The Bayou City Garden

Nut grass has balls

noreply@blogger.com (Muddy Mary) — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 01:41:00 +0000

Admit it, you admire the will to live that nut grass demonstrates. This one takes its job as a pernicious weed seriously by growing up out of 3” of gravel. Underneath that is a layer of filter fabric, and under that, soil which was scraped and pounded level and compact, and was pretty poor to begin with. Some of its nut grass companions are also hooking a couple hard turns to grow up from under the flagstones.

I pull them up, but their tubers stay under the filter fabric and send up new shoots. Sometimes the nodules do pull up out of the flower beds, and I stop to nick one with a fingernail and smell it. Did you ever notice what a delicious rootbeer scent a nut grass nut has?

You may not believe it from the unappetizing photo here, but finding a recipe for nut grass was on my garden geek to-do list. Somehow I associated it with the drink horchata so recently, I checked that. The internet provided a selection of informative and conflicting facts or factoids about nut grass (actually a sedge, not grass) which I’ll summarize:

The delicious nut grass tubers come from yellow nut sedge or chufa / Cyperus esculentis. The ones I have growing are different--purple nut sedge / Cyperus rotunda, described as ‘bitter’. I’m a little disappointed. I thought I might cool off some day after weeding with a glass of home made horchata. However, the aromatic oil is extracted for ayurvedic medicine (alas, not one of my projects) and the nuts are eaten in Africa as a last resort famine food.

So famine is one method of controlling nut grass. Times are not that bad at my house, thanks. A 20% vinegar solution sprayed down into the gap where the stalk was just pulled will get results too. But it will be on the second round, because nut grass is pretty determined to survive that, as well.

Seedlings, no tag

noreply@blogger.com (Muddy Mary) — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 04:06:00 +0000

These shorties sprouted from the pits of some exotic fruit eaten 3+ years ago. Cherimoya? Mamey? Sapotes? Canistel? Weeds? The tags are long gone.

Both seedlings were in a pot which was plundered by squirrels, haphazardly shifted around the garden whenever our construction site encroached, stowed in the dense shade of a tree and rarely watered, abandoned outside all winter, then repotted. It is amazing that they have survived my plant propagation 'technique'.

Maybe someone will recognize the leaves and if so, tell me please! I think it might be nice to know what I am growing.

Unkind words about sagos

noreply@blogger.com (Muddy Mary) — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 21:49:00 +0000

In California, apparently you lock down a good specimen of sago / Cycas revoluta. In Houston, the issue has not come up--at least not for me, because I don’t design with them. I do get asked to pull out badly placed specimens where an eye-gouging mammoth has grown from a Boston fern-sized charmer.

Dare ya to walk through there.

The reason they don’t get filched is that we are near sago saturation here, with a dull stiff cycad in almost every yard and landscape. Besides looking ‘tropical’ (though they hail from Japan), I reckon sagos’ popularity is supported by their easy propagation, durability and fast growth, for a cycad. (They flush out yearly with an increasing number of fronds. Compare that to the mingy frond per year on a Dioon edule). With the ease of making more sagos, filching them should be irrelevant.

Recently a subcontractor who works with me was telling about a job he’d been hired to do: relocate a sago that had a cable running through the trunk and into a subterranean concrete footing. He tripled the price. We shook our heads at the wonder of it.

It would be too much to hope that California would come and take these sagos away.

What am I missing here? What is the crazy appeal of this plant? Do they actually get pirated away in Houston, too?

What has flowers on it right now?

noreply@blogger.com (Muddy Mary) — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 20:41:00 +0000

I'd like to break the dry spell in this garden blog with the simplest of topics:

Plants That Have Blooms On Them Today.

I have no commentary, just springly, slightly fuzzy photos.

Crossvine / Bignonia capreolata 'Tangerine Beauty'

Altas pear

Nun's orchid / Phaius tankervilliae

Cherry laurel / Prunus lauroceracus

A precocious little Meyer lemon

Cilantro going to seed

Carolina jessamine /Gelsemium sempervirens

Yes, The Alamo is in a garden

noreply@blogger.com (Muddy Mary) — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 01:46:00 +0000

You just can’t miss an opportunity to go to San Antonio for a vintage Airstream trailer rally with friends. So I went. But while in town, I also stopped in at the former Mission San Antonio de Valero, better known as The Alamo.

