Where's the rain?

It's a good thing to have drought-tolerant plants
when you garden in a drought-prone area:  Silver pony-foot
(Dichondra argentea) under Lindheimer's muhly
(Muhlenbergia lindheimeri), with spineless prickly pear
(Opuntia ellisiana, maybe).

We just wrapped up a November totally devoid of measurable rain. I can’t find any records for Hays County, but in Austin where they track such things the last dry November was in 1897.

As you know, this part of the country recently endured an extreme case of the dries during the summer of 2011, culminating in the terrible fire near Bastrop. The next summer and fall were reasonably wet. We gardeners were ecstatic! Probably the farmers and ranchers were pretty happy, too.

But anyone who has even a passing acquaintance with history (which accurately describes my acquaintance) knows that droughts can be multi-year events. The drought of record in Texas happened in the ‘50s, and lasted seven to 10 years (depending on the source). And when you see a factoid like this – the last dry November was 115 years ago – well, your heart sinks a little.

I read somewhere (and now can't remember where) that when very thirsty, the Agave americana's leaves start opening wider. These are pretty wide.

According to the U.S. Drought Portal, 82 percent of Texas is in moderate to extreme drought as of Dec. 4. Hays County is in the “moderate drought” category. To my recollection, we have been categorized in some drought category or other since 2011.

The Keetch-Byram Drought Index measures forest fire potential on a scale of 0 (saturated soil) to 800 (completely dry soil). The majority of Texas counties, including Hays County, appear to be in the 500-600 level.

I may have posted this before, but I still find it fascinating so here it is again: an animation of the drought index:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58S0cmdfoKg.

I’m not a meteorologist, nor do I play one on television, but I’m beginning to wonder if drought is just Texas’ natural condition in the brave new world of climate change.

Days with 20%, 30% and 40% chances of rain continue pass by dry. Seems like there’s a good chance this drought is not through with us.

Favorite spot in the garden:  The white crape myrtle behind my porch swing is at last bowing to the season, and losing its leaves. The fall color of its leaves, decorating the tree and the ground underneath, really accentuate the red of its trunk.

In the woods

This was the tallest tree we tackled.

Sunday we spent some family time in the woods. We were doing a job that I enjoy, that exhausts my husband, and that really annoys the children:  slaying cedar.

Technically, we weren’t slaying cedar (Ashe juniper is its correct name), as they were already slain – laid low by that terrible foe, the drought of 2011. A belt of trees were geographically challenged in their quest for water, and a number of them – Ashe juniper, live oak and yaupon – perished. This left an unsightly mess next to the driveway.

And according to our calendar and much to our dismay, it will get cooler here soon and the firewood supply was perilously low.

And it's down, destined for firewood.

It was time to take action. We donned long pants and boots, and gathered chain saw, fuel, bar oil (or as my husband says, bahr awl), gloves and loppers, and ventured out solve two problems at once.

My boys were enlisted to drag brush frequently when we first bought this land, and it was a battle every time. Now they are out of our clutches, and we have shifted our sights to the little daughter. She has begun exhibiting the same reluctance her older brothers did. On Sunday I heard things like, “I don’t have any shoes” and “Can I make a pie, instead?” No.

Iris the dog is site supervisor.

I set her to using the loppers to break off dead branches and cut small cedars; she prefers this to dragging brush. Dan wielded the chain saw, while I stacked firewood and piled up brush.

In addition to the reward of how the area looks when we are done, we usually find a few surprises or treasures to make the job more enjoyable.

The first thing we saw was a giant pink and cream lantana, escaped into the woods and twining up through a cedar tree. It is far from where I had planted one in my garden. The thing is at least six feet tall!

Green tree frog and daughter's hand against
freshly cut Ashe juniper stump.

A while later, Dan called our daughter over. As he was prepared to take down a dead cedar, he discovered a bright green tree frog on its trunk. My daughter was entranced, of course, and carried the frog back to the house where she constructed a home for it near the new pond - deluxe accommodations that I’m not sure it will appreciate.

(Have I mentioned how much I love having a daughter who is not afraid to pick up a frog or toad?)

Tote that wood, sister.

It was a productive day:  dead trees cleared away, firewood stacked, brush pile created (which may be chipped sometime, but until then will be home to sundry critters), unexpected plant found, frog examined and relocated, fresh air taken in, muscles used, pre-teen ejected from the house, sense of accomplishment felt all around.

The finished-for-today product - more dead trees remain for another day.

Full disclosure ahead . . .

