Welcome and Unwelcome Visitors

Posted on August 11, 2009 by Meredith

Yesterday I had a very pleasant time visiting with Bob of Draco Gardens and his wonderful wife Lynn. They had me cracking up with so many hilarious stories, and they ~~forced on me~~ gave me some fantail goldfish for my pond. Well, to be honest, I was out there to get fish (they have a rather plentiful population at the moment), but somehow they managed to sneak more into the bucket… they claimed it was in case one of the fish died on the way home, haha. I told them that because I didn’t actually need more, that they’d all survive, grow, and make babies for me to bring back to Draco Gardens. Sure enough they all survived! More on that in a bit…

We spent a pleasant time chatting, and we got to talking about the Texas Star Hibiscus, a plant they love and one I just happen to have growing in my pond. I told them about the buds on my hibiscus that hadn’t bloomed yet, and Bob said I’d be posting a picture in my blog as soon as they did. Well, guess what I discovered today?

Look at that gorgeous red. The species is Hibiscus coccineus, and it’s also known as Scarlet Rose Mallow and Wild Red Mallow. It’s in the same family as the Texas Rock Rose (Rose Pavonia), and it’s native to Texas.

From a distance the leaves appear straggly to me, but close up they are quite striking. Elongated, toothed, and a beautiful combination of green and ruby… It’s interesting to note that when this plant was quite small, the lowest leaves were remarkably wide and looked almost as if they belonged to a different plant.

Googling for a bit about the plant, I laughed when I read that in 2004 a Houston narcotics task force raided a landscaper’s home and held him at gunpoint because they thought the Texas Star Hibiscus growing in the man’s front yard was marijuana. This earned them a Bum Steer Award from Texas Monthly magazine — for those of you not in Texas, Bum Steer Awards are given each year to the most idiotic or ridiculous people, actions, and events of the year in Texas and sometimes nationally. Not surprisingly, the list is long (and often includes politicians).

Back to the subject at hand — yes, this photo was taken at the wrong time of day, but I had to capture a picture of the tiny spider standing guard on the flower. Can you spot him?

Here he is:

The buds on my plant are all paired. I wonder if they always appear in pairs. Even the single bloom has a bud with it, as seen in the pictures above.

While photographing the stunning plant, I realized I was being watched by our newest amphibian resident. Being ever the romantic, it’s tempting to name him Prince, but I think instead I will call him Murray, after Bill Murray, who gets slimed by Slimer the ghost in “Ghostbusters.” Why not just call him Slimer, you ask? Because that would be too obvious, of course.

I tried hard to capture a picture of the new fish, but they scooted under foliage anytime they noticed me looming above. I enjoyed watching all the fish school around together. The new fish are quite at home. We’re now up to nine fish, egads! This isn’t a great picture, but you can see one of the wee ones swimming with the “big” fish.

I am so jealous of the gorgeous dragonfly and damselfly pictures that many other garden bloggers get. Without a good zoom lens, I can’t close enough to take a picture without the little guys flying away, if they even land near me. And yet I am happy to have as many as will come eat my mosquitoes and wasps and even some of the plentiful tadpoles. I definitely have noticed a decrease in mosquitoes since having the pond, though perhaps that has more to do with the drought, lol. Maybe bats are visiting my pond at night now. One could hope! Do bats eat wasps and hornets?

Just behind it was this caterpillar-eating menace. Can’t it just eat webworms instead of my future butterflies?

And in my garden, I found this horrifying creature, the terrifying, shriek-causing, hide-all-your-plants-from Gigantic Grasshopper — one of those that are so big they don’t bother to jump at all — they just fly their clumsy fly way out of reach. I knew I was making a mistake taking a picture of it when I should have just killed it — it got away, flying to the branches of an oak tree. Which really bugged me! (pun intended)

I guess that makes mine a garden of good and evil!

