Merry christmas to all

I am making it a promise to my self and the few souls that have discovered this blog to get back with it in 2012. Happy Holidays and may 2012 be a much better year.

The Well Goes Out

No photos today. Just sharing our misery. Our water well died! Luckily we have some rain water saved for the few plants left in the greenhouse AND we have a second well on the property for the guest house that my husband and I live in. But my Mom, who lives in the main house, has been moved to a hotel in town. Try making dinner for a week and not having access to a sink to wash pots and pans. Paper plates are one thing!!! The well driller is due out on Friday, today is Tuesday, keep your fingers crossed! No fun!!! The joys of living out in the country.

I love Fall the best for gardening in Texas. Plants renew their color from the summer heat and bloom their heads off as if to really prove something to the world! My roses are not in the same boat. I forgot to groom and fertilize them back in August. So, since the weather is a bit cooler I think I will give them a light clean up and a dose of Hasta Grow and see what happens. This product is great for flower and fruit production and usually gets things back on the right track. But right now the color in my garden is from other wonders such as Coral Vine (Antigonon leptopus), a honey bee & butterfly magnet, that loved the big dose of rain we got earlier this month.

I also love my Perennial Morning Glory (Ipomomea Indicia) which is also in full glory and was blooming this evening at the same time I was taking photos of the Coral Vine. This summer when we had very little rain it looked like we had lost it for good but just as soon as the rains started up again it came back and is even climbing into my art studio...under the door! You know they say... never turn your back on a Morning Glory!

Then there are the many colors of Autumn Sage (Salvia Greggii) which is really putting on a show. I have at least 4 colors right now and want more. This is a Humming Bird favorite. Most mornings when I come out of our little guest house the hummers buzz by to great me. The Fall Aster (Aster oblongifolius) has just popped and I expect lots of butterflies will soon stop by to enjoy those too. They add a lovely shade of Blue/Purple to the garden and are very drought tolerant. We usually get a good crop of them along the creeks around here as well and the Sulphur butterflies just love them! Now if we can just the temperatures down into the 70s we would all be happy campers!

I have neglected both my gardening and my blog! How sad!!! We had a summer filled with rain which was the reverse of the last three years. This does amazing things to gardens. We normally are good and brown by this time of year but we have the greenest grass. This is thanks to the tropical storms that have made their way up the Texas coast. And the Hurricane season goes until November! But in the mean time we get to enjoy the fruits of our "labor" meaning letting the garden go to the weeds...namely Cowpen Daisy. This is a very invasive critter but one that the butterflies seem to like so we are leaving them alone for now. We are looking forward to the fall!

Blue Bonnets and Other Glories of Nature

I love Spring and we are almost into Summer! It is the wildflower season in the Texas Hills and in addition to the Blue Bonnets we have lots of flowers showing up this year that we have never seen in the 5 years we have lived here. The long soaking winter rains made such a difference that everything is responding in over drive. We had a few days of harsh temps where we got down to 17 and 21 degrees and that has
forced some of our herbs into "retirement"! But as a gardener that just means a new spot to try something else!!! From the three year drought and the long soaking rains we did finally see more lavender plants crash.

Lavender likes it dry but we did not have drip irrigation through the worst of it. We were more concerned that the well would make it through the drought for us human types and the animals we support...even leaving water out for the birds and the deer! So that gives us the opportunity to replant and we are doing so with some plants purchased from our faithful lavender experts at Gabriel Valley Farms as well as a few donated from a fellow lavender enthusiast from Kerrville. We are also going to order some from Washington state...if they can ever get it to quit snowing up there! The photo here with the fairy is French Thyme. This variety is delicious in a blend for Herbs De Provence. It has flavor that is a bit unique. It is located in a large pot with a rose that is about to be removed because it was a grafted rose and is on its last legs.

I plan to hit the Antique Rose Emporium tomorrow and see what they have in the way of veggies, herbs and oh, maybe I'll squeeze one more rose into the collection. I'll have to sneak it into the yard before my husband sees it! I already have about 25 in containers and they are coming roaring back but obviously need to be fed. ARE has some great organic fertilizer that contains some beneficial micro organisms that seems to make them really continue to bloom even in the worst of the heat.

We also have some new additions to the neighborhood in the way of Long Horn cows. The property up the road has three new calves that are just adorable and tonight we noticed a new donkey has joined the herd. He is brown and white! I'll try to get photos of him soon. He looked so scared and he was far away from the rest of the troops. I hope he figures out his job is to run with the big guys and soon!

This weekend is the Hill Country Lavender Festival. There are 5 farms that will be open on Saturday, Oct. 3 starting at 10 a.m.-6p.m. There will be farm tours, music, demonstrations, workshops, crafts, food, plants for planting. There is NO ENTRANCE fee to the farms. For maps go to www.johnsoncitytexaschamber.com.
The following are the participating farms:
Becker Vineyard's Lavender Farm: 830-644-2681 or www.beckervinyards.com
Chantilly Lace Country Inn & Lavender Farm: 830-868-2767 or www.chantillylacesoaps.com
Hummingbird Farms: 830-868-7862 or www.hummingbirdlavender.com
M&J Lavender Farms: 830-696-6624 or www.mjlavenderfarm.com
The Meadows at Flat Creek Lavender Farm & Ranch or www.lavendermeadow.com
Miller Creek Lavender Farm in Johnson city will be closed due to a death in the family. Please keep Karen and Don Roets in your thoughts this weekend.

These are just a few of the members of the Texas Lavender Association. See a complete list of members at the web site www.texaslavenderassociation.org.

Lavender is an easy plant to grow in the Texas Hill Country, however, many home gardeners I have spoken with during the educational programs I do for area garden clubs have had problems growing it. What I am discovering is that most often folks are being way too kind to this tough
plant that originated in the soils of is Israel. My suggestion for this weekend is to take a trip to visit at least one farm and see what varieties they are growing and how they are growing them. Lavender has many uses in crafting and cooking...yes cooking. More on our farm and the many uses of lavender in a future blog.

Herb Gardening Road Trip

I have this fantasy that we are going to create the ultimate herbal demonstration garden here on our hill so that we can bring people to our property to study the many uses these plants provide. It is turning out to be a long term project. We are putting off building the new raised beds until the roof gets fixed and the road gets repaired. This has not yet deterred me from starting to collect the herbs I envision in these gardens! It just means a they will have to live in pots for a while. I love the thrill of the hunt!

As much as I love collecting herbs and flowers (and I am a true collector!) I love photographing them. So, in order to add to our inventory we traveled to Austin on Saturday. This is reason we started the day (very early) and traveled to the Arnosky Flower Farm. Visit them on line at www.texascolor.com. I have watched this family grow their business for years by growing flowers and herbs for the HEB's Central Markets . I had not been to the farm stand in about 4 years. I wanted get there when they opened at 9 a.m. to take pictures of the flowers at a time day when the light was rich with color. We arrived and found that they had received at least 7 inches of rain in the past week and the fields were very muddy. I managed to make it to one area before I realized that it was not worth getting my clogs stuck, not to mention the car. The flowers, however, did not let me down. They also have a few perennial plants and well as some fall lettuce starts. We also picked up some squash and goat cheese for dinner and their new barn is gorgeous. The few shots I got were worth the stop!

We then traveled on to the Sunset Valley Farmers Market (www.sunsetfarmersmarket.org) and found lots of treasures to bring home. We picked up fresh okra, lamb shanks, grass fed beef, homemade wheat berry bread. There was even a couple selling dried herbs and teas. I did not see any other fresh herbs other than fresh basil. I see a business opportunity here people!!!
It was a beehive (yes the pun is intended here) of activity! Yes there was fresh honey too!

After a quick lunch to a great Cajun place called Evangeline Cafe (www.evangelinecafe.com) we were off to visit a nursery we had not been to in a long time that has a great selection of hard to find herbs ...It's About Thyme (www.itsaboutthyme.com). They have antique roses, herbs, perennials and tropicals. I love seeing the birds in the greenhouse (no shop cat here!) and the demonstration garden out back. I did not have enough room in the car to pick up the plants I wanted so we will have to make a return trip soon. I loved the mint hanging baskets!

We finished the day by heading over to The Natural Gardener where the focus of the day was fall veggie gardening (www.naturalgardeneraustin.com) and the square foot gardening technique. We left here with tools to clean out our own beds, a few fall bulbs and some seeds to get in the ground. We love coming here because the staff always is pleasant, knowledgeable and helpful. They have a great selection of herbs here too. I really like their "herb garden" as it is a garden planted with herbs and perennials.

Next weekend we have the Hill Country Lavender Festival to look forward to. Six farms in around Johnson City & Stonewall are celebrating the fall bloom with farm tours and activities. For more detailed information go to www.johsoncitytexaschamber.com and go to the calender of events page.