We bloggers have the luxury of showing the best points of our garden on any given day. A reader might think that my garden looks great year round, if she were to judge by blog pictures alone. 

Inspired by the need for full disclosures during this heated political season, I will offer full disclosure of my garden during this heated gardening season.

My lawn!

Wonderful pomegranate (Punica 
granatum 'Wonderful') - yes, I've watered it.

Tropical sage (Salvia coccinea) - not irrigated.

As I bare my garden, let me enumerate the gardening conditions.

Artemisia (Artemisia 'Powis Castle" and
Texas lantana (Lantana urticoides) - poor babies!

One:  Most of my yard is in full sun. Related to that, it’s been in the upper 90s for most of the last two months.

Two:  Our water comes from a well, so watering plants is low on the priority list. I do water; however, it is done on an emergency basis.  As in, “Yikes, that’s about to bite the dust!!” Our last good rain was almost two months ago.

Emaciated giant spineless prickly pear.

Three:  Central Texas.

Oh, you want more on that last one? Here in Hays County, we subsist from drought to flood and back to drought again. The plants had better be able to live with that cycle. As you can see on the right, we are in moderate drought according to the U.S. Drought Monitor and we just turned red on the Texas A&M drought monitor (which measures forest fire potential).

The weathermen are forecasting rain for the next few days.  My little plants surely need it, as you can see.

Favorite spot in the garden:

Well, I’ve already told you how the garden looks. So my favorite spot today is a hardscape area. In an effort to spiff up the front entry, I bought some tumbled glass and tumbled it among the paving stones already in place. I love it and plan to obtain more. The grass is native volunteer, suffering from the heat like everything else.

We are cedar choppers!

What a slacker I’ve been. I can only claim summer as an excuse, though the date would indicate that summer is about over. GET TO WORK, SISTER!

This coming weekend marks a year since the Labor Day fires in Bastrop. Numerous fires sprang up that weekend, and we spent a nervous few days frequently scurrying upstairs to peer out the windows, watching for smoke nearby. As you may recall, I vowed to clear brush away from our house. (See Snow White and Me.)

Yesterday my oldest son and I worked on the west side of our house, where the cedar (Ashe juniper to be precise) stood close by, looming ominously over the driveway.  He has worked out there several days, but this time I helped by dragging brush and stacking firewood.

Walker is a U.S. Forest Service-certified sawyer, courtesy of a summer spent maintaining trails with the forest service in South Dakota. I am the proud owner of a chainsaw, but I’m not certified. Perhaps certifiable . . . oh, let’s not go there. Suffice it to say that we deemed it wiser for him to handle the dangerous equipment.

It looks so nice out there now. We are not deforesting the area, simply lifting the canopy, as fire would do if we (by that I mean Americans in general) could let fires race through periodically to burn the underbrush.

These two sad live oaks are right outside my office
window. The one in front has a few leaves,
but is not long for this world.

 

Last evening, sunlight angled through sparser foliage and illuminated patches of green grass and brown mulch here and there. This effect is my favorite part of clearing (after the part where our house doesn’t burn down in a wildfire).

Next on the chainsaw agenda:  Lots of trees - cedar and live oak - succumbed to the drought. Cedars continue to die, despite the rains that fell over the winter.  We need to take the dead trees down and process them into firewood-sized pieces.

Good thing there’s a certified sawyer in the house.

Favorite spot in the garden:

My garden looks grim right now. We’ve had no appreciable rain since July 15. The days are long and hot. I have been watering enough to keep things alive (maybe), but not enough to keep things show-worthy.

However, the tried and true flame acanthus (Anisacanthus quadrifidus var. wrightii) continues to bloom gaily, enticing hummingbirds to linger outside my office window. Even the volunteer plants, which receive no supplemental water, are blooming, though not as prolifically as the one in my bed (which does get roof run-off, when it rains). By the way, I have watered it once this summer.  That’s right, once.

Squeamish? Read no further . . .

Living in the country is not for the squeamish.

Here on the hill, our water comes from a hole in the ground, a.k.a. a well. Rainfall – or lack thereof – is a constant concern. Our well held out over the summer, but we know the supply is limited.

We try to conserve water in a variety of ways. Have you heard the expression, “If it’s yellow, let it mellow; if it’s brown, flush it down”?  Those on wells in drought-prone areas have.

Not for the squeamish.

Occasionally, we outpace the well’s ability to refill, despite our best conservation efforts. Several years ago our local well guru installed a mechanism to shut off the pump when no water is available, and turn it on again 30 minutes later. Occasionally we trip that shut-off.