I had a personal reason for wanting to visit. Boning up on genealogy I recently learned that some of my antepasados married there. Although I came 285 years too late for the wedding, I enjoyed taking in the botanical garden feeling of the Alamo compound.

A succulent bed of many textures, all of them prickly. My phone's camera did its best with these images but it was an overcast day.

Cherries flowering by Sabal palms…an odd mix. They used a mulch of pecan shells in this bed:

A closeup of the pecan shell mulch. I like the stuff. It looks good and useful to me.

The sleek trunks of Texas persimmon, Diospyros texana, below. Native Texas trees had a strong showing in the plantings.

An historical acequia, also known as an irrigation ditch, makes a water feature complete with koi. That is Yucca rostrata looking like a couple of Ziggy Stardust wigs. An out of focus Erythrina is behind it.

A well photographed cactus beside the chapel. After I took this picture, I noticed other tourists aiming their cameras at it, too.

Despite the arid impression given by the gravel and succulents in the photos, the overall feel of the grounds is to me one of lushness. Ancient live oaks shade hidden patios, and varieties of palm trees punctuate the planting areas. Never mind that I was at the site of a desperate battle and military shrine--I just wanted to sit down on a bench with a good margarita and raise a glass to my ancestors.

Rock out

noreply@blogger.com (Muddy Mary) — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 16:18:00 +0000

Now the pile of piles is sold, sorted, donated, restacked elsewhere, gone. This load of limestone blocks is the last thing to go. Those blocks made mighty good bed edging in my old garden, and I brought them along when we moved here. I am a bit sentimental about them.

An elderly lady who gave me these blocks said they were from the demolished Houston High School. The name suggests that at one time this megapolis of Houston had a single high school. Now that is a mental exercise to contemplate! Unfortunately it's not hard to grasp that the school building was demolished—that is just what we do with our public buildings in this city.

An old photo of the Houston High School building can be seen here.

The historic rubble is still with me, in the new, relocated pile of piles. It may well sit there hosting a succession of geckos for another geological age, but I am hoping it becomes sculpture or garden bones again soon.

I kicked little animals out into the cold

noreply@blogger.com (Muddy Mary) — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 16:05:00 +0000

Over yonder in the yard was a pile of piles which I called The Quarry. It was full of good useful stuff--salvaged bricks, leftover stone—but it looked bad and it sprawled across my best garden real estate. (A new neighbor saw it once and burst out laughing, ‘You said you were a landscape designer?’) Sure, the quarry was a blight, but it was full of potential and had actual dollar value.

It was also habitat. I didn’t realize that until one cold day I started dismantling the pile to sell and donate. I evicted:

An unhappy cold skink rudely awakened from hibernation. Immediately after the photo he and his kin won a vacation at the balmy compost pile.

A miserable leopard gecko. All geckos were compt an upgrade to the crawl space under the house. They share the accommodations again with numerous toads, unphotographed.

Earthworms. (Not pictured: slugs, wood roaches, all sizes)

A little frog. Where did it go?? It jumped, apparently into the ether. I could not find it again to bring it to safety. Remorse.

Since that cold day I began on the quarry, I’ve continued the sorting and dismantling on the occasional warm afternoon. Yesterday I finished! A great swath of future garden has been revealed. I hope the little animals will reposess it.

What's Growing in the Wall?

noreply@blogger.com (Muddy Mary) — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 03:56:00 +0000

It’s a maidenhair fern/Adiantum capillis-veneris, and a number of otherwise nice people have offered to yank it out for me. They don’t know marvelous when they see it.

I used to have big pots of maidenhair fern on the porch where they could get shade and, on principle, water. Whenever I came or went from the house I had to pass them and give them water when the soil was less than damp.

That was the theory, but in practice I would tear off to work, noting the pitiful state of the garden as a whole, and then drag back home after dark.

When the maidenhair had dwindled to a few pale fronds begging for merciful death, I composted them and transplanted walking iris into the pots for instant success. They sit on Prairie Style brick pilasters bookending the porch steps, and one of the pilasters has a big crack in its concrete topper. When the iris pots are watered, moisture seeps through the concrete.

