Now This Is Texas

Last weekend as temperatures reached triple digits, my husband, dog, and I headed out to South Llano River State Park in Junction. I don't have any pictures from the wonderful park because as soon as we got there I got in the river and then five hours later I got out. It was perfect.

In fact, it's given me an idea for a way to survive Austin's summers: a wearable river. I'm thinking kind of like a Michelin man outfit or ones of those blow-up sumo wrestlers with water next to your skin. Of course, people would then have to wear their bathing suits all the time (or perhaps au naturel) and there would be inevitable difficulties sitting, driving, and navigating sharp corners. But just imagine spending your whole day floating on a river. Sounds better than spending your whole day covered in your own sweat, doesn't it?

I digress.

On our way home, our car broke down in the middle of nowhere of 290. Well actually we were about 30 miles outside of Fredericksburg near the one-light town of Harper. Fortunately, Harper is one of those places where old men sit around at the one store on Saturday nights ever ready to help stranded cityslickers.

All of this is a long-winded introduction to our trip to the LBJ Ranch on Sunday, where we stopped on the way home from Fredericksburg after picking up our car.

I hadn't been to the ranch since the house was opened to the public after Lady Bird's passing in July 2007. Ever since Denise Delaney, who worked at the Wildflower Center and now works with Austin's Grow Green program, had shared stories of her visits to the ranch with Mrs. Johnson, I really wanted to see the interior.So on Sunday afternoon we stopped for a visit. The tour has changed since I first went on it about 15 years ago. Back then we traveled in a small bus with a staff guide.Last time we entered the ranch via the low-water crossing seen above (just barely). The crossing is closed now and blocked off, but in the good old days LBJ liked to drive his guests over it and make them worry that the water was going to spill over into the car. (A lot of LBJ stories are about him trying to put others in uncomfortable positions. I find them hilarious, and such a part of LBJ lore. If I were on the receiving end of some of his tricks, maybe I wouldn't find them as funny.)

The tour now is a self-guided car tour. We picked up a map and an audio CD from the park office and headed out.

The first stop was the reconstructed one-room schoolhouse that LBJ attended and where he later signed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.
Next stop was LBJ's birthplace, a dogtrot cabin.
Several magnolia trees, which I really didn't think would grow well in the Hill Country, were quite happily in bloom around the cabin.
Across the road from his birthplace, next to the Pedernales River, is his final resting place.That's President Johnson's headstone on the right. The vase of wildflowers is Lady Bird's maker. According to the park ranger, the family is having trouble deciding on what to put on a marker, which is why Mrs. Johnson doesn't have one almost two years after her death. I actually think that the rotating display of wildflowers might be just what she would want.For the rest of the tour, we drove through the ranch and around the airstrip to the barn where a horse, a cow and calf, and this Hereford, named LBJ Mischief 712, were hanging out.All the animals, well all with horns, had LBJ carved into them. (Apparently, the president was very fond of his initials and wanted everyone--daughters, dogs, etc.--to have them.)My husband told me that the weights are to keep the horns from growing straight up. This contraption reminded me of the weights--pieces of broken bricks, rocks, etc.--tied to fruit tree limbs at the Natural Gardener presumably to keep those limbs from growing straight up. (See how I keep tossing in gardening references just so you know that I know this is a gardening blog?)
During the long trip around the ranch, the audio CD included a conversation of LBJ with a rather beleaguered sounding ranch foreman, and LBJ's favorite song, "Raindrops Keeping Falling on My Head" by B. J. Thomas. Maybe LBJ was being ironic in his choice of song?Finally, we reached the house, christened the Texas White House. The park rangers estimate this oak tree to be 400 years old. Look how big it is!
Park rangers lead guided tours of the interior. No photos are allowed so this shot of a barn swallow outside the front door is as as close as I can take you inside.Only a few rooms in the house are open--a living room with the cool triple-wide television cabinet Denise had told me about (so the president could watch all three television channels at once), LBJ's office, a wet bar, and the dining room--all restored to how they looked in the late 1960s, including the phone attached to the leg of the dining room table in case LBJ needed to chat mid-dinner.