Flower Anatomy

Posted on August 9, 2009 by Meredith

Ahhh, the Texas Rock Rose (Pavonia lasiopetala). Such a favorite. It’s also known as Rose Pavonia and Rose Mallow. This gorgeous perennial is native to Texas and Mexico, but it is part of a larger family that has species native to various countries. Texas Rock Rose loves limestone-filled clay soil and doesn’t mind the drought, which is good because I have plenty of both. And the little flowers really stand out against the limestone rocks of my pond and my stone house, looking like a miniature hibiscus or wild rose. But each individual part of the rock rose is as beautiful and fascinating as the rest. And as it turns out, the rock rose is a great plant to use for a lesson in flower anatomy.

Texas Rock Rose, like other flowering plants, is an angiosperm. In this case, it’s considered a short-lived flowering perennial.

Each young bud is surrounded by green bracts, or modified leaves. The long, skinny bracts start out parallel to the bud, but then open up to reveal a whorl of green wider modified leaves called sepals.

You can see that the whorl of sepals is in a group of five. The sepals form a star when they open. The rock rose shows off this star shape again and again. It’s a rock star! (Did you just groan? I heard that.)

Despite my bad joke, the fact that the flower parts are in multiples of five is actually important. This indicates that the rock rose can be classified as a eudicot, one of the groups of angiosperms.

When the bud opens, the sepals are almost flat. They remain to protect and support the flower. Being green, they also contribute to photosynthesis. Together, the whorl of sepals is called the calyx. A star-shaped calyx. 🙂

One reason I am drawn to this star theme is because Texas is known as the Lone Star State, making the star shapes in the flower very appropriate. But who can resist the way nature can produce such a perfect five-pointed star again and again?

As the sepals open, you begin to see the pink within. In this picture you can see a closed bud, an opening new bud, and an existing flower that has closed up. The rock rose flowers react to both temperature and light — they will close up in the hottest part of the day and when it is dark.

When the bud opens to reveal the flower, you can see the whorl of five pink petals. This whorl is called the corolla. Some corollas are fused, but in the rock rose, the five petals are distinct. The rock rose also only has a single whorl of petals — some other flowers have a double whorl. The calyx (sepals) and corolla (petals) together form the perianth.

The bright pink flowers help to attract pollinators to the reproductive unit of the flowers. The rock rose flower is “perfect” in terms of botany; it has both male and female parts. Plants like these are also called hermaphroditic, or bisexual. They can self-fertilize or be pollinated by insects or wind, or at my house by getting brushed up against by dogs.

It’s hard to miss the bright yellow pollen of the rock rose. But if you look closely at the pollen, you will see that the grains are clumped at the end of tiny pink filaments. The anther at the end of a filament produces the pollen. The filament and anther together form the stamen. The filaments are attached to the stamen tube, or staminal column, seen here as a white cylinder. All these parts together form the male part of the flower.

It is interesting to note that the plentiful pollen of the rock rose is sometimes gathered for its Vitamin E and other health benefits.

In the rock rose, the female structures are mostly hidden inside the staminal column. The female structures are collectively called the pistil. You can see the sticky stigmas protruding from the stamen tube. Some stigmas have little hairs on them. The stigmas are at the ends of the female tube, called a style. At the base of the style, the ovary contains the ovules, which in turn contain the female egg producers.

The pollen lands on the stigma and germinates, growing a pollen tube down the style to the ovary and ovules. The sperm travel from the pollen down the pollen tube to fertilize the eggs within the ovules. And with a number of divisions, a seed is born! In the case of the rock rose, I understand the plant is a happy seed producer, to the dismay of some gardeners. At the moment, I don’t mind if it spreads some. I have room.

In this photograph, you can see that some pollen grains have landed and adhered to a couple of stigmas.

Turning attention to the green portion of the plant, the lightly-toothed, velvety leaves of the Texas Rock Rose form an alternate pattern on the stem. I find it interesting that a single bud and leaf “stem” from the same node on the main stem.

I recently added another species of rock rose to the garden as well, Brazilian Rock Rose (Pavonia braziliensis). If it starts to gets out of control, too, I’ll give priority to the native variety. Pretty white flower, you have been warned!

