People in Austin are seeing interesting bird visitors this week. I'd hoped for a painted bunting but was quite happy when this Yellow-Billed Cuckoo stopped at our garden today!

I took the photo through the window - my presence didn't seem to make the bird jump, but a clumsy grackle & a white-winged dove sent it flying. (Photos will enlarge when clicked.)

There's a slight chance of rain over the next couple of days - we need it so badly, while along the Mississippi people are dealing with floods. I've hand-watered the daylilies so there are some flowers in bloom on both sides of the back walk. Will the rainchains finally get to do what they're designed to do?

Another two-and-one-half inches of rain fell in NW Austin over the weekend, barely budging the lake levels but giving a good drenching to yards and gardens. A few pepper plants make buds in the vegetable plot and a few radish seeds have sprouted, but I didn't plant a fall crop of tomatoes, just left a couple of survivors in the ground. There's enough sun for them in early spring before the leaves come out on the pecan, but it's too shady now. Philo and I are working on a post about lawn equipment we're testing but thunderstorms are in the forecast and we need a dry spell to proceed. Until then we'll enjoy what has revived and rebounded The Passion flower in the Secret Garden revived and traveled 12-feet from the trellis to open blooms where the variegated privet background could make it look even gaudier.

Some plants endured the normal heat and drought of previous years but didn't survive this year- our twisted willow is no more.

The Sweet Lavender died not from lack of water but from girdled roots going round and round in heavy clay soil

A solid band of Lambs Ears is now a solid band of empty dirt. My guess is that they died from baking in afternoon sun rather than lack of water.

Here's the reason I think so - the Lambs Ears survived in open shade near the outer edges of the pecan tree's canopy

The given-up-for-dead clematis by the back door was only resting! This photo could be in better focus, but it's the first time my camera ever captured the variations in color that these flowers display as they open, expand, and fade. Is this clematis dark red, red-violet or purple? Yes.

On the patio a mysterious little plant bought in early June has finally shown what it can do. The smudged and faded name on the pot appeared to say 'Duranta Blue' skullcap. Assuming it was either a variation on our native scutellarias or one of the fancy new hybrids, I nearly killed it by giving it full sun, then luckily figured out it needed a larger container in part shade. Eventually I found the ID online - not 'Duranta Blue', but Scutellaria indica 'Dorota Blue', a groundcover for part shade. Dorota is Dorothy in Polish - I knew a few Dorothys back in Illinois and am quite taken with the name.

Dorota is not showy - but in closeup the blue of her flowers is intense.

Robin/Get Grounded recently showed us her garden and wondered what survived for other Austin gardeners. In the back all the cupheas lived and so did the hummingbird sage. The roses looked crummy but didn't die. The peach tree is on its last legs but the crepe myrtles are fine. The front central garden lost a few salvias, but most of the dreadful-looking salvias endured, along with Rosa mutabilis, Yellow Bulbine, Phlox sublata, Flame Acanthus, a lilac-colored lantana from Robin, Black foot Daisies and gaura. In other beds the Iris look ratty but live on. So far the monarda and Lycoris are no-shows, but the rest of the bed looks wonderful right now - partly from rain and partly because the Divas of the Dirt were here.
I'm totally in love with my Mutabilis rose! If I ever get cute little business cards this photo is going on them.

In the area along the back wall of the house the Meyer's Lemon has grown and held onto a few lemons. Next to the lemon the Brugmansia - Yellow Angel's Trumpet is putting on quite a show. Morning sun rather than afternoon sun makes all the difference.

The same morning sun, reflective white wall and afternoon shade encouraged the dwarf pomegranate to produce 2 fruits! The standard tree in the Secret Garden has yet to make one.