About midway through December, I got careless and cleaned two bathrooms consecutively. The pump shut off. No problem, right? Just wait 30 minutes.

But this time, the refill took a few days, with the pump shutting off repeatedly. Even when the  pump was on, the water pressure was low in certain faucets. Husband Dan was puzzled; when you’re on a well you either have pressure or you don’t (unless you are running water somewhere else, which we weren’t). The well was refilling at a much slower pace, but why the low pressure?

I called the well guru (“Oh wise well guru, come to our aid in this time of duress”). He determined that we had, indeed, run the well dry. He suggested that we walk three times around the well head, pausing each time to sprinkle herb de Provence and sea salt over the top. Then the entire family should join hands in a circle around the wellhead and pray to Poseidon for life-giving liquid.

Alternately, he recommended installing a 2,500-gallon holding tank, so the well could pump at a more leisurely pace. Also, the tank could hold trucked-in water, should the well go dry. Many of our neighbors have these.

As it was two weeks before Christmas, I voted for the first option; my family refused to cooperate. We are still considering the second proposal.

A week later, my husband stood fuming in the shower under a teeny trickle of water, trying to understand this situation. Why was the water pressure so low? He got out, dried off, and unscrewed the shower head . . . and found a clump of dead ants.

Ants, full of ANTagonism toward humans. They are not thirsty now
with all the recent rain. In fact, their mounds have flooded down below
so they have pushed them above ground.

He roamed the house, unscrewing other slow faucets. They were likewise clogged with ant carcasses. This included the kitchen faucet.

Are you feeling squeamish now?

My theory: In the drought, the ants were desperately thirsty. They crawled down into the well seeking water. Some fell in and drowned – over time, lots of them. When I ran the well dry, the water level dropped to the pump, and the dead ant bodies floating on the surface of the water were sucked into our system.

We consoled ourselves with the fact that these ANTibodies might protect us from the fire ant ANTigens we encounter. Maybe we have received ANTivenin for ant bites, or perhaps it will just serve as an ANTidote to their stings. Either way, this incident did reinforce the ANTipathy we already felt for fire ants.

Was this disgusting? Oh, yes. But we survived. I guess we're not too squeamish for the country.

Favorite spot in the garden:

Actually, this spot is on my kitchen windowsill. My mother-in-law brought some sprigs of flowering quince from her garden. When I stand at the sink and try to look out the window, my eyes are drawn instead to these lovely blooms. They seem somehow Asian – simple, lovely. In her garden, this looks much redder. On my mustard windowsill in fluorescent light, it became salmon-hued. It's lovely no matter the setting!

Hope springs eternal.

The weather has been nice on the hill, and when that happens, a gardener’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of new gardens (apologies to Alfred, Lord Tennyson). Several projects are on my list of 2012 objectives. The plan is to publish this list and thereby apply pressure to achieve said objectives.

The parking area is behind me, and the path goes up the right side.

For me, creating new gardens is much more exciting than maintaining old ones. This does not bode well for the condition of my existing flowerbeds, but it’s fact. Right now I am afire with enthusiasm for a new, ambitious undertaking.

I am working on the bones for a rock garden in front of the house. Visitors will pass through this garden on an existing stone path. I’m convinced the bed will take my yard and garden to a new level of sophistication and interest. (This type of thinking undoubtedly signals disaster)

Rock moved carefully by my son, with rain lilies
sprouting from dirt in the crevice.

Currently, I am in the rock selecting, digging, hauling and arranging phase. I roped my oldest son into moving two large rocks; the rest will be smaller. One day, when standing back to gain perspective, I saw that this garden could be expanded into a larger area that would tie in with existing landscaping. This will be so cool! (Cue “uh-ohs” from the audience.)

Even if it doesn’t turn out quite like I envision, I am having great fun working on it.

It will be pretty, it will!

Objective number two is halfway done. Last fall my husband and I laid rock framework for a long-planned bed under the living room window. The bed will be raised nearly two feet and will feature Turk’s cap and a vine of some sort. Two years ago I jumped the gun and bought a water container; the pump to make it tinkle sits on a laundry room shelf. The vine will grow on a rusty  structure that prior tenants used for outdoor showers. Now all we need is dirt - lots of dirt.

Objective number three is the easiest by far. My iris bed is looking oh so lovely right now after fall rains. The plan is to add garden soil and build up the rock border. Weeding is required. Also, my neighbor (thanks, Sheri) gave me a variety of iris bulbs awhile back that are lurking in a box on my porch. By awhile back, I mean several years. My daughter laughed at me when I mentioned these relics. They are most likely dead, but you just never know.