The seat cushions on the dining room chairs reflected Lady Bird's interests. Each set had a needlepoint of a different Texas wildflower.

In the future, the park hopes to open more rooms to the public once they're restored. I can't wait to see the his and her bedroom suites.

The former hangar next to the house now houses an exhibition space, including LBJ's collection of cars. My favorite car was this 1962 Amphicar, a car-boat hybrid.One of the president's many practical jokes was to take "unsuspecting victims" out on the property in this car, careen off the road claiming that the brakes were failing, and head into the Pedernales. Can you imagine how fun that would have been?

There are a few photographs in the hangar of life on the ranch, including various visiting dignitaries, but my favorite photo was this one of LBJ crooning with his beagle.I particularly loved the look on his grandson's face: If you are visiting Austin or looking for a quick day trip, I highly recommend the LBJ ranch. Just be sure to pack a swimsuit or a wearable river. Driving by and near the river that runs through the ranch will definitely make you ready for a swim afterwards. (Unfortunately, there's no swimming at the ranch.)

A New Frontier

A dear friend recently asked why I wasn't blogging more regularly. Besides the obvious reason (laziness), the primary reason is that I'm not finding my garden all that pretty right now. We're quickly moving into Austin's worst gardening season, and I'm already not excited at the prospect of keeping my garden alive during the next few months.

But the people's (okay, so one person's) will must be obeyed so here I go. From the right angle and with the right amount of cropping, my garden looks good. I've fallen in love with the horsemint/bee balm pictured at the top of the post. It showed up uninvited but has managed to make itself a star due to its pretty bloom and its lack of needed maintenance.
I grew this snail-topped mullein from seed Link Davidson gave me after I told him how much I liked the patch of them he had.This nearby lambs-ear is trying to bloom. I don't really care if it blooms. I just like to rub its leaves. I find it soothing.
Elsewhere in the garden the squash are blooming.

And I guess this as good an opportunity to segue into the less pretty part of the garden right now. Yes, the squash is blooming, and I think I at least temporarily thwarted the squash vine borer, and yet I have no squash growing. None. Well, there was that one that stopped growing once it was the size and shape of my pinky toe, but I'm not counting that one.

And then there are the tomatoes.It's too early for me to assess whether the fish heads et al have helped with my yield, but I do know that I had a lot of sizable green tomatoes that I watched over daily. Until the squirrels and birds stole them all. Fortunately, Renee of Renee's Roots had just written about her struggles with the squirrels and her solution: bird netting.
I love to have a solution but setting up bird netting sucks. It catches on everything. Installing netting is definitely an Advanced Relationship Activity. I would not try this if you are newly coupled or married. You need at least one or two failed home improvement projects under your belt before you tackle this one, unless you want one of you to end up wrapped in netting and tossed in the alleyway.At the very least, ensure that both you and your spouse did not miss lunch and weren't an hour late for dinner. Unfortunately, the way we installed the netting is making it difficult for me to harvest tomatoes and to squish leaf-footed bugs.

So I am thinking of redraping the netting today. If you hear some lots of loud cursing, don't worry. It's just me. Maybe my husband. Maybe both of us.

And now I move to the saddest area of my garden: my newest garden bed. I had the highest of hopes for this bed. It's the only one where I actually bought soil.

A few weeks ago my black-and-blue salvia looked this:Now it looks like this:I have no idea what's wrong with it, but seeing how unhappy so many plants in that bed are, I'm blaming the soil.

My beautyberry emerged from dormancy only to die in the last few days.
And now my back-up beautyberry, which I got just in case I killed the first one (did I force the issue?), looks to be on its last legs. The chile pequin is really not thriving either. Just this morning I noticed that the pineapple sage has bit the dust.

I am beginning to wonder if growing perennials is worth the emotional toll. Maybe I should have just stuck with vegetables. If you manage to keep a vegetable plant alive for three or four months, you're a genius! (or at the very least, a master gardener).

With perennials, the expectations are just so much higher. You're supposed to keep the plants alive, like perennially. And that just seems a wee bit unreasonable to me.

Vegetables and bugs seem like a better fit for me.

I Left My Heart in Colorado Bend

Last weekend we took our annual anniversary camping trip. I'm not usually one to return to the same place over and over, but Colorado Bend is such a great park that we returned for the third (maybe fourth?) time. What makes it so great? It's relatively close to Austin (about an hour and a half drive), it's on the water, the primitive, hike-in camping is only about a mile from the parking lot, and it's pretty.We weren't able to camp in our favorite spot (which I'm not revealing with any more detail) on Saturday night, but we moved to that spot on Sunday night and had the whole place to ourselves.

On Sunday, we hiked along the Colorado to Gorman Falls. It used to be that you could only visit the falls on a guided tour, but since our last visit, the park has opened up the falls to all.And I kind of wish the falls were still protected. Despite signs saying that the falls were off limits and a sensitive ecosystem, and chains in front of them, several people were climbing all over them. There was the father leading his kids up the falls while the mother stepped over the "Do not enter" sign as she lit a cigarette and took pictures with her cell phone. Then there was the couple of their two large dogs who climbed all over the rocks and falls, dislodging moss and other plant growth.
I tried to explain to my dog why she wasn't allowed to do the same, but I ended up just telling her we'd take her swimming elsewhere.This pool wasn't exactly what I had in mind when I told Pear she could go swimming, but boy was I glad she found it. We were all getting pretty hot on the endless hike back to our campsite. The one thing that Colorado Bend does not do well is signage. The trails are very poorly marked.

(If you want well-marked and well-maintained trails, visit Government Canyon State Natural Area. That place is so well marked that even my father could navigate his way. I guess that statement would be funnier if you knew my father but trust me, it's hilarious.)

On the hike back, I began having flashbacks to a hike we took years ago in Slovenia that was supposed to take two hours. Twelve hours later we stumbled into an outdoor bar with the only Slovenian bartender who was a Spurs fan.

I digress.

Our hike in Colorado Bend didn't last quite as long, but I was worried. We decided to hike a different way back, which is really how all troubles begin. I think my husband got worried when I decided to take a lesson from the dog and lie down in the shade of a cedar tree. Finally, we bushwhacked our way and luckily stumbled upon our campsite. The trail markers we were following were some sort of rogue trails.
I was so hot by that point that I didn't bother changing into a bathing suit. I just stripped down to my sports bra and underwear before jumping in the river. The park ranger had said we would be all alone on Sunday so I wasn't worried about anyone seeing me.

And then the park ranger came around. Oh well.

I wish I had brought some of bug collecting supplies. There were lots of cuties on the wildflowers.I like how this one is color coordinated with the Indian blanket.

I'm not exactly sure what this plant is, but the whole pack of them was quite graceful.

Our dog loves, loves, loves to go camping. She gets to sleep in a tent with us, she gets to eat some people food, and she gets to hike, swim, and "fish."
We love camping for many of those same reasons, and one additional one: our normally extremely active dog actually wears herself out.

The Beast

After my last post's diversion into useful gardening information, I am back to my "don't do as I do" didactic method. Four months, two chainsaws, two axes, two loppers, one root jack, and 3,500 brown refuse bags later, I have cleared out the world's (or at least the northern hemisphere's) ugliest hedge, which I affectionately dubbed the Beast.

