Garden book review: Yard Art and Handmade Places

Today I am joining a garden book review meme hosted by Holly at Roses and Other Gardening Joys. I wrote a review for the first month of the meme, and have not participated since. There's really no excuse for this, as I love books, all sorts. This meme is made for me!

Several years ago, I received a gift book entitled Yard Art and Handmade Places, Extraordinary Expressions of Home, by Jill Nokes with Pat Jasper. Nokes is a family friend. Well, I don't actually know her, but other family members do. She is a landscape designer in Austin, and my brother-in-law, who is a landscape architect, worked with her for a while.

Each chapter features a different yard and gardener, from all over the great state of Texas. These gardeners use a wide variety of materials to make a personal statement in their yards. 

According to the book jacket:

"Yard Art and Handmade Places celebrates the fact that, despite the proliferation of look-alike suburbs, places still exist where people with ordinary means and skills are shaping space with their own hands to create a personal expression that can be enjoyed by all."

The gardeners use materials ranging from rocks to collections, statuary to junk. Some of the gardeners used plant choices to create an oasis. Other gardens celebrate a gardener's Mexican heritage or reflect the owner's religious beliefs. It's no slip of the pen when Nokes calls these gardeners "artists.'

One of my favorite chapters is about a gardener in San Antonio (pictured on the book's cover), Jesus Zertuche, who built a waterfall in his front yard from white limestone with black mortar, and decorated it with rocks collected over a lifetime working on a ranch in south Texas. He posed the animal-shaped rocks around the pond and waterfall. He also populated the urban property with trees and plants, to soften the hard edges of the limestone and provide shade on hot south Texas days.

Another chapter features Cleveland Turner's yard in the Third Ward of Houston. He has filled his yard to the brim with brightly colored found treasures and colorful flowers. From the book:  "Like many folk artists, Cleveland receives a lot of attention simply because his home and garden seem so wonderfully outrageous and free from convention."

I loved exploring these creative gardens; I often wish my garden was more whimsical, but it just may not be in my nature. 

The stories Nokes tells about the gardeners are fascinating, but I did wish for larger pictures, since I will most likely never see these gardens in person.

This book is pure fun. If you enjoy quirky yard art interwoven with beautiful and interesting plants, you might want to track down this book. To see more garden book reviews, click on this link.

Favorite spot in the garden:

Spring seems to be peeking out in my garden. I’m ready, how about you? The snowdrops (Leucojum aestivum) or snowflakes have begun blooming. I'd never noticed the tiny green spots at the base of each petal - very cool! Some of my snowdrops came from around an old house on property where my sister lived for awhile. My mother-in-law recently gave me more, from her grandmother's garden. Both of these were in southeast Texas, but they seem to be doing alright here in central Texas, too!

Oxblood lilies arise

Hear ye, hear ye, the first rain of fall has . . . fallen. After that first rain (in late August or September) the loveliest thing happens in my garden – the oxblood lilies arise from the mud! Of course the rain lilies bloom, also – though sparsely this time, perhaps due to tough summer conditions.

Inspired by these lovelies, I chose to write a lily post. Perhaps I could wax poetic about the graceful, nodding flowers atop long slender stalks, and refer to lily lore – such as how lilies have symbolized “purity, innocence and goodness” (Chicago Tribune, Sept. 18, 1988) from the times of the ancient Greeks and Romans, and continuing to this day in Christianity. Perhaps I would mention famous people named Lily, though I could only come up with Lily Tomlin. I could trot out famous expressions, such as “gilding the lily.”

I googled oxblood lilies, to begin learning about this beautiful flower, and made a crushing discovery.

Oxblood lilies are not lilies. (Rain lilies are, however.)

What cruel trick is this? This derails the whole theme of my post! Who can I complain to? Who is responsible for this travesty in plant taxonomy!

Oxblood lilies (Rhodophiala bifida), also called schoolhouse lilies, are members of the Amaryllis family.  According to The Southern Bulb Company, German settlers introduced this Argentinean native to central Texas.

