Author: Cat C L

They didn’t say how much rain, but we are getting some light rain again.  We’re not even up to a quarter of an inch, but at least its a slow light soaking rain.  The ground will be happy even if we don’t get a lot of water into the tanks.

One interesting lesson – we had a green breathable plant blanket covering a set of plants.  The plants were under  a PVC frame, then the plant blanket on top of the PVC frame.  Well, it may be breathable, but not a lot of water got to the plants.  The center of the plant blanket, where water collected in a pool, was letting a small drip of water thru.  We had a pool of water on top of the blanket.  We just went outside to take the blanket off and realized that we had quite a pool of water on top of the blanket. Interesting thing to remember.  They may be good blankets to keep frost off of the plants, but they don’t necessarily let a lot of moisture thru them.

Yesterday we had to go to Home Depot.  I picked up a new pot for the lemon tree and two blackberry plants.  They are small blackberry plants, the inexpensive $8, in paper cup kind of plant.  They seem to be essentially bare roots stuck in dirt – definitely dormant plants.  I have them soaking in water, but I don’t think they will get potted today.  I did repot the lemon tree, and in the process used most of the potting mix I had.  So hopefully tomorrow or Thursday I can go pick up more potting soil and pot the blackberries.

Yesterday I also ordered a raised bed system.  I ordered it from Gardeners Supply.  I ordered:
3 X 3 foot raised bed
liner for the bed
garden hoops – not sure if I will need them but I figured I could use them to keep critters out
grow bags – I’ve never used them but they might be useful to grow things in.

I also ordered some seeds from Park Seeds.  Actually I ordered a whole mess of seeds from Park Seed. One problem I’m finding here is that Home Depot and Lowes seem to sell on a national date system.  What do I mean by that? Well, here we have a long growing season.  Our average first frost is November 21-30, and our last frost date is March 11-20.  So we can grow frost free at least 8 months out of the year.  But right now, early January, both stores have little to nothing available.  So if you want to start plants in a greenhouse, and I have a greenhouse I can use, you can’t get much out there.  They don’t even have much in the way of pots to purchase.  So I ordered stuff online.  I’ll try to order roses sometime soon.  Those will have to go into pots, otherwise they are deer candy.

The weather seems to have warmed up today.  Its 1pm and we are up to 54 degrees.  Its pleasant outside.  I went out and checked the greenhouse, haven’t done that in a few days, more like over a week.  Surprisingly, everything seems to be doing well.  I did go into the greenhouse last week to move some house plants in there, but that had been all.  So today I went in to check everybody.  Actually all those poor seeds I had put in the pots seems to be more then happy.  They are coming up.  IN DROVES!!  I think I planted too many seeds.  But they are coming up. It is I admit nice and warm, not to hot and with some pleasant sun in there.  I think the house plants will enjoy it for a while.  

Guess what!! I think we actually got a light dusting of snow last night.  It didn’t last, but you can see this fine, and not quite so fine line of white in the angles of rooflines.  So I think we actually got a little bit of snow sometime last night.  I’m not sure if we actually got rain too, but it is wet outside. Its still pretty cold out there, so until it warms up its probably not the best place to go driving.

Weather update – They are saying we may be in for an actual winter weather event.  What is that you ask?  Possible snow/sleet tonight.  Right now I’m not so sure it will happen up here where we are, but you never know.  I’m sure it would be unusual.  On the other had, if it actually happens, I wouldn’t want to have to drive up or down our driveway.  Our driveway is just too steep and I could see it getting treacherous. This new weather is due to hit tonight and last thru tomorrow, Friday, around noon.  We’ll see.

Wicked weather.  We’ve been cold, cool, and still no real rain.  The weather has been up and down, some cold and cool days – right now at 8:30 am its all of 35, after a low of 32.  We’ve even had some below freezing nights.  But not any real rain.  I say not any real rain because the other day we had heavy fog – the houses across the street were mere shadows.  That much moisture registered on the rain gauge, but no rain fell from the sky.  So the water catchment tanks didn’t get any new water.  So I can’t say it really rained.

And with some of these cold days, the humidity has varied widely.  One day it was cold and blustery, very windy, and the humidity level was down to 11% – that is dry.  Right now humidity is 78%.

But the holidays were nice.  We saw some family on Christmas Day.  Then the day after Christmas we went to see some other family here in Austin.  That day it was so cold I wore one of my down jackets.  That’s how cold it was around Christmas.  By New Years Eve we were just foggy.  Today its clear enough to see across the hills.  Not much wind, but its expected to be cold/cool for the next few days. Next week it should warm up enough for the nights to be out of the low 30’s and into the 40’s.  That will be good for the plants.