This is a lot like the dripping cliffs of central Texas which are the maidenhair fern’s natural habitat. So, naturally, a fern has grown out of the mortar. It’s not a home maintenance error, it’s a marvel.

Unearthed treasures

noreply@blogger.com (Muddy Mary) — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 22:33:00 +0000

Years ago I volunteered in Turkey to help build and landscape a bus shelter on a roundabout. Loads of sand were brought in by dump trucks, and the junk in the loads fascinated me. There were ancient bits of tiles, glass gone iridescent with age, and chips of colorful marble. It happened that the volunteer organizer was an archeology student. I would bring her some little treasure for diagnosis. She would say ‘Hmm. Byzantine’ and chuck it over her shoulder.

When I am digging in Houston, I think about the Turkish archeologist when the shovel gritches against something buried. ‘Hmm. Rebar…from last year’. As my house was built in 1923, there actually are several decades of possible treasures to find. I use the term treasure very loosely here. I am easily pleased.

A buckle (with staghorn fern / Platycereum bifurcatum mugging in the background)

Aluminum fence post finials

A fossilized gas heater decoration

Pot stand from a rangetop. It can still be a pot stand, for terra cotta pots on the patio.

Midway through major modifications

noreply@blogger.com (Muddy Mary) — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 19:16:00 +0000

In 2008 I referred here to a construction site formerly known as my garden. I’ve got some progress photos to show you the new back garden. It's fledging from its nest of hoarded plants and rock piles amongst the former construction site.

A view of the patio. The little tree by the tank is a Mexican orchid tree (Bauhinia mexicana). All summer it flaunts lacy white flowers that pollinators love. I too am partial to bauhinias and I want to grow at least one of every make. Sadly, one can not eat them, otherwise they would be true favorites. In front of the column is a night blooming cereus to enjoy while lounging on the patio of a summer eve.

The steps to the garage form a bench and the planter you see here. Those vintage patio chairs need cushions before they get sat on again. In fact, as I look at these photos I see a dozen more projects staring me down.

For example, there is the raw field of dirt you see beyond the walkway here:

I have been visualizing a kitchen garden there so long that I sort of ceased noticing it is really bare. The bamboo hastily jammed into the beds in the foreground remains there to hold sheets over the little citrus trees if it should freeze again.
I love to see a garden’s ‘Before’ photos, and I do have some to show. I’ll post those whenever the garden is closer to looking like a proper ‘After’.

Bamboo at MAC

noreply@blogger.com (Muddy Mary) — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 03:48:00 +0000

I went up to the Margaret Austin Center to see if they needed another volunteer to wrangle bamboo at their grove-thinning wingding today. They did.

This stand of green-streaked gold culms is Painted bamboo/Bambusa vulgaris vittata. The organizer of the bamboo maintenance assault, Jill, thinks it makes the best sounding flutes. She says that Margaret Austin came back from a visit to a monastery in Thailand with two rhizomes. Now look at it, thirty years later:

Here is bit of the other bamboo grove, of a species I don’t know. The architecture dominates the scene, no? If I have the history straight, that building was designed and constructed by University of Houston architecture students who later became part of the Ant Farm Collective. The Ant Farm doesn’t ring a bell? Maybe you know one of their projects, Cadillac Ranch, in Amarillo, Texas:

The cars were painted pink for breast cancer awareness, summer 2006.

Another funky building, the meeting hall at the Margaret Austin Center:

These canes will be crafted into flutes, fences, and furniture.

On vintage trailers, landscape architects

noreply@blogger.com (Muddy Mary) — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 18:51:00 +0000

I’m a lazy blogger this month. But my girl Ms Alex has been quite industrious with her new project: restoring a 1950 Spartan aluminum trailer as a camp house. Such an endeavor would be incomplete without a blog of its own.

Today, Ms Alex posted kind words about my landscaping work. Not content to let her blow my horn, I’ve got to direct everyone’s attention to it, here.

