Garden update

(As always, clicking on the picture once zooms in, clicking twice zooms in more.)



Onions, garlic, snow peas, roses and herbs. The nasturtiums are big enough to make a good salad now.



Houston, we have MULCH. The red stuff was just for whimsy. I promised Phil not to do it again, but isn't it pretty this way? All of it is cedar, and helps reduce problems of root-knot nematode...

The future vineyard...

During a recent rain (curiously, there was little wind), the giant oak out front lost a huge limb, one so big it was the size of a lot of whole trees. There was a mother mustang grapevine that grew up this limb, her girth at the ground was probably 4 inches across...really old and productive. Only one in ten mustang vines is a female, so I was thrilled last summer to discover this one was. But when the limb fell, Phil had to cut the vine to disentangle and remove the wood and clean up the mess. I feel like I lost a friend.

The good news is that I already five or six cuttings rooted from this vine, knowing it was female, to make into a small vineyard for our own wine. Since the vine was down, though, I got another twenty or thirty cuttings, and here they are, lined up in their little cutting nursery. I hope they'll root this way.


This is the honeysuckle vine I planted last spring. It's doing well and smells heavenly!

Christmas before last, I was given an amaryllis bulb. I don't have much use for plants that can't survive our climate, but I stuck this one in the ground, and promptly forgot about it. Apparently she can survive here, because after a 15 degree freeze, here she is in all her glory!


The brocolli hasn't made heads yet, but it's looking full and leafy. I think next year I'll plant them a little straighter and further apart. Not sure if they're crowded here, but I think they might be. Of course, the beans, peas, parsley, borage, cilantro, and basil might be part of the problem. ;~)

Cherry tomatoes, bell peppers, and some onions in there somewhere...


I put the cowpeas along this series of concrete reinforcement steel...it stands on its edge, and each curve sits opposite the other, with their ends wired together. Pretty sturdy. Guess we'll see. Down at the far end is winter squash. We've got more of the reinforcement steel cut to make tomato cages for the romas, which get huge, but we haven't put them together yet. Soon, soon.

Peas (the dog LOVES these things!) and chard, strawberries. Onions and garlic look good, carrots are a long way off, and the radishes are all green and little root. Too much nitrogen methinks. Next year they get planted away from the peas.


Strange discovery: the dog knows cedar to be "flowerbed". Since he was a pup, he's been trained "get out of the flowerbed!" and knows not to cross into mulch. When we put the cedar down in the garden, of course we started at the corner farthest from the gate. Schultz wouldn't step on it! So his access to the garden shrank with every wheelbarrow full, and now I can leave the gate open and he sits just outside it, knowing that the whole thing is now "flowerbed". He's such a good little guy...

The view from the deck, as I head out to gather a dinner salad! Mmmm...and plenty of thyme, mint, and oregano there along the house.

Thanks for dropping in to see the garden. If you're ever in San Antonio, drop in for real!

For the love of dog...

He trusts me unconditionally
even when breakfast is late.
He brings back morning air in his coat
to give me the day’s forecast.
He saves weed seeds for the
bed-sheets without me having to ask.
He maintains constant vigil against
terrorists, murderers, evil UPS guys
and marauding squirrels.
He is a smile on four legs.

The promised progress report pics...

Everything in our garden is grown organically, no synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, fungicides, etc.

Clicking on pictures will enlarge them, clicking again will make them huge! :~)

Using irrigation from the house's gutter downspouts, this is the "water garden" with cannas, iris, seagrass, and a sloooowwwly growing jasmine vine in the middle.


A herb bed off the deck along the north side of the house...lemon balm, comfrey, several mints, thyme, oregano, mexican heather, southernwood fern, purple something (?) sorrel, salad burnett, turk's cap, plumbago, a nandina and a Japanese yaupon (up close.) This summer I won't be able to see the ground because it will all fill in.