That might also be good for the deer.  The poor deer have not been looking too good out there.  Actually some of them look a bit scrawny.  And since its so cold, they are eating whatever green shrubbery they can find.  Between the deer and the cold I’m sure we’ll be replacing plants come spring.

The lantana is not taking this cold well.  It actually looks in pretty bad shape.  The plumbago is well eaten by the deer now, but what is left of it also looks pretty scrawny.  And the esperanza has been munched on and looks almost black from the cold.  The bulbs I put in are putting out their tops and those tops are being nibbled on by the deer.  I know most of the deer will survive, but I’m not sure which of my plants will.  Sone of the irises have been pulled out by the deer.  The deer don’t seem to care for eating the irises but they seem to try them anyway.

I’m starting to think about plants for the spring and what and how I want to plant things.  I’m thinking I may just figure out where and how to do some raised beds.  I’m hoping to find some sort of recycled material raised beds on Amazon.com.  I’m not sure what I will find, but its either that or large pots.  I did pick up some large pots but right now the photinia are living in them.  When we got back from the Nov. trip and I was watering plants I realized the photinia were not absorbing water well.  So I purchased three large whiskey barrel type plastic pots and put the photinia in them.  This way I could water and let the photinia sit in the water a bit to absorb some.  The good news is I’m pretty sure the plants absorbed the water well before we hit this cold weather.  Though I’m not too worried about them as they are sitting right next to the house.  The house type plants I had in the front of the house are not sitting under the sheltered back patio.  Hopefully they will survive the cold. I’m sure I put them back there a bit late, but we’ll see what happens and if they survive.

Yes its been a few weeks, and I’ve been gone out of town, out of the country.  And much has changed in that time.

Yesterday the weather was in the low 80’s, today we probably won’t hit 60.  It’s 3:30 in the afternoon and only 57 degrees outside. The tree leaves are changing, at least for those trees that can change.  The nights have cooled down too – last night got down to 47. So we have had a definite weather change.

Now for the good news.  We had a neighbor’s son water the outside plants while we were away.  We lost nothing.  Everything has survived.  Not only has everything survived, the outdoor tomato plant has two tomatoes, kind of large tomatoes ripening on it.  It does need some support but that’s okay.  I had watered my few indoor plants well when we left.  They all survived well too.  Admittedly my dish garden needed water, there were just a couple of dropping plants in it, but not many and nothing was even close to dying.  So all in all, I think it went well.

My mint is struggling though.  Not sure why.  I also have a problem with whitefly.  That I have to figure out how to handle.  It’s evident in the greenhouse.  I think its the reason the cucumbers never did well.  But the jalapeno plant in the green house does have one small pod.  Also I’ve noticed that the tomato plants in the green house are not doing as well as the one outside.  I’m not sure why.  I’ll have to do some more checking on that one.

Where I haven’t seen any deer, Bill says he’s seen just a few.  I think that’s a bit unusual, usually we have the congregating in the back yard in the evening, but not now.  Don’t have any answer why the change, maybe its just a season change.

I’ll write more later.  I got back and promptly got sick.  There was a cold or something that went around while we were gone.  Bill was feeling poorly and had to buy sudafed while we were gone.  He had to take it to survive the flight home.  So its not really surprising that I’ve come down sick.  It seems to be just a cold, so its rest and lots of soup.

Weird weather.  It has definitely cooled down.  The past couple of weeks have been nice weather, with occasional rain thrown in for good measure.  Its been foggy, can’t-see-across-the-street mornings followed by cloudy overcast days.  And then we get a good old foggy but warm morning followed by warm muggy overcast day.  Go figure.  But the good news is the plants are loving it.

We are still having bachelor parties some days in the back yard.  Actually some days it just looks like parties in the back yard.  We have deer just coming in, some close to the house as if they don’t care we are inside.  And they are once again eating plants they are not supposed to like – the wax myrtle and the cypress.  But it feels nice outside, and much better then those triple digit days.  So all in all its doing nice outside.

They’ve pretty much finished the garage.  Bill and Pat have started moving stuff into it.  Bill even put up the blinds on the windows and installed the door locks on the new garage.  So its safe secure and fast filling up.  Maybe we’ll actually have a place to put our cars.  One can hope.

What a change in weather.  We spent Friday evening, pretty much all day Saturday, and early part of today Sunday cloudy and with some rain.  I say some rain since we didn’t get a lot.  But most of it was short periods so the rain soaked in, it didn’t just run off.

Today, Sunday we went out to  Fredricksburg Roundup.  Its about energy – such as geothermal, solar, and some water collection.  It didn’t have as many exhibitors as its had before, but it was interesting.  One thing I will say, it has good food.  This place called Navajo Grill had brought in a portable wood burning pizza stove.  I had a Margarhita (sp?) pizza. It was pretty good.