This hedge, about 40 feet long by six feet wide by eight feet high, dominated our yard. It was large and ugly, and probably some variety of invasive ligustrum. I was never able to get an accurate identification. Over time, it didn't matter. Every time single I turned into our driveway, I muttered, "I hate that hedge." Now that I've got a teeny tiny bit of gardening knowledge under my belt, growing and alive are no longer prized-enough qualities for a plant to remain in my yard.
The hedge's only slightly redeeming quality was the privacy it offered between us and the neighbors. Almost two years ago during a rash of daytime burglaries in our neighborhood, it hid me as I checked on a suspicious person in my neighbors' yard. When I saw that person kick in their front door, the Beast hid me as I slowly and quietly retreated into my house to call 911.

(Unfortunately, the hedge was of no help to the police dispatcher who gave the motorcycle cop my address as the one being burgled. He tried to sneak up on the burglary in process but ended up at my back door drawing his gun on me.)

But I digress. I didn't hold the hedge responsible, but I also didn't like it any better.

So finally, after years of hating it, I decided to remove the hedge.

I started by trimming it with loppers. That would have taken the rest of my life. Next I used our chainsaw. Piece of crap. MSS of Zanthan Gardens loaned me hers. Much better chainsaw but it still struggled with the Beast.

The wood (or whatever the branches were made of, I think perhaps titanium) dulled the chain quickly. I sharpened it many times, replaced it, and then still wore out the new chain. When I returned the saw to MSS, I included another new chain.
A friend recommend a root jack, which was moderately successful. It might have worked better if the stems weren't so close together and if there weren't 5,000 of them. See that brown bag in the photo below? You know how tall those are, right? Notice how the pile of branches is taller than the bag?
Once I'd cut down all those branches, I still needed to dig up the roots. My first ax, with the improbable slogan "quality digging tool" lasted only ten minutes, before it bent at 90 degrees. (My second ax, purchased at Callahan's, survived the entire demolition.)
I think it had something to do with the size of the roots. Notice the Pabst Blue Ribbon bottle next to the roots? I use it not to just to show how enormous the roots are but to show how long this hedge has dominated the yard. I'm not entirely sure, but this bottle looks like the ones my father used to drink from when I was a kid. The bottle is just one of the many things the Beast swallowed. The photo at the top of the post shows some of the other goodies tucked under the Beast. My favorite, however, has to be this almost complete plate,with a cute floral pattern.
Then I found a fork, and everything began to make sense. Years ago the neighbors were dining al fresco in their driveway, someone drank too much Pabst Blue Ribbon and tried to stab his or her dining companion with a fork.
The attackee tried to defend his- or herself with the plate, and oh, forget it.

So clearly tackling the Beast was challenging my mental as well as physical health. (I must apologize here to MSS for tweeting about cutting my leg while working on the Beast. For a moment she was afraid that I had cut myself with her chainsaw and not my loppers.)

I took a brief break to recuperate and look what happened: this evil &*^%$ grew back. I had cut those suckers down to within an inch of their lives, and they did not care.So finally, (I know what you're thinking, finally, really, finish already) with some help from my husband, we finished removing the Beast this weekend.
Because this project took way longer than expected, I wasn't able to plant the new area. I did transplant some underperforming bamboo muhly into the area, as well the world's tiniest mountain laurel.
I plan to add some more plants in the fall. Until then I covered the area with weed barrier and mulch. I hope that the the evil hedge doesn't grow back.
As you can see, I'm still a few bags of mulch shy of a full load, but then again you already knew that, didn't you?
I also have the rest of the hedge to remove. That's right, all this time, blood, sweat, and tears has been for only half of the 40 feet. I've still got another 20 feet to remove!

We've left it temporarily until we build some sort of privacy screen or at least build window screens for that side of the house.

A couple of years ago I got a bid to remove the hedge and install a walkway. I found the several thousand dollar bid too high. Now I think the bid was too low, just to remove the hedge.

So, please use my experience as a cautionary tale. If you ever get a crazy notion to remove 960 cubic feet of hedge by yourself, stop and reread this post.

You and your loved ones will thank me.

I Interrupt This Blog . . .

While normally I pride myself on the fact that this blog rarely provides useful information except in the form of "Don't do what I did," I have actual useful information this week!

Last Saturday my friend, neighbor, and fellow gardener Tom called to ask me about a problem with his Kieffer pear tree. God love him, Tom thinks that because I am a certified master gardener I know stuff about plants.

Of course, I had no idea what his problem was. But I did know how to find the answer.
While I sent him to Central Texas Horticulture, I went to the source I knew would help me even more quickly: Twitter. Within minutes of posting this question--"Friend in Austin with Kieffer pear tree has flowers and new growth turning black. Larger leaves have black spots. Ideas? Remedies?"--I had an answer from no less a gardening luminary than @grumpy_gardener: "It's a bacterial disease called fire blight. You can spray to prevent it, but once the tree has it, not much you can do. "
Grumpy (aka Steve Bender of Southern Living magazine) and I then exchanged a few other pear-related tweets, in particular whether my friend's other pear tree, an Orient, would catch the disease.

"@Vertie 'Orient' should be OK. I will pray for it."

Holy crap! Steve Bender is praying for my friend's tree! I just have to tell you as an aside why this particular Twitter conversation makes me excessively use exclamation points. Southern Living was for many, many years my mother's gardening/cooking/decorating bible. She would keep the issues for years and then periodically pull out certain pages and file them under the appropriate category. Pre-Internet days, she also loved to mail me pages with sticky notes saying, "Go eat here," "I like this for your windows," "Have you cooked this?"

My favorite Southern Living mailing from my mother was an article on cast-iron plants. In those days I killed every plant I touched. The article said something to the effect that no one could kill this plant. My mother's sticky note read, "YOU NEED THIS!!!"

So many times when I am out in my garden I can almost hear her chuckling ("My daughter's gardening! and the plants are still alive!"). Last weekend I absolutely heard her laughing hysterically ("Other people are asking for her gardening advice! That guy from Southern Living is talking to her!")

So thanks, @grumpy_gardener, for the information but more importantly for making me smile, remembering my Southern Living-loving mother.


(Oh, wait, I did promise you some actual information. Fire blight is horrible. It most often appears in young trees. Tom planted his last spring. Kieffer and Orient are both supposedly fire blight resistant but well, you can see how that turned out. The leaves, which look burnt--hence the name--are surprisingly smooth and slippery, not at all crispy as I assumed they would be.

My friend pruned his tree back six inches from where the blight appears. There's a small chance it might survive, but he definitely won't have any fruit on it this year. He told me last night that new growth had appeared where he pruned but that he also saw new evidence of blight. At this point only time will tell. His other pear tree, knock wood, seems to be blight free.)

Early Bloom Day

March is such a crazy time (in a good way) for gardening and gardeners in Austin. I never seem to find the time to post as often as I'd like. In particular, I missed Bloom Day. April is not looking like it will slow down much so I thought I would just go ahead and post what's blooming now.

The top photo is poppies, grown from seed I bought at Natural Gardener and from some I got from Patty Leander. The larkspur is from MSS at Zanthan Gardens. I've fallen in love with the dark blue blooms that I know MSS tags and saves.
This iris is from my friend Eleanor who is now blogging at Garden of E. About half of my plants are cuttings or divisions from her plants, but I don't think even she could have imagined how prolific these irises would become in my yard.
The sweet peas are also growing right along. I normally don't bother with annuals but these are so easy to grow I think I'll sow some every year.
Even if I do say so myself, I'm kind of impressed with this layered look of blooms. It almost makes me look like a real gardener.Closer up to the house, near the back porch, I've got another happy vignette going.
The rose arbor has finally made a liar out of me.I can grow them! I just can't remember what kind they are. Ideas? Lori?

