Zanthan Gardens
Weblog of a Central Austin Garden

Despite no appreciable drop in temperature, fall has come to Austin and the plants know it. New flowers are starting to open, first the oxblood lilies, then the coral bean, and now the Lindheimer senna (aka velvetleaf cassia) which goes by a couple of botanic names, Cassia lindheimeri or Senna lindheimeriana.

I bought the senna (or is it a cassia?) back in May in a 4-inch pot from Barton Springs Nursery. When I planted it, I teased the three stems apart. One died but the other two thrived on all the rain we got this summer and are now about 3 feet tall and wide. The flowers are not very showy. I prefer the plant for its blue-green leaves which are very velvety to the touch. Lindheimer senna is reported to reseed freely and is a native Texan, at home on the shallow limestone of the Edwards plateau. I also read, though not a problem in my backyard, that it is considered toxic to cattle. Deer, too, are said to leave it alone. However, birds like the seeds.

Garden History

Planted: 2007-05-23.
First flower: 2007-08-28.

In fourth grade, Sister Florence introduced me to the wonders of multiplication and division–concepts that thrill any gardener when it comes to bulbs and perennials. Even as a child I found these concepts interesting in the abstract, despite being forced us to recite the times table up to 12 in front of the class. Arithmetic is pleasingly exact. And unlike Peggy Sue’s algebra, simple arithmetic is useful in all the practical sciences: cooking, sewing, building.

The man who came last month to measure the garden house for the screens was a confused when he looked at the framing. The strips for the rectangular wall screens are indented so that the screens will be flush in line with the columns. But the strips for the triangular gable screens are nailed to the outside of the beams. And so, they are not flush; they hang out over the edge.

After examining this anomaly, I decided that it must have been done because the rafters were also doubling as the top edge of the frame for the gables. Unfortunately, the rafters did not line up with the beams and supporting columns. So now the only way to screen the mosquitoes out was to nail wood on the outside of the wall, to line up with the rafters.

When I asked why the rafters hadn’t been spaced to line up with the walls, I received this reply:

I was going to run wood on top of the screen and the frame would not be showing. Otherwise the frame would stick out much further than the others. An error that was revealed after framing as 18″ on center did not work out all the way down the line, as we have an overhand [sic] of 2 ft, and so forth..small 1 inch fudge.

So here’s the story problem. The house is 20 feet wide. If you want the rafters to line up with the walls, is there any way that 18 inches on center will work? If not, how far apart should you space the rafters? What is the standard spacing for rafters anyway?

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Although the new pond attached to the garden house isn’t ready for fish or plants, wildlife has already discovered it. Feral cats and grackles both drink from it. Dragonflies or damselflies (I can’t tell them apart yet) hover over it, alighting on potted plants nearby. And the last two nights we’ve heard the deep croaking of some toad.

While skimming leaves from the surface, I discovered this stringy ick, which AJM (raised in far wetter clime than I) recognized immediately as toad spawn. This morning I saw a toad creep out of the pond and hop off to the back forty. It was barely dawn so I couldn’t get a very good photo. I think it is Bufo valliceps, the Gulf Coast Toad.

When I Googled “frog spawn” I got a lot of sites in the UK. Do Americans call it something else? The UK sites are aimed at helping children protect frogs and toads and raise them to release. One site said that toads only mate where they are spawned. But that can’t be true since this toad mated in a pond that didn’t exist a year ago.

This is my first WordPress post. We’ve been in the process of migrating the Zanthan Gardens site for some time now and I’m sure there will be some unexpected behavior and problems we need to work out.

If a link or photograph doesn’t work for you, or if you have trouble with comments, contact me via msinclairstevens at yahoo dot com and I’ll try to find a fix.

For those of you who subscribe to Zanthan Gardens via Bloglines, you might need to resubscribe. If you use another rss reader, would you let me know what happens.

Update: Sunday Evening

The blank individual entry pages (with comment form) and category pages should be working now even for those of you who use IE. I failed to close a tag in the html headers of those pages. I’ve run the W3C validator and discovered all sorts of little nasties I needed to fix. Thanks for all the feedback, from Pam/Digging and the rest of you listed below.

