Zanthan Gardens
Weblog of a Central Austin Garden

Suddenly, the yard is plunged into shade. The morning sun stops shining through my bedroom window and plants that have grown all winter in the full sun, plants about to flower, are now in the shade. The cedar elms have leafed out and transformed the landscape. I’m not as fond as cedar elms as I once was, as they are the trees that tend to fall in high winds. But this week, they are gorgeous. They leaf out a chartreuse green that deepens to a bright green. The red oaks and live oaks are leafing out too. Only the pecans are still bare.

Dateline: 2011
Spring will not be ignored. It rushes into the garden whether or not I’m there, just not in the way I would have planned it. The pink evening primroses smother the path while the areas I consider my meadow are bare. I’m not blind to the lesson.

This is the week that something new opens every day. All of spring’s bounty comes just as the yard is plunged into shade. The weather continues dry and hot. The toads and mosquitoes have returned. Temperatures rise into the 80s and the larkspur, just sending up its flower stalks, droop. The Tulipa clusiana and the Muscari racemosum have also faded quickly in the heat. A whole year of anticipation…and then they whither as they open.

If you don’t look too closely the garden is filled with swathes of Easter basket colors: yellows (Engelmann daisy and Jerusalem sage and some snapdragons that have finally recovered from the freezes); pinks (pink evening primroses, pink bluebonnets, Indian hawthorn, ‘Souvenir de la Malmaison’, ‘New Dawn’, ‘Blush Noisette’); white (bridal wreath spirea, cilantro); blues (bluebonnets, baby blue eyes, starch hyacinths) and purples (false dayflowers, Nierembergia gracilis, tradescantia, prairie verbena). There is also one jarring red, the St. Joseph’s lily.

So much needs to be done which will be left undone. Right now the garden is blooming on the strength of previous years. It really is a garden wild.

Dateline: 2008
This is the week I both look forward to and dread. On the one hand the garden finally looks like a garden. I take pleasure just walking around in it and frequently forget to do anything but just stare. On the other hand, the shade has descended which means the sun-loving flowers will soon turn sulky and I’ll soon be counting the days until fall.
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Dateline: February 2, 2008

The Anemone coronaria has sprouted adding to my anticipation of spring. This is the first year I’ve grown them.

In the days when people spent more time observing nature than television, this week marks a significant moment in the year, halfway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. Many cultures celebrate this turning point in winter as the beginning of the new year, the beginning of spring, even though for many the worst of winter is yet to come. For Christians, the end of the Christmas Season and the liturgical year is celebrated at Candlemas. Americans try to forecast the weather on Groundhog Day. The Chinese New Year (based on a combination of solar and lunar calendars) begins. And the Japanese celebrate setsubun, literally halving the season, driving evil spirits from their house while inviting good ones to stay on the eve of spring.

Anticipation of spring is running high here at Zanthan Gardens. The Spanish bluebells, Hyacinthoides hispanica, are nosing up.
I planted them to remind AJM of home. Traditionally the English have used Spanish bluebells in their gardens because they are larger than the native English bluebells of the woods. However, recent worries about non-native plants have created controversy over Spanish bluebells. I’m surprised they do so well in Texas. They’ve come back every year neither increasing much nor diminishing.

I was very excited to step out into the garden after a few cold wintry days and see the Tulipa clusiana. I was afraid that with all of the rain last summer that these species tulips had finally rotted away.
Tulipa clusiana likes hot baking summers and doesn’t require any chilling period to bloom. As such, it is the ideal tulip for Austin, where most tulips are difficult to naturalize.

I worried that last summer’s rain might have also done in the delicate triandrus daffodil “Hawera”. This is one of the few daffodils I’ve grown which has come back reliably over many many years and flowers without any chilling.

Like Yolanda Elizabet at Bliss, I’m excited to see the summer snowflakes coming up. Unlike many bulbs, they don’t mind Austin’s clay soil.

The overwintering annuals have put on lots of growth–or at least the ones that I managed to thin and replant during December have.

This is the second year I’ve grown bachelor buttons, Centaurea cyanus. In fact, these plants are from the seeds I had leftover from last year’s seed packet. I’m so pleased with their perfomance (and how easy they are to grow) that they have one a place in my permanent repertoire. Behind the bachelor buttons in this photo are the baby blue eyes, Nemophila insignis, which desperately need to be thinned.

This weekend promises to be beautiful, sunny and in the 70s. I have loads of pruning, weeding, and transplanting to do (and watering because it’s been so dry). What joy it will be to be out in the garden, though, checking over all the plants just waiting to burst forth in bloom.

Update: February 2, 2010

In some ways, Spring 2010 couldn’t be more different than Spring 2008. Then we were at the beginning of the drought and now we’ve had 5 months of cool, rainy weather and a killer freeze. All the overwintering annuals are large and plentiful and trying to bloom well ahead of schedule. Because this winter has been cloudier and cooler, this copious tender growth keeps getting nipped back by weekly freezes.

The Anemone coronaria did not survive the drought. Nor did my narcissus. But the Tulipa clusiana, Spanish bluebells, and Leucojum aestivum carry on rain or shine.

2010-02-02. Larkspur buds. The larkspur, which are usually in full bloom in April, keep sending up flower stalks that are cut down with each freeze.

While the rainy weather has allowed the self-sown annuals (including weeds) to proliferate, it has kept me from most of my gardening chores. I haven’t even sown many new packets of seeds such as the bachelor buttons yet. I have a short window of opportunity in which to sow seeds around Christmas after the leaves fall. If the weather is not encouraging or I’m too busy with the holidays, then I miss my chance before the heat sets in. Not that I won’t try anyway. This year might be a long cold spring letting us have flowers into May. Well, we can dream.