This is the new bed outside the door of the recently finished Jan Cave...the main stuff is nandina, butterfly bush, dianthus, and the arborvitae, w/ thyme and oregano tucked in here & there, and four asparagus crowns behind it all, ...the nursery pots contain what will be Texas Mountain Laurel from seed. Also a bay laurel and a Red Cascade rose from a layered cutting.

Rosemary, Knockout yellow rose (only one w/ fragrance that I've found) cilantro, sage, more rosemary, lavender, thyme, oregano, chives, garlic, silver lace vine (not awake yet) cannas, lemon balm, cross vine, rue, winter savory, frog-fruit (I regret planting it--invasive!) and more cannas. The red, off in the background, is Indian Paintbrush, a native Tx wildflower.

My Roma Tomato Ghetto Planter (experimental, but so far, they're half a foot taller than the ones in the veggie garden...)

Blackberries, bottle gourds, and ghetto tomatoes. Indian paintbrush and native purple phlox in the background...

Honeysuckle, artemisia, Lady Banks rose, oxeye daisy, tarragon, mexican mint marigold, iris, creeping oregano, bouncing bet, forsythia, and some other stuff I can't remember the name of right now. I didn't plant the bluebonnets, but I plan on saving the seed!

Along the side/front of the house; grapes, pansies, yarrow, fennel, poppies, hollyhocks, russian sage, purple coneflower, thyme, larkspur, daylilies, lantana, knockout and red cascade roses, and waaaay the end, a redbud tree w/ dusty miller, lemongrass, false indigo, nasturtiums, and...other stuff. This beds' got a while to grow, but it's making progress!

Mix of herbs, roses, flowering perennials, and veggies.

The front beds (listed above) w/ the Anna apple tree and Schultz in the foreground.

Veggie beds, southwest side...peas, green beans, basil, borage, parsley, broccoli, and cilantro.

Veggie beds, southeast side, w/ lettuce, spinach, herbs, radishes, carrots, peas, and nasturtiums. More bluebonnets to the left in the neighbor's yard. Our HOA lets us mow around them until their season is over.

Veggies again...peas, strawberries, swiss chard, onions, garlic, etc. I still have to finish edging the beds w/ timbers, and then comes lots of mulch.

The new asparagus beds, w/ the Mex. bird of paradise nursery sprouting in pots. (And a pot full of chickweed...yes, I grow it on purpose. Good for you!) Two years before we can harvest any asparagus!

The garden gate my honey built last year.

The new fruit trees we put in this year are doing fine--two peaches, two plums, two apples, a fig, a Mexican elderberry, and quite a few rooted cuttings of the native Mustang grape. The chasteberry tree is thriving (and I still haven't processed last year's berries) and Phil's pet Burr Oak (we named it Raymond) is leafing out nicely. Since we only moved into this place a year ago February, (and there was NOTHING growing that didn't plant itself here) we've come a long way. I love taking all these pictures so that in five years we can look back and see how far it's come.

But right now, it's a lovely San Antonio Spring, promising to be a very productive San Antonio Summer!

The Jan Cave is finished.

We hang three light bars on the ceiling this week, and move the kiln into place, but otherwise, it is done. Countertops, big shelves, table for glaze work, and the wedging table (very sturdy). I can't believe I painted it WHITE. But the light's better that way, and I'll be too busy to notice anyway. :~)

We've also finished building the frames for the veggie beds, and digging them in w/ two truckloads of compost. I'm working on the last of the trellises and tomato cages, and putting landscape timbers around the perimeter beds...then that will be done too. Oops, I lied. We still have a trailer or two of mulch to come in for the paths and for the beds, THEN it'll be done.

The asparagus crowns should arrive this month (according to our climate zone, they'd have been here a month ago!) and those will go just outside the garden fence, tucked in behind the sugar snap peas. It's already looking soooo green, and I've had a radish and swiss chard salad already.

Pictures very soon.