint marigold flowers are not as beautiful as salvias, but the foliage smells better in an inside vase.    

For more than 50 years a peony that once grew in my grandmother's garden has been divided and shared around the family. In Illinois, Peonies and Lilacs rule the month of May with both color and fragrance but they can't live here so I had to leave them behind.
Luckily, Grandma's peony still blooms in the gardens of my sisters and cousins. My sister Hannah cut three flowers that were just beginning to show petal color and tucked them into her suitcase. I recut them and put them in water, and the first one opened two days later. 

My sisters' daylilies bloom at the end of June and during July, but in Austin they flower in late April and May. The old-fashioned orange daylily bloomed with Larkspur in April but by the time my sisters came it was done and the larkspur was going to seed. 'Devonshire' had open flowers, with purple-blue supplied by Mealy blue sage.

 

I brought 'Prairie Blue Eyes' to Austin with me in 1999 and it still looks good. 

 

A passalong daylily from Pam Penick, 'Best of Friends', was having a spectacular year - nine stems with 8 huge flowers open at once

 The dwarf 'Vi's Apricot' daylily had been blooming for weeks, a passalong from a friend in Illinois. My sisters took divisions of this little flower home to plant in their gardens - even though Vi can no longer garden, her special plant will keep on blooming.

My sisters saw the buds of the citron daylily - the original plant didn't live through summer 2011 but I'd moved a small division near the house. One flower opened yesterday.

The Cenizo/Texas sage had popped some flowers - today it's covered in blooms

Hannah & Josie liked the 'Red Cascade' climbing mini-rose mixed into the Rosemary

They liked the two-tone flowers of 'Hot Lips' salvia

 

 

  

They wondered how tropical milkweed would do in Illinois

And liked the pure light blue of Plumbago with Purple oxalis

They were here when the Hydrangea x Bliss 'Sweet Carol' bloomed for the first time since 2008.

They got to see dwarf pomegranates forming

 and to see small Meyer's lemons growing on the tree behind the house

The garden was full of birds this week - we watched them from the breakfast room and in the garden- here's a white-winged dove herding a fledgling under cover

And before they left, they encountered a genuinely lovely Southern scent - Magnolia blossoms on the 'Little Gem' tree.

 

We had a wonderful time but the few days went by in a blur - the entire family group liked Trudy's patio

 But all too soon they were rolling the suitcases away 

Now it seems like summer instead of May... yesterday we got the first tomatoes of 2012. 

This post was written by Annie in Austin for her Transplantable Rose Blog... probably much too late for the roundup of GBBD posts by May Dreams Carol 

Ed May 25, 2012. The complete list is now up at Annie's Addendum. 

Garden Bloggers Bloom Day April 2012

Spring 2012 has brought some pleasant surprises, like blooms on the Hesperaloe/Red yucca - the first flowers in three years.

The mild winter allowed the unfrozen Loquat tree to give us fruit as well as flowers.

But our tree seems to be better at making flowers- the fruit is quite small with very large seeds so it took an enormous amount of loquats to yield enough pulp for one batch of loquat salsa and a few jars of loquat jam.

It wasn't exactly a surprise when the 1940 US census records were released at the beginning of April - genealogists and family historians were counting down the days. Building the index is a huge project, requiring thousands and thousands of volunteers. I've tried to balance my desire to quickly hunt down my own family members in 1940 with my wish to help other people find their family history. Now I sometimes hunt and at other times I am a volunteer indexer, working from my home on my own computer to add to the index. If this idea intrigues you, look into becoming an indexer, too - the project is huge and should go on for many months.

One of my favorite not-quite-surprises is the Sweetheart arch. When I planted the 'Climbing Iceberg' rose and Confederate Jasmine on opposite sides it didn't seem like a gamble - those are plants that are usually pretty tough in Austin. They lived but didn't thrive in 2010 & 2011. This spring the arch is almost covered in white flowers - makes you want to walk through and sit on the bench, doesn't it?


If you'd like to see the complete list of everything that was in bloom on April 16, 2012, with my best efforts at the botanical names and more photos, click over to my companion blog, Annie's Addendum.

Since Carol of May Dreams Gardens started this meme in February 2007, on the 15th of each month she makes a post & a roundup of participating gardeners from all over-here is April 2012.

Happy Spring from Annie in Austin!

