SWEET ALMOND BUSH NEW PLANTS

Look at Bill the truck earning his keep, ha!

We picked these up recently, they are called Sweet Almond bush...scientific name Aloysia Virgata.  Another name is Almond Verbena and another is Incense bush.  There's a reason for that.  They have an incredible scent.  Very strong but wonderful.  They bloom for months on end throughout the heat of the Summer.

I bought three as they are going to be planted along the driveway, in-between the existing purple vitex (Texas Lilac) already there.  We have four of those so we figured one in between each will make the driveway have purple and white bushes from one end to the other.  The purple flowers of the Texas Lilac look very similar to these flowers.

And hey, look at the new wheelbarrow getting a workout, ha!

They are on the porch for now (not on the railing, this was for the picture, ha).  They won't be in the ground just yet, need to mow and use the weed whacker in the areas where they will be planted and then get the auger machine to create the holes.  That will happen in a couple of weeks.

They are already in bloom, and we wish we could describe the smell.  It's sweet and kind of like honey in a way.  I have heard it described as almonds and vanilla, and I guess it does remind some people of incense, that's probably why that name stuck.  Smelling the scent on the breeze will be wonderful and they'll add some color.  That's a win/win in our book!

YESTERDAY TODAY TOMORROW SHRUB

In this dry, drought embattled time we have, let's see some flowers and remember what it can look like.

A couple of months back, we posted a picture of this plant, our "yesterday/today/tomorrow" plant (notice the green yard, ha).

It was a gift from a coworker a couple of years ago and and we've been taking care of it on the porch until we can get it planted in a special spot.  She told us she had a huge one growing in front of her house.

She found this picture to show us:

This is what the plant grew to look like in front of her house here in town.  Amazing isn't it?

We can only imagine the incredible scent it gives off when this big.  This is why we want to plant it in a special spot where it can grow big and beautiful and we can enjoy it for years to come.  It's going to have to be in a special flowerbed for sure.  In this drought though, we are not getting it in the ground when we are only available to water it once a week.  They have been hard to find in nurseries and it's come this far.

FLOWERS BEES AND BREAD

Our Vitex bushes are in full bloom and the flying critters love them and wee enjoy watching.  Bees and butterflies (tried to get a few in a picture but they didn't come out).

There are regular honey bees of course but we also love the large bees that frequent the flowers.

This is a carpenter bee...

And this is a bumblebee.  Love the fuzzy nature of these bumblebees.  They look like stuffed animals, ha!

Hope you are having a good weekend.  It's rainy on and off again.  More on that tomorrow.

Yesterday, 2nd Man made some white bread...

...and this morning we had some as toast.  It's always so good, crispy and toasty on the outside and still soft inside.  Toast with a little butter is so good.

It's almost a comfort food. 

As we post this, it's starting to rain again.  Sigh.

POINSETTIAS

My office building puts out poinsettias at the holidays every year.  They leave them sitting around and put them, in pots, into the soil of the built in planters.

Just after New Year's they toss them out.  They always say we can have them if we want them.  I've often wanted to take a few and do something with them at the farm.  I remember seeing a huge poinsettia "bush" in our old neighborhood.  I asked the homeowner about it and she said the just planted a small plant once after the holidays and it just kept growing into a full almost hedge.  Every October she covered it for 12 hours a day so that they would turn the brilliant red they are known for.  It was incredible to see next to her porch.  

Anyone ever have any luck in planting them?  Maybe this will be the year that I take them up on the offer. 

ALIEN WORLD OR JUST FLOWERS

I've taken these pictures over the last year.  I like extreme closeups because they look so unlike anything else.  Definitely something other worldly about them when seen like this.g

(remember, as with all photos on the blog, any will enlarge when you click on it)

Closeup of the flower buds on a Huisache tree...

Can't remember what plant this is but it definitely looks cool...

The center of a Passionflower...

Love this one.  So geometric and artificial looking while still being a living plant...

This one though has to be my favorite.  This is a weed (I think a thistle of some sort).  It looks like it will burst open and try to eat you at any moment.  Amazing how something in nature can look so amazing and foreboding at the same time...

ENJOY!

COLOR ON THE FARM

Even on the farm in the blazing heat of Summer, we have some color.  It's hit and miss, but it's there.

Lantana carnival

The happy multicolored lantana...

Yellow marigolds

The bright yellow of these marigolds...

Pentas

The deep red of the pentas...

Orange marigold

More marigolds this time in orange...

Texas Lilac

And this purple of the Texas lilac (vitex)...

