Bloom Day, April 2010

I'm alive, and so is my garden! In fact, I can safely say that my garden has never looked so good. After the last two years of drought, it amazes me how quickly everything filled in and bounced back. Even the roses are covered in flowers despite the fact that I barely fertilized and completely missed the window to cut everything back properly.

Seriously, it's completely ridiculous how much is in bloom in my yard right now. I've been walking outside, looking around, and laughing with giddiness. The garden is the most spectacular it's ever looked in the three and a half years I've been working on it, and that's including the front yard, which I finally finished hardscaping and planting last month.

So thanks to all the rain this winter, it's a jungle out there. Here's the rose Sunny Knockout being cuddled by artemesia "Silver King" and larkspur:







Here's the rose "Maggie" on the fence. Thanks to planting four other extremely thorny roses directly in front of it, sadly, I haven't managed to fight my way back to the fence in order to properly appreciate the fragrance. Which is sad, because the scent is strong and fabulous. I'm tempted to knock on my neighbors' door and ask if I can spend 5 minutes in their backyard just because there's nothing in the way on their side of the fence.








Here's rose "Gruss an Aachen" tempting me to take up watercolor painting again:











Here are a few blurry pictures of the back borders, which contain roses, artemesia, heartleaf skullcap,and a ton of salvia greggii, among other things. Please excuse the blurry pictures; it was starting to rain:














Here's catmint drowning a "Bright Edges" yucca. The cat is particularly fond of this combo for some reason:











The cat, with a "Mutabilis" rose in the background. The stock tank is planted with bamboo muhly, which should fill in enough by fall to screen the seating area behind it from the street.









And yet another rose blooming is Blush Noisette. I love the graceful form of the bush and it's gorgeously fragrant, especially in the summer heat:










One of the most fragrant roses in my garden, with the prettiest blooms is the English rose, Abraham Darby. The color of the flowers varies quite a lot from flower to flower:



Right now nearly every rose in my yard is blooming with such abandon that I spend every spare moment outside wandering around smelling the flowers and staring. A complete list:

Marie Pavie
Thomas Affleck
Mutabilis
Republic of Texas
Star of the Republic
Mme Berkeley
Felicia
Gruss an Aachen
Belinda's Dream
Maggie
Souvenir de la Malmaison
Duchesse de Brabant
Louis Philippe
Zephirine Drouhin
Archduke Charles
Blush Noisette
Buff Beauty
Abraham Darby
Eugene de Beauharnais
Mme Alfred Carriere
Sunny Knockout
Pink Knockout
Pink Double Knockout
Rainbow Knockout
Double Knockout


Also blooming:

salvia greggii
yellow and orange bulbine
ice plant
'Homestead Purple' verbena
moss verbena
"Walker's Low" catmint
passalong peach iris from Annie In Austin
pansies
snapdragons
various ornamental cabbages
clover
bluebonnets


This is my favorite Bloom Day ever.

San Antonio Botanical Garden: color, texture, & light

On Saturday, a bunch of us Austin garden bloggers voluntarily woke up at an early hour and drove through picturesque fog down to San Antonio for the day, where we visited Madrone Nursery, the San Antonio Botanical Garden, and the Antique Rose Emporium. Here are some of my pictures from the San Antonio Botanical garden, where everything was lush and green and butterflies were everywhere:

White Floss Silk Tree (Chorisia insignis):

A shady rill. I have no idea why the water was flowing here when the rest of the water features were dry:

Purple & green & texture:

Light in a courtyard:

Violet-blue & orange:

Spiky contrast:

Dwarf canna "Madame Angele Martin":

Fall color:

The fist of an angry cactus:

And as Blogger is messing up formatting even worse than usual, I'm going to give up on lining my text up with my pictures and let everyone else do the talking. So far, we have reviews from:

Pam @ Digging
Jenny @ Rock Rose
Rachel @ In Bloom
Amy @ Go Away, I'm Gardening

Diana @ Sharing Nature's Garden

Caroline @ The Shovel-Ready Garden

Also, I am amazed that I spent only three dollars on plants the entire day, which is some kind of personal record in self-restraint and frugality. When I mentioned this to my roommates after I staggered in the door, one did a double-take, pointed, and yelled, "Who are you, and what did you do with Lori?!!"

What can I say? I like to think that I've come to terms with the fact that I can cram only so many plants into my yard.

my milkshake datura brings all the boys bees to the yard

So while I haven't been actively blogging for months-- aside from complaining about the drought and heat on Twitter-- I have been taking pictures of the interesting things that have been happening around my yard. For instance, I knew that the datura in my yard was a favorite plant of bees and moths and other insects, but a certain morning back in August was like stumbling into a bee bacchanal: