Coralberry

When planning plants for the garden, I basically think of three things: form, origins and benefit to wildlife. Coralberry, Symphoricarpos orbiculatus, seems to fit all three. I've seen gorgeous stands of this arching plant growing at the Wildflower Center, and seen relatives of our coralberry (often snowberries) growing all over the U.S. in parks and wildspaces. It's pretty in summer and in winter when it is full of berries. It also spreads a lot and feeds the birds.

In our own garden, coralberry has not yet lived up to snuff. It has spread around a bit, but it doesn't form the dense lovely thickets that I was hoping for. Nor does it fruit all that much. However, I was happy to find that a small area of coralberry in the far back corner has produced abundant fuchsia berries this year. (It's something I discovered while on my knees weeding.)

I think coralberry probably likes more moisture than I'm likely ever to give it, but perhaps if we have a nice wet year someday, it'll do its thing.

Wait, Weeding IS Gardening

I'll never forget talking one day with a well-known local landscape designer when he said something to the effect that he didn't think of it as "weeding" but as "gardening." Ignoring the fact that we were at that moment watching his gardener weed, I still thought it was a great idea, philosophically. And the next time I found myself weeding, I definitely had that thought running through my mind.

You know, he's right. If gardening is indeed about tending to the earth, part of that is about plucking and preening.

Weeding is a bit like exercising - once you get started it's actually really great but it's the getting started that can be hard sometimes. The process of weeding brings you into intimate contact with your garden and all of its goings-on.

You are basically forced to plop yourself in one place for a while on your hands and knees, poking and pulling at weeds. And part of that process is distinguishing unwanted plants from those you like. You get to see things you might have tra-la-la-ed past if you weren't looking closely.

Yesterday was a beautiful, sunny crisp day in Austin, and it was high time to try to control this awful cool season grass that invades our gardens.

While I was pulling that stuff up (for hours), I discovered that the Mexican plum (Prunus mexicana) has sent up a runner. Mexican plums are wonderful ornamental trees, but in the wild they form thickets. I never expected to see mine try to get to it's natural state. I also found a juniper seedling undoubtedly dropped by a bird.

I listened to a flock of cedar waxwings alight in the bare pecan branches overhead, squeak for a time and then flutter off to their next destination.

Gardening is more than just the planting of plants and the quaint snipping of flowers here and there. It's getting your hands dirty and muscles sore. It's listening and watching and smelling. It's slowing down to observe. It's fabulous.

View from the Front: A Series

Last year I declared that I wanted to take a photo of the front garden from the front window every year in January. I almost forgot! Here is the front garden this year, then 2011, and 2010. Things look much greener this winter because we haven't had a big gnarly freeze (yet). Change and growth...

Winter "Weeds"

This time of year, there are a few weeds that make themselves quite well known around here. The first is this beautiful little mint-like weed is called henbit, Lamium amplexicaule, and a quick search will teach you that its the bane of lawns and landscapes. This one is a non-native to the U.S. but it is widespread.

I think it's rather pretty myself, and is adding some nice purple color to the garden at the moment. That said, it is spreading itself around in an unruly sort of way. The fine thing about that is that it'll disappear once it warms up. I guess you can eat it too.

Here's another winter-spring weed that will take over quick called bedstraw, Galium aparine, often called cleavers.

Bedstraw is native. Reporting in the Gonzales Inquirer, Dr. Bob Williams said that bedstraw makes a bitter tea and has a long history of use as food and medicine. I always think of this plant as "sticky weed," because it has little hooks all over it that make it stick to humans and animals.

Williams also says that in old times the plant was known for its powers, and that it is still employed in country lore as a purifier of blood. He himself seems to have made up a tea of the stuff to use as a spring tonic in lieu of sassafrass. He says its also a host for many butterfly species, but I haven't yet confirmed.

The only real problem I see in the garden is that it spreads in very thick (but weak) mats and could compete for light and water resources with other spring emerging plants. So, I do control it to a certain extent. I don't feel the need to eradicate it, but I'll pull back the larger growths of it just to give our other plants the benefit of warm spring sun and moisture.

What's the different between a weed and a wildflower? Some people have so many bluebonnets growing in their gardens they might consider them weedy (but desirable). This year, I finally have one bluebonnet coming up from seed.

I'm not sure why I haven't had much success with these annuals in the garden, though I have noticed they love sun and really bad soil. We're mostly clay and part-shade, so that could be the reason. So last year, I planted this seedling's parent in the hot pea gravel part of the garden near the veggie beds. Maybe that'll become a little bluebonnet weed patch for us...

Being a Better Naturalist

One of my goals for this new year is to try and be a better naturalist - to better document and observe the nature around me. This blog has long been an effort at that, but I've actually never been good at keeping deeper records of the plants, birds, insects and other animals around me. A good naturalist would have documents of sitings with dates and other important information, like weather. I'm going to try and work may way to that little by little.

To that end, I just compiled some master lists of the plants, butterflies and moths, birds, and reptiles, amphibians and mammals found at the Grackle. I've certainly forgotten things, so keeping this updated will be a new challenge for me. The butterfly and moth list, in particular, is very small compared to all the species I know that we have.

On the plant front in particular, it was an interesting exercise to write them all down and especially to categorize what is native and what isn't. One of the little challenges with that is that while we consider some things "Texas natives," they aren't really native to this area (for example, desert willow is widely used in gardens in Austin, but is a native of in West Texas.)

One of my goals is to have more plants from the Blackland prairie in the garden, and making this list made me realize how few we have to date. In particular, I'd like to have more native Blackland prairie grasses. As a next step, I'm going to separate those plants out in my lists and then think about how to get more Blackland prairie plants here in the garden.

Winter Blooms of the Loquat

The loquats are in full bloom this time of year, and even more than last year if I recall. They must be digging these once weekly shots of rain juice. There are two great things about this. One, the flowers exude a very subtle sweet perfume, which is always welcome in the winter months. Second, blooms mean future fruits. The warmer temps this year are also encouraging honey bees to venture forth from the hives. I'm not sure if the loquats depend on them to set fruit, but it can't hurt.

Our loquats are still pretty full and growing up front. Someday they may be large beastly tree-hedges. And that's cool with me. They make a nice dark green wall to shield our view of the street (is there anything uglier than a street?).

These trees are from southern China, and I saw many of them wither during the drought over the past summer. They seem much like our native Wax Myrtle only in that they require more water than you might think. We didn't get any fruits last year, so I'm crossing my fingers for a bunch of the pale orange sweet fruits this year. They taste much like apricots and are great in granola. I'd love to make a loquat cobbler or something like that, but have never gotten enough of the fruits...maybe this year.

Dividing Red Yucca

For a blogger, I'm awfully bad at documenting processes sometimes. Case in point: I decided to divide one of our three red yucca plants this past weekend. It would have been neat to photo the whole process of digging these up and dividing them, but above, you can only see the end point, which is a couple of pieces of the red yucca supported by a stalk of bamboo. (The support was called for because the divisions don't have any roots to speak of.)

Red yucca, Hesparaloe parviflora, is not a true yucca, but an agave. According to Mr. Smarty Plants, dividing them is best done in fall or winter and can be a successful way to propagate the plant. Another chance to cross my fingers and hope it works! I love the idea of getting more new plants from old ones, but it's not always as easy as it sounds...