Garden update

Our American Beautyberry is so laden with berry's that the poor branches are all droopy!

The flower beds are starting to fill in. Here's a shot of the yard from the back, left hand corner.
The newly stained pergola! It took 8 hours of sweat and resulted in a lot of sore muscles, but it was worth it in the end. When it needs restaining in 2-3 years we'll be getting someone else in to do it :)
The calla lillie's in the 'water garden' are blooming and they're lovely. We have a mixture of yellow and red ones.
Here's the blooming Texas Star Hibiscus. These guys are really loving it and have grown about 3 feet since they were planted.

The self seeded papaya is doing really well! The trunk is about 3 inches thick and it's full of fruit. They are still rock hard and I'm concerned they wont ripen before the first the frost though.
Here are my 2 melons. I am hoping they ripen up quickly too.
The winter veggies are in. Here are the cauliflower plants. The peppers (on the left) are still going strong.
The green cabbage plants are at the front, broccoli at the back. We've planted beans to grow up along the string with the onions on the left.
It seems odd to be planting winter veggies when it's still in the 90's out, but if they don't get in now they wont have enough time to get established before the frost's come. It's all a balancing act!

A visitor

So this fella paid us a visit yesterday. He seemed very comfortable on top of the fence, walked up and down a bit, looked around etc.

From my "Birds of Texas" book we have decided it's a 'Cooper's Hawk'.

How lovely :)

Is it hot?

Yes. Yes it is. For our celsius friends out there, 110.5 is basically 44C. It has been over 100 for the past week, but 110 was a new one :)

The garden is starting to suffer a little with the heat. We had rain yesterday but that was first in 3 weeks. My new Texas Star Hibiscus celebrated the rain by flowering today!! They are going great guns at the moment and have shot up 3 feet since they were planted.

The "water garden" although a little dry, is filling in nicely.

I first saw these flowers at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center (near Austin) while on a visit with English Mum and Dad. I found 2 plants locally and though they didn't look to be doing much except dying, they have come into their own lately. The flowers close at night.

So, for a while we have had a mystery plant growing in the compost bin. As many of you know, I am not very good at killing things so I let this one grow, just to see what it was. Well, when we got back from our road trip, the little plant had grown 4 feet, flowered and has fruit! After looking through every garden book we have and some extensive google research, we are the proud owners of a papaya plant!! :)
There is no hiding it from MM anymore ...

Hurricane Season 2010 - Alex

We have the first named storm - Alex - in the Gulf of Mexico. At the moment all the forcast models show it crossing land well to the south west of us between Corpus Christi and the Mexico Border.

We will not be out of the storms reach however. Predictions are for between 3-12 inches of rain with high winds.

Time to test out the new drainage and water garden we finished!

We have a pergola

So we went against the suggestion of gargoyles (thanks Canavan) for the trim on the poles and we're really happy with this less chunky version.

The furniture fits nicely underneath and the BGE finally has a permanent home!

There's still a couple of little things to be done - some work on the sprinklers (they spray all over the new patio!), some grading and maybe another flower bed. You can never have to many :D

A new garden bed

One of the conditions of the pergola permit was for us to put in plants along the fence between us our next door neighbour. Apparently it's for privacy but unless they're standing on their a/c unit, they can't be bothered by us BUT we who are we to argue!

Here are the plants I picked out. This part of the yard is a low spot and can get very very wet. After a big storm it's not unusual for it to get an inch of standing water so all these plants are "water garden" or bog garden rated and are natives for our area. They are a mix of turk's cap, louisiana iris, swamp iris, canna lily, texas star hibiscus and strawberry bush.

And let the digging begin!

And after we dug in some compost and soil, the plants went in. We've covered the beds in some mulch to help keep the weeds down and give them some definition.
The rock in between the beds is over the existing french (aggie) drain. We also moved the bird bath to this area because it wont matter if it drips water all over the place!

Fingers crossed they all survive. :D

More progress

The focus of yesterday was the electrical. We have a line going from the existing outdoor outlet, under the ground the back, left and side post. It come out there with another outlet and switch for the fan then runs up the pole and along the top to the fan. Looks pretty good :)

The forms were also done ready for the concrete. All the hard stuff is nearly done!

A pergola update

It's amazing what 2 guys can do in one day of hard work! We not only have the 4th pole in place but the beams, joists and rafters are all in place.

We're not sure about a couple of the details, like the trim pieces around the top of the posts where they meet the beams.

Any thoughts?

It has started!

We have passed our first inspection and currently have 3 poles in the ground!

It's a good start!

A Pergola

So as you may remember, when we did the pool we lost a lot of the decking/patio we had planned to the easement along the back fence and the inconvenient location of the gas line. So, we have decided to extend the patio out the left side of the house and for some extra shade, build a pergola. Well, we're not building it ourselves of course!

Over the last few months we've interviewed contractors, looked at models, checked references, filed for permits etc. As of today we have the plans approved and permits in hand.

Here's a shot from the back fence looking toward the house. The decking and pergola will come out from the existing decking into what is grass at the moment.

Here's a shot looking back up the yard. The new section will be from the existing decking toward the side fence. We have a 5 foot easement on that side.
The new decking will (hopefully) match what we have already:

We have done our due diligence. Fingers crossed it all goes to plan!

First day of summer and start of hurricane season!

So today is the official start of summer although we've been in the 90s daily for the past 2 weeks! Here is our weather station reading as of 2pm today:

The weather stations sad face tells the story - it's a warm one! Generally the hottest part of the day here is around 4pm and as you can tell from the little arrow, it's only getting hotter out there. Good thing is my clothes on the line dried within minutes!

As a reminder as to how crazy the weather can get here, we had a lightening and thunderstorm come through on Sunday night. It was pretty powerful. We had an inch of rain in about an hour and the lightening was very active. The tree below is in our neighbours front yard. It got struck and as the was so close the clap of thunder that quickly followed was deafening. I screamed like a little girl in an octive that MM believes is not human :)
The rocks are supposed to be all around the base of the tree but the lightening blew them out as it passed out of the tree.

This one strike caused us all a few problems. Our cable TV box was fried and we had to get a replacement, our neighbours lost their TV, Phone and Internet service and another neighbours lawn sprinkler control panel no longer works! All day yesterday there were service vans all over the place fixing down cable boxes!

The weather man (Yanez) is predicting an active hurricane season - let's hope he's wrong (he usually is!)

Out and About

A few weekends ago we traveled to Austin for a Big Green Egg festival - aka EggFest. The road to Austin goes by a town called Brenham, home of Blue Bell ice cream. Blue Bell is an institution here in Texas and is the ONLY ice cream to have. They do tours of the factory and have a gift shop that offers scoops for $1. We have never done the tour but have been known to take the detour for a scoop! :) My fave - blackberry cobbler ...

The EggFest was on the shores of Lake Travis and we got a great day for it - sunny but not overly humid. MM signed up to be a cook for the day so we were allocated a demonstration egg and went to work! With the help of our neighbors The Cottens, (who also made the trip to Austin for the weekend) we made about 400 tortilla scoops (the scoop filled with mexican style pinto beans, skirt steak and cheese topped with an avocado cream and pickled jalapeno) and chocolate chip-candied bacon cookies. Yes, you read right - CANDIED BACON!! :)
Here's one of the 6 batches of cookies going on. The cookies were such a hit we had to cut them into quarters to make them go around - that made around 340 samples and we had no problems getting rid of them! In fact, we had a line each time a new batch came off the grill!
It was a great day and we'll be sure to sign up to cook again next year.

Oh, and a random shot - our first strawberry of the season :)

Some random shots

So the veggie garden is really starting to take of - I'm keeping my fingers crossed that they all stay strong. Here we have a row of green beans (l) next to a row of fava or broad beans. Onions and tomatoes are in the back ground. I've left space in between to sow a second crop so we have 2 lots and different stages. Well, that's the plan :)

The grapes are no longer sticks! That's a tomato hanging in the background.

A couple of weekends ago we went to the Texas Hill Country. Yes, Texas is so flat they have a desginated "Hill" area. It also happens to be Texas wine country too so we sampled a few of the local wineries. It was not Napa, but a couple of them surprised us. Here I am with the Blue Bonnets (state flower) at one of the wineries.
We were wondering if our gecko would return this summer and here he is! He likes to hang out in the front yard and sun himself on the bench we have on the porch. Of course, this may not be the same one as last year but I like to think it is.
Mmmmm ... pizza

BGE Enhancements

So last weekend it rained so we had some time on our hands for some projects that seemed to be constantly pushed onto the back burner. One of them was building an extension bench to the BGE stand. We had all of the components, just needed to actually make it!

Here it is in the "down" position.

And da-da! In all of it's glory in the "up" position.

As you can see it really enhances the space that MM has to place cutting boards, pots, lids etc. The extension is made from the same wood as the existing table and it was lovingly stained (by me!) so it will weather to be the same colour. The brackets lock in place so there shouldn't be any accidents.

Not bad if I do say so myself :)