The burgundy center provides quite the contrast to the white corolla. The petals are larger than that of the Texas Rock Rose, giving the corolla a more rounded appearance. From the back (see the crumpled petals in the background), the petals have a similar pink vein to that of the Texas Rock Rose.

Hey, even the burgundy forms a star shape!

Whatever the flower parts, whatever the species, the rock rose is beautiful. Dare I say, it’s a star.

Entwined

Posted on August 7, 2009 by Meredith

Entwined
© Great Stems

The darkness of night faded
I turn to the light of dawn
And gingerly I reach out

A shy and uncertain hand

Longing for love, and clinging

At the briefest hint of touch

Will I be made the fool?
My denied hopes a tangled mess

Or will the tendrils of love entwine?

For hand in hand, and more than hugs
Tenderness brings strength to heart

And hopes become wishes true

Oh, be the rock on which I stand
And I will stand proud but grounded

Be the wall upon which I lean
And I will know comfort yet stay dependent

But hold my hand and love me
And I will bloom and grow

High and higher, unbound by rooted doubts
Upon the ladder of heart’s embrace

Toward the warming sun above

And I shall be whole and happy

All because I reached, and you were there.

And love entwined.

The photos show a glimpse of my young food garden: jack-o-lantern pumpkin, cantaloupe, and sugar pumpkin vines, with images of the tendrils of crossvine and caroline jessamine mixed in. The seedlings are growing well, and they are my babies. The cantaloupes are blooming now, and the jack-o-lantern pumpkins are teasing me with buds.

A few days ago I saw my first squash vine borer moth (horror!), and the next day I went out and removed about 30 little brown eggs from my jack-o-lantern pumpkins. Hopefully I got them all. Seriously, I’m checking for eggs every day now. This task will get harder as the plants get bigger.

I’ve planted 32 corn seedlings and all are growing. Yes, that’s a lot of corn! But they all fit with this square-foot gardening.

I’ve had a few leaf-miners tunneling, but I haven’t done anything about it. As far as I know, the overall plants will be fine, though I hate to see the pretty leaves tainted with trails.

And I’ve bought seeds for my third raised bed, for fall: carrots, beans, spinach, and zucchini. Looking forward to and terrified of attempting to grow even more veggies… But having fun, too. 🙂

What’s Up, Doc?

Posted on August 5, 2009 by Meredith

I had an intruder today. Completely disrupted my garden picture-taking. WiseAcre, did you have something to do with this?

Everyone else seems to get pesky bunnies visiting their yard. Me, I usually get bugs, not Bugs Bunny.

Not even a Playboy Bunny.

Sorry, hunny-bunny!

It’s just a funny bunny!

In the sunny.

(I guess I’m a little looney, too).

Toadally Frogsome Rescues, Dude

Posted on August 3, 2009 by Meredith

Today’s post was supposed to be about my happy veggie gardens, but wildlife had other plans for me. Like our newest pond resident…

I found him peeking out at me from the dog pool. An actual frog for a change — not a toad this time! It turns out that frogs are much harder to catch than toads. He darted under the water and far away each time we came too close for his comfort. We had to lower the water level by taking the dirty water from the dog pool (we give it to our plants; it was extra high from the rain a few days ago). And then we had to be extra sneaky with a big glass bowl, which we ended up bringing up under the frog. Once he was in there, he was quite willing to pose for some pictures. Or just stay like a statue lest we eat might decide to eat him.

I decided to let him move into the pond. He was too cute to resist. Here he is on a pond rock, just before diving in. I’m not up on my amphibian species yet — is he some species of leopard frog?

But the next day I made a different decision. I went to clean the rest of the water out of the dog pond and discovered, to my horror, that the toad eggs laid by the amorous toads of three days ago had already hatched and become tadpoles. Countless tadpoles. They were swimming like mad around the remaining water in the dog pool. Well, this called for a rescue. But they were not going into MY pond, by gosh. I decided to drive them to a nearby big pond.

First we had to get them out of the dog pool. We started by getting as much water as we could safely get from the pool and carting it around to area plants. Then we finally realized that it would be much faster to just pour water through a net into buckets and separate the tadpoles into their own bucket of water. The water got particularly filthy as the water level went down. The dogs tracked in a lot of mud after our rain the other day.

As we got closer to the bottom, we found even more tadpoles — “baby” ones, haha. By the time we got all the tadpoles out, the count was in the thousands. I’m so glad we didn’t attempt to put any in our pond. There’s enough in there already! Bucket filled, let’s go!

Seatbelts on, children!

We drove over to the pond and added a little water from the big pond into the bucket to make the transition easier on the tadpoles. Then we poured them into the shallow water at the pond edge (first shooing away the minnows and other little fish that seemed to think we were there to feed them or something).

We made sure the tadpoles were swimming (not that we could have given them CPR or anything). They looked happy enough, and so were we.

So we celebrated with boba drinks. I worried that the pearls (tapioca balls) would remind me of toad eggs, and so they did. My choosing a green drink was totally (toadally) an accident, though!

See the resemblance?

We had one more good deed of the day — helping jump-start someone’s car in the parking lot. Then it was time to head back home. And the dogs are happy to have a nice clean pool that they can muddy up again.

Need Help with Weed ID

Posted on August 3, 2009 by Meredith

A little ID help needed! These aren’t my usual weeds, so I thought I better confirm that they actually are weeds before I pull them. Can anyone help me out?

This one is growing way too close to my damianita. I was pulling other weeds at the time and something seriously irritated my skin — if I’m correct it was this plant. The other ones were ones I pull all the time, like nutsedge and something with tiny white flowers. I should have taken a picture of that one, too — it crops up all over my flower beds in the backyard. Next time on that one. ~~Edit: I believe this is Nettleleaf Noseburn (~~Tragia urticifolia) — if it touches your skin, you will feel as though a dozen fire ants stung you, or a big ol’ wasp got you. It hurts! It could possibly be Betonyleaf Noseburn as well (Tragia betonicifolia~~) — in any case, it’s a noseburn!~~ Edit again: Latest report is that this is Heartleaf Noseburn (Tragia cordata). Thanks, Paul! It definitely hurts like the dickens — welts, too. Spreads underground — we’re definitely having trouble keeping it under control.

This next one started out as a two-lobed leaf, and I let it grow until it took some other shape. Now it looks like this. When it was smaller, there were a couple of suggestions about what it was, but it’s changed so I’m re-submitting!

You can see a two-lobed leaf in this other one that’s appeared nearby.

This one is similar, but the leaves are smaller and the lobes slightly different. So might be a different plant?

Thanks for all your help — I just don’t want to pull a friendly plant. Foes be gone, though!

Creature from the Black Lagoon

Posted on July 31, 2009 by Meredith

At long-last, my neighborhood got some long-needed rain. I say my neighborhood because in all honesty and selfishness, I have no idea what happened elsewhere in Austin. I was too busy out in the rain doing a little happy dance. I guess the gardening gods felt sorry for me and let the rain fall. I shall pay proper homage later.

And it was a good long rain. Long enough to give a deep watering to the trees, gardens, and scorched earth. Long enough to fill my mock rain barrels and get the toads ready for l’amour. See this massive spout of water? We’re in the process of painting and have no gutters up, so no rain barrels, but I put out two plastic bins to catch as much water as I could. They overflowed, so much water fell. Yay!

Even the entryway’s crazy-tall Japanese Yew, planted 20+ years ago by some previous owner, got some water. You can’t see much of it from this picture, because I was taking pictures of the rain!

Hey, I just now read that the Yew is quite toxic. Why am I not surprised? It seems everything I want to plant or is already here is toxic (except the key lime tree I bought today. Wheee! Oops, hubbie, ignore that. But if you don’t ignore it, blame the wee one; he insisted on getting it. It was only $20 and quite large! Key limes, honey, key limes! Just think of the money we’ll SAVE!).

So what does rain have to do with this odd title, “Creature from the Black Lagoon”? Well, I’ll tell you. It all started when I woke up at 6-something this morning and let the dogs outside. When I tried to get them to come back inside, the puppy was standing in the dog pond (a.k.a. wading pool) and not moving.