Fourth objective calls for transplanting blue mistflower seedlings to a completed bed that remains barren after seeds failed to sprout in the drought.

All of this is proposed with the understanding that I cannot water at all, as the drought is expected to last through the spring and our well is showing signs of stress.

Ah, hope springs eternal.

Fall blooms on the hill

The woolly butterflybush (Buddleja 

marrubiifolia) is a Texas native, according to the 

Wildflower Research Center. This cool plant 

survived the summer in my hottest bed 

without supplemental water. It grows 3 to 

6 feet tall (mine is about 3) and 

attracts butterflies, as its name implies.

As per usual, I am posting for Garden Bloggers Bloom Day, hosted by May Dreams Gardens one day late. In my defense, it was raining yesterday. While we were thrilled by the 1 inch we received, my camera was not and took the day off. That inch of rain brings us to 15.1 inches for the year (our average is about 33 inches). It's astonishing anything is blooming at all. But voila!

We are having a beautiful fall in central Texas. The temperatures have been mostly in the upper 70s during the day, 50s and 60s at night, with a few quick cool spells. This moderate weather is probably drought related, but I'll take it. Monday evening, I was out in shorts and t-shirt. I'm so happy to live in Texas right now! (I might not have been so happy at the end of this past summer.)

Also, we have not had a freeze yet here on the hill, though some of our neighbors have. Our lowest temp so far has been 37 F.

Here's another Texas native perennial strutting its stuff. The white mistflower
(Ageratina havanensis) is a butterfly magnet, though it hasn't drawn many this year.
However, the bees were ecstatic this morning! Again, from the Wildflower Center,
this is a Texas native, found on the Edwards Plateau south to Mexico,
blooming in October and November. 

 

Above: Moses' boat, bedraggled,
but hanging in there!
Left:  Tropical sage (Salvia coccinea)
is a southern U.S. native. It suffers in
drought here, but perks up nicely with rain.

Fleabane! This stuff volunteers - I love it!

Still blooming - new gold lantana  . . .

These blackfoot daisies (Melampodium leucanthum) reappeared after our fall rains.

Last, but not least, flame acanthus (Anisacanthus quadrifidus var. wrightii)
is still blooming and nourishing lots of bees. I tried to get a picture of a bee dining,
but the darn things would not pose.

Let’s talk about brush.

This Northern cardinal is enjoying his vantage point. 

I frequently see birds flying from our bird bath to this pile.

Brush piles provide cover for wild creatures. When we filled out the application for Backyard Habitat designation, brush piles counted in our favor. As our backyard is larger than the average Jane's, much of it crowded with Ashe juniper thickets, brush piles are easy to come by. In fact, much of the property might be considered a standing brush pile.

I was excited to realize that brush piles are beneficial. They aren't unsightly, but serve as homes to birds, snakes, rabbits, mice, etc. This was a tectonic shift for a girl who grew up in towns where brush piles were signs of a lazy homeowner. It’s all in the perspective, isn’t it?

Boy, do we have brush piles. Everywhere. We have burned lots of brush in our seven years on the hill. But frequently the county issues burn bans due to dry conditions, and the brush starts accumulating in . . . well, piles.

Forgive the photo quality; this was taken on my cell phone.

Last year favorable conditions allowed us to tackle the biggest, baddest brush pile ever – 10 feet wide by 30 feet long. Trees surrounded the monster pile, and our water hoses could not reach. It had been lurking there at the front of our property for a good long while, and had dried to a crisp.  First we cut back surrounding trees and piled that brush nearby. We set the thing alight, not knowing how fast it would burn, and hoping an inopportune gust of wind would not strike. Terrifying.

It burned large, but under control (barely). After the main pile burned, we threw on the newly-cut brush. It was an all-day burn extravaganza. I kept expecting fire department trucks to come wheeling in, sirens wailing, either after calls from nervous neighbors or after a panicked call from us.

We resolved NEVER to pile brush like that again. From now on, we would collect brush in small piles and, if needed, drag branches to a central location a little at a time for burning or chipping.

When I go out to clear small areas, I look for a hidden spot, preferably on a drainage of some sort, to pile brush. I address another issue with this strategy – slowing down the flow of run-off in the next flood event (that’s how we roll here – drought followed by flood). These piles can stay.

Recently we have been creating new brush piles. After watching wildfires scorch Texas this year, we decided to push the brush line away from our house (see Snow White and me). We plan to rent a chipper and make mulch. Meanwhile, the piles shelter birds and other critters. All is good in Pickens Land.

