and back to gardening...

Anyway... after my short little reminiscence about my glamorous past...

This is the Pseudoechinopsis 'dominoes' blooming again. (I know, I know... it's probably not a real ID but that is what was on the tag, and it's going to have to do until I find out the real ID. Ease up already... sheesh...)

The pot is so light weight that it tips over when it blooms, so I snuggled it up against one of the Agave americana in the yard until I can get it repotted...

And my official second harvest of tomatoes.

Wee Haw!

And now, on a totally unrelated note, does anybody out there know one darned thing about Royal Haegar Pottery?

I know the bare basics... the difference between haegar and Royal Haegar is that Mr. Royal was a pottery designer, and he put out a high end line. And I know that this vase, even though it verges on ugly, was a bargain at 5 bucks.

It's about 15 inches tall... which is fairly large for this sort of pottery... but despite the fact that I work in an antique mall and flea market, I've never picked up much on this company. Except I tend to know it when I see it... which is pretty bloody easy, as it says it on the bottom.

Anyhow... if anybody out there enjoys this kind of research, or just wants to tell me... I'd appreciate it...

Random pics and stuff...

just some random pics around the yard... not sure that there's anything all that interesting going on...

This is an actual Mansfield Cemetary cactus blooming in the back... not bad for a cutting that is a little less than a year old, huh? As you can see, he's already growing offsets, and the smaller cutting directly next to him is more typical of the cuttings that I have... still too small, but I expect big things from them next year...

And the winter may have killed my Variagated Agave americana... but the roots have evidently survived underground and are starting to resprout... how cool is that? I'll probably take one inside this winter, as they're evidently not as hardy as the unvariagated form. The web-sites aren't in agreement as to exactly how hardy they are... so we'll not take any chances...

And here's a common everyday thistle by the side of the road. I've always been fond of thistle. I have no real reason why, just am...

And here's the new growth on the Sago Palm... The other rescued sago may be showing some signs of stirring to life... but it's very subtle... anyway... as soon as these leaves get up and hardened off, I'll cut off the older beat up leaves, what few are left, and try to find a place in the yard to put this guy... where he'll sit for at least 3 months before he puts up another whirl of leaves... they don't grow their leaves one at a time, but rather in periodic bursts. Sometimes only one group a year, and never it seems more than 3 a year. hmmmmm.

Anyway... no day off for me this week... I've got to work on Monday for someone who's got a Dr's appointment... oh well...

Yes... I'm still alive!

Sorry I haven't been posing for a while... the truth is that my life hasn't been all that fun lately...

You see, I've been working 6 day weeks. 4 days driving the dang truck and 2 days at the flea market... except it isn't really two days as much as it is 1 1/2 days, because I go to church on Sunday morning, and then go directly to the flea market... but what it all boils down to is that my only day off is Monday, and I have to do everything (ie: laundry, cleaning, grocery shopping, etc.) on Monday, and, quite frankly, thsi schedule is not really working out all that well for me.

But, when I left the house this morning, I was bound and determined I was gonna find something to take a picture of...

Here's a house in Ft. Worth... (Yes, I'm taking pics of other peoples front yards. I justify this by telling myself I'm looking for gardening ideas.) These Agaves scattered over the front lawn look kinda cool... but I don't know that I want to do this in my yard... quite frankly, I can think of better ways to spend my time in the garden than weed-eating around agaves...

This is one of Ft Worths street trees... more specifically a Yucca aloifolia... you see a few of these in the area... but this is the only one I know planted by the city... and it had to have been planted quite a while ago, as it's now about 15 feet tall... quite possibly the largest one I've seen locally...

And this is just one of those rocks that you see by driveways in shopping centers. The purpose is to keep cars off the lawn. Of course, they also tend to turn minor roadway accidents into major ones, but that's a whole other arguement... the only reason I was really interested in this lump of sandstone is because if you look really-really close....

you'll see this...

I have no bloody idea how that echeveria got there.

The entire landscaping in this shopping center consists of small strips of grass and these huge rocks and this single, solitary clump of echeveria.

It's very puzzling.

Anyway... I hope everybody out in blogland is doing well... have a great day!

still more snow...

The snow finally stopped around midnight last night. According to DFW airport, we officially had 11 inches. I'm further south, and I think around 9 is more like it... lost a few branches in the neighborhood, but the power stayed on. They lost it in some spots in Dallas though...

A view down the street...

The curly willow in the front yard:

A foul tempered cat named Phennig:

And the Agave so you can compare it to yesterdays pic...

I don't think I lost any plants, most of mine are known to be hardy thru zone 7 and I'm on the line of 7 & 8.

A little quick research tells me that the highest snowfall ever recorded in Dallas was 14 inches, in the winter of 1977 to 78. Which would have been hideous...imagine having to be cold AND the added humiliation of wearing bell bottoms...

