Sally's Allotment
Here's a look at some of the plants that I shared a month or so ago. There's been quite a lot of growth and Chris' orchid addiction seems to be paying off, The yellow and black/purple orchid fascinates me and seems to change every morning
I have somehow fallen into collecting begonias. Last year I only branched as far as the strawberry begonia, but this year I couldn't resist a couple of beauties from Red Barn Nursery - the Begonia Rex - Lalomie, the Angel wing Begonia "Sinbad', and the Begonia Cowardly Lion (what a fab name):
The abnormally warm winter in Austin means the roses are already popping! Two of my David Austin beauties (Molineux and Mayflower) are already blooming. So many blooms that I snipped a few to bring indoors. And of course, the very Texas friendly, knockout rose as well as a lovely coral rose. The light pink is a bush that was here when we moved in and has survived hardscaping and much mowing down over the years when we created the front yard area.
After basketball this morning, I dragged Chris and Tom to the Orchid Sale at Zilker Botanical Gardens. Tom was not impressed, but Chris ended up buying 11 different plants. I'll make a gardener of him yet! One of my goals for this year is to learn more about the proper names for different plants so I'm including a photo of my attempt to capture both the look and the name of each plant from the start.
As Tom and Chris were out early this morning to get hair cuts, I thought I'd use my new hedger tool to give my grasses a haircut. Something tells me I'll have taken off more than Tom does!
Looks like spring is starting to sneakily break through into the garden. This morning, I noticed a couple of lovely ranunculus blooms, a peep of my orange esperansa, the mint beginning its takeover, and the poppies fighting back. Should be an interesting year. All these glimpses of the future motivated me to do the less exciting tasks like reviewing the irrigation system schedule for 2017.
The front and side garden look sad after being cut back drastically for winter. It's hard to imagine that in four months, I'll be pulling out perfectly good flowers to help with overcrowding. I do need to begin thinking about some shrubs that will add at least a bit of greenery during the winter months. For now, I'll hold onto the glimmer of color that is beginning to appear and will take over soon
The weather has been too contradictory to be able to really get our hands dirty in the garden. Instead, we managed to clean up and take care of some of the pots on the back patio. I think the black pansy is my current favorite
My fruit trees look like they may not have survived the recent frost (a frost that was sandwiched between days in the high 70s). Just before their demise, I managed to pull off a couple of grapefruit, a lemon and an orange. The outer skin had black peck marks on it which looked unattractive but hadn't damaged the flesh inside. Turns out it was probably a hummingbird attack but the innards were not damaged. Looking forward to continuing to try to increase my fruit bounty in 2017
According to Katie, I have to post to this blog at least four times a year in 2017. So here goes the first post! A quick selection of the rapid garden bed we planted between Christmas and the New Year This bed usually houses a giant orange Esperanza bush and loads of wild mint, but in the winter, it looks barren and sad. To brighten things up for our 7th annual Polar Bear Plunge on New Year's Day, Katie and I selected and bought a selection of goodies at the nursery and planted them within two hours. We felt like we were on an episode of Ground Force!