Butterfly Weed Rebound

This February, I planted these two butterfly weed plants in the front garden. They were small, and got nipped by a frost, but quickly rebounded. When my mom was visiting in April, we counted 21 monarch caterpillars (that's right, 21!) munching on these plants. When they were through,there was nothing left but green little nubs sticking out of the mulch.

I know that 4 of the monarchs survived, because they headed west from the plants and formed chrysalises on our front porch.

The larve in the back is about to transform into a chrysalis, like the blurry one in front. All 4 of these sucessfully matured into adult butterflies.

And now, the butterfly weed is back and as colorful and beautiful as ever, providing nectar for other insects. I'm amazed at its ability to rebound. No doubt this is why it earned the name "weed." I've seen this butterfly weed labelled around town as Asclepius tuberosa, but in fact I think it may actually be Asclepius lanceolata, also known as Mexican milkweed or red milkweed. (I can't remember what the tags said at Barton Springs Nursery.) It's quite different than the A. tuberosa found in the tallgrass and blackland prairies, but it looks like they are both native to the East Austin area.

I'd like to get my hands on some tuberosa someday...

Smarty Plants

The wonderful folks behind Mr. Smarty Plants at the Wildflower Center answered a question I sent in regards to my buffalo vs. bermuda conundrum. Here's what they had to say:

Question: Is Bermuda grass taking over my Buffalo grass lawn? I recently sodded a small area of Buffalo Grass 'Prairie' (last fall). It's doing beautifully, or so I think. There are stolons running and reaching all over the place. How can I tell if these are Buffalo grass stolons or stolons of the nasty, nasty Bermuda grass??

Answer: Distinguishing between the stolons of the two species is difficult unless there are flowers present. Both show variable "hairiness" around the nodes and leaf sheaths so this feature is not going to be definitive. The nodes on buffalograss tend to be a bit more swollen with several leaves emerging from them instead of one or a very few; however, if you don't have stolons from both species for comparison, this is going to be difficult to determine. The flowers, however, are very different. Bermuda has a windmill-like infloresence with 2 to 7 branches. Buffalo usually has separate male and female plants. The male flowers are flag-like banners standing above the leaf blades and the female flowers are somewhat hidden amongst the leaves, rounded and burr-like, but not spiny. If you see any bermuda flowers, you can pull up that clump and all attached runners, and then have these as a sample to compare for further control efforts.

Here are a few "visuals" to help you. Bouteloua dactyloides (buffalograss), which has just had its botanical name changed from Buchloe dactyloides, has both pistillate (female) plants and staminate (male) plants. Here are more photos of buffalograss. Cynodon dactylon (Bermuda grass) has both the male and female flowers (perfect flowers) on a single plant. Here is the line drawing for the Cynadon dactylon (Bermuda grass) plant.

Mi Jardin Es Su Jardin

Without gardener-friends, what would our yards look like? A recent visit from our southern-fried Wisconsonite friend Tony got me thinking about how a little love and sharing goes a long way. Take for example this photo of our old garden in Madison, Wisconsin (which is bad, but I didn't want to search through the piles too long for something better).

The flagstone path is courtesy of throw-away stones from John's sister Lorry. Tony and another friend Catherine donated hostas and many other plants to the cause. I would often come home, in fact, to find plants dug up from Tony's garden waiting by my back door for me to plant them. Without these folks, our garden would've taken forever to grow. And it just wouldn't have been the same. Every plant from a friend has a history. Those from the nursery just blend into the garden whole.

In Austin too, we've benefited from the kindness of others. We have a few mountain laurels that came from Tina and Amy's (I think one of these tough transplants might actually survive!). We have juniper fencing and Hill Country stones scored from our friends C.J. and Jenny, who live on an undeveloped property outside of San Marcos. Steph passed along a couple agave pups, and Felicia donated a larger century plant to the front yard as well.

Note to Self: Dig out those fine, strong inland sea oat plants taking up precious flower space and spread them around to friends in need.

The Watering Time Begins

I installed a drip irrigation system--bought piece-by-piece at Lowe's and easily installed--in March, but we've had such an amazingly wet spring and early summer that I have only used it very sparingly. Now, it looks like the rain days may have passed us by.

I'm starting to have to water the garden now; however, I'm using water collected in our back 75 gallon rain barrel to feed the veggies, so still, not turning on the drip.

When it does get turned on, by the way, it works great. I highly recommend installing one for flower and vegetable beds. Veggies especially are certainly not xeriscape plants...

UPDATE: um, not so much. It's 6.21.07 and still raining away this summer...

