House Beautiful - At Least For Company

What is it about having people over that suddenly transforms me into a cleaning, decorating, landscaping, and cooking machine? I mean, come on, I spend time on the couch under the fan, but it's not like I'm a total slob. My garden is in pretty good shape. I have food in the house. The dust bunnies aren't bigger than the cat.

And yet I am in frenzy.

Of course the cause of all this is my hosting a Master Gardener event next spring where perfect strangers will be looking at my yard. That doesn't really frighten me, but it's all those Master Gardeners that intimidate me into a puddle. These people know their stuff and I have to be ready! Of course they are perfectly nice people and are always kind to me. I have nothing to worry about.

Still.

I've been in sort of a paralysis, a kind of summer doldrums, trying to get my ideas solidified so I can finish up the back yard. I haven't laid all the bark down and I need to configure some sort of pavers in the paths. All of those examples I have clipped out of Fine Gardening and Horticulture seem just too elegant (and expensive) for what I need.

Lucky for me, I've gotten a nudge. I was able to come home a little early on Friday and spent some time with my neighbor. Cindy is very artistic and has such an eye for things. She has pavers, plants, and all sorts of objects in her garden that are arranged so artfully. I dragged her across the street (don't worry, she left with cucumbers and cantaloupe) to throw some ideas at her. We had a good discussion and I gained a little direction. Then on Saturday I spent the morning with another group of gardeners. We talked about landscaping and various gardens that had recently been visited and I became so inspired by the conversations that a couple hours later I was looking at rock.

I think I know how I'm going to finish everything now. Today I worked on the last ditch in the backyard and moved the compost bin. I've budgeted out what I need for bark and patio pavers. I've got Ed working on an arbor. Everything is in motion.

So in a frenzy I go, trying to get everything in its place. I don't know why I do this; I guess it's out of fear of rejection or something. I'd spend time on the couch trying to analyze it, but I've got a garden to get ready!

Pretty Little Things

My days of cottage style gardening are over for now. A whole yard filled with nothing but flowers is not what I'm currently doing, gardening-wise, but I do miss them.

Luckily for me I live in a place where wildflowers are exalted. Austin is, after all, the home of the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center. Her program to seed Texas roadways makes the spring here a kaleidoscope of color. There is also a local farm that raises flower seed, which is where I got the sunflowers pictured.

So now I'm thinking maybe I can do this flower thing after all. I can plant native seed all over my berms and between my fruit trees. Those blue bonnets are nitrogen-fixing legumes and will increase soil fertility and tilth. Not only that, but the native flowers will attract bees and beneficial insects that will help my garden thrive.

So I guess all those years of subscribing to Fine Gardening and longing to see the great landscapes of the British Isles is going to pay off after all. Right here. In Texas of all places. I think Lady Bird would be proud.

Gardening in Central Texas - Lessons Learned

This month is my one-year anniversary of gardening in Central Texas. It hardly seems possible that a year has passed since I first put my hands in the sticky muck that passes for soil in my back yard. My first two plantings were some sad looking tomatoes and peppers from Lowe's. I just jammed in them in a strip of raised bed left by the previous owners, and hoped for the best. The best didn't really happen, because I was about to be KO'd by the hottest summer in Austin history. But even so, there have been many lessons learned since then, and hopefully my fall gardening season will kick off a little more successfully.

1. It is freakin' hot here. The hottest summer non-withstanding, the heat here is so much more intense than Oregon. Those 100-degree days in August are nothing compared to the every day onslaught here in Austin. It doesn't cool down at night so a stressed plant stays that way. The bonus though, is that these warm nights really aid the growth cycle and ripens fruit a lot faster.

2. You cannot water enough. I didn't understand why everyone was so upset when water restrictions said you could only irrigate once a week. I'm used to that being just fine and watering any more frequently promotes shallow root growth. Not here. Some of my vegetables and fruit get watered every day during the hot spell. During fruit set I will hand water AND drip irrigate. Believe me, I am not overwatering. I use my trowel or garden fork to dig in the soil to find the moisture zone and spend many days never finding it. I am so thankful that I installed my rainwater collection system.

3. Pestilence rules. If there is an obnoxious bug on the planet, it is sure to be thriving here in Central Texas. I have never seen such a plague of pests. Cabbage loopers, stink and pill pugs, leaf-footed bugs, caterpillars, little black beetles that mowed down my mustard, and a host of others that I discover every day. As I build my back yard habitat I hope to attract just as many beneficial insects, but right now it's just me out there doing battle. I have had to rethink my entire approach to what to plant. Up until now I mixed my vegetative and flowering plants together in the same bed. Not any more. In order to harvest food for the table, I have to keep the vegetative plants under row covers. I lost my kale and cabbage because I didn't get the covers on soon enough. That won't happen again. I am also shopping online for a bug vacuum. I have my eye on one that has a zapper inside. Payback's a bitch baby.

4. The growing seasons are actually shorter. The heat and the cold really shorten the available days for healthy plant growth. This is a problem for something like tomatoes that take forever to ripen. And worse, bloom set stops when the temperature reaches 95 degrees. The only way to combat this is to start seeds very early. I now have plastic to go over my hoops and will be raising seedlings as early as November. I need those plants vigorous and ready to bloom in March. However, notice I wrote "seasons". We have two awesome seasons to grow in, making this my most productive food patch ever.

5. It will freeze here. That hot summer really lulled me into thinking I live in the tropics. Not so. We had several freezes and I lost two of my precious citrus trees and had frozen pipes in the bathroom because I was careless. Not next time. I will actually put up Christmas lights in November - on the plants, not the house, and will let the faucets drip on cold nights. I also have plastic covers ready to go. Bring it on!

It has been such a blast learning to garden in a new climate. And even though I have had some spectacular failures, my successes are far greater. Home grown citrus, lemon grass, and cantaloupe bigger than my head, sweet corn in June - I really couldn't ask for more. Now if you'll excuse me, it's time for me to check my inventory and get ready for fall planting. Yee haw!

Let there be dragons and other monsters

There are monsters in my yard.

Every day in the garden is a complete adventure because I am constantly discovering creatures I have never seen, or have never seen such a variety of, before. Dragonflies are an example. The breadth of dragon and damselflies is simply amazing. I have never encountered such colors: carmine, bottle green, lipstick red, orange, Sapphire blue, white, and variations in between. I am constantly running to the house for the camera and the computer to try to figure out what I am seeing. Check out this website that has over 100 listed just for Travis County! Yesterday I saw a new one that just knocked me over. My digital camera just won't focus on these guys, so click here to see a picture of this male Plathemis lydia. I have the females too but they don't have that stunning white abdomen.

There are also a plethora of caterpillars that are munching various plants to the ground. The only one I knew by sight was the swallowtails. Imagine my horror when I saw these monsters chowing down my citrus trees! They are HUGE. I'd never seen such a thing. Turns out they are swallowtails too. They are a type of black swallowtail that specializes in citrus trees. I have them everywhere and it is very, very, hard to allow them to stay. My poor trees are still just recovering from the freeze and don't have a lot of leaves to spare. One of my limes died back to the graft, so I allowed the rootstock to go ahead and grow. My thinking was that I could use it as a swallowtail cafeteria and move the other caterpillars off my good trees. Well, that was a good idea that lasted for about a week. The new growth couldn't keep up with all the "relocated" creatures. Now I am picking them off and rotating them around to whatever is growing most robustly at the moment. Thank goodness the cardinals, blue jays, and anole lizards are helping me keep the population in check so I don't have to resort to caterpillar-cide.