Out in the vegetable garden, despite the fish head/tomato plant/dog debacle, the vegetables are starting to, excuse my French, kick some ass. The beets are beet-iful and bountiful.
If President Obama would only give (roasted) beets a chance, I think he would want them in his new garden.
I also don't remember seeing fennel in the White House garden plans. To be honest, I would not have cared about the oversight--I don't really like the raw anise flavor--until I roasted them with a little pancetta and plopped on some fresh salad greens. Yum. Seriously.

I also just harvested my celeriac. I'm not exactly sure why I grew it except for its exoticness.
Anyone have any good recipes?

I've also been expanding my own little mini-farm. After hearing about everyone keeping chickens, I decided I couldn't wait until the Funky Chicken Coop Tour on April 11th to build my own. I need eggs for Easter.
I still haven't named her. I wanted to make sure she survived the threat of the aforementioned dog.

I'm amazed at how much the chicken poop has improved my soil and my vegetable output. I've had to rent a tractor from time to time to keep up with the workload.I've also started packaging up the excess flowers and vegetables and giving them away every Wednesday and Saturday to my friends. Leave me a message and I'll let you know where to come.








I know that at least of a few of you figured this out early on, but in case I caught any of you--APRIL FOOLS! I took these pictures this morning at Boggy Creek Farm, where I have the good fortune to cashier on Wednesday mornings. Stop by and say hi. Unfortunately, though, you will have to pay for your flowers and vegetables. Carol Ann and Larry wouldn't want me giving them away. And yes, I've done this before!

It's Alive! It's Alive!

The rain knocked off some of the few blooms I had for Garden Bloggers Bloom Day so I thought I would follow up on a few previous posts. Y'all played the Dormant or Dead game so enthusiastically that I'll start with it.

First up is the Forsythia sage, shown above. I labeled it dormant, and I was right! Yea! (None of you disagreed with me on this, so we all get points for it.)

Next is the beautyberry: Alive! Alive! So in the wrong place now! (I moved it when I thought it was dead because I wasn't quite ready to give up on it, but I really didn't think it would recover so I planted it way too close to some other plants. Oh, well.)

The Mexican mint marigold is next. Most of you said it was tough and would recover.
You're right! It's not looking a lot better than it did in January, but it's definitely still alive. Or at least it was when I took this picture. I then moved it, again. There may be a final lightning round of Dormant or Dead.

And next, the plant that sparked the most debate both on and off my blog: the chile pequin.
The friend who gave it to me told me to treat it badly. I did, hacking half of it off. Lo and behold, the chile pequin likes it rough.

And then there's the Turk's cap.I know what you're thinking: Hey, no fair, those weren't part of the original game! So, sue me. I didn't include these because everything I read about Turk's cap suggested they were impossible to kill. I assumed they would live so I didn't bother tossing them into the dormant or dead pile. Well, I think both varieties--some red Turk's cap that had been growing wild behind my fence before I transplanted it here and two white Turk's cap I bought last year and moved from the front yard--are dead, without a doubt.

Moving on, my poor fig tree, which had its fill of Life in Texas, seems to have a better grip on the weather here than I do. I trimmed it for the first time ever in mid-January, and it seems to have liked it. Lots of little figs are covering the tree.

My last update is on some of the mystery plants from The Drought Is Over post. The one many of you identified as gaillardia (Indian blanket) bloomed, and it was not a gaillardia. It had tall white flowers and was ugly. So ugly that I didn't even take its picture. Before it could sow its evil seeds, I yanked it out. Unfortunately, in my haste, I also inadvertently yanked the passionflower plant growing next to it. And killed it too, no doubt about it.

I do have another mystery plant for you though:Thoughts?

And finally, the mystery plant that might be a buttercrunch lettuce.
Annie chastised me then for nibbling a bit of it. At the time I tasted I thought it wasn't a lettuce but now I'm not so sure. It looks exactly like a buttercrunch, doesn't it?

Can I eat it now, Annie?