I went out this morning and shoveled the snow off my sidewalk, then went down and got the walks of Miss D and Miss M... the elderly ladies that live down the street, and then I did Miss P's next door... I would have gotten a few more, but the snow had gotten into my boots... my charitable instinct would appear to end with wet socks.

Merry Christmas to all...

Just a few shots around the neighborhood... we had three whole inches of snow last night, so I was just itching to get out and take some pics... unfortunately, the snow was accompanied and followed by high winds, so we didn't get any pretty accumulation on the trees...

The first pic is some mistletoe growing about 20 feet above me in a neighbors mulberry tree. It's not a great shot... When I pointed the camera up, there were a whole flock of robins. They sat, gave me take time to focus, and the split second before I took the pic... they flew off.

Little boogers.


This is my rather pitiful excuse for a Christmas tree... it's really not so bad. It's an Italian Stone Pine, Pineus pinea. A juvenile tree about 3 years old. In a couple of more years, he'll start growing longer, greener needles... If he survives. They will survive here... they're hardy to zone 7 and I'm on the line between 7 & 8... and they'll do very well through our summers, being drought resistant. But they're not really the best tree to have around... they grow into an umbrella, flat topped kind of tree. And too big for my little suburban yard. The trees are the ones that produce edible pine nuts that you pay way too much money for at the store.

I'm thinking that I could bonsai it... or maybe just grow it in a larger pot until I can figure it out, or find someone with a yard big enough.

The biggest problem will be getting him through the winter until spring, when I can do something with him. They really need a whole lot of light, and they usually won't survive inside until spring. As soon as it thaws though, I'll shove him in the coldframe. I'm not gonna shock him by throwing him out there right now though...

here's a shot of a mourning dove all fluffed up in the sun...

And finally, in the sheltered alley, some show accumulation... but not a pretty picture.

And that's about the best I could do today... I thought of getting one of the cats to come out and play in the snow for some shots. They informed me that I was quite insane, refused to discuss it further and would have locked me out of the house if they could figure out how to turn that little knob...

I had planned on going to midnight mass last night, at the church I've been attending recently, and plan on actually becoming a member of in the New Year. But the snow started yesterday afternoon, and after it ended, the wind kept up. Which means the friction of the wind melted the snow on the roads, and as soon as the wind died, it froze. I was still gonna risk it, but I was hearing sirens about every 30 to 45 minutes {I live fairly close to a major street. Whenever the sirens would go by, Dad used to joke that they were playing the "Cooper Street Blues" }

I decided that Baby Jesus was a forgiving sort, and would be more than willing to overlook my absense.

Instead, I curled up next to the truly obnoxious 5 foot tall cactus lamp, with a good book (Will Self, The Book Of Dave) and cats curled up on me. I had a very nice, mellow and blessedly peaceful Christmas Eve.

Seeing as I grew up in a household with a sibling who was later formally diagnosed as bipolar (except they called it Manic-Depresive then) peaceful holidays are my preference. I don't have a huge amount of warm fuzzy childhood memories about Chirstmas, and I have a hard time faking it for everyone elses sake, so I tend to let everybody else have their fun, and I'll have mine.

And all that is probably more than you needed to know, but there we are.

The point is, and I DO have one, is that I truly hope that everybody out there is having a wonderful holiday, no matter how you choose to celebrate it...

So, Thursday night and Friday I was all sick from something I ate. Fine.

But Saturday, I decided that there was some gardening that could no longer wait... despite the fact that it was 103 degrees and the are pollution levels were on a red alert. So, looking back, I probably shouldn't have done that... and I did pay for it most of today... but I guess I did at least achieve something... I managed to dig most of the suckers out of the agave, as they were pushing the bricks out of place and waving their thorny little tentacles in a threatening manner at the cars passing by...

And I moved the tumbling pots over towards the front cactus bed, as I wasn't happy with where it was.

And then I started potting up the pups from the agave... which really, aren't really pups anymore as much as they're pretty good sized agaves... and now I'm waiting for them to root good so that I can get them to the flea market and sell them...

Of course, I'm not terribly sure that all of this is worth the wheezing and coughing that I did for the rest of the night, but there we are.

nothing particularly new...

Well, ever since last Monday, I haven't really seen anything worth taking a pic of in my wandering around... but I wanted to make a post anyway... so I took the camera out in the yard to see what there was to be seen... and here they are in no particular order... This is the street view of my cactus bed in the front yard. The purple coneflowers self seeded a few years ago, and I just left them. I have dug a few out for friends, as they were shading out the rock garden to the right in the pic...
and here's the view from the yard....

here's one of the Texas wildflowers that came up in the yard and I've been very carefully mowing around... I'm gonna take the seeds off of this and scatter them in a better location for next year. It's a Mexican Hat or Black eye'd susan, or prarie coneflower... I think it depends on who's telling you about them...