Update: Sunday Morning

Annie at The Transplantable Rose and Julie of the Human Flower Project both report a problem with getting a blank comment page. I don’t have a separate comment pop-up. The comment link should lead to the individual entry. After a little experimenting Annie discovered that this comment problem happens with Internet Explorer but not with Firefox. I don’t have IE–so I can’t test any fixes for it.

Carol at May Dreams Gardens reports trouble accessing Zanthan Gardens from Google Reader. The permalinks have changed. And although we went through all sorts of hoops to redirect the links, you might need to change them on your side as well. Or force your browser to refresh the page (rather than read the cache. In Firefox, that’s shift-refresh).

Old MT URL: http://www.zanthan.com/gardens/gardenlog/index.html
New WP URL: http://www.zanthan.com/gardens/gardenlog/

Old MT URL: http://www.zanthan.com/gardens/gardenlog/xml.html
New WP URL: http://www.zanthan.com/gardens/gardenlog/?feed=rss2

OLD MT URL: http://www.zanthan.com/gardens/gardenlog/002282.html
New WP URL: http://www.zanthan.com/gardens/gardenlog/?p=2282

I can’t believe we have 5 more blogs to migrate…grrrr.

I enjoy weeding after a rain. The air is fresh and the plants perk up. Best of all our clay soil becomes soft enough to relinquish its hold on the weeds.

Today I decided to work on the southwest corner of my yard which I refer to as the back forty. It’s part of my mini-woodland and I leave it mostly in a natural state to provide habitat for birds and lizards, as well as a hiding place for possums and armadillos. I’m glad I have room in my yard to allow for a little wildness.

2007-08-17. Before. Strangled in bindweed.

With all the rain Austin’s received this summer, the back forty has become a spot where you can no longer see the garden for the growth. Most of it is bindweed, wild ruellia, and turk’s cap. Underneath there somewhere is my ‘Little Gem’ magnolia and two tiny Texas mountain laurels that I’ve grown from seed.
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Carol at May Dreams Gardens invites us to tell her what’s blooming in our gardens on the 15th of each month.

August 15, 2007

Now that Austin is finally reaching normal summer temperatures, many plants have decided it’s time to close up shop until fall. However, after receiving almost twice our annual rainfall, the garden looks better than usual for this time of year. Typically here, there are few new flowers in the garden in August. Most of what’s blooming is just hanging on for dear life.

• Abelia grandiflora
• Allium tuberosum
• Antigonon leptopus
• Asclepias curassavica
• Canna–unknown red from seed
• chili pequin–very few flowers but covered in fruit
• Coriandrum sativum–some cilantro sprouted with last month’s rains and quickly flowered on ragged 1 foot tall plants
• Cosmos sulphureus
• Duranta erecta
• Hibiscus syriacus
• Ipomoea quamoclit (cypress vine)
• Lagerstroemia indica
• Lantana ‘New Gold’
• Malvaviscus arboreus
• Mirabilis jalapa pink
• monkey grass
• Oenothera speciosa (pink evening primrose)
• Oxalis triangularis
• Nerium oleander ‘Turner’s Shari D.’ — full, gorgeous bloom
• Plumbago auriculata
• Polanisia dodecandra
• rose ‘Blush Noisette‘ — once again in full bloom
• rose ‘Red Cascade’
• rosemary (unusual for summer here)
• Rudbeckia hirta — fading
• Ruellia (Mexican petunia)–dependable this time of year
• Tulbaghia violacea (society garlic) Thanks, Pam!
• Verbena canadensis

With the garden house project at a standstill this week, I decided to clean up the meadow garden which, thanks to Austin’s unusually heavy rains this year, is mostly weeds and rotted bearded iris. Even the paths are overgrown and covered in cement dust and other construction detritus.

The area around the garden house is the most dispiriting.

This is where I laid down most of the Christmas tree mulch last January. And where I plan to put all my tropical plants. During excavation for the garden house foundation, mounds of caliche were piled up there and, with workmen walking over it constantly, has been packed down anywhere from six inches to a foot deep.

Caliche, as I’ve said, is almost as impervious as concrete. The rain runs right off it, exacerbating our drainage problems. (Since my return from England, our garage has flooded in every heavy rain.) Luckily it come up in big chunks.

As you might suspect, caliche is a poor planting medium. All of it will have to be removed before I can plant the terraced bog garden.

My day’s work.

