Purple Mustard

The mustard greens are looking so amazing right now. Check out that purple!

The toscano kale is looking mighty fine too, I must say, with a red russian kale peeking out from behind.

Lots of buds on the Meyer lemon.

Out with the old, in with the new. A broccoli leaf drizzled with beads of dew in front of basil going to seed.

And here's this weird creature, which I thought was a violet. Any ideas? It's sending up these seedheads now, but I haven't seen any flowers at all. Strange.

Muscle Man

Perhaps we were inspired by the artists strutting their stuff during this past weekend's E.A.S.T. Studio Tour or just plain inspired by the random objects laying around the yard and shed. Either way, John and I constructed this funny piece of unconsciously anthropomorphic yard art:

It's made from the PO's leftover weights, which I'd previously pilfered for a fountain. I've since dismantled the fountain and recreated a much better fountain (the Fountain of Weights didn't make enough noise for me). John was inspired to add the sticks and stones that break our bones. The topper comes from the Saluda Grade, a line of railroad track just outside of Saluda, North Carolina, that's the steepest mainline railroad grade in the U.S.

You used to be able to hear the sounds of those trains pushing the grade hitching a ride though the windows of my parent's old house on a magnolia scented breeze. That takes muscle, too.

For now, I deem this sculpture, the Muscle Man.

Juniper Hills Farm

Out Blanco way is an amazing cooking school/bed & breakfast/donkey ranch/lavender farm owned by some friends of ours called Juniper Hills Farm. A small group of us friends (ahem, 12) ventured out there this past weekend to make food, drink wine and tell stories. Here are a few pics from this really sweet place.

Spinach Goodness

CAUTION: Food porn.

The great thing about thinning out spinach seedlings is turning the "thinnings" into this wonderful wintery spinach salad with warm fake-bacon dressing. This was an experiment using tempeh-based bacon, and it rocks. A little sauteed shallot, tempeh bacon, red wine vinegar, brown sugar, dijon mustard and hard-boiled eggs. Yum-O!

Spray-On Shrubbery

Got a dead shrub that’s driving you crazy? Just spray paint it! That’s a strategy I recently saw used on the University of Texas at Austin campus, where traditional boxwood hedges line many of the landscapes to nice effect.

Notice anything amiss? Look closely...

This dead boxwood shrub was spray painted to keep the hedge looking complete (not a good color match though).

Apparently, boxwood hedges date back to the Greeks, and they are a mainstay for more formal gardens. Though the shrub isn’t suited incredibly well for Central Texas, it is used all over the place. I take it that it requires a ton of water and doesn't like intense sun very much. As an alternative, lots of folks use a few dwarf varieties of the native evergreen yaupon holly, Ilex vomitoria, which can be pruned and pounded into many different hedgy shapes. I’ve also seen dwarf wax myrtle, another native variety, used in this way.

Here's a very cool example of a kind of boxwood knot in a corner of James David's garden:

Home Despise

Recently, I sucked it up and visited the new Home Despot that just opened in my neighborhood at the Mueller development. As I drove through the sycamore-lined parking lot, I was thinking positive thoughts, like:

Well, this is not Breed & Co where people give you individualized attention and the scale is just right, just human, but it’s cheaper and really convenient.

I am happy to have at least ONE hardware store that I can ride my bike to. Someplace to buy home and garden goods that’s not on the other side of a freeway.

I like these spindly sycamores with their sweet, spicy aroma that they’ve planted in the parking lot islands and wonder how nice they will look in 10 or 15 years when they are large and providing shade.

I had ventured to the new store to see what they had in the way of cheap shrubs and trees. I usually opt for the local nurseries, but a bargain is a bargain (sometimes). I generally prefer the slightly more visually appealing Lowes, myself, but it may be hard to continue to justify driving across town when I could go to the Big Box next door.

I usually avoid the garden centers at these places if I can help it, unless I need metal edging or drip hosing (but even that can be found elsewhere at locally owned businesses). Their over-emphasis on chemical fertilizers and pesticides, annuals and non-native plants is just ridiculous, IMHO. In fact, I saw that they were selling ligustrum! That should actually be illegal, I think. For that matter, wouldn’t it be great if there were a city or state level rule that would prohibit the sale of locally invasive, non-native species? I just don’t understand how that practice can continue as such. It’s also generally hard to find locally produced composts and potting soils at the Big Boxes (though I have seen bags of “Native Texas Hardwood” mulch).

But, they did have what I was looking for at the moment: cheap shrubs. I bought 4 yaupons, Ilex vomitoria ‘Pride of Houston,’ to begin screening the back yard and front side yard. They were only $19 a pop for 5-gallon shrubs. Not bad. Some co-workers of mine have also recently found some sweet deals there on live and red oaks. Big trees for very small cash. And I hear the Mueller location delivers, too.

So, it ain’t all bad. I know I’ll be headed over their when my plumbing bursts at 9 p.m., or have a need for some random deck screws at an unreasonable hour of the day. And, I’m happy that all my Eastside Peeps and I don’t have to go so far to get what we need.

In truth, we can avoid the Age of the Big Box Stores (A.B.B.S.) about as well as the dinosaurs avoided the Cretaceous. It’s there, but I just generally prefer to be the little rascally mammal nibbling in the undergrowth waiting for the next age to begin…

Go Greens Go!

This whole Super Bowl--I mean presidential election--business is making me nervous, so what better to do than garden blog?

My newly planted greens are going bonkers. This year, I decided to plant arugula and spinach from seed for the first time and tried again with the beets, which I've never been successful with. They are all doing AMAZINGLY well. [Thanks to TW for watering in my absence!]

The arugula is at a perfect height for salad harvesting and all the beets are doing great too.

Tonight, I began to thin out the beets using scissors. I left a plant every 3 to 4 inches and apparently this will determine how large the final beets are. Here they are pre-thinning:

I threw these delicious little greens in a salad with a bit of freshly snipped arugula, Carr Valley cheese from Wisconsin (thanks Tony!), honey truffle oil from Italy (thanks Steph!), luscious pears from the Co-op, and a touch of white wine vinegar. Yum.

I'm going to let the spinach grow for a bit before thinning it out. But it's looking pretty good too:

Californians Are Friends of the Topiary

On a recent trip to the Bay Area, I came to the conclusion after many walks through neighborhoods that Californians are not afraid of topiary. Lots and lots of homes, institutions and public landscapes are filled with square hedges, ball shrubs and any number of crazy topiary shapes. I'm really liking the topiary thing at the moment, but mainly when used in moderation.

And I must say, that our friends Jay and Amie have a topiary in the front yard of their Oakland house that just may take the cake.

Isn't it amazing? This beastie was left for them from the POs. They were pledging to rip it out when they bought the house a year or so ago, but I think they've softened to it a bit. It's totally outrageous and really cool.

J & A spent some backbreaking (literally) time transforming their small front yard from sod grass to a really nice array of perennials, succulents and grasses, including agaves, artichokes and lavenders. It's all very California...especially with the topiary. Here's a view from the other side.

[Shout out to Jay and Amie. Nice to see ya'll and thanks for the hospitality!]