First Day of Spring and Native Plant Sales

Spring begins today. Tennyson wrote, "In the Spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love." Maybe because I am not so young any more, my fancy is turning to thoughts of gardening instead. This quote from Margaret Atwood seems more appropriate, "In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt." And that is exactly what I intend to do for the next couple of days. I am going to smell like dirt, if not a little more. 

People often ask me where I get my plants. In addition to a few local, independent nurseries, the majority of my plants, especially the hard to find varieties, come from native plant sales. There are several sales coming up this spring, so take advantage of your chance to add some native plants to your garden and smell like dirt at the end of the day.

I normally compile a list of native plant sales in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, but this year I found a statewide listing on Sheryl Smith-Rodgers' blog, Window on a Texas Wildscape and she directed me to the source of the information on the Native Plant Society of Texas website. Click the links for the full lists. I will summarize the DFW sales below. 

• April 5, Fort Worth Botanic Garden. North Central Chapter will have plants on sale.
• April 5, Flower Mound. Keep Flower Mound Beautiful Spring Trash-Off and Environmental Fair. Trinity Forks Chapter will have a booth with over 1000 plants for sale.
• April 11-13, McKinney. Spring Plant Sale at Heard Museum. Collin County Chapter will have a booth.
• April 26-27, Dallas. Texas Discovery Gardens Butterfly Plants Sale.
• May 3, Dallas.  Native plant sale and speakers at Love Our Native Plants and Prairies Day at White Rock Lake. The Dallas Chapter will be there.

Since it is the first day of spring, I wanted to take post some pictures of the spring flowers in my garden, but there are not many. We had ice and temperatures in the teens just a couple of weeks ago and that did some damage to the tender flowers that were starting to form. I do have a few patches of Four Nerve Daisies blooming like the one above and the flowers on the Golden Groundsel are just beginning to show a little yellow. Otherwise, most of the plants are slow to break dormancy. The native plants know not to rush into spring because you never know when it will turn cold again.


This is how the front garden looks today. If we get a little rain and do not have any more freezing temperatures, the spring flowers should burst into bloom in another couple of weeks. For fun, I looked back at my photos of the garden at this at this time of year and at this approximate angle over the last seven years to see the changes and the effects a cold vs. mild winter has on when the flowers start to bloom.


April 4, 2013. This is a couple of weeks ahead on the calendar. I don't think I will have this many Bluebonnets blooming on April 4 of this year. The plants are just now beginning to grow out of the rosette stage.


March 24, 2012. The winter of 2011-2012 was extremely mild. The Four Nerve Daisies bloomed all winter long. It was strange that many of the Four Nerve Daisy plants died during the summer of 2012.


March 19, 2011. A few Four Nerve Daisies are blooming. The Possumhaw Holly in the background has more leaves than it does today.


March 21, 2010. This was the winter that killed most of my agaves. Just a few days before this picture was taken, I removed the mushy agaves and planted the spineless prickly pear and Yucca pallida. I thought winter was over. This is the reason native plants are sometimes slow to come out of dormancy. 

March 23, 2009. This is a little bit of a different angle. The focus of this photo was my new decomposed granite pathway that I just installed. In 2008, I removed the grass from the front yard and began planting to the left of the pathway in the fall. Everything looks so fresh with the new pathway and fresh mulch. 

I don't have a photo for March of 2008. Later that year became the lawn's Season of Destruction and the garden's Season of Construction. I am sure some neighbors still wonder when the lawn's Seasons of Destruction will end.


April 1, 2007. Lawn, lawn everywhere, but I did have a nice big flowerbed next to the house and in part of the parkway. It is amazing how the garden has changed through the years and how the winter weather affects when spring really begins in the garden.

Let Me Off This Ride

Maybe it is just me, but it seems like the temperatures this winter have been more of a roller coaster ride of highs and lows than in the past. For the latest example, the high temperatures on Friday and Saturday were in the low to mid 80s. A cold front blew through early Sunday morning bringing falling temperatures and sleet. The low temperature on Monday morning is expected to be around 14 with a wind chill near zero. 

On weekends when the temperatures climb into comfortable levels, I get out and do a little work around the garden.


Spring is just around the corner, so it is time to clean up the front garden. I "mowed" the dead growth on the grasses and perennials with hedge trimmers. I hope some of those tree leaves will blow away now that there are not as places for them to get snagged.


I am getting the urge to move the stock tank again. It was not an easy task when I moved it last year and I swore "never again". I like it where it is, but I think the possumhaw holly next to it may be too close. So "never" may come this spring.


The "bones" of the garden a visible now. Rocks, cactus, yucca, possumhaw, pathways, and a roving stock tank all add structure to the garden.


Scattered clumps of narcissus, one of my few non-natives, add a little sunshine on cloudy days. This photo was taken a few days ago.


Today, the temperature roller coaster came crashing down and the narcissus are bowing closer to the ground.


It is almost as if they are staring in disbelief at the sleet on the ground. It was so warm yesterday.


Frozen broccoli and frozen asparagus are on the menu tonight.


The asparagus started popping up in the last week. There are about six spears that are visible. I snapped off the tall one and another one that was about the same size. Some of the others that are coming up are much thicker. 


I did not pick this Romanesco broccoli. I think it will grow more, provided it does not succumb to the freeze. Just yesterday a cabbage white butterfly was laying eggs on the broccoli and today it is frozen solid and covered in ice. I hope the cold kills the eggs. The caterpillars taste bitter.




After tomorrow, the temperatures will begin to climb again. I am sure there will be a few more dips before the steady climb into summer. Maybe this will be the last big dive for the season.

Misty Sunday Morning

This morning the weather was a little misty ahead of another cold front that could bring some more frozen precipitation this week.


The moisture always brings out the colors of the Little Bluestem grass. (A setting on my camera brings them out even more.)


Pine Muhly in the foreground. 

Our sudden, early December ice storm did some damage to my spineless prickly pear cactus. The "branches" are slowly drooping closer to the ground and a few of them broke off. I will have more on this tragedy in a future post. I think it will survive, but it may be too early to know for sure.


Possumhaw Holly or Deciduous Yaupon is one of my favorites. The red berry covered branches are upright again after being bent to the ground under the weight of the ice in December.


It has been quite a while since there has been any rain water standing in the rain garden.


Bushy Bluestem grows in the rain garden.


A close up of Bushy Bluestem.


I do a little garden maintenance when we have warm weekends. I may trim a perennial here and there to tidy up the garden a little, but I leave many of them until mid-February because the seedheads add interest to the winter garden and provide food for birds. This is Rudbeckia above.


Salvia greggii.


Zexmenia.


Skeleton-leaf Goldeneye.


Eryngo. Most of the seeds have fallen to the ground...


and sprouted. These plants will not bloom until late summer.


Bluebonnet seedlings. These will be in full bloom in a couple more months.


The Buffalo Currant sent out a few early flowers. There should be many more over the next month.


Four-Nerve Daisy continues to bloom throughout the winter months.


In the vegetable garden, I planted a couple of varieties of onions in January.


Shallots and garlic were planted in October. The garlic will be ready for harvest at about the same time as the onions. This is my first time to grow shallots, so there will be some guessing as to when to harvest them. Inside the cattle panel cage, the roots of asparagus are preparing to send up new shoots. I cut back last year's ferny growth in January.


This is also my first time to grow Brussels sprouts. I have a purple one and a green one. The purple one is quite attractive in the garden.


I also have four broccoli plants. I harvested florets from two of the plants over the winter. Maybe there will be more to come. I covered my vegetable plants for the December ice storm, but I have not covered them since. They have been exposed to temperatures in the mid teens and it does not seem to have harmed them. When the plants are cold, they look like they melted to the ground, but then they perk up again when the weather warms. They are in mid perk in the pictures above because we had about three consecutive days where the temperature did not get above freezing. 