At least that’s what I thought until yesterday, when I read in the newspaper that Travis County officials are formulating new fire control plans, one of which is to minimize brush piles. Wait – brush piles are good, right?  Well, in the case of a wildfire, brush piles are bad. I imagine a burning brush pile would deliver fire up into the canopy very efficiently indeed. Bad.

In the interests of protecting our house, I have exchanged one danger for another. Oh brush, I’m so confused! What should I do?

Everything in moderation, as they say. Brush piles are good, when small and not located close to your house (in retrospect, this seems rather obvious).  As I look out the window at trees gesticulating wildly in the gusty north wind, I’m thinking I should rent that chipper pretty soon.

Sorry little critters. You’ll need to move along to smaller digs before too long.

Favorite spot in the garden:

Black dalea (Dalea frutescens) is native to Texas, Okahoma, New Mexico and northern Mexico, and likes to live on limestone hills. I've not found it in the wild on my property, but it seems to like my flowerbed alright.  This small shrub (mine is about a foot tall) has fern-like foliage and lovely blooms (July to October). I pick this lovely lady for today's favorite!

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.

Summer survivors

As we all know, it was a tough year for gardens in the southwest. Garden bloggers wrote repeatedly about the need to rethink the garden. In that vein, this post is dedicated to noting the plants in my garden that did pretty well this summer, despite the record-breaking heat and drought.

Spineless prickly pear (Opuntia ellisiana),

 Lindheimer's muhly (Muhlenbergia lindheimeri) 

and silver ponyfoot (Dichondra argentea).

These were watered occasionally late in the summer.

I had originally thought to do a post on the casualties of the drought, complete with teenage moaning and woe-is-me-ing. I have actually spent a good bit of the summer in this mode, despite the fact that I haven’t been a teenager in many years. Many, many years.

But as a mom, I have learned to embrace the power of a positive attitude. I can carry that into the garden, I can. Even though I lost so many plants, so many . . . little . . . plants . . .  No, stop.

Onward with positivity.

Meteorologists say this drought could continue for years, so rethinking the garden is not just an idle exercise. Frankly, I wasted quite a bit of money this year on new plants that did not survive. I also wasted quite a lot of well water trying to keep said plants alive.

Anacacho orchid tree (Bauhinia lunarioides).
This did receive some supplemental water late
in the summer, but I think it might have survived
without.

I need to be smarter and more disciplined about plant choices.  To me, gardening in its highest, most successful form involves choosing plants appropriate for the site and climate. I thought I was doing that, but as Dylan sings, “for the times they are a-changin'.”

P.S. I would really love to see other Texas gardeners’ survivor lists, so that we could compare notes and maybe come up with new plant options. If you have such a list, add your list or post a link in my comments. Thanks!

No supplemental water at all! On the left, purple sage (Leucophyllum frutescens), 

and on the right, the indomitable century plant (Agave americana - I think - it was a pass-along plant).

Autumn sage (Salvia greggii) in the back. In front is a black dalea (Dalea frutescens) -
a native wildflower. The sages show heat stress, but bounce right back with water.
The dalea just got a little thin. 

Newly planted, regularly watered, but showed little sign 

of heat stress. This is yellow bells or esperanza 

(Tecoma stans).  It will get much larger and have showy 

yellow blooms - I can't wait!

That's right - Texas lantana 

(Lantana urticoides). 

It did receive occasional water 

late in the summer.

This trailing lantana (Lantana motevidensis 'Alba') was transplanted at the beginning of this horrendous summer, and soldiered through.
(Yes, I watered it - but plenty of things I watered did not survive!)

This is not prepossessing, I realize. This Mexican bird of paradise (Caesalpinia mexicana) was purchased this spring at Peckerwood Gardens and planted upon my return home. It sat all summer with occasional watering and did fine. I was so proud! But when I went out to take a picture for this post, after 2.8" of rain last weekend - wahh! The top appears to be gone, but it has new growth at the bottom. I read that it requires good drainage - perhaps it got too much water.

Oh yes, my friends, the flame acanthus (Anisacanthus quadrifidus var. wrightii)  is a keeper . . .

The Mexican oregano (Lippia graveolens)

is not blooming now (old picture),

but it did survive all summer

with only roof run-off.  The new one planted

 out front did not survive.

. . . as is the pavonia (Pavonia 

lasiopetala) a.k.a. rock rose.

This was the only plant that

bloomed all summer, 

off and on.