Next is a Pavonia hastata... AKA rock rose. This small flowered relative of the hibiscus is one of my faves... The bush is a little rampant, and the blooms are small... just shy of 2 inches across... not really that impressive... except the hotter it gets, the more it blooms... a very valuable trait. This bush, in the upcoming heat of August, will be covered with hundreds of these small white flowers when everything else is doing it's level best to crawl under a rock.

The crown of thorns, which I talked about in a previous post when someone abandoned it on my porch just knowing that the local cactus freak would love it... and the Pachypodium...

A little Mammilaria bloom... I forget which one of the top of my head...

And on a corner of the of the front rock garden, an old galvanized bucket that had sprung a leak now is home to a tiny variagated agave, right in the middle, and a Ghost plant (Graptopetalum paraguayense) & all the leaf cutting that fell off said ghost plant when I potted it...

And that's kinda what's going on in the yard right now. Nothing particularly new, but still kinda nice...

Later!

little gothic bob...

Well, I probably should have made this the 100th post... This is one of the Bob's that I carved years ago, and we always called him little Gothic bob... He sits on the mantle piece every Halloween and the rest of the year you can find him sitting in various places... wherever he feels like.



Today, he evidently felt like sitting in the agave...

The truth is that I had an hour to kill before I went to work. So I was playing with the camera...

A little technical info... Gothic Bob started his life as a garden stake that broke. I carved his head, then he was given wire arms and legs which were wrapped with burlap strips, or you could use muslin, then you wrap and knot with string... and then you have a little primitive, completely pozable Bob.

Obnoxiously cute isn't he?

well, fuzzy pics... my rechargable battery charger is no longer charging... dagnabbit.

Anyway, Memorial Day has brought the first gardenia bloom of the year... I don't know what variety this is. It's an antique variety, grown from a clipping from an abandoned farm house... the blooms have that great classic scent though...

This is just a color shot of marigolds, coleus and variagated agave growing in a pot... you're probably getting an idea of my gardening style... simply put, no bare dirt. I will cram as many plants as I can into any small place. The agave will eventually fill this pot, but until then, I'll keep shoving in annual...

And this is a half pot full of opuntia microdasies... I planted a pair of these pots in front of a brick wall, I thought that the golden spination would look good against the brick. This is all new growth, so the color isn't as bright as it will be later... we'll see how it works out. The pots are sitting in a bed of southern snowbells, the green leaves just now dying back... so I'll be putting in some annuals here soon.
Hope eveyone is having a great holiday weekend!

Busy Sunday...

well, I've been off of work for a whole week, and today I was just gardening a lot, between naps. This last weeks "vacation" has left me far more exhausted than working, but I've come out of it with a new flea market booth, a new AC system in my car, a new (used) stereo in my car, and a couple of thinned out iris beds... no pics of the iris... new beds aren't that attractive.


sent fifty gazillion iris out to my sister so that she could do something with them.

here's a pic of charcoal briquette kitty... who didn't appreciate her nap being disturbed...

and here's a pic of the cactus again, the first bloom dying off and the second opening... (If I appear to be fixated on this cactus, it's because it's a fairly new and it's the first bloom I've had from it.)and here's a pic of the agave americana, yucca, rosemary and various other plants in a tiny little space in the front yard about 3 weeks ago, this little 4 x 4 bed seems to catch a lot of seedlings.... The white iris in there are one of the batches that I had to thin out. There were too many, they were threatening to crack the sidewalk, and that's really a small bed. Anyway, reduced it down to 2 plants, which will be a dozen by bloom time next spring/summer.

I guess I'll have to go to work to get any relaxation time... LOL.

More cactus pics...

well, I'm having a bit of a fit posting nowdays aren't I?

Echinocereus reichenbachii v. baileyii, a.k.a. Baileys lace cactus. You can see him down the page... The bud on the right should be opening tomorrow... the great thing is that yesterday, these buds were both the same size. That's a lot of growth for one day !

Passiflora incarnata... the native Texas passionflower... just to prove I can grow something besides cactus, I can also grow rampaging vines...

The name passionflower refers to the passion of Christ. The three pistols are the three nails of the crucifixion, the five stamens are the five wounds suffered by Christ, the corrolla is the crown of thorns, and the 10 petals are the 10 disciples that were present at the crucifixion... or that's what the priests told the natives when they tried to convert them, right before they used them as near slave labor... but that's another story.
just an agave. Don't know exactly what kind, I bought it from one of those people by the side of the road. But I like it, and I'll figure it out eventually...