There are also all kinds of interesting bees and wasps that hang about. They are very brightly colored also and vary in size. I found a dead wasp in the garden that makes the largest hornet I've ever seen look like a ladybug. Between them and the giant cockroaches, I can see a nightmare cooking some hot restless night. Right now I also have a swarm of leaf-footed bugs in my black-eyed peas. Every time I go to pick them I get thwacked in the face with a rapidly flying-away bug. They are about a half inch long and have a long needle snout for boring into things. Lovely creatures. Here's a link if you want to marvel at them yourself. They are also known as "stink bugs" so they aren't one I want to handle for a photo.

When the air warms up in spring, the air becomes resplendent with the sound of cicadas. Their chittering can be quite a cacophony during the day and I am always amazed at how they call to each other from tree to tree. Since they are high overhead, you usually don't see them unless a bird has dropped one. I was lucky to catch this newly hatched one underneath the front yard rain barrel. It is called a Superb Green Cicada and I don't think it could be more aptly named. It really is a pretty thing for such a big bug. Their white grubs are commonly found in lawns. I'm always finding them as I dig ditches or turn over soil. I usually just throw them out in the road so they can become street food for the jays and mocking birds that are always supervising me.

I think my fascination with all of this is mainly because they are so new to me. I've always been interested in things in nature and discovering all these new creatures sends me back to Mrs. Holdridges third grade classroom. It was there that we used to do science projects and hatch out Monarchs in jars. I find that same sense of joy and wonder bubbles out of me as I drag poor Ed out of the house to look at some new thing I've found.

Why just yesterday I was out weeding and came across a tiny reddish-brown toad. We also had hawks nest in the neighbor's tree and their two chicks have fledged. Ed and I watched them chase two tomato-thieving squirrels, and then later one landed on my patio trellis. I tell you, all this wildlife sure saves on zoo admissions!

Bushwhacking Texas Style

To be honest, I didn't even look at the package. All I saw was "sunflower collection" and I immediately grabbed the item off the shelf at the Wildflower Farm. I love sunflowers. I have always had several in the yard and delight in finding new colors and schemes to try. They are just gorgeous on the plant and in the vase. Plus they are easy to grow and are relatively pest free.

Then I moved to Texas.

First of all, there is some sort of caterpillar that has just mowed through most of them. I think the likely suspect is a pretty little Bordered Patch (Chlosyne lacinia) buterfly that's been hanging out. I have learned not to immediately drown caterpillars in soapy water until I have identified the adult, and in this case, they were only eating the sunflowers. Plus, these plants are HUGE. I planted them on the berm between my fruit trees, and they have reached a height of at least ten feet. The side branches are over an inch thick and the trunk is at least three inches at the base. A little defoliation was in order just to let some light in for the apple trees.

But then the caterpillars got their fill and the dang plants recovered. Pretty soon, my trees completely disappeared. Today I decided I'd better tackle the job or lose the trees. It took me over an hour to trim up two sunflowers and to chop up the branches into the compost bin. Whose ever heard of having to trim up a sunflower to save a tree? I mean really?

Next time I think I'll read the package.

Deep in the heat of Texas

Summer is here in full force. We have humid, 90-degree days (although balmy compared to the 100+ weather of last summer) and the nights are not much cooler.

It is these temperatures that bring me closer to understanding my southern genes. The heat and humidity really take it out of me, and I find myself moving, talking, and even thinking much slowly. Suddenly things lose their urgency as I gravitate toward the porch or any piece of furniture under a ceiling fan where I can find a little air movement.

The easy ways of my grandparents and great aunts suddenly spring to mind. Those folks couldn’t be hurried into anything and the lazy way they framed their thoughts sometimes seemed alien to me. I’ve always been prone to rushing around and doing too much at once. The only time the pace slowed was when I spent time with the McCasland clan. It was from grandma that I learned to love chickens, corn bread, bacon fat, greens, and anything else she would let me help cook. Grandpa and I spent many hours sitting in the boat waiting for the crappy to bite on Emigrant Lake a tonic for an A-personality granddaughter prone to talk too much. It seems he never ran out of stories about Arkansas and I never tired of listening.