And then there is my poor red oak tree. It is not perking up. It suffered several broken limbs after the ice storm. There is more damage than can be seen in this photo. As much as I would rather do it myself, I think I need to call in a professional for this job. 

I am ready for spring.

Ice Ice Baby

I know. I should not have done it and I am sure I am not the only person to make this reference today, but I could not help referring to a song that made Dallas native Robert Van Winkle (better known as Vanilla Ice) famous. The year was 1990 and the song was Ice Ice Baby. Why would I make a reference to this one-hit wonder? Not because I like the song (which I don't) but because when I look out the window or turn on the TV, all I see is ice, ice, baby.

Just Wednesday, the high temperature was 77 degrees. And then, an arctic cold front blew through and temperature dropped below freezing by Thursday afternoon. Rain, freezing rain, sleet, and snow began falling Thursday night and now everything is coated in a layer of ice. The ice should stick around for a while because the temperature is not expected to rise above freezing until, possibly, Sunday afternoon.


Four Nerve Daisy blooms almost all year, even when coated in ice.


The Horsetail Reed in the stock tank is frozen solid.


Skeleton-leaf Goldeneye still has flowers and is now frozen in time.


Little Bluestem and Pine Muhly grassicles in the front garden.


The ice is weighing down the limbs of several woody plants like the Flameleaf Sumac behind the Agave. The leaves of the Flameleaf began turning orange last week. The were not flaming enough to keep the ice away.


The leaves of the Possumhaw Holly have not dropped yet which provides additional attachment points for the ice and increases the weight on the limbs.


Even the thorns on the Hercules Club tree are coated in ice.


Looking across the front garden in the opposite direction.


A close up of a Pine Muhly grassicle.


Soapweed Yucca.


It is hard to tell that this is Mexican Feathergrassicle.


I have noticed that my Pale-leaf Yucca and Spineless Prickly Pear Cactus lose some of their normal blue tint when they are frozen.


Cactusicles.


A closer look at Little Bluestem grassicle.


The Weeping Yaupon Holly looks like it was frozen in mid-weep.


I am six and a half feet tall and I used to be able to walk under the red oak in my backyard. Now several of the limbs touch the ground.


When the wind blows, the ice covered leaves clink together like the crystal on a chandelier.  But the ice storm came at a bad time because so many trees are still full of leaves.


As I mentioned before, the ice coated leaves and branches creates extra weight and sometimes the weight becomes too much and the branches snap. I saw two broken branches on my red oak. The wind picks up occasionally and it could will cause more broken limbs before this is all over. I changed "could" to "will" because I just watched another branch bend and break under the weight of the ice.


Both my Desert Willows are weeping severely.


So much so that both have major splits and will need to be cut to the ground. I have been expecting this to happen. I always loose my Desert Willows when they reach this size. They either split or the wind causes them to lean too much. After I cut them down, they will probably resprout from the stump.


Even with the numbing effects of the Toothache Tree, this broken branch was painful to see. I considered removing this branch over the summer because I thought it could improve the shape of tree. I decided to leave it and now there is a nasty wound almost halfway through the trunk. This tree had not shed its leaves either.


I removed a few Desert Willow limbs so they would not crush any other plants. I was a little surprised at how heavy the ice coated limbs were.


Next door, my neighbor's pecan tree was blocking the alley.


And their driveway. I have a feeling that arborists and opportunists that do not know anything about proper tree pruning techniques will be busy hacking at trees over the next few weeks.

Since several of my trees are breaking from the weight of the ice, it is good timing that I received two trees in the mail today. I received a Texas Redbud and a Bur Oak through a partnership between my electric delivery provider, Oncor, and the Arbor Day Foundation. The best part is that the trees were free. You may qualify for free trees too. The Arbor Day Foundation partnered with other utilities to help customers reduce utility costs by planting shade trees around their homes. Here is the link to the website. http://energysavingtrees.arborday.org.