My mother-in-law dug these bulbs from the front yard of her grandparents’ house, and years later passed some along to me. Her grandparents, Emil and Laura Brune, ran Pearfield Nursery in Colorado County. Laura’s father, German immigrant J.F. Leyendecker, established Pearfield in 1876.  According to my mother-in-law, Peter Heinrich Oberwetter, a German Texan who studied bulbs, introduced oxblood lilies to Texas about 1900.

“Whether or not J.F. Leyendecker had them, I can't say for sure, but Grandma always had them,” says Mary Anne. “They used to line her front walk, which is why I planted mine out in the front.”

This group of lilies is by my front step.

I love how these lilies surprise me each fall. After they bloom, the foliage grows during the winter, and then dies back with the heat. By the time they bloom in the fall, I have forgotten they even exist. These babies are tough - drought tolerant, soil tolerant, preferring part shade to full sun. Apparently they don’t require dividing, but can be after the foliage dies back. The blooms proliferate over the years.

This is probably an evening star rain lily (Cooperia 
drummondii). You may remember my earlier post
about rain lily identification issues.

They did not bloom at all during last year’s drought. Perhaps a gardener could be forgiven for thinking they had died.  But the fall rain resurrected them, and they are more beautiful this year than ever before.

Here’s to oxblood not-lilies!

Favorite spot in the garden:

See above!

Stickers and Dad

While out in the yard a week ago, I was horrified to find . . . stickers. 

I think these are field or coastal sandspurs
(Cenchrus spinifex). According to the Wildflower Center
website, these prefer sandy soils, which explains
why we don't normally see a lot of them.

We have lots of plants that stick to you around here. Most can be avoided. But these terrible things lurk on the ground, waiting to be driven into the soles of unsuspecting children’s feet. There they stick, as children cry “Don’t touch it, don’t touch it!” when their parents endeavor to remove the pernicious seed without impaling their fingers.

I remember when I was that child crying in pain. And of course, I’ve heard the cries when removing stickers from my own children’s bare feet.

When I saw the hated plants, I knew it was time to take action. After retrieving tools, I advanced on the enemy wearing gloves, carrying a big white bucket and brandishing my trowel. Begone, foul beasts!

I carefully dug up the offending plants, trying not to knock the stickers off before they made it into the bucket, and then picking stray stickers off my gloves. There were actually quite a few plants in three areas – how did they become so many?  Inattention, that’s how.

As I dug, my thoughts were not only about how this was a weed I did not want in my yard, but also about protecting my little daughter’s bare feet.

This reminded me of one of my earliest memories. My family – parents and three girls - lived out in West Texas when I was very young. We had a large backyard, infested with stickers. My dad spent many hours sitting on a stool in that backyard digging up sticker plants and discarding them into a bucket. I’m sure it was a hot, thankless job – west Texas in the summer can be hellish.

Why did he work so hard at this? All these years I’ve thought it was so he would have a pretty lawn. But now that I’m the parent carefully removing the sticker plants, I think there was another explanation.

My dad was doing one of those thousands of things fathers do to protect their children. He was digging stickers so his pretty little girls wouldn’t be hurt as they played barefoot in the backyard. Perhaps that’s why the memory stuck in my mind – it was a picture of my father as protector.

Thanks, Dad, for digging all those stickers, and for all the other things you did to take care of us.

Favorite spot in the garden:

White heliotrope (Heliotropium tenellum) is my favorite plant today. It’s not in one spot, but scattered about my property (this photo was taken beside the driveway) in inhospitable locations, looking lovely. I’m sure it’s grown here before, but I’ve only just identified it this year. It is hardy, prolific, cheerful – what more can you ask from a wildflower?

Making kid magic.

I read an article recently commenting on the passage of time. It talked about that list of activities you want to do with your child. They are good ideas, but it’s never quite the right time. Then suddenly, your child turns 18.

I narrowly averted one of those regrets this week.

Five years or so ago I saw a picture of a child’s teepee made of long poles, with vines trained to grow up and shelter the space inside. How cool, I thought. I persuaded my husband to drag up long cedar poles and lash them to the outstretched branch of an Ashe juniper near our picnic table. I stuck some jack been seeds in the cedar mulch at the base of the poles and waited for the kid magic to happen.

It didn’t happen. The vines didn’t grow, and the teepee stood there year after year, neglected and unused, except for the time it was wrapped in a sheet for a senior English film project by my oldest son and his friends. They filmed a Westernized adaptation of  “Candide“; my daughter had a small role as a young Indian girl. This was not quite what I had in mind, but fun, nevertheless.

But as part of the gardening frenzy of this spring, Monday afternoon I conscripted my daughter to help me with clearing out under the teepee and planting. She was reluctant. She was engrossed in her own activity.  Nonetheless, she trudged over and began pulling weeds and removing rocks. Then she retrieved the broom while I retrieved the loppers, and she swept the dirt in the teepee while I lopped live oak scrub encroaching into the teepee space.  Next I gathered some plastic 1-gallon pots with the bottoms cut out and placed them at the base of several of the tent poles. We filled them with good garden soil and planted transplanted morning glories on either side of the door and hyacinth bean seeds in three other pots.

Somewhere in the middle of this, she got into the project, and began coming up with her own ideas to improve the teepee. She suggested bringing in dirt and putting turf grass on top, so she could lie down comfortably. We agreed that Native Americans probably used buffalo robes for floor coverings. Wish we had one of those . . .

So now I have a second chance to make this project work before my beautiful daughter is too old to enjoy it.  My fingers are crossed that the kid magic happens this time.

But really, I think the magic has already begun.

Favorite spot in my garden:

One of my favorite wildflowers began blooming this week, just in time for Wildflower Wednesday (hosted by Gail at Clay and Limestone). The prairie brazoria (Warnockia scutellarioides) did not bloom at all in last year’s drought.   The plant pictured here is part of a volunteer colony in a flowerbed right outside my office window. I also saw some yesterday by the driveway – much smaller and less showy.   

This gem is native to calcareous soils in Central Texas (that’s us!), according to the Wildflower Research Center database. It blooms April to June, is 6 to 12” high (some in my bed are taller), can form extensive colonies and attracts butterflies. Love it!

Visit Clay and Limestone to see more wildflower pictures!

"All I want for Christmas . . . "

The lobbying began before Thanksgiving, complete with song: 

            “All I want for Christmas is a real Christmas tree,

            A real Christmas tree, oh, a real Christmas tree.”

I think you know the tune.

The mighty woodsman chopping down
our Christmas tree.

Several years ago we had a lean Christmas, and decided that instead of spending scarce funds on a store-bought tree, we would cut a tree from our land.

Mind you, Christmas trees in the traditional sense do not grow on our land. We have Ashe junipers. Because they tend to grow in thickets, they are shaped by their quest for the sun: thinly branched and leaved, usually lopsided, with very long lower branches. When brought into the house, some might consider them . . . ugly.

In my eye, once one is hung with ornaments (some handmade, some sentimental favorites), strung with small white and multi-colored lights, swaddled in the tree skirt I crocheted early in our marriage, and topped with the angel Dan and I bought our first Christmas, it becomes beautiful. It is a cheerful symbol of the love in our family.

Once we broke that tradition of visiting the Christmas tree lot, wandering among the lovely evergreens, then dropping $75 on a tree that would die within a month, it was hard to go back. In prior posts, we have established that I am a cheapskate.

More importantly, it feels more Christmas-like to walk out the door and wander our land in search of the perfect – well, somewhat perfect – tree, cut it down, drag it to the house, wedge it into the tree stand, and decorate it. It looks like the appropriate tree for our house. It feels homey. It feels right.

My daughter yearns to hang ornaments on those thick evergreen branches once more. To her, our spindly cedar trees aren’t green enough, thick enough, or lush enough to qualify as perfect Christmas trees. As I write this, I feel a twinge of sympathy for her and her vision of Christmas. Maybe next year we will give in and go find that perfect tree at a lot. 

But when she’s grown with her own family, I hope she will fondly remember those years when we put on coats, grabbed the chainsaw and headed for the woods to choose a Christmas tree. 

An autumn walk

Earlier this week my daughter (home sick from school - but not too sick!) and I set off to explore a dirt road that runs along our property, as part of This Grandmother's Garden's Autumn Walk Challenge. I've been wanting to traipse this road, and now I have a good excuse. 