Today when we got back we set up the automatic watering for the green house.  We leave on our trip Oct. 31 so we needed to get that all set up.  Its nice now that the heat is down a bit, 70-80’s during the day, plants are growing again.  So we’ll need that watering system up and running while we’re gone.  Haven’t figured out the big pots outside the greenhouse yet.  Have to figure those out.

The deer in our backyard:

Vegas was great!!  We did shopping, went to see a show, gambled a bit, we had a blast.  I enjoyed it immensely!  I want to do it again, maybe in February or March, or at least some time early next year.

The weather has been cooling down, at least for this area its cooling down.  The days have been high 80’s and low 90’s.  The nights are low 70’s, even a few high 60’s.  The other day we even had fog in the morning.  Granted, it burned off quickly but it was a definite change.

The deer have been coming out in droves.  There’s another new fawn, still with spots.  Its so much smaller then the rest of the young ones.  And we’ve been seeing the bucks with antlers.  Not what I would call large antlers, and not large males.  But they’ve got antlers growing out of their heads.  Sometimes it looks like a bachelor party in the back yard.

But those lovely deer are eating my things again.  I had a small gardenia plant, it had been a house plant but I repotted it and it was sitting outside.  Some lovely creature decided it looked tasty and ate part of it.  Its coming back and has new growth.  One of the mint plants that were outside has also been eaten.  Even though they are listed as deer resistant, I don’t think the deer know they aren’t supposed to like mint.  So the deer have been eating it.  It will probably come back too.  I did buy two mums, small pots.  We’ll see if the deer eat those too.  Again, their tags say deer resistant, but we’ll see what the deer actually think.

But everything else is looking good.  I planted the last rosemary plant we had sitting around.  It still had some green on it.  I also planted a lantana that had not yet been planted.  I found a confederate jasmine that needed to be planted and put it in the ground too.  We’ll see if these plants make it.  But with the cooler weather I believe they will have a chance.

The stores now have bulbs available for planting.  I picked up some daffodils, bearded iris and iris bulbs for the yard.  I just got them so I haven’t put them in the ground yet.  I figure I will put them in the front yard somewhere.  I doubt the daffodils are deer resistant, but a neighbor said that irises do well and that the deer don’t eat them.  We’ll see if the deer eat our iris and not the neighbor’s.

But overal the yard is looking okay.  The landscape company put some plants down at the entry to the street.  We have two standards with lights near the street.  They put in a variety of native plants in semi-circles around the standards. The idea is that we will try to make the yard look more finished and slowly fill in the rest.  It is a big yard so it is going to take some time.  It won’t get done quickly but we are working on it.  We are even finally talking about what to do in the back yard.  We will have to fence a small area and do something in there.  It doesn’t make sense to fence all of it, and of course we are a pathway for the deer and that has to be taken into consideration.  So if we can fence a small area around the back, close to the house we will have an area where we can actually put plants that will be sheltered from the deer.  It may not be sheltered from other animals, but it will be sheltered from the deer.  The fact we are even talking about it is great.  And I know it will be a while until it actually gets done, but here it will be best to plan something first.  It will be a lot of work to get a fence in or to get anything else in in the backyard.  So we will take our time, plan it out, talk to the landscaper and see what makes sense and will work before we start the work.  I just hope with all the talk and planning it actually works.

What a difference a day makes.  Yesterday the temperature hit 100, today it is noon and we are just barely 80 degrees outside.  We will not come close to yesterday’s heat.  And tonight they are saying the lows are going down into the 60’s.  I won’t call it a cold front, though I suppose technically that may be accurate.  But it is definitely a cooling trend.  And the nice thing is the 10 day forecast  shows the weather staying this cool.  We’ll still hit the 90’s but more along 90-91-92, not 99 or 100.  We have a breeze too and it feels nice outside.

Well tomorrow I leave for Vegas!  I’m getting excited.  I’m all packed, printed out my boarding pass, getting some cleaning done.  Bill is not really looking forward to my being gone, but he has enough work here to keep him busy.  I don’t think he’ll really notice my absence too much.  He’ll survive.

I went to Home Depot the other day.  They had mint plants.  I’ve been looking for mint all summer and never found it.  Since they had some I picked up 2 small pots.  And with this nice weather they should do well, at least I hope so.  I put one in the greenhouse and the other is outside in the yard, under netting, but in the yard.  We’ll see how they do.

I’ve also noticed I have a problem with whitefly.  I ordered some yellow sticky patches that are supposed to help.  We’ll see, they haven’t arrived yet.  I have the problem both inside the green house and in the plants in the yard.  I’m betting it came from some plant I bought.  On a brighter note I had planted some seeds from a tomato we ate.  Those seeds are sprouting, actually they sprouted pretty well.  We’ll see how they do.