Strawberry Surprise

Over the years my garden has provided me with innumerable surprises--from the pounds of rusted nails and broken glass that initially constituted my soil to the vegetables that actually grew and fed me.

I still see each flower as a surprise.

I've also found some more unusual "gifts" in my garden. During the summer of 2007 when it rained and rained here and my chard grew to beanstalk height, I found a bird egg resting in the stems. It never opened.

Then there was the time I unearthed a coin commemorating Eisenhower's second inauguration in 1956. I was so excited that I immediately ran into the house and looked online to see how much I could sell it for. I had visions of redoing the entire backyard, even the entire house.

I found a similar coin, in mint condition, for sale on Ebay. For $3.00.

And then are the gifts that are more canine in nature. No, no, no, not that. This: the infamous tomato/fish head debacle:
Then there's the mystery items that shouldn't have been a mystery at all. Last fall when I was prepping my vegetable garden, I dug up a large animal skull. I wondered if a squirrel had been using my bed as a burial ground but thought little of it until the next day,When I found another skull and then another. I got a little freaked out and tweeted about it asking for advice on these gruesome surprises.

About 10 minutes later I realized the skulls were the remains of the fish head debacle and sheepishly had to admit that on Twitter. What I didn't mention then because it was too early (even though Jenny of Rock Rose had already figured it out) was that I was pregnant and therefore had somewhat of an excuse for my brain lapse.

In addition to digging things up, the dog also likes to bury things in the yard, like this toy (can you find it in the picture at the top of the post?), which has probably been buried at various times in every inch of the yard.Here she is last night, plotting her next burial:This morning's garden surprise, however, is guaranteed to be the most unusual one. Look what I found when I went to check on my strawberries:Based on the stork bite on the back of his neck, I know how he arrived. I can only guess that the stork placed him in the strawberry patch because I don't have a cabbage patch.

As he's already showing a proclivity toward weeding, I think we'll keep him.

And in family naming tradition (the dog's name is Pear), we'll call him Strawberry.





As if I need to tell you, April Fool's. Believe it or not, the baby didn't arrive via the strawberry patch. He is, however, a wonderful surprise. And yes, I've done this before: 2008 and 2009.

Feeling Blue

I've pretty much got a one-track mind these days, and it has little to do with my garden and almost everything to do with the little bundle of joy who should be arriving in the next week or so. But that doesn't mean that I have completely ignored my garden, it just means I see my garden through rose-, I mean baby-colored, glasses.

As I look at my garden these days, I see that it is trying to tell me something that I've hitherto not known: whether I'm having a boy or a girl.

Blooming and perfuming the air like crazy are the Texas mountain laurels seen below and at the top of the post.While not technically blue, these blooms are pretty close to what constitutes blue in the gardening world.

Ditto for the blue, I mean grape, hyacinths.Next we've got the larkspur, which is on the verge of blooming and will definitely be blue: So far, that's three blue, zero pink.

Now we move to the less clear signs of gender. This iris bud should turn out more lavender than blue. Does that mean it's abstaining in the boy-or-girl debate?
The vast majority of my spiderwort seem to be leaning male, but these hot pink ones are desperately trying to get noticed:
This cutie is the bluest of all my blue plants and would be a clear indicator
IF it weren't named Veronica. A boy named Sue might be okay these days but a boy named Veronica? I don't think it'll happen.

And there's the baby blue eyes from Rachel at In Bloom, which really should be screaming boy:except for that pesky word "eyes." If the name were simply baby blue, then I could go ahead and buy some non-gender-neutral clothing. But "eyes" ruins my hypothesis. It's not even helpful in predicting the color of my baby's eyes. Aren't all babies born with blue eyes?

Of course, there is a distinct possibility that blue/purple flowers are my favorite and that I've perhaps planted the ground so to speak. But is it really a coincidence that the two pink roses I planted--Duchesse de Brabant and Belinda's Nightmare Dream--died? (I wasn't pregnant when I bought or killed them, but hey, maybe they knew something then that I didn't.)

In conclusion, after this scientific analysis of my blooms, I have decided that my garden seems to be suggesting that there's a 50 percent chance that I will have a boy.

Now if it could only be slightly more helpful in helping me come up with a potential name for a boy baby. Before next weekend, please.

A Light Dusting of Snow

By now, I'm sure you've all heard about Austin's excitement over a wee bit of snow on Tuesday. I was completely jaded and didn't believe any of the weathercasters that the snow would actually materialize.

And then, lo and behold, snowflakes the size of Texas fluttered down. I had to get out the camera, not just to document the snow but to take advantage of how the light dusting of snow would cover my garden's bare spots and make all the remaining plants seem that much more beautiful.See how that works? You almost don't even notice the big hole in the lower left where I planted an American beautyberry. It became the 15th or so victim of that particularly deadly spot. I think it's finally time to take Annie in Austin's advice and stick a pretty pot there.Here again see how the fluffy white stuff around the iriess distract the eye from the dead Turk's cap and presumably dead crinums to the right? (Yes, MSS, those are the crinums you gave me. They looked great for a while but the January freeze hit them hard.)These snowcapped wine bottles created a Mount Tempranillo, hiding the weeds hiding behind them. (If you look carefully, there are also a ton of poppy and larkspur seedlings. I didn't kill everything MSS of Zanthan Gardens gave me.)Here the snow distracts you from noticing that I accidentally took a picture of my dog relieving herself, or maybe the snow just distracted me.

In some areas of the yard, I think only a thick blanket of snow could beautify them, although there is something majestic about these tools accidentally left out in the snow. OK, just me?

Now here's where we'd need a snowicane or snowmageddeon to make things beautiful:But what is beautiful is that my husband has promised me that this remodeling debris will be heading to the dump this weekend.

Behold: Another Thing of Beauty

This thing of beauty requires you to see the beauty of the negative space, of what isn't there instead of what is. Those of you familiar with the story of the Beast might have an easier time with this exercise.

On a miraculous day last November, the handyman for the rental house next door knocked on our door. He didn't introduce himself; at the time I didn't who he was. He muttered his only words: "Do you want me to cut down the hedge?"

I responded, "Um, yes. How much?"

He said, "$100."

I was going to jump on that offer until he added, "Split between you and the landlord."

I struggled to hide my glee and casually said, "Sure, I guess."

I had spent four months of my life taking down the first half of the Beast. For $50, I was going to have the rest of it removed. Sometimes there is a god.

While I knew $50 or even $100 was way too low a price, I felt little to no guilt for getting that deal. This handyman is the person responsible for so many of the crap repairs/details in our house. The owner of the house used to own and rent out our house. The handyman told us that he used to do all the maintenance at our house, which means he is responsible for many of the issues in our bathroom and throughout the house.
While four workers struggled to tame the Beast (and probably would have cursed the handyman if they knew how little he had sold them out for), I hid inside taking pictures. (The pictures are a bit wonky because of the old glass in the windows and the window screens.)They filled this trailer at least twice. This section of the Beast also included some actual trees that had been hiding in the hedge. That's how tall the hedge was.Not included in the removal was digging up the roots, but I still think I got a great deal.Now I just have to figure out some privacy screens. Someday I'd like to replace the fence in the backyard and enclose most of this otherwise wasted space. Yes, I can hear you laughing and wondering, "Has she even finished the bathroom project yet?" Um, no, but remember it's not my fault; it's the neighbor's handyman's fault.

In the Beast area that I had previously cleared I planted some bamboo muhly. For these muhly it was their last stop before the compost bin. None had performed well in varying degrees in shade, but I didn't want to purposefully kill them so I put them on Death Row. For some of these plants, this move was their third or fourth. (I'm finally learning that sometimes I really not solely responsible for my plants' underperformance. There really is something to that notion of the right plant in the right place.)Shockingly they lived and thrived, so much so that I realized I had planted them too close to the neighbor's driveway. The January freeze fixed that problem and now I am just waiting to see if they'll grow back. If they do, I'll move them a little further into our yard.

For now though I'm just enjoying the breathing space that the Beast's removal has provided and being grateful that I didn't have to remove it all.

Behold: A Thing of Beauty

What? Not exactly what you were expecting? So, no, this tankless water heater isn't specifically a garden-related item, but it partially does explain my absence from my blog. And it does explain my new desire to hug shiny metal objects.

After hating our bathroom for many years, the husband and I decided the moment was nigh to do something about it. Everything in the bathroom, as in much of the house, is made of the cheapest, most mismatched materials the previous owners could find.

We'd done tons of house repairs/improvements since my husband bought the 90-year-old house 10 years ago--installed central air and heat, hardwood floors, new foundation, new porch; tiled the kitchen floor that has previously been covered in carpet (!); painted every room, painted the kitchen cabinets, replaced the stove and toilet, and built new wooden window screens and a new shed. I'm sure I'm forgetting something but I do want to point out that we crazily did much of this work ourselves.

It's no wonder we ran out of steam (no pun intended) before we'd tackled the bathroom. But we'd gradually become aware that many tiles in the shower weren't actually supported by anything behind them. Crappy grout held them in place. Then there was the plumbing issue. We'd never had anything nearing decent water pressure or hot water.

So in November we finally decided to tackle the bathroom, starting first with the shower.

