I have been messing with these old Butler bricks for quite some time…as you do.
I have salvaged them wherever I could…stacking them here, stacking them there,
ancient monuments to remind me of an uncompleted project.
The first crop circle I built with them had a few seats around it and was occasionally used as an unusually painful campground when my kids were smaller.
When I decided to expand on the area, and with the removal of my stock-tank fish pond, it became clear I would have to take the bricks back up and start from scratch with a new center point.
More bricks were salvaged during our recent remodel and the removal of this brick patio.
I did lose a few Butlers to concrete and broken corners.
I decided to go with an in-ground fire-pit this time round.
This works out great as we now use it as a fire-pit in the cold months and a table straddles the pit in the summer.
The crack in between the bricks is like crack for the weeds, apparently. They grow as fast as I pull them.
Only another two more rings of bricks to go…of course it isn’t finished.
I keep getting distracted by things like this:
Ugh, and this:
I mean, what manner of nonsense is really going on on this branch?
These two old rosemary bushes, although healthy in this picture, had developed a lot of dead and brown growth at their bases.
And here they are after I attacked them with the Fiskars.
Wizened rosemary bonsai trees!
With the long hot summer drawing to an end and with minimal precipitation this Fatsia Japonica…well,
lets just say it has looked better.
Some of this summer stars have been the Mexican Honeysuckle,
Lonicera japonica
knockout roses and ‘hardy red’ oleander.
Burgundy Canna remains cool in the heat and it has been a bumper year for the Pride of Barbados.
These plants can take the excruciating and prolonged summer temperatures,
myself on the other hand…
even Kumo looked a little peeky after spending an afternoon outside.
On that note I will leave you with a modern design I worked on for a new build near Mopac in Austin.
The last time I posted, this cactus must have been a pup!
Yes it has been that long…so long in fact that in the interim WordPress changed its page editor on me and moved all my tools around.
Gutenbergers!
Where to start…where to start?
It has been so long that Loki is now pushing-on the size of Kumo especially clad in her winter coat.
She now uses him as a warm, funky-smelling cushion on our colder nights.
At 10 months Loki is already dominating the patch and keeping the dove and squirrel population firmly at bay.
No complaints from me.
I just hope she doesn’t challenge the local urban fox like she did the other night…that was a screaming match.
I always open the door very slowly to let her in the house at this point, no telling what unfortunate creature may be dangling from her mouth…oh yes.
On an equally gross note my satsuma tree put out an equally disgusting array of bile fruit (as per the annual norm). I do like the winter color they put on though which is the main reason I grow them.
At least that is what I keep telling myself.
As usual I bribed my daughter into some satsuma ‘sampling’, it is now an annual Patch tradition after all and one that never fails to have me in stitches.
“Same as last year Dad…err, disgusting?!”.
You never know, one of these years they might just be sweet and delicious instead of generating unsavory faces akin to the infamous Montreal escargot tasting of 2017, but I highly doubt it.
The tranquil view of a nice sunset is somewhat diminished with a rather large refrigerator lurking around in the landscape and luckily for me it was bulk pick up week. Yes, it was finally time for her to leave for probably less greener pastures.
Eager to stay where she had been for the last 9 months she had one more fight left in her…
…Stupid Refrigerator.
The end of an era.
Or is it?
Now we get to look at the backside of it from our front windows for a few days.
The fridge that just keeps giving.
Staying with major domestic appliances for a moment, we no longer have to go outside (or fight with a tarp) to use our washer and dryer. Oh no, we now have this smart stackable ‘indoor’ solution…
The sheer luxury.
These two Texas sages
Leucophyllum frutescens
have been getting leggier and leggier over the years, it was time for some drastic hook-saw action.
“Owf with their Heads!”
Now to wait and see what happens.
I have read that Cenizo does not respond at all well to heavy pruning.
I think leaving but a few feet of stump sticking out of the ground qualifies as heavy pruning. Worst case I will replant, but I am curious to see what happens and how they will respond to their brutal decapitations. That adjacent yucca is next on my pruning list, it drives me crazy when there is dead growth hanging down like that.
This one is quite tall and requires some help from a cedar stump to support a spiraling trunk.
Moving Along…
Wheel-barrows full of turf? Dirt trenches and lots of running back and forth? It can mean only one thing…
Another client ‘Normandy Phase’ was well under way.
This time the war-zone was a large back garden in Austin. The goal was to blend some hardscaping and plantings around the house and introduce a water element while nibbling away at the overall turf coverage (turferage).
Pallets of oversized Oklahoma flagstone were dropped at the front of the property and hauled to the back on dollies…a very time consuming activity. I like to use the natural edge of the flagstone to define planting beds or contouring around turf areas, eliminating the need for any additional and superfluous edging materials that always look unnatural in a landscape.
The good people at https://hillcountrywatergardens.com/ drilled a hole through this attractive moss boulder to create a low-level, naturalistic water feature off the back deck.
Here it is up and ‘running’:
The water feature uses rain water collection tanks to top up levels in the hot months. Cafe river rock was mostly used to hide the water collection basin and was in keeping with the natural color palette of the scheme.
Lighting courtesy of Steve Serum at keepinitgreenaustin was also introduced to illuminate the area and to broadcast up into the distant oak trees.
Turfstone was used to form a connecting pathway at the back of the garage and to aid drainage. A steel barrier was needed here to hold back the turf and soil.
I will leave you with this very bizarre Opuntia know as Pricklypear (opuntia engelmannii) or fondly known as the ‘Hairy Roger’.
This is on my most wanted list. I would love to grow a hairy 10ft version of this like my regular opuntia tree.
This is me Philip Leveridge,
I am a designer (landscape and product), gardener and bagpiper in Austin Texas (zone 8b)
You can visit my professional landscape design website by clicking on the image below:
View more of my projects and hear what my clients have to say about Leveridge Landscape Design on Houzz:
