2005-10-19. Crinum gowenii–I think.
Dateline: 2006
I haven’t spent any time in the garden since I returned from Las Vegas (10/10). It’s been raining so I’m not needed in the watering for watering and I’ve been focusing all my attention on the kitchen remodel.
I do go out from time to time to check on my wards. The rain has brought up the paperwhite narcissus already! And here’s the Muscari six inches tall. And there’s the Narcissus simplex (given to me by kind reader, Shelly B, and obviously planted too late last year). The four o’clocks are in full flower and the oleander is looking better than its looked all summer but the plumbago has suddenly stopped flowering (too cold?)
The weeds are taking over. I prefer this problem to having to water.
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Category: Week by Week in the Garden | 1 Comment »
Spider lily week.
Dateline: 2006
I return to Austin late Tuesday (10/10) night behind a line of thunderstorms. DFW was a mess after 5 inches of rain and flooding and flights were delayed an hour at minimum. However, I managed to fly standby on an earlier flight into Austin and my baggage made it on the plane to my utter amazement. I was hoping that the rain had also made it to Austin and it had.
By Friday (10/13) the meadow was aflower with rainlilies. And a late flush of oxblood lilies surprised me. The Nerium oleander is blooming again. Bluebonnets. cilantro, and daisies are popping up everywhere.
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Category: Week by Week in the Garden | 3 Comments »
2003-10-06. Musa lasiocarpa in flower. Austin, Texas. (Update: The flower closed up during the winter and then reopened throughout 2004. It finally died in early summer of 2005.)
Dateline: 2005-10-09
After flowering for two summers, the mother plant died. Slowly its stalk rotted away and the pups (some of which were full-grown plants by this time) began to fall away from the center.
2005-07-28. Even in late July, the blue-green banana leaves looked crisp and fresh. They never turned brown or wilted like the brighter green canna. However the number of pups was getting out of hand.
As today was the second of two perfect fall days, I decided it was time to dig up and replant the pups. I soaked the ground thoroughly to make it easier to get through the hardened clay. Then AJM and I began digging around the perimeter and trying to prize up the mass by getting the fork under the roots. The whole mass is fleshy and breaks easily. All we succeeded in doing is snapping the top of the banana plants off the roots.
In the end it was a banana tree massacre. A score of large banana trees lay rootless on the ground. Half a dozen smaller ones came away with a little bit of root. And what about the roots? If I replant them, will new pups spring up? Are banana trees like Tradescantia in this respect. I’ll try it and see and report back.
I was very depressed after destroying my banana plants. I had to keep telling myself that they were all going to fall over and die anyway and they had outgrown the space and were crushing the plants near them. Still, there’s a big empty spot in the garden where once was the most beautiful green.
I started with one and I have more than one now. If even one pulls through the winter, all will have worked out in the end.
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Category: Plant Highlights | 5 Comments »
