OMG, YOM! LOL

Windsor Park's Yard of the Month for June







I can die a happy man now. But I think I'll just kick back with a coctail instead.

Bluebonnets

Bluebonnets doing their thing, mid-April.

In the Spirit of Halloween

For a gardener, I'm terribly under educated when it comes to insects, and quite naturally, my ignorance leads to fear. I have no idea what this bug is, but it scared the you-know-what out of me. I was pulling weeds near the eyesore dog fence and just assumed it was a leaf. Imagine that. My face was within inches of this "leaf" before I noticed it was staring back at me. I just about had a heart attack, but once I recoverd and took a closer look, I figured he didn't look so deadly after all. He even stood still long enough for me to get a pic of him.

Here's one of the few I can identify:

No clue what this is. Looks mean!

A few more horrifying moments caught on camera:






AAAAHHHHH!!!!!! Oh, wait...

September

Things are looking much happier now that the heat wave has broken. The flowering senna (cassia corymbosa) has had a few sporadic blooms since late spring, but now is it's time to really show off.



Beside it is a clump of turk's cap. It had been looking a bit beat-up, but last weekend's rain encouraged it to freshen up and put on a new flush of blooms.



Another view of the senna. That tiny yellow fuzz ball at the bottom of the pic is a barrel cactus not quite the size of a golf ball. A test of patience, as so many things can be.



In the back yard I have a small clump of cattails in a stock tank pond. It sits in the dappled shade of a large bur oak. I think it would prefer more sun but it did have a few blooms on it this year. A few weeks ago one of them flopped over into the water. I kept thinking I should cut it off before it made a mess, but the pruners were never in my hand when the thought crossed my mind, despite my constant piddling. I'm glad I let it be. I've never seen baby cattails before. Aren't they cute?

Home Grown Tomatoes

In March I planted three tomato plants, Early Girl, Lemon Boy and Sweet 100. Today's harvest isn't exactly the bounty of my wildest vegetable-growing dreams, but I'm excited nonetheless.



Next to the garden is one of my favorite plants, batface cuphea:





Reminds me of someone...

Tech Turf Update - Day 31

Tech Turf

I decided to rip out my old lawn (St. Augustine) and replace it with a buffalo grass hybrid called Tech Turf. After months of hemming and hawing over whether I was really prepared to do this, I decided it was time to sh*t or get off the pot, so to speak. So I went to Home Depot and rented a sod cutter.

The sod cutter just about kicked my ass, but in the end I successfully made the yard look like a complete disaster.

Next step, draw the new bedlines and install edging.

Then I outlined the beds with a band of decomposed granite. I'm going for a desert-tropical look. The beds are like the "islands", with granite sand "beaches" and an "ocean" of cool green grass.

The Tech Turf arrived via UPS. I ordered 4 flats of 72 plugs. Hard to believe this cost $200. An expensive experiment, but I am optimistic.

Here's what a typical plug looks like:

One week later:

Day 23 - I've had to do a lot of weed pulling this past week. I guess it's inevitable with so much bare dirt, full sun and regular water. It's been between 95 and 103 degrees every day since I planted the plugs. This stuff must love the heat. Look at how much it's grown already!

To be continued...

I'll leave you with a cute pic of Bouncer snuggling with Henry on a recent trip to Port Aransas. She's not normally allowed on the bed, but since we were on vacation... Sweet!