The Tragedies of Clay

One of the tough lessons I'm learning this Spring, my first in the house and with the garden, is that we have some serious clay soil. Clay, clay, clay. This is old blackland prairie, folks, which is characterized by clay soil dense enough to create large shallow pools of water with just about any rain. Many of the first settlers noticed the same when they first arrived to Texas, before the blackland was tilled and turned into farms and home plots. So, it's not just compaction from construction. (But that doesn't help either). Matt White talks about the character of this area now and then in his book Prairie Time: A Blackland Portrait.

So, there was the desperate move of the desert willow from front to back (the poor West Texas native was drowning after all this rain). My two shrubs of another western species, cenizo, are just now on their last legs, too. I think the clay is simply too tough for their little roots.

That'll learn me. So, the lesson here is: a) plant things adapted for this soil (a.k.a, native blackland species), and/or b) amend the soil like a mofo with Natural Gardener Revitalizer compost BEFORE doing anything else. I get the feeling that I'm going to have some hot days this summer, working a big pile of this compost into my beds.

Buffalo Circles

Well, the buffalo grass is getting tall and green. I sodded these two circles in our front lawn in early November 2006 (last year) and they seem to be doing pretty well thus far. I used Buffalo grass 'Prairie' from Turfgrass America. Maintenance hasn't been TOO bad thus far--haven't watered them a bit since they were first established. But, I have been faithfully trolling the circles and pulling our the nut grass (oo, the bastard nut grass!) and bermuda grass (oh, the damn bermuda!). Actually, I'm currently fearing that the entire circle is really just tall bermuda grass...I find it hard to tell the difference between bermuda and buffalo, and I think only time will tell.

I had a chance encounter with some of the folks at the Wildflower Center (full disclosure, I was writing this article about them), and they mentioned that buffalo grass is kind of a nightmare. It's not necessarily a shining star for the native lawn movement, because it can be patchy and weedy. That's because buffalo grass would really grow naturally in a more clumpy or clustered way. The better native lawn, they feel, is a mixture: buffalo grass, Texas grama and blue grama. So all the grasses grow to fill in the spaces and make a nice carpet. Texas grama isn't commercially available, but blue grama is. So, in March, I seeded these circles with blue grama purchased from Native American Seed. It sprouted readily and I think I can see it's smaller green blades in the buffalo forest.

It's going to be interesting to see how these circles evolve over time. (By the way, the lawn in the back of the photo is the remaining piece of St. Augustine in our front yard. We plan on removing that this Fall and replacing with crushed granite and plants.)

Nature Fake Snake

This poor young Texas Rate Snake (Elaphe obsoleta lindheimeri) may look sinuous and perfectly happy basking on this limestone rock, but don't be fooled. It's a nature fake. I was very, very saddened to find this youngster freshly dead in our driveway--killed by the Great Destroyer of All Things Living: the car. I was devastated, but I placed it on this rock in our front yard as an offering to whatever critter might need it (hopefully not a rat, although they would certainly feel happy with themselves for having the tables turned wouldn't they?). It disappeared within days.

Our yard is virtually filled with reptiles compared with our place in Wisconsin. Fence lizards, spiny lizards, anolis lizards, rat snakes, garter snakes...who knows what scaled creature may turn up in the weeds and grasses and flowers.

The veggies and flowers grow wild

As I'm typing this, we're having yet another of our fantastic Texas storms. The rain, as other Central Texans can atest to, has been unstopping this year. It's really a beautiful thing. Barton Creek is flowing like I haven't seen it in years. Droughts are drowning. And it's been good (and bad) for the garden. Good, because I've had to use my new fanndangle drip irrigation systems maybe once since I installed it in February. All of my new plants are thriving. Well, most all. Some of them, like the evergreen sumac, drowned in our totally water-logged blackland prairie clay.

Anyway, this is all to say that here are the two beds in the back yard. One is John's Flower Garden and the raised one is for veggies. It's amazing to see how fast things can grow in this climate.

Bacon on a Stick

Things-on-a-stick have always followed and tormented John and I. Art shows in Wisconsin abound with things-on-a-stick. Metal birds? Glass ball? Artsy blob? Put it on a stick. It'll sell like hotcakes! The people will flock. So, it was funny when our artist friend Steph picked up this bird-on-a-stick for us at a festa at Zilker Gardens. She proudly presented it to us after we had finished gorging on beef at the Salt Lick. The first thing that came out of my mouth: "Cool! Bacon-on-a-stick!" John and I laughed (because of our thing with things-on-a-stick) and Steph and the crew giggled along. But back in our garden, the bacon-on-a-stick actually adds a nice flash of red amongst the constant green of the herbs. This corner is full of lavender, lemon verbena, creeping time, and sea oats. Nothing with sparking color. So, bacon-on-a-stick. Who knew?