The Back 40: Part III

Ta da! Four square yards of Hill Country soil from Natural Gardener and 6 yards of Native Texas Hardwood mulch later, and we have mostly finished our backyard stream, rain garden and berm project. (I know how much the ladies over at Garden Rant loath a berm, but I think this one is for a good cause and hopefully avoids the Berm Island effect.)

The piles await.

Our new beds are just begging from some plants, and that's the fun part. As Fall approaches in Central Texas, so does planting time. I can't wait to get to the nurseries and plant sales. We were thinking this weekend about how mulching is like painting. If a room is looking drab and old, it just takes a fresh coat of paint to make it look crisp, fresh and inviting. I think the same goes for mulch. It looks (and smells) so good and totally freshens up the garden, smothering natty little weeds and making all those lines clean again. It's a clean palette to start filling in the space with plants.

The Back 40: Part I and II

We've recently embarked on a massive project to both deal with some drainage issues in the backyard and pretty things up back there. You see, we're midslope around here, and water comes streaming down off the hill above us toward the creek below us. This is made especially bad since the neighbors behind us have a roof downspout literally dumping directly into our backyard. So this water likes to collect in pools in our backyard, flood into our too-low garage and under our house. The more we can do to divert it, the better. (Of course, it hasn't rained in so long, I've forgotten what this can be like.)

Anyway, here are some pics of this project in progress. We're using the same Llano river rocks that we used for the front dry stream bed (also made for drainage).

Basically, we are creating a creek to divert water and it flows around the back yard within a new perennial bed. We are also decreasing the amount of lawn (hallelujah), by turning the turf area into one small rectangle aligned with the axis of the back garden. There's still a lot of work to do (ie, hauling in some soil, mulch and plants), but we're getting there.

This is a back-breaker. Digging out the "stream" or french drain. We're still in pain. Two weeks later. Getting old sucks.

You can see the neighbors' drain coming out of their wall.

Filled with rocks and some berm going on.

Brown metal edging from Lowe's defines the edge of the perennial bed and lawn.

We have these heavy-as-shit concrete things all around the house, from previous owner projects. Here we used two to make a bridge over the creek to get to the compost bin.

As we were digging, we found this strange concrete shape buried beneath the soil by the back gate. So, we filled it with stone and turned it into a micro-feature. I like that it's off kilter.

Part III of this project is coming up soon. We'll put newspaper down over everything and cover that with soil, compost and mulch. Then, we'll be ready for planting in the fall. Whew.

Ike Comes and Goes

Hurricane Ike has come and gone, and so go jokes and references to Ike & Tina and President Eisenhower ("I like Ike?"). If you are a gardener in Central Texas, you're never supposed to WISH for a hurricane, but when one is headed your way, you sure do hope for some rain.

Well, that didn't really happen, I'm afraid. Austin went nuts canceling school and football games and preparing for the Monster Storm, but things were pretty much par for the course here. No rain (not much anyway) and no cooler temperatures. It was still 100 degrees yesterday. Yuck.

My Austin Samba School performance was canceled last night at the Xemumba festival due to the "hurricane," though none was in our sights. But the hot sticky evening was not lost. Prince was in the house at the Scoot Inn, where Foot Patrol put on an amazing show honoring the Purple One and benefiting the Texas School for the Blind. The closing number couldn't have been choreographed any better: it started to pour cool, cool rain and the band gave us a rocking version of "Purple Rain." We were all wet, and it was an amazing end to a great evening.

Unfortunately, on the garden front, the rain was only about .25 inches at most. They are still saying that cooler temperatures are on the way. Fingers crossed.

The Kidneywood Lives

Just when the kidneywood (Eysenhardtia texana) planted out front begins to disappoint, it decides to burst with sweet-scented white spires of flowers. This is a native Texas shrub or small tree (I'm going to prune mine up some day) that is very airy, and a great substitute (I think) for vitex. The leaves are pungent when crushed, and it blooms off and on throughout the season. The flowers smell divine.

Because of it's light, breezy look, it's really hard to take photos of, but here's my best shot.

This plant is about 3 feet tall, but it should get up to about 6 or 7 feet. I think that at this point in the summer, especially during a really dry one, nectar is hard to come by. Right now, the butterflies, moths and bees are positively swarming all over this plant. Way more than I was able to capture on film...

A hairstreak butterfly

A very striking day-flying moth (you can tell it's a moth because it holds its wings over its body like a tent - dead giveaway)

Halictid bee

A strange bee that may be a drone (male) honey bee. Need to do some research on this one, which is too dark to me a standard female worker honeybee.

Anyway, the kidneywood doesn't disappoint after all!

Mad Town

John and I just got back from a weekend in the Old Home Place: Madison, Wisconsin. It's a bucolic little European-esque city, with the world's best farmer's market, bike paths (and bicyclists) galore, stately buildings, Brandy Old Fashioneds and fish fries. Gotta love it. A lot of people say that it's like Austin before Austin grew up, but I'm not comfortable with that comparison. It's got a really different, Norwegian-Swede, progressive, socialism vibe going on that's pretty different from Austin's wild west, libertarianism.

We stayed on our old street with friend Tony. Tony lives in a cedar shake house with a beautiful mature garden that he's been working on for over two decades. Tony and our friend Catherine both helped us seed our first garden with hosta transplants, cimicifuga, ferns, wild geranium and more.

Here's a pic of Tony's backyard on a gorgeous 85 degree Madison summer day (note the ubiquitous bicycle - everyone does it in Madison).

It's so pretty lined with various types of hostas, fruit and maple trees. Tony's potted herb garden on the back porch impressed me too. Sage, mint, oregano, tarragon and chives are handy for fresh yummies (e.g. cool sweet pea soup dotted with mint).

The pear branches are drooping under the weight of ripening fruit, just next to Tony's quaint garage.

Madison is home to the tallgrass prairie, and lots of people - especially in our old neighborhood - fill their front yards with a mix of tallgrass natives and adapted plants. Many people really like their yards to be full and wild looking. It's interesting to see how the same prairie species can grow so differently there. For example, check out the Little Bluestem in the foreground of this photo:

It's got a completely different, more sedate growth pattern up there. I also noticed other familiars and related species to some of our plants down here, like black-eyed susan, echinacea, and northern sea oats.

Rain gardens are big up there, too. This is one at the local food co-op, just full of goldenrod and other yellow asters.

Madison's system of bike trails is like none I've ever seen anywhere. Lots of old rail lines have been converted into bike highways. Here's a shot of one that ran by our old house. Community veggie gardens line the left side and a restored prairie lines the right. The prairie is all yellow this time of year, but there are the remains of some purple coneflower and gayfeather to be seen too.

Here's a very creative firewood fence at the house of a locally successful restaurateur. It'd be fun to see the fence deplete as the cold winters wear on.

Just next door is a garden that is an amazing combination of evergreens, mostly low growing and of various colors. Cool stuff, and I remember that it looks great draped in white snow.

And finally, here's a guerrilla art project that I installed the fall before leaving Madison, with the help of Megan and Jeff. It's survived a long time now and is pretty integrated into the fabric of the bike trail up there. Someone even added a new directional sign to Fairbanks, Alaska.

I'm glad the sign has made it this far, and hope that someone takes care of it from time to time. It got me to scheming for something similar here...