Technically, we are trespassing, which makes my daughter very nervous. The road is an easement  to which we do not have access. But it washed out from flooding a year ago, and we very rarely see a vehicle navigating it. I'm sure the owners would not notice or mind two intrepid explorers.

We crawl through our rickety bobwire fence to embark on our expedition. My daughter immediately spies these copper-colored rocks amid the usual limestone. The nice thing about walking with a child is that she has sharp eyes for things on the ground . . . 

We head down the hill, where water drains across a low in big storms. I promptly slip on loose dirt and land - oh, so gracefully - on my rump. Only my pride injured, we continue on.

The ravages of drought (summer of 2009 and current) are quite evident. Up on top of the hill, live oak skeletons jut above dead or stressed Ashe junipers. I'm betting if the junipers are this color, they are goners. Fall color, Texas-style!

We spy this field of rocks to our left. I'd like to come up with some clever play on "Field of Dreams" but I just don't have it in me today. I will say that we grow great rocks here in Hays County. It's our best crop.

All too soon we arrive at this locked gate. I figure two locks are a pretty strong indicator that the owner is not interested in receiving visitors. We turn around.

My daughter points out the Ashe juniper berries, which are a lovely shade of blue. I in turn admire the interesting texture and color of some live oak deadfall.

Iris the dog leads the way. The road is dotted with cowpies left by Henrietta (do you remember her? She has been wandering loose on this road recently).

We pass by our property heading south toward Henrietta's home pasture, admiring our next door neighbors' well-tended, cross-fenced property - a sharp contrast to our place where nature reigns supreme. Down the way, we note the broken fence Henrietta has repurposed as a gate. 

Some might consider our next discovery gruesome, but we think it is our most interesting find: a coyote carcass. We hear coyotes frequently, but see them never. This carcass is quite desiccated and not too stinky. I suspect it may have been shot by Henrietta's owners and hung on the fence as a warning to its pack mates. "Keep out!!"

A short way past this treasure, some cattle panels have been rigged to block the road. My guess is that this was done to keep Henrietta from reaching the county road (in lieu of fixing the fence!). We turn around again.

At the corner of our property and the well-tended neighbors' is a small gap that we decide to use to get back home, just for fun. My daughter is convinced that I won't be able to squeeze through, but I do. She, of course, has no trouble.

The original purpose of this walk was to find fall color, so we track down one fall-blooming wildflower we both adore:  wood-sorrel (Oxalis Drummondii). Nearby, we spy what we think are Texas bluebonnet seedlings, germinated after our recent rains. 

Home again, two happy girls after a lovely autumn walk.

On hanging laundry.

The only color in my yard this summer came from clean laundry 

flapping in the breeze and backlit by the sun.

When our children were very young, we lived on 10 acres of Blackland Prairie east of Austin, home to Johnson grass, bluebonnets, two trees and scads of fire ants. We were poor as church mice. When our second-hand dryer broke down, I was forced to engage in the vintage activity of hanging laundry out to dry. My husband built an iconic clothesline behind our rent house, with two galvanized iron T posts and four lines strung between.

I hated it.  I hated it as much for its symbolism of our status in the world as for its inconveniences. In summer, the clothes were stiff as boards, and about as comfortable to wear. Our underwear dangled for the world to ogle. Yellow jackets crawled over the clothes, pins and lines, waiting to zap the laundress. In winter, clothes wouldn’t dry, and so we draped them all about our very small house. But more pressingly in my young mind, CIVILIZED PEOPLE SHOULD OWN A CLOTHES DRYER!

When our fortunes improved, I bought a dryer and never looked back.

That is, until we faced the same situation here on the hill. Broken dryer, not enough scratch to purchase another. This time Dan strung clothesline between oaks in a small motte outside the laundry room. It was winter, and we frequently resorted to drying clothes over the stair rail and on hangers in doorways.

My in-laws saw our plight, and very generously gave us a dryer for Christmas.

But something had changed in me since those early years. Perhaps it was a deeper appreciation of nature, or a diminished concern for what others think, or a greater interest in the wellbeing of the planet (sounds lofty).

I now enjoy hanging laundry. Saving electricity - for my pocketbook and the planet - is how I justify the extra time it requires.  But really, I just love it.