First up, was a new window to replace the ugly crappy one we had. Of course, we found the window had stayed put through the grace of God. Anyone with any building experience--or common sense--would realize that the window needed some framing that actually attached it to the house. We replaced it with this beauty that's twice as wide, lets in lots of morning light, and actually has structural support: Next up was tearing out the old shower tile and replacing it with shiny new tile. Along the way we found a few friends that had made themselves as home in the walls like these salamander eggs: We hired a plumber to install the beauty at the top of this post and to redo the plumbing in the shower.Of course, as always happens on projects in our house, the scale grew. The plumber said that we had the most interesting assortment of pipes he'd ever seen in his 20+ years of plumbing. Lucky us.

So we agreed to replace the entire mish mash of galvanized, copper, and two kinds of PVC pipe in various sizes.

And then, just when we thought we had expanded the plumbing project as far as it could go, the plumber discovered that the pipe coming in from the street was narrower than recommended. If we didn't replace it, the rest of the plumbing upgrades would be moot. That's how we ended up with this:
In the end, the shower turned out beautifully. I could stand in it, under its glorious water pressure with limitless hot water, for the rest of my life.The next step is replacing all the drywall in the rest of the bathroom. In case you're eyes have glazed over, and you're wondering what the heck any of this has to do with gardening, behold what was behind the old drywall:This is either a)some old wallpaper, b)some sort of insulation, or c) some leftover crap the previous owners decided needed to be included.

I vote for c.

I kind of like this lily pad paper but don't think it's worth saving. We've replaced the old drywall with modern water- and mold-resistant drywall. Bathed in the morning light of the new window, its green hue makes the entire bathroom glow like a gardener's version of Avatar.Eventually we'll add beadboard to the bottom of the wall, paint the upper portion some shade of blue, and install a new door, vanity, sink, and lights. I'm hoping "eventually" means "before I give birth" but given how so many of our house projects proceed, I am hoping that it will be done before the child graduates from high school.

I did have a second thing of beauty to share with you, but I'll save it for a later post. This one is long enough already.

Cibolo Nature Center in Boerne

Last Sunday I had a need to get out of town. The weather that weekend was gorgeous, and I needed an outdoor fix that my garden and the rest of Austin couldn't fill. I had long ago put Cibolo Nature Center in Boerne on my short list of places to visit after reading Pamela Price's tweets about it. (She also kindly assured me that dogs were indeed welcome to visit. After our trip last summer to Blanco State Park where we found out only upon arrival that dogs weren't allowed in the river, I wasn't going to make that mistake again.)

The trip takes about two hours, about the maximum distance for a relaxing daytrip. I wish I could have gotten a good picture of the Gulf muhly-filled meadow we crossed to reach the creek. Moths and butterflies covered the meadow. I almost had to swat them out of the way.I was actually surprised at how much water was flowing in the creek. I guess all the recent rain had helped fill its reservoirs.We walked the trail along the creek for most of our visit. It was cool and shady, and the cypress trees actually offered some fall foliage color.Benches and shelters throughout the center offered chances to sit and marvel at the foliage and enjoy the weather. Never afraid to multitask, we used our little breaks to make a dent in out leftover Halloween candy. (We might have had less if we'd actually been home during trick-or-treating hours, but that seemed an inefficient way to end up with more candy for me.)
Among the many native plants, this one was my favorite: I can't decide if this is a sunflower whose yellow has faded or this color was its original shade.

Here are some of its compatriots further along in their lifespan.After reaching a pretty obvious sign that we'd hit the end of the trail,

we turned uphill where the trail is shared with horses.The visitor center is closed on Sundays, but it certainly looks like it would be worth a return trip.
We headed over the Haupstrasse aka Main Street after our hike. I'm not a big shopper but if you are, there are lots of stores to check out. I was more interested in some of the signage than the stores. This flower decorated one of the shops.This store name left me a bit puzzled:Does the store offer one antique? antique pickles? or the unusual combination of old stuff and pickles?

It was this store, however, that really threw me for a loop:
The only dingo I know is the one that ate the baby. Who knew it could also be hip?

We were too stuffed from our Cocina de Consuelo's breakfast burritos to take advantage of Pamela's lunch suggestions: Boerne Grill and the Hungry Horse but perhaps on a return trip.

On the way back, we set the GPS to take the most meandering route home and enjoyed seeing some really gorgeous rural areas.

I wish that we could have made this trip and attended Novella Carpenter's panel at the Texas Book Festival. I highly recommend her book, Farm City, about her efforts to farm, raise, and harvest vegetables, chickens, ducks, and even pigs.

Alas, we couldn't do both but I think Novella would understand the need to be in nature.