My post oak has finally leafed out and stopped raining its catkins everywhere.
Inland sea oats are quick on the rise, and one of my favorite tropical-looking shrubs,
Nerium oleander,
‘Hardy Red’ is putting on a, well…red show on the edge of my Hell-strip.
‘Hardy Red’ tolerates temperature extremes better than the white and pink cultivars, it blooms sporadically through most of the year.
Prefers sharp soil and good drainage,
as do most things in the Patch, like this
back-lit sotol, and these barrels:
I contemplated picking off last year’s old blooms, then decided better of it. I will wait until I have my pliers, besides there is that stubborn piece of Bermuda grass that I always have to work on, (bottom-right) but I do not want to talk about that.
With the discovery of the first tadpoles of the year, the netting began.
Not so little fingers went fast to work,
their catch and release policy even included a few baby goldfish which is a good thing considering recent events.
Finally:
My landscape design portfolio finally outgrew the page that it once inhabited in here, so for the past few weeks I have been busy learning Thesis 2 and building a new home for it in here:
One final fling around the water park before the cooler temperatures descend over central Texas.
A water park that comes to life with an amazing light show as the sun goes down.
There are also lots of plants providing great fall color in the Patch,
they may be leggy (pruning negligence on my part) but these Mexican Leucantha still pack a snaking purple punch.
Salvia and the first celosia seed heads are starting to form,
these will be turning little fingers pink when I bribe my halflings with some extra allowance to harvest the seeds.
Thryalisis also putting on a fine performance at the back of my post oak,
head high, they are attracting shiny tiny hover flies / flower flies.
Allograpta obliqua
Flower Flies resemble wasps and bees. Despite their tribal markings, they are totally harmless and beneficial pollinators of flowers.
The larvae are also partial to aphids.
There are a lot of yellow flowers currently in bloom, it has been a bumper year for bitterweed all over Austin this year. Bitterweed is a yellow-flowered annual weed that thrives in poor soil and turban defying Hell-strip temperatures. Bitterweed poisoning is a major problem for sheep in the Southwest, it is a member of the sunflower family and is closely related to Colorado rubberweed both in appearance and in the rather nasty effects it can have on sheep if ingested.
Luckily for me, I do not have any sheep in my Hell strip, an occasional lost chicken perhaps,but no sheep. I like the free-form meadow aesthetic this cheerful plant creates and it works well set against a backdrop of bamboo muhly, another Hell-strip veteran.
“The bells, the bells…Esperanza.”
One more that is in the process of turning yellow:
Satsuma. The fruit this year are particularly large. I wonder if this little tree will beat the previous fruiting record of 97 set in 2009?
There may well be a blogging competition in here; guess (or be the closest)to the exact number of satsumas? And no, the winner will not inherit our house elf.
Other things observed this week:
Bluebonnets are on the rise,
and the mysterious “brains” have been spotted, floating once again in the pond.
“ackack-ackack“
Interestingly these have not yet “grown” the disturbing spinal column that I usually see dangling on the underside of them.
Well at the persistent and repetitious “aww can we go to that new place, you know the one where the other one was, can we?”monthly monologue from my elder halfling, we finally broke down and took her to the newly reopened restaurant.I say this somewhat lightheartedly as I really had my own hidden agenda for going there, and it wasn’t the food.
I wanted to see for myself if new ownership had decided to tackle the now infamous, sarcophagus restaurant planter.
And to my amazement they had!
I got out of our vehicle, heart pounding, and rounded the familiar strip-mall corner (mild panic attack) only to come face to face with a healthy and centrally planted loquat…a loquat! Squeals ensued followed by a considerable amount of shushing and hand waving on my part in case the front of house was listening to us just inside the establishment doors.
A pleasant end to a rather long, drawn out story I thought to myself, then I remembered the The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and started craving shellfish.
Finally:
I will leave you with some before and after visualizations of the latest ESP design:
A silver and gold approach eats into the hell-strip, widening and softening the property entryway. Two ‘blue ice’ cypress sentries stand guard flanking the gate.
The small box store pond was not at all fitting with the scale of the grounds, it was also situated opposite the front door, a natural entry-place to the garden. I replaced this with a wide and inviting limestone edged pathway that draws the eye down into a seating area and up around the second tier planting beds.
Here is the left side of the same bed with a meandering pathway leading up to a second tier shade bed.
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:
