November Garden Hoe Workday

Saturday found us "hoeing" around at Anna's. Before/After pix will be posted soon...

Anna had recruited the help of her sisters, who must love her a LOT to have driven a good hour, to help her prepare the delicious breakfast and lunch we had. We had a yummy breakfast casserole (from Naomi's recipes), sausage wraps and donuts that Nancy brought from Round Rock donuts-fried in LARD-which we discussed was a wonderful thing, coffee and mimosas. Lunch was a totally yummy chicken pasta salad and fruit salad, of which I think we all had seconds.

After a little visiting, we went to work. There were two projects we planned to attack that day. The first was trimming back the ivy on one of the beds in front. Beautiful as it looks, that stuff is a pain in the you know what. We got it whacked back though, hopefully to a nice size, and put what rocks we had available around for a border. At one point, the ivy tried to get back at us for whacking it all up and tried to "eat" Nancy. Unfortunately, she escaped before I could get a pix.

The second project was supposed to be to just extend the depth of Anna's veggie garden. One thing about us, no matter what we initially THINK we want to do, it ALWAYS ends up being a bigger project. Anna's veggie garden was no exception. Why just extend it a few feet when we could make it HUGE? After moving the compost pile back and pulling expired plants, Naomi started tilling. Rock removal and raking followed hot on her heals. What resulted was a GORGEOUS vegetable bed of fabulous dirt (I was really tempted to make a dirt angel in it it was such heavenly soil) that is going to result in lots of beautiful produce. I can't wait to post the pix...

In the meantime, here are a few snapshots of the fun we have during our work days...

"We could put a pond right here!" Always thinking of yet more projects that can be done, Naomi pointed out that Anna's rock garden area that she and hubby have been stumped about what to do with, could be turned into a water feature area. Anna's hubby noted that he'd prefer it be turned into a putting green. We'll see which idea comes to fruition.

"FIRE! FIRE!" Unable to unwind the last of the twine and grass that had become one with the tiller axle, and thereby bogging it down, we resorted to FIRE! Heather is carefully burning the grass and junk hoping not to ignite anything else. It worked great and the fire department didn't have to come over.



Goofin' around... Hoe Nancy taking a brief break from all the hard work.




Garden Hoes... I don't know why we never take a picture BEFORE we dive in and get nasty, but here we are. (L to R) Anna, Nancy, Naomi, & Heather. Nickie was unable to attend.

Like We NEED More Plants

Last night, Naomi and I attended the Native Plants Society of Texas-Austin Area Chapter plant swap in Georgetown. The LAST thing we need right now (especially with winter quickly approaching) is more plants that we need to get into the ground. That said, we're gardening freaks and couldn't resist.

We both got many wonderful plants to add to our own landscapes and enjoyed visiting with the NPSOT members as well. Some of the goodies I personally managed to score include: carolina jasmine, wild onion, snake herb, turk's cap, spiderwort, pipevine, wild foxglove, lindheimer's senna, false guara, salvia coccinea, purple coneflower, and little bluestem grass. Yippee!

It was loads of fun and I'm so thrilled I got to attend. Even if I hadn't gotten all the wonderful plants I did, I learned some things about native plants of Texas. Thanks, Naomi for letting me know about it! --Hoe Heather

Will It Rain or Do I Water?

THAT is the question. My poor pond garden needs watering badly (cause I've been forgetting) BUT the weather person said we've got rain in the forecast so I'm HOPING that the Lord will feel bad for my poor unwatered plants and send some rain to us...FAST.

This is the time of year where I really want to be outside, as Naomi mentioned in an earlier post, playing in the dirt, because the weather is SO beautiful. Unfortunately, there isn't really any planting I can do right now, that I know of, since ol' man winter is on his way. Now is the time to begin buckling down instead of germinating seeds and that is the complete opposite of what I want to do. In fact, the urge to make things grow is even greater since my having joined another group where I've been trading for some WONDERFUL seeds and plants. I am so excited about some of these that I am itching to go plant them. That excitement is going to make for a long winter, I fear.

Anyway, back to the rain... here's crossing my fingers that the weather person was right. If not, I have GOT to remember to water my poor plants later today. -Hoe Heather

I hate this weather...

Okay, I know I said I like this weather, but last night it was 20 DEGREES COLDER THAN NORMAL so ALL my tomatoes, cucumbers, tomatillos, and peppers are mushy black crud. (My canteloupe are mush too, but that's okay seeing as they were a "volunteer" crop anyway.) Even a few of my perennials got a little frosted (like me right now).

Why didn't I cover them? Because it WASN'T supposed to get that COLD. It was ONLY supposed to get down to 50 degrees or so (normal temps this time of year), but NOOOOOO - I have black stumps where my wonderful plants used to be.

Silver lining - my lettuces, chards, cabbages, and other root vegetables are still looking good. I now have planted at least 7 different types of lettuces (seed and starts), four types of cabbages, several variety of broccoli, and collards and kale (seed). I'm trying intensive planting on my lettuces. I planted four rows of starter plants and in between, seeded other varieties. My goal - to have a solid row of lettuces (6' x 2') with no real visible space between the plants so that I don't have to weed. We'll see how it goes...

In other planting news - my GardenHoes project looks great. The number of unplanted plants is slowly going down and I am trying to be sooooo good and not buy any new ones until I get all these in the ground. I have several bulbs that I planted under one of our mock pear trees coming up, so I am hoping to get some flowers. What kind, I don't know, as that area became an experimental bulb planting ground. The deer have managed to eat a few more of my plants, but most seem to be surviving (it may be because my neighbors have taken up target practice and scared the deer away). We got some new fish for the pond...I wasn't supposed to, but when I saw that the new babies that survived the spill were okay, I figured - what the heck? Lots of other stuff in the works, but I can't remember it all right now.

Last thing - I can't wait for Hoe Anna's project day. It will be the first time we've been over there, so i'm excited to see what her place is like.

~Hoe Naomi

Heather's Hoe Day!

Despite being in the middle of the kitchen remodel, the Garden Hoes were over the first Saturday in October for a huge project. Anna and Nickie did a beautiful job cleaning up and mulching the pond garden and we built a beautiful herb and iris bed in front of my garden. It didn't "sound" like a big project in my imagination but, like the kitchen remodel, it got bigger and bigger as we went along. Probably the most time consuming part of the project was removing only a very small amount of the fill rock that made up the majority of the ground. After removing 5 wheelbarrows full of rocks from the tilled ground, we called it quits, added compost and finished the project.

Between all the hard work, we took a few breaks, of course. One was for lunch and we had Greek Salad and some other Greek fixings. YUMMY. Another break found Anna telling Ryan, because he was sitting in her lap and asking the questions and she has more patience than I, what EVERY variety of onion and then bean was in the seed catalog.

Little FUNNY aspect of the day...Naomi had met, the night before at First Friday in Georgetown, a gal who had recently relocated here and invited her to hang out with us on Saturday to do a "little gardening". Well, the new firend DID show up and DID even jump in and help for a little while. During one of our breaks, however, she commented that when Naomi had told her we'd be doing a little gardening and eating, blah blah blah... SHE thought it would be a sort of picnic and we'd occasionally pluck a weed. THAT got quite a laugh out of all of us. The LAST thing we are is some prim and proper gardening group. LOL.

Anyway, we had fun and got the project(s) done!

We forgot to take a "before" photo but remembered pretty early in the day. Here is Naomi tilling up my rock ground in preparation of the bed.




It is beautiful and I can't wait until next year when all the iris come up and, hopefully, bloom amidst all my herbs.

Many thanks to all the Garden Hoes for the awesome job! Extra thanks to Naomi for the beams, compost....

I'd rather be playing in the dirt...

Thursday morning and the temp is about 75 degrees. I wish I was outside right now. Not even necessarily doing anything productive, but just moving things around.

This morning when I went to work, I noticed that I have the beginning of a bloom on my fall asters. I got these for the first time this year and was told that these plants bloom at the start of the fall equinox. (This is not my plant by the way, but hopefully soon). The Natural Gardener calls the Fall Aster one of their favorite plants and talks about them on their website: "All year we wait for this magical time when profusions of purple aster blooms signal the transition into Autumn in Central Texas. Aster oblongifolius, our native species, is a real powerhouse of a plant. A very hardy perennial, reaching about 2 feet high by 2 to 3 feet wide, it is extremely drought tolerant and will spread quite happily by seed. An unobtrusive member of the garden community for most of the year, Fall Aster jumps to the fore in late summer to provide an eye-popping show through the Autumn months. Plant now to get a head start for Spring."

Well, between the 50 degree nights and the fall aster blooms, I think Fall has officially arrived. This is my favorite time of the year - boy, I wish I could be outside right now.

Look What Showed Up

From Hoe Nancy:

So, I'm thinking this beast of a summer has died.  Look what came up in my yard as a complete and total surprise when I splashed some water around something nearby:


These lilies have been in the ground several years now, but I haven't seen even a hint of them for 2006 (drought), 2007 (flood) or 2008 (drought).  Their first year (2005) I got one sickly bloom (my friend only gave me a small chunk) so I am astounded by this spread.   I had very much given up on them, so needless to say I do a little dance of joy every time I walk the yard and see them.   Then I start wondering about all the other things that I've just assumed were dead and gone .....   but I've got to tell you that seeing something blooming in the yard raised my spirits so much that it sent me running to the nursery for some blackfoot daisy.