Grover wasn’t moving because, as it turns out, he was surrounded by several toads in the water. They weren’t very happy with him in there, and I guess he didn’t quite know what to do, either. I didn’t get a picture, as I decided to rescue the toads and move them toward the main pond. Here’s a picture of Grover later, with a stick he’d found.

But Grover is not the Creature from the Black Lagoon. And it turns out that two of the many toads were actually double — mating toads foolishly thinking that the dog pond was a good place to hook up. Even as I rescued the toads and helped them find their way to the crevices of the main pond rocks, those silly boy toads kept a tight grip, making the females lug them around. I could hear the toads croaking last night and this morning — I guess rain brings out toad passion. Water’s here — let’s get together, baby!

While I was outside, I realized that the waterfall in the pond had become a trickle, which meant that the pump was clogged with something. So I decided to go ahead and deal with the pond right away. The rain might have sent some tree debris into the pond. While I got ready, I grabbed the camera and caught a picture of a toad on a pond rock. All those toads aren’t Creatures from the Black Lagoon either.

If it wasn’t rain debris clogging the pump, there was a chance it was something messed up from the last time Sheba got in the pond. I’m still trying to get a good picture of this pretty dog, but she truly tries to hide from my camera. I have to be sneaky.

She might be camera-shy, but she’s not the Creature from the Black Lagoon either.

So I get in the pond and begin my work. Sure enough, the filter was slightly tilted, letting debris get in. And there was an umbrella plant that had been knocked to the bottom of pond. Amazingly it was fine and had new growth. Is it the creature? No. Nor are the snails I found (the dwarf puffer in my aquarium will be most appreciative when I feed those to him!).

Since getting in and out of the pond is an annoying chore, I decided to make the most of my time in there. I threw out any leaves and sticks I found, got sludge that had collected below the pump, trimmed the dwarf papyrus, and gathered pea gravel that had fallen out of knocked-down plants and put it back in the respective pots. While I was working, two pairs of mating toads hopped up the pond rocks and joined me in the pond. I guess mating takes priority over being scared of the human. And amazingly I didn’t drop the camera in the pond during these pictures.

The mating toads aren’t Creatures from the Black Lagoon. Nor are these toad eggs I found while working on the plants in the pond. Pretty cool — I hadn’t seen eggs before. Suddenly I realize how many eggs are probably in my pond. Hopefully it won’t affect the fish, or vice-versa! The fish aren’t the Creatures either. But they gave me little goldfish “kisses” in the pond while I worked. Hey, I can pretend they were kisses!

I continued working, even sitting down in the water to collect some hair algae that was growing in various places in the pond. It had become a problem after the last major time Sheba got in the pond, when she knocked half the plants into the depths of the pond. Lots of spilled soil and whatnot had been added to the pond, and the hair algae went wild. We added a barley block and more submerged grasses, and the pond is back on track. The hair algae? Not the Creature. But you’re getting closer.

I found lots of nasty sludge in the filter pot. I scooped much of it out with my hands and tossed it into the nearby garden bed. Some sludge is ok, but not in my filter pot. I opted not to take a picture with my nice camera while having sludge in my hand. Sludge? Not the Creature.

You can see in the second mating toad pic the dwarf papyrus I trimmed back. It’s trying to bust out of its pot now, but today wasn’t the day for me to deal with it. So I trimmed back the parts that were drooping into the water. There were a lot. The monster “dwarf” papyrus, before or after its haircut, isn’t the Creature.

Here’s the cleaned-up pond.

Hmmm, after looking at this picture, the dwarf papyrus still looks like it needs a haircut. Reminds me of my husband on our wedding day, when his hair looked exactly the same after having paid for a haircut… you know, before wedding pictures… sigh.

So the “dwarf” papyrus isn’t the creature, nor is the baby dwarf lily I decided to lower slightly into the water to let it grow taller. Not the Pink Sparkle flower, either.

I decided while I was out there to go ahead and plant the swamp milkweed I’d grown from seed, not realizing that Asclepias incarnata was actually swamp milkweed (It didn’t say it on the package! Not my fault…). As the name implies, it likes water, and I had a dilemma of figuring out where to put it, as I really didn’t want to plant something that wasn’t drought-hardy. I finally figured out that if I plant it next to the dog pond, their splashing was likely to give the plants the extra water they’d need. I already cart the dirty dog water to my plants all over the the backyard, before refilling the wading pool. It’s a pain, but I do it. Can’t waste the water and can’t leave it in long enough for mosquitoes.

Aha, Swamp Milkweed, you say — with “swamp” in the name, the milkweed has to be the Creature from the Black Lagoon. Nope, wrong again.

It’s not this bug I found on the buds of my Texas star hibiscus, which apparently likes its spot in the pond. I can’t wait to see the flowers!

It’s not any of the dragonflies that were flitting about the yard and the dog pond. I couldn’t get a good picture, they zoomed so fast; but I think they were Roseate Skimmers. The male was a gorgeous pink/fuscia. The females (if they were the same species) were brown/orange/black.

Ok, then what in the world was the Creature from the Black Lagoon in this story? ME, it was me. Picture if you will a woman wearing an old t-shirt and some old, too-short shorts (It was still just before dawn when I got in that pond! Who’d be watching?), who gets in a pond to do some maintenance. After sitting in the depths to gather sludge, hair algae, debris, gravel, and whatnot, I was rather a solid wet, gross mess from head to toe, and having the waterfall turned back on while I was in there guaranteed that more silt was churned up to collect on my clothes. Oh, but the story doesn’t stop there…

When I got out of the pond, I figured that since I was already filthy, I might as well plant the swamp milkweed in the wet soil nearby, as you know. What’s a little more mud? Nothing, until I went to the backdoor to go back into the house to take a shower. It was LOCKED. Locked by my husband, who so generously let me stay working in the pond by taking the boys to camp for me. Locked, perhaps out of habit, just before he left the house. And there I stood, now about 8:30 in the morning, looking like the Creature from the Black Lagoon. And then the realization that I was probably doomed to walk through the neighborhood looking like that to find someone to let me either call my husband or help me get into my house.

Fortunately, a spark of brilliance came to me (thank you again, gardening gods… or house gods) and I was able to get inside the house without having to show up on a neighbor’s doorstep, ring the doorbell, and <shudder>. If I hadn’t found a way inside, this story might be called “The Black Widow” instead of the “Creature from the Black Lagoon,” if you get my drift.

And no, I did NOT take a picture.

WANTED: Dead or Alive

Posted on July 29, 2009 by Meredith

This just in from the Great Stems Police Department — be on the lookout in your own garden!

Should you happen upon any of these Wanted creatures, please take appropriate action and as necessary, contact your local authorities.

Edible Aria

Posted on July 28, 2009 by Meredith

If you’d like to learn more about sustainable, healthy eating, you might want to check out Edible Aria. My friend Ren shares incredible whole, fresh recipes accompanied by beautiful photographs (I drool at every picture), and he also includes current articles about healthy eating and what’s going on in the food industry. He encourages the use of organic, local foods and having home gardens, and he shows how the use of seasonal ingredients keeps healthy eating affordable. Did I mention the delicious recipes? (I’m still drooling.) Ren tells us, “Eat as if your life depends on it.” Food for thought, eh?

Ren’s Edible Aria was recently reviewed by The Monday Campaigns, Inc., in association with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, on their site Meatless Monday as well. This site is also worth checking out — by not eating meat one day a week, you’ll not only improve your health, but you’ll reduce your carbon footprint, helping sustain our planet.

Good food. Good living. Yay, Earth.

Gardening Gods, Why Do you Forsake Me

Posted on July 24, 2009 by Meredith

Gardening is still such a mystery to me. What should work doesn’t, and what shouldn’t work does. I know there are all sorts of Murphy’s Laws when it comes to this crazy hobby. Here’s what I’ve discovered about the way gardening works. Gardening gods, why do you forsake me?!!