I think of Jack and Clemmy often now. I think I can understand them a little better and I wish they were both alive for me to tell them so. I’d like to tease Grandma and tell her how I relish greens and bacon. Grandpa would be urging me to drop a line into the Colorado River to see how big a bass I could pull in. I hear the crappie bite really well on lawn grubs I can hear him say. I would tell them about my lazy summer days and how now I can appreciate the phrase “come and sit a spell.” I would show them my garden and laugh as the drying pods on my black-eyed peas pop and crackle in the sun. We’d talk about the merits of the tomato varieties I’ve planted and wonder how much taller these sunflowers are going to get. We would sit in the chairs that Ed made out of fence boards, swat at the mosquitoes and admire the fireflies.

I could never imagine the life I lead now. I could never even conceive of slowing things down and actually enjoying the heat of the day. I had no idea that the south would ooze out of my pores like the gallons of sweat I didn’t know I could produce. I didn’t know I had a southerner in me. “I swan Sheri”, I can hear Grandpa say, “we knew it all the time.”

If only things were different

Yesterday I ran across some news that struck me profoundly. The first was a picture of an oil-soaked bird in the Gulf of Mexico http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127482022. Then there was a post about an Prescott Arizona elementary school mural that is going to be “whitened” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/04/arizona-elementary-school-mural_n_601436.html. Last, a thought-provoking article in Mother Earth News discussing the morality of industrial agriculture (among other things) http://www.motherearthnews.com/nature-community/the-truth-about-vegetarianism.aspx

At first I became very sad and wondered how it could possibly be that we live in a world where such things happen, where people cap cop such attitudes. Why doesn’t somebody do something? Why don’t people see how wrong they are? Why are these mistakes made over and over?

Then my indignant and morally superior attitude hit me right back in the face. Want to change the world? Change yourself.

What these three articles have done is turn me completely inward to evaluate what role I have played in perpetuating a society that allows us to destroy ourselves and others without a backward glance. What is it about us that require one to be right and the other wrong? Why do we feel the need to bully each other or nature into submission? What genetically predisposes us to dominate, destroy, isolate, and control?

I think part of it has to do with our complete disengagement with community and family. We live an anonymous existence that allows us to write things on the Internet or hurl insults from a speeding car without any fear of retribution. We are free to air our hurts and hatreds, perhaps hoping that if we spew it from our bodies it will somehow heal us. Sort of like throwing trash on the ground; get rid of it and it’s no longer my problem. But it doesn’t heal, it doesn’t go away, it just gets worse.

I am not above all of this. I am part of the problem. These past years have not been fun for me and I now can see that the root of the problem has been inside me all along. The anger and viciousness I have hurled at others to express my dissatisfaction with life makes me no better than those people in Prescott. My assertion that other people have it easier than me and that I deserve better means I am just as greedy as BP oil trying to take shortcuts in order to make more money. My speechifying about my greater understanding of the food chain due to my agricultural background still sees me going to the grocery store for the bulk of my meals – despite what I claim to know.

Here is what I have learned. There is no Right. There is no One Way. There is only Me and what I do right Now. Want to change the world? Start right here, with me. Want people to treat me better? Start right here, with me. Think other people have it easier? I have a perfect example of an acquaintance that is wealthy and is one of the most miserable people I know. It’s better to be me with all my flaws and anemic bank accounts.

Here is what I am saying to myself. Live your life the best as you can with less. Grow as much of your own food as you can. Sew your own clothes or buy used. Drive less. Consume less – I mean, how many pairs of shoes do you need any way? Treat others with more kindness. Stop envying people you think have more. More is meaningless. Things don’t matter, they are just things. Stop trying to change other people; instead, be an example. Stop doing things that make you crazy. Stop hanging out with people that make you crazy. Seek a higher path instead of judging others.

Wishing things were different will not make it so, becoming different will. Change the world one smile, one more vegetable garden inspired, one less mile driven, one less object bought at a time.

This I can do. So can you.