Now we just need to multiply all this by tenfold, ha. We do have more lantana planted in the flowerbeds and a few pentas, and of course several vitex scattered around, but we need more, lots more. Next year might have to be the "year of color" at the farm.  

For now, we'll take what we can get!

DOG DAYS HAVE ARRIVED

Dog Days of Summer that is.  Tomorrow is August 1st and it's here.  The heat. It's literally the best we can do to just try to keep everything alive.  

Lots of water.  

Plants AND us.

These are some of the plants on the porch that we need to plant in the ground but it's just too hot to attempt that now (including the pecan tree).  

They will have to wait until the Fall.

Here is yesterday (Sunday) at about 3pm.  With humidity it felt like 118 degrees.  Needless to say, we didn't even go out to the farm. Saturday was just all I could do to get anything productive done. 

Lemongrass and Lantana

The flowerbeds are hanging in there.  These are the recently planted (recently meaning early June) lemongrass and lantana.  We really want them to make it.  The lantana does so well in our climate and the lemongrass, well, we just want some to use and once it's established here, it does well. I found two of the smallest size plants and have been keeping them well watered and they are making it and growing 

Texas Lantana

This is a lantana that we thought was dead last year after it was overlooked in a pile of container plants that had died and we were throwing out.  A little sprig came back and I figured, why not plant it and see what happens.  It's getting large, can't wait for it to fill up that end of the bed. Lantana does so well here, we might just have to have it all over the property. Thankfully it comes in lots of colors.  

Next season might just have to be the season of planting lantana!

Flowerbeds

Speaking of, these were planted as very small plants back in June. Two lantana and one penta per bed. They are doing great.  I soak them twice when we're there...once when I get there and then once again when it's time to leave.  So far, they are growing and doing well between watering times.

As for the garden, the two eggplants are covered in blooms and setting more fruit. I didn't think they liked the heat but apparently they do, for now anyway.  Maybe even they have a limit, ha. 

Okra dying

The okra on the other hand, is a different story.  Here it is.  Ugh.  This time last year, our okra was so tall I couldn't reach the top of it.  Almost looks like something has eaten it but I looked everywhere and didn't find anything.  Oh well, I think 2nd Man is tired of okra anyway. I'm a good Southern boy, I can't get enough but I can wait till next year I suppose.  

Jalapeños and eggplants

Here's the harvest for this week.  More jalapeños and a couple of nice eggplants. 2nd Man is going to make some jalapeño cheddar bread so we'll use some of these for that.  

'Tis the season...to stay inside where it's cool!

FLOWER PRESS TRASH TO TREASURE FIND

Regular readers know that I have a new favorite place to look for bargains...our downstairs trash area!  Our building has trash chutes on every floor and they feed into a separate room, but for boxes and other things that people can't put in the chute, there is an area (indoor) near the loading dock, for people to put things they don't want.  I've found several cool items so far.

And here's another.  I love that some people just sit items at the side so they don't get lost to the trash forever.  Case in point, this was leaning up against the dumpster in the building's loading bay.  I knew immediately what it was and snatched it up.*

*(cue 2nd Man eye roll)

Flower press

A flower press! 

And from the looks of it, probably homemade. It still had some cardboard in it and even paper towels between sheets of paper and thinner cardboard.  I was hoping there might be some flowers still inside but alas, they were all gone.  

Homemade flower press

One thing about it, the bolts that screw down to tighten it (and create the "press" effect) stop before it's squashed down very far.  I'm guessing that maybe there are a few missing pieces of thicker cardboard?  Or maybe the thickness of flowers adds to that as well?  

We have so many wildflowers around the farm pretty much all times of the year, and a bunch more are planted or about to be planted, I'd really love to get into that.  And I'd love to decorate the top to make it more of "our own".

Anyone ever used a flower press?

Any tips/advice?  

FRONT FLOWERBEDS DONE

Well, they are done, except for planting!  But hey, that's the fun part!  So at the risk of boring you, here are some before and after pictures.  It was a lot of work but I enjoy sharing the fruits of that hard work.

This is the water faucet area.  It was a mess.  First, I cleaned it all out and then put down (missed the picture) the same weedblock fabric that we have in the garden.  

After I did that, I filled it up with gravel.  Actually, after this photo was taken, I added four more bags of gravel.  It's the medium size gravel, in between pea-size and large.  We wanted it to be easy to step on as we hook up hoses and such but not so small that it washes out easily.  This was the perfect in-between size gravel (and it's SO pretty when it's wet).