I must clarify one thing. She calls me a landscape architect, although I haven’t sat for my licensing exams, or passed, to become said landscape architect. I tell that to her and to everyone, but do they listen? It’s sweet of my friends to want to give me a career promotion. But the difference between a landscape designer (me) and a landscape architect is a not a minor distinction, legally and in practice. That could well be another posting soon, which may be July at the rate I’ve been writing lately.
[Steps down from soapbox]

Someday, when I am truly a landscape architect, Ms Alex and I are going to sit out by that fine old trailer, survey our work with satisfaction, and crack a bottle of Veuve Cliquot.

Back to the earth

noreply@blogger.com (Muddy Mary) — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 17:14:00 +0000

We had a marvelous shelter dog named Thorn. Even people who didn’t like dogs liked Thorn. Like a good friend of the human sort, she was intelligent, trusting, and light of heart. When I think of her, she is running for joy in wild circuits around the Kid, with her big smile on. You may wonder why the Kid named a lovely dog ‘Thorn’. Well, he was calling himself Spike then, and in need of a sidekick.

Thorn died far too young, but that’s a story for another time, or for another blog.

Her ashes were returned to us in a box, which has been stored in a container with Halloween decorations (!?) under my bed for five years. From the perspective of feng shui, or even voodoo, this was probably not the best location. It was always my intention to scatter Thorn’s ashes in the back garden. But the monumental construction project, the garage apartment, was impending.

On January 1st, at last, I set Thorn’s ashes free in the new garden.

It feels like a proper send off for a loved companion. It feels auspicious to have done it on the first day of a new year.

For the record: I would also like to have my ashes set free. When the time comes, you friends and family will get a little sachet of my grit, a party favor from the funeral. Toss me out somewhere in the wide world. For someone who loves the garden and the outdoors, it is fitting to become a soil amendment.

Putting in pawpaws

noreply@blogger.com (Muddy Mary) — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 05:16:00 +0000

The pawpaw tree (Asimina triloba) has so much of what I like in a plant. It is a good looking ornamental tree with big tropical leaves. Although something of an oddity, it is native to these parts and is host to the zebra swallowtail butterfly. You can grow it in part shade. And on top of all that, it makes an edible, creamy fruit.

photo Wikimedia

I think I have a perfect location for a row of pawpaw trees. Our garage apartment on the north and the neighbor’s on the south create an alley. It gets intermittent or dappled sun from miscellaneous trees and the neighbor’s garage. The soil is damp there longer than anywhere else in the garden. The soil was not as rich or well draining as needed, so steps were taken to fix that.

Ms Brenda, garden lady, dug the 8’ by 60’ wasteland along the back fence. All I asked was that the ground to be broken and weeds removed, but she likes to dig down as deep as the fork and to turn the soil over. All manner of corroded metal and concrete chunklets were removed. A plastic horse, aluminum fence post finials, and a buckle that may be silver turned up.

To build up the bed for the pawpaws, I mined some mounds of soil created during the garage construction project, and wheeled loads of it around to the new bed. In one area I found a Neapolitan confection of soil: a layer of bright white leftover mason’s sand, over the deep black of a former compost pile, on pale brown clay.

The builders had excavated some clay in clods up to the size of a basketball. That’s a representative chunk sitting on top of the load (photo below). Now those clods have been hacked to pieces and worked into the rest of the soil.

I didn’t do a soil test here, but I had some granular sulfur already and I tossed it over the piles. Our soil tends to be alkaline and pawpaws prefer more acidic soil. Some Microlife, an organic fertilizer, was also tossed on. The last amendment added was the ashes of sweet dog Thorn (Read about her here). The pale yellow of the sulfur and the blue-white of her ashes made a strange visual.

When the bed was leveled out, it had a nice crown in the center. Digging holes for the 7-gallon container sized rootballs was as easy as playing in sandbox, thanks to Brenda. The soil is so well prepared back there, it feels like brown sugar on the shovel.

The trees are 10’ on center. They don’t have much presence in this photo, being leafless. The vines being trained to the fence are Carolina Jessamine (Gelsemium sempervirens), also native.

Pawpaws must cross pollinate, so I picked several varieties of trees. For a fruit no one ever seems to have tasted, there are a lot of varieties available. Several of mine are an ungrafted ‘native’ variety. They are younger, yet taller, than the two grafted varieties I chose. The grafted “Wells’ matures later than ‘Rebecca’s Gold’ but both have large fruit. (Memo to self: Wells is on southeast side and Rebecca is on southwest) In the nursery, they expected the trees to be temperamental producers throughout their youth. We’ll see. The pawpaws that grow wild on a piece of land we own in Nacogdoches are very small but fruitful, like this one below. There is a small green pawpaw about mid-photo:

The small fig-brown flowers of the pawpaw are pollinated by flies. I recall that the speaker on fruit trees at the Master Gardener class said his trees’ productivity increased when he brought home some roadkill! I'm hoping funky old sandwich meat hung on the fence will work, instead.

Old Spineless

noreply@blogger.com (Muddy Mary) — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 04:29:00 +0000

I admired a particular cactus last fall at the TNLA Expo, and stopped to talk with the vendor. Not only was this a (mostly) spineless cactus, it was also variegated emerald and lime green. Pretty sensational. This variegated type is the decorator version of the hardworking Opuntia ficus-indica, which I grow. No spikes means it is easier to tend, prepare, and eat. The vendor thought Opuntia ficus-indica has been selected for spinelessness since prehistory. That really intrigues me and I wanted to know more.

My very brief research turned up this nice paper. I learned that sailing ships were stocked with Opuntia ficus-indica to prevent scurvy. The cactus was distributed around the planet via trade routes and people in distant places think the cactus is native to their own country. But DNA studies show it is closely related to several central Mexican prickly pear species. The authors present multiple possibilities for its origin, with more research needed. I am partial to the romantic idea that someone in ancient Mesoamerica found or hybridized a spineless sport and it has been propagated vegetatively ever since, right up to my potting up a pad from my neighbor.

My specimen, in the photo above, grew from the piece I picked up while out walking the dog. (On dog walks I have also found plumeria branches, macho aloes, and ceramic pots of all sizes set out for the trash, or opportunistic gardeners.) This is the mother plant:

See how she is ‘arborescent’.

In summer a tuna (fruit, not fish) grew on my Opuntia ficus-indica, and when it looked ready, I picked it. The Kid and I shared it. It was impressive for its brilliant violet juice but was not too flavorful. This “Indian fig” is what the species name refers to. I have not tried julienning and serving up the pads yet. I don’t crave the taste of cactus but it’s good to know it’s there to eat, come the revolution.

Prickly pear pads at my local supermarket, Fiesta. These have spines, hence the tongs you see here!

My cactus produced a spiny throw-back of a pad from the base the main trunk. I plucked it out. I’m curious what triggers going spineless to spiny. Luther Burbank developed cactus varieties for livestock feed, and wrote that many spiny cacti have spineless sports from time to time.

Every article I read about ‘spineless’ cacti mentions the glochids, and I’ll mention them too. When you move a large-ish Opuntia ficus-indica from one side of your garden to the other, and up some steps, you end up with short, almost invisible, glochids in your arms. Those are the hairs that cluster in the sparse nodes visible on the pad. They are annoying, but they seem to disintegrate in the skin after a few days where they are not completely removed by tweezers.

Holiday greetings, late and early

noreply@blogger.com (Muddy Mary) — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 05:39:00 +0000

In the long silence since I wrote about the surprise incidence of snow, perhaps you are wondering if the frozen plant trauma required a little stay for rest and medication? Not this time. As amazing as having water freeze outside all by itself is the fact that none of the tropical plants suffered, even though some snow stuck around til morning.

I'm blog lazy, but busy otherwise, gardening and holiday-making. I've sent out Christmas cards a mere two days after Christmas this year. It's no good considering them generalized holiday greetings, current til about mid-January, as they specifically reference Christmas in the pre-printed message inside. What's a Buddhist sending Christmas cards for, anyway? Well, that was to be addressed (heh) in an off-topic blog entry called How a Buddhist Decorates for Christmas. I'll sit on that for next year.

In the event that I continue this internet indolence past 2008, I'll say it now: May the New Year be wonderful, lush, fruitful, and muddy!

[sound of cork popping]

Grape leaf in dry grass

Something odd

noreply@blogger.com (Muddy Mary) — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 03:34:00 +0000

It's snowing! The euphoria of seeing snow for the first time in 3 years has given way to some foreboding about the massacre of tropical plants. This naturally occurring frozen water took me by surprise, completely unprepared. Even worse (for tropicals), it is sticking around and collecting!

