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Earlier this week we hit 90 degrees. For 2 days! Last night we had lightning, thunder, and some rain. Today, Saturday we barely make 60. Tomorrow, Sunday night we have frost and freeze warnings.

Welcome to crazy Texas weather.

Okay, today we had to go pick up some items at Lowes and Home Depot. So while we were there I picked up a couple of fruit trees. Since we already have a hole where a wax myrtle was, we needed a tree to put there. So I got two, one for the hole, one for somewhere else.

The hole will get: SunRacer Nectarine. It says its hardy to 20F, self-fruitful, and low chill. Its semi-cling, great flavor, and high resistance to disease. Let’s hope so.

  

The other tree is a Avocado, Lila. She is hardy to 20 F, and self fertile, though someday we may want to plant a mate to her. This plant says you may get better yield with additional avocado varieties around it. Let’s hope she likes where ever her new home becomes.

So how did we get a hole from a wax myrtle? Well there was a wax myrtle near the fruit trees. We’re testing a “cage” to keep squirrels out and it made no sense to keep the wax myrtle in the cage. So out came the wax myrtle. We planted it elsewhere. So that’s why there was a hole that needed a fruit tree. I sure hope the nectarine likes its new neighbors.

While we were at Home Depot they had a couple of other trees I’m thinking about. They had a tangerine and a persimmon. I’m thinking maybe they could join the family, but I haven’t decided yet. We’ll see.

I made it out to the yard today. Its been gloomy, wet, with patches of blue sky, and no rain. So here is how the garden is doing.

We have little apples.

  

  We have artichokes growing, but no nothing to harvest yet  

Meet the swiss chard.

The peach tree has blossoms.

The meyer lemon has flowers.

The potato plants are in cages. Thought that might be safest.

A little green friend with the grape plant.

The blueberries are growing. I hope they ripen.

And some of the cutting from the trees are taking root. Don’t ask me how, but its happening. We may end up with more trees. And yes, I put tags on them so I know what is what. Hopefully those tags stay put.

The good news – we’ve had a slow light rain for almost two days. We have had times of no rain, but its been wet and gloomy out there. We have barely made it to 60 degrees. Hopefully if it lets up I will go out and take some pictures of the trees and plants. But they are saying more rain for the next day or so. We’ll see.

But we can use the moisture. No argument there.

I’ve decided to begin making some changes to the site. Nothing to major, but you will notice some links on the right hand side. I don’t make money off this site and I don’t intend to. So if you click a link, I don’t make anything off it. Those links are to sites I use (the gardening links) and sites I visit (fashion sites). More sites will be added eventually.

The garden is starting to come together nicely. I recently signed up for The Old Farmer’s Almanac Garden Planner. They send out emails with Your Personalized Planting Reminders telling you when to plant seed or sow indoors. I figured I would give it a try and see if I have better luck with my garden. Its nice because they seem to send out emails only weekly or every two weeks. So you don’t get a lot of emails, but they are very time sensitive. So when you get them, they are do now kind of information. So we’ll see how it goes.

Following TOFAGP Pat and I have put in a lot of seed. We’ve already got tomatoes in the ground, peas, beans, more asparagus, more strawberries, collard greens, swiss chard, and we even got corn in already.  We’ll see how they do.

Another thing that has happened is the apple trees have fruit. We have lots of little apples on the trees. We transplanted the stupid plum (it needs a new name – maybe survivor?) to the area with the other fruit trees. Its short, but full of blossoms. The other plum also is getting its blossoms. The pear is starting to send out new shoots so blossoms are on the way. We may have to build a cage or something around the fruit trees to help us keep the fruit. Last year we lost fruit to the squirrels. I’d like to keep some fruit this year.

We also put in a berm in the back to see if it will help with the rain flow. Since we got rain starting last night, we’ll finally see how it works. I also think the new walk path will help with water flowing down. But overall the yard looks good and this rain is much appreciated. The weather forecast says we should have light/heavy rain all day and into tonight. We might even have rain tomorrow. We’ll see.

A lot has happened. Jan 12th my dear significant other had a quadruple bypass. This was totally unexpected. Nobody may expect the Spanish inquisition (thank you Monty Python), and we didn’t expect this. So far he is doing well. Surgery went well, he’s been home healing, we were able to get a friend to come help (well worth the money) and he’s even in cardiac rehab. Such a relief. But he’s still healing, still can’t lift over 5 lbs, and sometimes get exhausted easily. But he’s doing better and that’s what matters.

Consequently, the yard has taken a bit of a back seat.

But fear not we have not forsaken the garden. We did get a new walk path put in.

To give you an idea how unexpected SO surgery was we had planned for the walk path to be started the day he landed in surgery. But we had a landscaper do the work and it came out great. I have high praise for Abey and his group (Austin Creative Landscaping). They’ve been working in this yard since we bought the house and have done some great work and put us in touch with other good companies we’ve used.

Since SO is doing so well our friend/helper has been helping we in the garden. We trimmed the fruit trees, trying to root some of the cuttings, planted seeds that are already sprouting, set up a new strawberry bed so we now have two strawberry beds and of course added more strawberry plants, and are getting the garden beds ready for planting. A few plants have been moved around. We have two artichoke plants that now are not so close to each other. This will give them room to grow. We moved the sorrel since it hasn’t died and appears to be a permanent plant. Planted some potatoes, multicolored ones in some pots.

We even are trying to put in a berm to help water flow, if it ever rains.

The weather went from cool, weird to I think its spring/summer now. Its been in the high 60’s up to the low 80’s. That’s probably why everything is growing and sprouting. Even the apple trees are flowering. I don’t know that we had enough cold for the fruit trees to do much, but we’ll see what they do this year. They have definitely grown this year. We even cut back the pomegranate. It didn’t flower last year so no fruit, but cuttings from it are rooting nicely.

And we had new soil delivered to help refill some of the planters, add dirt to the berm, and anything else we can think of.

 So spring is here. At least in our yard.

Okay, it got cold again. As in yesterday it was in the 70’s. Today mid afternoon, after 4 and it’s only 39 degrees. Oh, and we just had rain and hail. At least it was short lived. This morning around 8am we had one of those cold fronts come through, and we got rain. Then again around 11 we got more rain. Between the two we got just over an inch of rain. The wind has been blowing since last night. The strongest wind gust was 29 mph. But we’re not done with the cold yet. We have cold weather for the next week.  He ten day forecast shows nights around, just above and just below freezing.

At least we’re better off than the Dallas area.  They got tornados. About 8 people are dead from those tornados. I guess we’ll just take the rain and cold. Though the east coast has had unseasonably warm weather.  Not much you can do about the weather. And our current weather patterns attest to that.

Funny note.  Christmas Day Las Vegas got a smattering of snow. Wonder what the odds were on that?

Go figure. We’ve had a couple of cool nights, down to 33 last night, but now we are back to warm weather. Warm as in the 10 day forecast says highs in the 70’s, with a possible 80 thrown in for good measure. That means the nights will be in the low 50’s. Maybe rain on Christmas day, but we’ll see.

Getting sorry we picked all the tomatoes. Though some of the plants I left look great. The bok choy never looked better.