I love the small break from inside work. Standing outside with clean, fragrant laundry in my hands, I feel the breeze and the warm, healing sunshine on my face; listen to birds singing, insects whirring, and maybe far overhead an airplane droning; look around at the trees, grass, flowers, and a vulture soaring overhead in the blue, blue sky.  These are stolen moments of peace in a cacophonous world.

Did my great-grandmothers feel this way about laundry? Their world was simpler. Perhaps this was just another household chore among many, without the luxury of a stand-by dryer. I hope that they stopped occasionally to enjoy their natural surroundings, took a deep breath of clean air as I do, and returned to their other chores rejuvenated.

Now, it’s time to bring in the laundry.

Favorite spot in the garden:

This may not look like much to you, but – hallelujah! - green stuff is growing in my yard! It seems like eons since we had a green lawn, but probably it’s been about four months. (I use the term “lawn” very loosely. These green seedlings are probably grass, wildflowers and  . . .  well, weeds.) Whenever I glance out, I must smile.

My nature girl

Yesterday was a milestone birthday for my wonderful daughter. Nine years younger than our middle child, she has in many ways been an only child.  She has brought so much joy to our lives, as children do.

Nature is the backdrop for our time together. She spent early months poolside in the summer heat while her brothers swam. That first summer and fall, I would place her on the futon under the front window. She would gaze out the window, mesmerized by the crape myrtle leaves fluttering in the breeze outside.

She would want me to say that this was taken many years ago.

As she grew, we spent hours in the front yard, which was shaded by two massive cedar elms. She splashed in the wading pool, played in the sand box, and followed me around as I gardened.

Our first outdoor scare came at about age two. The little darlin’, outside one evening by herself, came inside and told me she had eaten a red berry. The only red berry in the yard was poisonous – Texas mountain laurel seeds. After a flurry of calls (poison control knew nothing of these), my mother-in-law told me the seeds were very, very tough. Darlin’ was unlikely to have broken into one. If she had swallowed an unbroken one, it would pass through without harm. She survived.

We moved to our present property after she turned four. More space to roam! She has taken many walks through the property, with either her dad or I. We had to forge around the cedar thickets that she and the dog could scuttle underneath. We are in the process of constructing a trail around our property; she leads, and I follow with loppers.

When we began keeping chickens, she would crawl into the brood pen to play with them, undeterred by piles of poop.  Later, she would go down to the chicken coop and spend long stretches of time building structures, making chicken cake (her special chicken treat), and carrying the chickens around – even roosters. She still does this.

We have enjoyed many porch picnics and meals out on the picnic table. Under duress, she helps me divide worms. I think she secretly enjoys poking through the dirt and finding the red wigglers. Recently, we constructed our own water feature, out of a kitty litter pan and an aquarium filter. We are very proud of this bit of ingenuity.

She spends lots of time outdoors and barefoot. She loves snakes, despite the fact that a checkered garter snake bit her this week. Toads are fun playmates, also. She'd like to make friends with lizards, but they are prone to quick getaways.

I can’t imagine our life with her without the natural world surrounding us. Nature is almost a physical playmate for her. And oh, what an endlessly fascinating one! Because of her (and her brothers before her), our interaction with and appreciation for nature is enhanced. Through her eyes, we see nature anew.

Happy birthday, nature girl. We are so glad you are a part of our life!

Favorite spot in the garden today:

This lovely is the Texas thistle (Cirsium texanum), planted not by me, but by Mother Nature. Last year these ran amok, making the neighbors uneasy. They are prickly and unsightly, can be up to five feet tall, and are very prolific in the right conditions. With the dry weather this year, they are much diminished, both in number and size. Either way, the blooms are stunning.

According to the Wildflower Research Center, painted lady larvae use this as a food source, bumblebees and butterflies use it as a nectar source, and goldfinches eat the seeds and use the seed fluff for their nests. This is a perfect plant for my backyard habitat!

I love/hate chickens.

I love chickens – when they are closed up in a pen. When they wander freely, I hate the little, feathery clucks! Chickens and gardens absolutely do not mix. We have 13 acres crawling with bugs hidden beneath leaf clutter and brush. But where do the chickens yearn to be? In my flowerbeds.

To the left, note craters left by dust-bathing chickens. The scattered rocks used to be
under the drip line. Bottom right is supposed to be a little morning glory bed. 