Snow and a cardboard cycad/Zamia furfuracea: probably a bad combo

Soggy tents over the little citrus trees in a new bed. Aww, I hardly knew them.

Instant jungle in the garage, thawing.

On Liriope...and a Confession

noreply@blogger.com (Muddy Mary) — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 18:35:00 +0000

I always ask myself, why does someone who loves diversity and local plants have so much damn Liriope in the garden?
Then I tell myself about one of the reasons: dogs.

When I turned the soil in the only sunny place in the front yard, I was dreaming of produce. I put in vegetables, herbs and heritage plants right where someone could pick from the sidewalk if they were motivated.

Then, this lady let her dog walk up into the bed to piss on the dill. My anticipation of fresh salad ingredients died right then. The dill died later, after taking a hit from every other dog in the neighborhood.
(By the way, the lady was none other than our neighborhood association president.)

Now everything I plant along the sidewalk is inedible, and piss-resistant, and cheap to replace when it does succumb. Ergo, the Liriope muscari, aka, monkey grass. Once you have one patch, you have a source for endless division. This is what I call a place-holder plant, but in this case, it probably won't get switched out.

You might ask why I don’t buy a few packages of seeds to get thrift and some interesting diversity too. Good question!

Here’s my confession: I am crap at starting seeds. They are like baby birds, needing time and devotion and I resent that. I neglect them one day and they mummify. The pots get knocked off the windowsill by a breeze, or by a crazy dog, or by the blinds crashing down. When I direct sow, one plant will emerge, and it will be growing in the neighbor’s driveway, maybe.

So I go for bulbs and rhizomes and roots that take a long time to notice they are out of the dirt. Cactus pads, stalks that root, corms, epiphytes—I’m all over them like a cheap suit.

Still, I look at the seed racks in the nursery and feel defective as a gardener. I truly admire people who collect seeds for next year and grow a real garden from them.

Over the Edging

noreply@blogger.com (Muddy Mary) — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 18:18:00 +0000

After the garage construction, we had some left over Trex “composite lumber” decking. It has become the edging material of choice here in my garden.

It looks appropriate for an urban garden: simple and modern when the faux wood grain side is turned away. This color plays well with the terra cotta colored brick of my house. (The house in the photos is my neightbor's but her brick is similar). It is not going to rot, being part wood waste and part recycled plastic. Barring any sloppy driving incidents, it will stay indefinitely just as it was put. Unfortunately you must pay dearly for these qualities, at $2 a lineal foot!

I justified the cost in tires not punctured, as I pulled out the deformed existing steel edge.
There are cheaper composite lumber materials available for edging, like Rhino Edge and Bend-a-Board. Since we already had part of what was needed, I decided not to change materials.

The corners were mitered, without loss of body parts, and two steel angles were installed to hold each corner together.

There is a corner running into the slope at the end of each side, for stability and to finish off what would otherwise be a loose butt end. (This is a gentrified neighborhood, thank you.) On the long runs, the Trex is set down in a groove adjacent to the sidewalk, and this combined with the angles at the corners provides all the stability it needs.

With the front and part of the back garden edged with Trex, I am looking at using it to shape the vegetable beds…coming soon! (Project number 29 out of about 5000)

Holiday Road Trip Part 2

noreply@blogger.com (Muddy Mary) — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 03:47:00 +0000

Yes, we have Thanksgiving at an off-road vehicle park. Lots of people did. I sure do like to get free and muddy, but as it turns out, a 4-wheel motorcycle making sounds of intestinal distress isn’t my cup of tea, or rather, can of Bud. Doesn’t matter. It is tradition now for cousins, aunts and uncles to converge there in the cabins down by the creek with sugary white sand beaches.

Curiously named Red Creek has white sand.

My cousins own Red Creek Offroad. There is no gardening to speak of, but the woods are full of trees and shrubs that have made the landscaping bigtime, so I find it interesting to see them at free range.

Huckleberry or farkleberry or something Vaccinium is in foreground.
Berries tasted not so great.

Going home (50,000 calories richer)...

Isn’t it terrific to find a world class gem somewhere unexpected?
Right off the interstate and behind the Wallmart in Picayune, Mississippi, is the Crosby Arboretum. (My mother’s people are from nearby Poplarville.) I went there for the trees, vaguely aware there was something else there in the woods.

The Prairie Style gateways and notice board, and nicely constructed bridgeways were clues that resolved in a splendid pond-side pavilion designed by the late Fay Jones.I assume it was mentioned in a May 2007 article in Landscape Architecture magazine, but I forgot about that. What I remember from the article is that people walking around on site have asked the staff, So where is the arboretum? The plants are Mississippi natives in their own wild habitat, and that is the intent of the Crosby Arboretum. Some people can’t see the trees for the forest.

The structure of the pavilion speaks softly of a weathered barn gradually coming apart.

We were given a bag of pellets for the pondlife. Turtles were a no-show; hibernating. In the main pond, perch came up, looked hard at the floating pellets, and left. They were sick of pellets. In the backwaters of the pond the fish were not so choosy.

Canted benches—so you don’t roll into the water by accident if you are asleep, the Husband says.

Vistas came and went around the pond, like a Japanese stroll garden. In fact, even without a stalk of bamboo, this was more of a Japanese garden than the Jungle Gardens (see Part 1) with its various Asian decorations.

There were other sections left unvisited, such as a large meadow called the pitcher plant bog. Prospects of lunch down in New Orleans, just an hour’s drive away, got pretty hard to ignore.
From there on, the trip was roads and restaurants--too tangential for this garden blog.

Leaves from a red maple / Acer rubrum

Holiday Road Trip, Part 1

noreply@blogger.com (Muddy Mary) — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 03:58:00 +0000

Eventually we get to Shiver Me Timbers Millenium Park in Lake Charles, Louisiana. Best playground I ever played on. You have your Lord of the Rings-evoking style which is a hallmark of Leathers and Associates. You have your alligator in pirate drag up on the entry gate. (See him again here.) You have splinter-free composite-lumber bridges and contraptions, all built by the community. This is so cool that I want to be a playground designer, too.

Random kid, not mine, in photo.

Photo not so good, but hopefully you get the idea.

The next leg of the journey brought us to Avery Island for the Tabasco Factory and Jungle Gardens.

We arrived in time for last tour of the factory. The Kid actually wanted photos taken, as conspicuous Tabasco consumption is currently ‘hot’ at school.

Some tour gleanings: The seeds of the peppers not selected for next year’s crop are sent to Wrigley’s. Wrigley’s extracts the oil and uses it in Big Red chewing gum. Peppers are picked when the color matches the red on ‘le petite baton rouge’, and you can get a baton of your very own in the factory store. (Why? For wannabe hot sauce contenders?) I stocked up on Tabasco Cheez Nips, Tabasco Slim Jims, Tabasco soy sauce, but not petite batons.

The Tabasco factory was calculated to soften up the Kid for a dreaded garden tour at the adjacent Jungle Gardens. But dark came and we retired to Lafayette till morning.

And then...

Dwarf palmettos (Sabal minor) and bald cypress (Taxodium distichum):

A fine, 900 year old statue of the Buddha sits inside this hilltop shrine:

Camellias were literally humming with bees. Not possible to show on film. Note to self: Get a real camera.

Home hole in the foot of a massive oak named ‘Cleveland’:

Another camellia, festooned with blooms and Spanish moss:

There were an absurd number and variety of birds in the Jungle Gardens, not just the white egrets the Gardens are famous for hosting in nesting season. This kinglet, a cartoon-like bird of eyestrain-inducing size, cheerfully came closer and closer, to within a few feet of us:

Then it was on to the business of locating the husband in the city of New Orleans, and navigating into the woods of Mississippi where the GPS unit goes blank. We will say nothing of the distant banjo music. Check back soon for our adventures there and back…Holiday Road Trip Part 2.

Bromeliad on a Stick

noreply@blogger.com (Muddy Mary) — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 03:38:00 +0000

There is something appealing about the weird sputnik shape of ball moss/Tilandsia recurvata . Although I have never seen them used I am sure that branches with ball moss colonies would make a very mod, very cool floral arrangement or sculpture.