*Why is it that you promise yourself most determinedly that this time you will not buy any plants, and when you get to the nursery you realize that not just one, but two of your most coveted hard-to-find plants have just arrived off the truck? (here is more Dutchman’s Pipevine — the other, non-pictured is a native milkweed I rarely see)

*Why is it that you wait so long for the first monarch of the season, and when you finally see one you discover all your milkweed is covered in aphids?

*On the same note, why is it that ladybugs show up when there aren’t any aphids and leave before the ferocious onslaught of the little sap-suckers?

*Why is it that your darling dogs have an impelling need to lay on and compact any dirt you till, and another impelling need to dig up any freshly planted garden bed? (This photo, by the way, is of the naughty dog that keeps getting in the pond. She’s usually camera-shy. Don’t be fooled by her gorgeous fur. It hides an imp.)

*And why is it that your yard can have plenty of available (dog) fertilizer but you can’t use one bit of it to make compost?

*Why is it that the bag that spills in the car is not the bag of pine straw, and not even the pleasant smelling potting soil, but the compost made from cow manure?

*Why is that you set out birdfeeders for hummingbirds and cardinals and what you get instead are gluttonous, wasteful doves and predatory wasps? (Ok, really, I get them all.)

*Why is it that the pond you enjoy so much attracts, among other creatures, hornets and wasps that take a nice long, happy drink before going and killing your beloved caterpillars? (Sad note: the monarch caterpillar in the milkweed picture above, along with all its buddies, disappeared during the writing of this blog entry. Stupid, but necessary predators.)

*Why is that you attempt to sacrifice yourself to the gods for some rain by putting up a metal trellis while standing on a partially metal ladder with wire cutters and a hammer in your hand and thunder and lightning in the distance, and all you get is a few sprinkles, like a spit in the eye?

*Why is it that you don’t realize you have to stop at the grocery store on the way home until after you’ve covered yourself in stinky compost while bagging it at the nursery?

*Why is it that you buy a beautiful tree that you are determined to keep alive because it needs to shade the A/C unit and because it is replacing one that died, and it dies while the one that the dogs dug up multiple times over the winter is the one that is thriving? (Actually, three trees the dogs mostly destroyed came back and are doing well.)

*Why is it that the young trees you rarely water (including two you forgot about for weeks in your garage after the last frost) survive, but the ones you faithfully water on a recommended schedule die?

*Why is it that the plants you still haven’t managed to put mulch around are doing better than the ones you surrounded with three inches of mulch?

*Why is it that the most amazing, beautiful sights in your garden happen when your camera is nowhere near?

*Why is it that a random new seedling grows in your yard and you have to wait until it gets big to find out what it is, or whether it is friend (keeper) or foe (weed or invasive)? This one looks like a friend, I hope, but I don’t know what it is yet.

*Why is it that your son doesn’t want to work outside when it’s hot, but then when it’s cool and overcast, he still doesn’t want to work? Oh wait, I know that one.

*(from the son) Why is it that your mom always makes you work, but barely ever lets you goof around? Oh wait, I know that one. (from the Mom: clearly I just let him goof around)

*Why is it that your beautiful plants take so long to grow, but your weeds grow like… well, weeds?

*(from the other son) Why is it that every time you want to plant something, your mom doesn’t have a plant to plant? But when you don’t want to plant something, she has lots and lots.

*Why is it that you lovingly make several cost-effective environmentally-friendly thistle socks for the birdies, and the finches tear such big holes in them until the socks won’t hold any more seed, making you want to reconsider plastic? (technically these two are the brand-name socks — I’d already removed the destroyed homemade ones… I guess I better get busy making more)

*Why is it that you work so hard to create a great garden for your new veggies and then realize that you managed to let some of your herbs die in the process?

*Why is it that you can spend so much time making your outside yard beautiful and neglect your poor house plants?

*(from the husband) Why is it that dinner isn’t ready yet? Oh wait, I know that one.

Got any to add? Please share them! I have a feeling this is a non-ending list!

Author’s edit on 7/26/09: How could I forget this major one: Why is it that I finally start gardening, and Texas finds itself in the middle of perhaps its worst drought ever, with drastically reduced water availability and temperatures over 100 degrees all summer long?