If you are planning any project which requires excavation, be certain to specify who is responsible for hauling away the dirt!

Friday a week ago, I was feeling rather frazzled and just needed to get out of the house. I sought solace in the Zilker Botanical Garden. It’s just down the street from my house and I can’t think why I don’t visit it more often. The crowds, probably. But last Friday was a rainy day in a week of rainy days. The gardens were almost empty.

I wended my way through the butterfly garden and slipped in the back way to the Hartman Prehistoric Garden. I’ve never seen it look so lush. The waterfall was flowing well and it looked like I had walked onto the set of some jungle movie…complete with surprises lurking around the bend.

I went back and snapped this photo today which was sunny and hot. It’s much more mysterious and evocative in mist and rain. I regret not carrying my camera with me always.

What attracted my attention most was this large white flower with an intoxicating scent. I couldn’t get enough of it. Whatever it was I wanted it for the bog garden-to-be next to my new pond.

I grew up in the desert and don’t have any experience with tropical or pond plants. A week passed and I stopped in at Emerald Garden to see if I could find it. I think I saw the plant but it wasn’t in flower so I couldn’t be sure. I couldn’t find a label or anyone to help me, so I left.

Then yesterday, I visited Annie in Austin because her new Adirondack chair has inspired me to paint our outdoor table the same bright yellow…and I wanted to see what the color looked like in real life. Of course, the first thing we did was sniff around her garden. Everything is in bloom and looks lovely. And there it was. The mystery flower. It’s a ginger. And she gave me one! I’m so excited.

We also had a lovely conversation which ended up lasting all afternoon long. Both Annie and Pam/Digging have graciously acted as sounding boards this week for a decision I’ve been toying with. They allowed me to toss ideas around and provided tons of encouragement. I hope they know how much I appreciate it.

Dateline: 2007
I got very little done in the garden this week, other than dig a bit more caliche and gravel out of the back lawn and try to prepare it for replanting. All week it rained.

And it rained.

I never had a chance to mow the lawn. And the weeds are so out of control in some places that I’ve given up and will tackle those spots in the fall. Or winter.

Like Pam/Digging, I find that orange cosmos is the perfect summer fill-in plant. I’m glad I planted a bunch just before I went on vacation. And I’m thankful for the temperatures in the 80s here in the last week of July when we’re usually wilting under the 100s.
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Japan is my adopted second culture and yet I’ve never had a desire to replicate a Japanese garden in my own yard. When most people think of a Japanese garden, they conjure up visions of the great temple gardens, or the gardens of the Imperial Palace, or the tea gardens of wealthy manors of old. Mimicking those gardens in a backyard in Texas seems as eccentric as building a miniature garden of Versailles. Would I put a Shinto shrine in my garden? Why not a mini Stonehenge?

NIMBY. Stone circle on beach in front of Castle Tioram, Scotland

And that’s the key to how I feel about Japanese gardens outside Japan. They are examples of a style, museum pieces rather than livable gardens. We could argue that the Italian garden was an example too. I think the difference is that I can walk through the Italian garden, sit in it and read, dangle my fingers in the fountain. It’s comfortable and inviting. The Japanese garden seems reserved and distant.

Of course, Tatton Park is not my little back yard and the Egertons had enough space (about the size of Golden Gate Park in San Francisco) to work with. Choosing to create examples of different types of gardens was a great idea–especially for those of us on a visit. It’s almost like shopping at the mall. “Are you in the mood for Italian or Japanese tonight, dear?” “Oh, let’s just sit in the fernery.”

The Japanese Garden at Tatton Park has been restored just recently and is considered to be one of the finest examples of its kind in the UK. It’s sited in what looks like a little gully with a stream running through it to a large lily pond. Lots of moss grows here, too. The combination enables you to imagine a little bit of the steep and rocky terrain of Japan here in the fine grassy plains of Cheshire.

Many plants found in Japan grow here. They seem larger and a bit wilder than their clipped counterparts in a formal garden in Japan. The feeling I got was of stumbling across some forgotten teahouse hidden in a mountain forest. Part of me wanted to go inside. (Due to the fragility of the garden, one is not allowed to walk through it.) But part of me didn’t need the signposts or chains to make me hesitate…to sense that this is a sacred space that one doesn’t intrude on casually.