Open areas covered with nice, loose mulch to be scratched are irresistible to chickens. Flowerbeds also make lovely locations for dust baths, in which a chicken squats and flings dirt onto her feathers by scratching and flapping. It’s actually fun to watch a chicken bathing this way, but not so much when she is doing it in a flowerbed.

The chickens are really my husband’s and daughter’s pets, but I am wholly in favor of having them. We all like the idea of free-range chickens chasing down bugs and greenery. Their pen, dubbed “Gitmo,” was built with incarceration/protection in mind after dog depredations. However, 10 to 12 chickens make short work of any living organism in an enclosed space. Not a blade of grass survives in their pen, and any self-respecting bug long ago emigrated. We felt sorry our little darlins’, confined all day to such a barren place, so my husband began letting them out to roam.

I have fumed over the free-range chicken problem for months. I debated giving up on gardening (awww), weed-whacking everything (drastic), opening up my husband’s vegetable garden gate (entirely too mean). My sweet husband has tried to help, by putting poultry wire over a few beds. For birdbrain critters, chickens are remarkably adept at getting around such obstacles.

The iris bed seems to have exploded onto the sidewalk, 

courtesy of you-know-who.

One day last week I planted three purple oxalis in a bare area under the crape myrtle, and watered well. The next day the chickens came rampaging through, scratching up one plant entirely, covering another, and destroying the Moses’ boat that was just coming up. That was the final straw. 

Over breakfast the next day, I asked that the chickens be kept penned, except for a few hours in the evening. Gardening is my thing, I said, but every time I went outside to do my thing I became angry, and that’s not really how one’s thing should make one feel. We agreed to build a prison yard for the chickens so that they would have more room to roam.  Two postholes have been dug so far (no mean feat in limestone country).

Dan and I try very hard to accommodate each other’s interests, hence my long fume over asking him to contain the chickens. Figuring out how to live together peacefully while pursuing our own (sometimes conflicting) activities can be challenging. But we’ve been working at this co-existence for 25 years (as of March 22). No flock of featherheads will get the better of us!

Time to garden!

           

Favorite spot in the garden:

After the deep freeze of 2011, I expressed concern for the fate of my Anacacho orchid tree (Bauhinia lunarioides). I am pleased to report that it survived and is now blooming madly! Some dear gardening friends gave me this tree as a housewarming present. Dan hacked a hole in the limestone and we plopped it in five years ago. Astonishingly, it has survived and flourished. I have seedlings popping up here and there, and had considered transplanting some. Yesterday I resolved that instead of transplanting (not my best skill), we will harvest the seeds and go fling them out in the woods.  This plant is native to canyons in western central Texas, and is 6 to 12 feet tall (ours is nearing 12!).

There's a cow in my yard.

"Hello, neighbor."

When I looked out my window this morning I spied something unexpected – a cow.  Not my cow. 

This is not the first time in our six years here that it has happened. About two years ago we looked out to see two very white, very lovely Longhorn cows grazing in front of the house. At the time, we had a German foreign exchange student living with us, and to see cows in the front yard confirmed one of his pre-existing ideas about Texans – we are all cowboys.

I have fond feelings for cows. When I was growing up, we often visited my grandparents on their farm near our north Texas town. They owned about 80 acres and ran a small herd of cows. The lowing of cows is a soothing, homey sound for me, as any sound associated with loving grandparents would be.

We live in a rural subdivision, with acreages too small for cows. People here have an inexplicable fondness for goats. However, our property and house are on an outside edge of the subdivision. Some large tracts of undeveloped land lie to the west of us, and on that land live – cows.

Because of this proximity, I get to enjoy the soothing sound of cows calling to one another, without the fuss and expense of owning them. And, because of this proximity, occasionally one of the girls gets out of her pasture and wanders over to say hello to the neighbors.

Then she strolls back home.

Favorite spot in the garden:

Sometimes when gardening, ideas just come to you. I have had this pot for a while, sitting on my front step. It was too short for its location. The other day I bought these violas, and had an epiphany: “Little blue pot!” Then another: “On stool by glider!” Voila! I am very pleased. Little things like this can make my entire week.