When I find the balls on the ground I take them home and put them to a more mundane use. They make good ‘mulch’ over the soil in pots of bromeliads. Ball moss is itself a bromeliad.

Now don’t that look natural?

There is no consensus about what ball moss is doing up there in the trees. Some say that it is a true parasite that will suck out the life of the tree. This scary-looking crepe myrtle has a bad case of ball moss:

Some say it is a benign epiphyte which simply prefers the more open canopy of a sparse tree. I am not an arborist but I have an opinion anyway. Ball moss is not a murderer or a sunbather, but gets established on a tree that can’t thwart it because it is already weak or sick. For example, here is the root flare of the same crepe myrtle above:

It looks like damage from a line trimmer used to cut the grass next to the trunk, followed by an infection in the wound. I would bet my Felco’s this happened before the first ball moss showed up.

Some healthy looking trees have a small stable ball moss population. But the association of prolific ball moss and really sick trees looks as if ball moss is not merely using the branch as a perch. Science, anyone?

Right now, other gardens are more fun

noreply@blogger.com (Muddy Mary) — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 03:50:00 +0000

Now that it is finally cool enough to do some major garden work, there is no sunlight for it in the evenings. Contrast this with the summertime, when there is no shortage of light, but it is so hot that you can die gardening at 7pm.

Lately I have been landscaping at night, installing the hardscape in the back garden. While I would like to put up a blog post or two about it, it is coming along so slowly that no one should be squirming with anticipation. In the meantime, enjoy some scenes around town that I found diverting...

A garden of culvert tubes:

Infestation of ceramic fungi at The Arbor Gate:

Sign seen on leaving the soil supplier Mulch King:

Summer concedes

noreply@blogger.com (Muddy Mary) — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 04:18:00 +0000

Once in a while we get vibrant autumn colors here, if an early cold snap drops in. But usually the fall season is indicated by subtler things: the color of the light and shade, the declension of the sun, and the reluctant tapering off of summer produce. There is something so poignant about the sweet vestiges of summer hanging on well into fall. Seen in the garden today:

Celeste figs in November

A small second crop of Hunt muscadines (or maybe they are Fry muscadines).

Sweet basil beginning to lose its vigor. Pesto time!

The need for integrating my pest management system

noreply@blogger.com (Muddy Mary) — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 17:09:00 +0000

So my next door neighbor told me about a new garden pest. One recent night while she was writing, she heard violent rustling in the shrubs behind her fence. She said she wondered what kind of animal was back there, and decided to go see.

A man came out of the shrubs through a gap in the fence. He had some lame explanation about searching for his lost dog but he looked like he had either been sleeping back there or taking a dump. He bummed a cigarette off my neighbor and asked her about her marital status. She’s married, but he asked to see her ‘coochi’. [Oh, you mean my ‘chichi’ ruellia? There’s a good patch blooming in a garden down the street and around the corner. Bye.]

My neighbor is very brave and played it cool till he left. By the way, she didn’t describe about her garden dweller much but I don’t think he fit this appearance:

A guy I saw at the Texas Renaissance Festival

I have a management system for garden pests like my neighbor’s. It is 75 pounds of mutt named Plue. We did not bring him in for homestead security but he takes it upon himself. From time to time he makes himself a key pest. For example, I feel like nannies pushing strollers do not need to be evicted from our street but he does. A mail carrier told me Plue has the loudest bark he has ever heard from any dog, and I would guess that he is an authority on barking dogs.

(Photo taken by the Kid)

I don’t know how other people do it, but gardening with a dog this size and varietie(s) can be such a drag. He is not a puppy anymore so maybe I shouldn’t tell tails but I have not forgotten that he tore up 7 bags of fine compost directly over the new French drain. I haven’t forgotten that he excavated the drip irrigation system and added many, many more perforations. Part of the reason the back garden is nearly a wasteland is the recent garage construction, but part of the reason is Plue.

As I get the garden going again, I will be considering ways to integrate it with Plue. Come to think of it, I’m pretty sure I can learn from the dog vs garden experience of the many garden blogs writers out there. And I will post my successes, if any.

Meanwhile, I have yet to find garden-lurking, cigarette-mooching pervs in my landscaping, and for this I say: Good Boy, Plue!