Although it didn't fall in my neighborhood, other parts of Austin got a little rain yesterday. Closer to San Antonio, Victory Gardener Pamela Price rejoiced on Twitter that 4" of precious water arrived at her garden. Send some showers in this direction! Temperatures are hovering closer to 90°F than 100°F this week. We need only one more day over 100°F to tie the all-time record and 2 to smash it. Now public wishes for one more heat spike have popped up all over Twitter. Or as MSS of Zanthan put it, "We've come this far and !#$#@* we want the record."
Couldn't have said it better myself! We do want it!


Even though some of the garden is wheat-colored, just a little hand-watering was enough to make my favorite annual combination of Moonflower vine and Blue Butterfly Pea climb to the top of the obelisk and bloom again.

I went out after midnight and snapped this photo of them entwined. In past years they've bloomed through October - always welcome, but never so much as in this year when usually dependable plants have died or have no flowers.


My daughter Lilly wondered how big the moonflowers are but the tape measure couldn't be found. I held the lovely flower in my big ol' peasant hand - the edge of the petals almost seemed to ripple in the dark, like a butterfly instead of a flower.


Did anyone else think of Patsy Cline when you read the post title? September 8th was the day she was born - here's a video clip of her singing "Walking After Midnight". I'll be humming that tune next time the camera and I take a midnight stroll.

It's so easy to not write, to not take photographs, to not enter this summer's losses on the semi-permanent record of a blog. There seemed little point in joining Garden Bloggers Bloom Day. I wrote nothing full of facts and numbers like the posts by MSS of Zanthan Gardens, no posts rejoicing that drip irrigation kept most of the garden alive like the vacationing Rock Rose, no celebrations of serene stock tank lilies and stately agaves like Pam/Digging, no struggles with enormous water harvesting projects like Bob of Draco, nor dramatic storm photos like Nature Sharing Diana or hopeful words about fall vegetable gardening like Renee & Iris & Katina or contest-winning photos like East Side Patch.

II loved Julie and Julia (the photo of the wonderful Meryl Streep is from @JulieandJulia on Twitter) but said not a word. A week slips past, and another - the neglected inside of the house gets attention, closets are rearranged, the Diva website is caught up, a book or two read, music put in written form, stuff tossed out. We hope for a shower to christen the rainbarrel. We're painting and shopping and hanging curtains and cooking as old movies play on Netflix.

Writing a blog post takes too long while jumping on Twitter takes 10 minutes, a simpler but more limited connection to other gardeners. Then a post by Linda from Central Texas Garden made me laugh as she led a cheer for the heat, calling for just a few more days over 100°F so we can beat the record and hearing Linda's voice as I read made me want to speak. I took the camera out on Monday, planning to ease back in via Cindy's Through the Garden Gate. I missed that deadline, but Cindy didn't make it either! From the gate you can see what gets hand-watered - small trees, shrubs, plants that make flowers, fruit, seeds and nectar for bees and birds and butterflies. And what only gets the 'slop-over water' - the nearly dead grass away from the edges. Looking around the garden I've realized that most of the lambs ears are dead, the abutilon is gone, most of the callibrachoa croaked, as well as some of the sedums, some of the salvias and the native Texas betony, too.From the other side of the triangle bed we can see that some Salvia coccinea are green and even the picky Blackfoot daisies look happy In the same bed we don't see several Ex-lavenders, Ex-snapdragons, missing Balloon flowers and even native Ex-scutellarias. All the lavenders in the ground died but the very old 'Provence' lavender in the clay pot and cuttings from it in the hypertufa trough live and even bloom. A small 'Catawba' crepe myrtle is okay, the 'Mutabilis' rose isn't blooming but isn't dead, and the lived-over Jatropha integerrima/Spicy Jatropha is doing fine, with daily visits from hummingbirds.

Afternoon shade provided by the house wall wasn't enough to help the clematis but it let the blue Plumbago and Mother-of-Thousands thrive. Do you see that seedling mixed in with the pecan debris? It's one of hundreds of invasive ligustrums sprouting in the beds and paths. I don't have any ligustrums, but they grow in all the yards surrounding mine. Native plants die while invasive ligustrum, Chinese tallow, nandina and Chinaberry stay green. The greenest spot on the lawn is under the birdbath - water is essential for the Chickadees for the black crested titmouse who shows up every day and for the bees, wasps and all the other creatures who come here to drink Keeping the birds alive keeps me from giving up. I give water to the red house finches, water to the giant native sunflower and to the shrubs that make berries. I try to keep the hummingbird favorites alive. Shouldn't the cardinals, blue jays, gold finches, wrens, doves, grackles, hummingbirds and starlings recognize me as their friend by now? But no - they still only let me photograph them through the window. You'd think the squirrels would be grateful, too... but they'd rather toss pecan shells down on my head. Survived August...check. Now the tiny tips of the Oxblood Lilies are poking up again, giving me hope we'll survive September.

Open the back door and you'll see three plants that are thriving in spite of the weather - they do get water, but the real secret seems to be the house wall - this strip gets full sun in the morning but from early afternoon it's sheltered from the burning rays.
The blue Plumbago auriculata is almost as tall as I am and the Amarcrinum
'Fred Howard', a has finally settled in after a few years, making four flower-stalks on two plants. We call plants like this Crinum lilies, but they're really in the Amaryllis family.

The pink and blue combination was expected, but the pop of orange was added when seeds of Asclepias curassavica/tropical milkweed parachuted in from another part of the garden and made themselves at home.



There isn't enough orange in what's left of the vegetable garden. Last summer's level of heat and drought didn't stop the 'Juliet tomatoes from producing enough to chop up for fresh salsa, but this summer's heat has kept the Juliets down to only 2 or 3 ripe per day. Too bad - I really want to try Renee's fascinating method of drying Juliets inside your parked vehicle!



We had 1/7th of an inch of rain last week. This piddle of nature did nothing for the trees or shrubs or perennials, but some parts of the parched lawn sent out exploratory blades and the rainlilies? They went nuts! Above are Zephyranthes 'Labuffarosea' in a large container on the patio, under the spare boughs of a Pineapple Guava. Zephyranthes are also called lilies and are part of the extended lily family.

Below are 'Labuffarosea' in a container near the front steps, marooned in a sea of Silver Pony Foot/Dichondra argentea. (sideways photo upload courtesy of Blogspot). The original bulbs came from Plant Delights nursery in 2000. They have multiplied and I've given bulbs of this rainlily away to many fellow garden bloggers and to most of the Divas of the Dirt - hope all their rainlilies are blooming, too! So even though there has been a DROP of rain, most of the words in my recent song, 'Don't Want to Be in Texas in July' are still valid... except that it would be a lot harder to write lyrics that rhyme with "August".

Many of you already know Amanda the zany gardener who writes a blog for Horticulture Magazine as Kiss My Aster. She's lots of fun both on the blog and on Twitter. Amanda recently invited me to premiere my new song on the Horticulture website and it was fun to be able to say "Yes".


Like Anna in "The King and I" doing her best to quell her fears by whistling a happy tune, I've tried to make it through this summer by writing a funny song and having Philo make it into a video.




Please check out Kiss My Aster's fun blog and " I Don't Want to Be in Texas In July" over at the Horticulture Mag Website.

At left near the Pink Garden a Texas Redbud is getting established, waving arms to its cousin the Texas Whitebud across the drive in the sunny native and adapted bed that now fills the footprint where a huge ash once grew. Between them, way back in the shadows at the far end of the house you can see the dark leaves and deep pink flowers of the 'Forest Pansy' redbud, planted in fall 2004.

We're in deep drought here in Central Texas, and have already racked up more than 30 days over 100°F with all of August and September yet to come. I've been watering the trees, but sometimes the ground stays so warm and the nights are so hot that even good-sized trees just give up the fight to stay alive. With a little luck the three redbuds will make it through to live and bloom again.