The Whitebud is Late for March GBBD

Welcome to a pretty good Garden Bloggers Bloom Day post for May Dreams Carol! Spring looks more normal this year after rains have lessened the drought - my garden has more flowers than a sensible person could expect after the last 3 years, surviving hail, record heat, record drought, record cold and a sideswipe from Hurricane Hermione. The green of annual grasses gives the look of a lawn. The coral honeysuckle- Lady Banks rose combo on the arch are once again in synch
There was enough moisture to make Bluebonnet seeds sprout and grow. Salvia greggii is starting to bloom, the Blackfoot daisies lived through winter, the larkspur has buds, the white iris flowered and the cilantro is bolting. The first fragrant peach iris opened today
After months of bloom, the Loropetalum/Chinese witch hazel is still adding color - this time with bright new leavesBattered but alive, the Banana Shrub scents the air and makes me smileSomething happened to the native Mock Orange that has suckered along both sides of the fence - a lot has died. But there's a big chunk living and blooming still.
In 2011 the Meyer's Lemon tree against the garage wall was frozen, nearly died and had no flowers. In 2012 it reaches to the roofline and has hundreds of buds ready to open.
Last year the Texas Mountain laurel froze but it was beautiful this year
The native Four-Nerve daisies haven't stopped flowering for months so no surprise there... but when the also hyphenated Blue-Eyed grass lives and blooms again it's an event!
I bought a native Mexican Buckeye last spring, then chickened out as the heat came on, moving it into a larger container rather than planting it in the hard, hot earth. Last month with softened ground and more hope in our hearts Philo & I set it out under where the canopy of a live oak will shade it in afternoon. It's a small shrub so we had to look down to see the flowers.
Texas redbud and old-fashioned Spiraea are paired again
But the Whitebud is not only late for bloom day - it must be permanently known as the Late Whitebud. The flowers were beautiful in the March 2011 post for GBBD, but the tree was already in its final decline. The garden is named Circus ~ Cercis for the 3 kinds of redbuds but the star is gone! Tom Waits once sang
"tell me who will put flowers
On a flower's grave"

Actually, most gardeners do it all the time, planting new flowers when something dies. I dried my tears and bought a 'Muskogee' crepe myrtle, hoping it will handle the harsh west winds and sun in that front bed. When my turn as hostess for The Divas of the Dirt came last November, in addition to making hypertufa troughs we planted the new tree forward of the spot where the whitebud once grew. The leaves will not be heart-shaped but with luck the blooms will be beautiful.
A complete list of blooms with botanical names is posted on my Annie's Addendum blog.

(The lyrics for Flowers Grave can be found at the Tom Waits website and the song is on YouTube. )

Garden Bloggers Bloom Day February 2012

This post was written by Annie in Austin for her Transplantable Rose Blog.

February 2011 kept us below freezing for 3 straight days, killing some plants and damaging many. So far this February of 2012 has given us cool temperatures rather than freezing cold nights, and there has been some rain. Although the amount of rain that has fallen on my garden is much less than those official measurements from Austin Bergstrom Airport or Camp Mabry, in combination with no nights below 27°F, it was enough to pump up more blooms than usual for February.

There's a complete list of what's in bloom today at Annie's Addendum - the Shrimp Plants, Four-Nerve Daisies, Rosemary, Pineapple Sage, Creeping Phlox and Loropetalum are on the list for another month.

In many winters the Mexican Honeysuckle/Justicia spicigera acts like perennials do in the North, freezing completely to ground level. But this year it has experienced minimum dieback and is in bloom for February

The Sweet Olive/Osmanthus fragrans is quite wonderful right now. In a good year it will be in bloom from late fall until mid-spring. Last year the flowers opened but the scent didn't carry through the parched air, then deep cold froze off the ends of each branch. This year there's new growth and the shrubs are covered in tiny flowers, never showy, but as the name promised - they are fragrant.

One bluebonnet/Lupinus texensis is open today with buds forming on other plants scattered in a few beds.

I don't have a name for this daffodil - perhaps it is 'February Gold'? Someone started it in this yard years ago and the bulbs turned up occasionally after we moved in and began to make a garden in 2004. We tucked them into different beds and borders and I like the way they look with morning light on the petals. This spiraea was also here when we bought the house. It's similar to the ones we called Bridal Wreath in Illinois, but the leaves are more oblong - perhaps it is the variety called Reeve's Spiraea. None of the flowers were open today, but the buds are formed.
The Carolina Jessamine/Gelsemium sempervirens had become a huge tangle last spring and in a normal year would have been pruned back. But once the heat struck, I hesitated to put any additional stress on the plant. Last month I gave it a drastic pruning, taking out deadwood and long vines. The timing meant many flower buds were also pruned but there are enough left to be pretty now.
Is anyone watching the new TV series "Smash"? The story centers on a stage musical about the life of Marilyn Monroe. Marilyn the Star had a reputation for being unpredictable and not showing up when you expected her. 'Marilyn's Choice' the Abutilon has been unpredictable, too - blooming in 2010 then refusing to present a single blossom in 2011. Now in February 2012 she has decided to bloom once more.

Two of the roses decided to bloom this February, too - 'Julia Child' has just begun a bloom cycle, but something about the weather has made the color less like butter and more like a peach.

The front Rosa 'Mutabilis' has taken advantage of a mild winter in a very big way - and even the individual flowers seem to be larger than usual. This rose has a fragrance but you usually have to be close to the flowers. The other day you could smell that rose smell while walking down the sidewalk to the mailbox.

Carol of May Dreams Gardens first invited bloggers to post about their blooms in February 2007 and she was pleased when more than a dozen bloggers gave links to posts. I was one of that group, with a list that included the yellow daffodils, Carolina Jessamine, pansies, the Coral Honeysuckle, Texas Mountain Laurel and the Salmon geranium found on today's list. Apparently there is something addictive in counting up the flowers! Five years later you'll find well over 100 links to posts for this February's Garden Bloggers Bloom Day.

This post was written by Annie in Austin for her Transplantable Rose Blog.