Notice, the faucet is not centered in the flowerbed.  We could have started the next section with an even space on each side of the pipe but we needed space for the hose.  We ordered one of those hose reel things that let you put the hose inside and then roll it up via a crank on the side.  Will have that next weekend and get it all nice and neat with the hose.

You can see the edge of the water faucet area with the gravel in this picture.  Once I placed the end piece for that area, it was time to move onto the next section.  So above is before...

...here it is with the cardboard down...

...and finally filled with soil.  Ready to plant!  I snapped this pic after I was finished with all of it, you can see a sneak preview of the last section already finished in this photo.  But before that, here it is...

Flowerbed before

...the last section before I started working on it.  Oh, that hose there?  I ran over it with the mower last season and thanks to all of you, I saved it so that I can use it for the fruit trees to prevent bark/trunk damage when they get a bit bigger.  

I put down more cardboard (lather/rinse/repeat, LOL), cut the timbers and put them down and in place.  All that was left to do was to fill it up with soil.

Flowerbed after

Pretty!  Since the timbers are in 8' lengths, I just worked in 8' sections.  Instead of having one long, never-ending flowerbed from one end to the other (which could get unwieldy), we opted for smaller 4' cross sections dividing up each flowerbed.  That will let us have different things in different sections.

Front flowerbeds

Here is a photo taken while standing on the porch stairs looking toward the end.  The part in the foreground is also 8', it's the one I blogged about HERE a couple of weeks ago, so lots of space there too.  Total length from edge of stairs to the other end is 32 feet (four 8' sections).     

Oh how I love clean, freshly filled flowerbeds.  They have so much potential!  We'll start with smaller plants so they can grow and get established.  I did have a few salvia I put in the first flowerbed, we'll see how they do.  We'd like drought tolerant plants and flowers, maybe a mix of perennials and annuals.  

Time to go back and look at some "Inspiration Thursday" pictures from the past!  

ONE MORE FLOWERBED READY

This is on the other side of the front porch stairs.  

Flowerbed before

You can see, it was an overgrown mess.  That's what happens when we just put stuff there and then don't get to it over the Fall and Winter.  Several of the plants we put there in containers were lost in the January freeze.  

So the first thing I did was take everything out, threw away what was dead, then I cleared out as much of the weeds and grass as possible and put down cardboard (missed that picture).  

Flowerbed after

I put in extra timbers, along the front and rear, and locked them in place with the rebar.  We had another Vitex tree (like on the other side of the stairs in the corner bed) and I put it in the ground so that we'll have the same bush on each side and we'll keep it pruned to bush size (purple flowers).  The last thing to do was to fill it all up with soil and there are several bags in here.  Since we had a couple of marigolds left over, I put them in too.  The rest is empty for now.  

Our main goal is to get them built and filled with soil now so they are ready for plantings.  Then we can buy small plants and/or seeds later and let them fill in.

It's hard to tell in this picture but this bed stops about 18" from the water faucet/main water valve shut off to the house.  The timbers will ultimately run the full length of the front of the house including the water faucet area but the soil parts of the bed will stop and start on each side of the faucet.  My next project will be to keep going and get the faucet area cleaned up and filled with gravel, then start on the flowerbeds further down from there.  

It just time and labor, right?  

Now if the weather will just cooperate!

GARDEN FLOWER BEDS DONE

One of the big projects for the weekend was to get the flowerbeds in front of the garden finally finished.  These are the flowerbeds that I set up and put cardboard down last year but...

...this is what they looked like after not being able to get to them before Winter set in.  The fruit trees took up time and then the garden and, well, they fell into a state of disrepair, as you can see above.

It took a good hour per bed but I got the soil all turned, the timbers back in place, the steel rebar put in to lock them in place, loaded them up with fresh soil, leveled it all out and they were ready...

...for flowers! For now, we have planted marigolds, Mexican heather, pincushion flowers, and salvia.  

I had to do the same thing on the other side of the gate, here it is after getting the timbers all fixed and the soil added.  I planted the same flowers in this one.

I put the marigolds next to the gate entrance so we'll see happy colors right there.  Plus they can be rotated in and out with other annuals more easily.

We're going to have a knockout rose in the middle of each bed too.  You can see it in the photo above.  I didn't plant them this weekend because I need a bit more soil to put around them after I dig the holes (they are larger than the smaller flowers we bought).  We didn't locate them at either end of the flowerbeds because I don't want thorns by the gate as I go in and out, and at the other end I will pass by on the mower and don't need them there either.  So we figured one in the middle of each would be pretty.

You can see how much space we have with the two beds.  I'm going to fill in some empty spots with lemongrass and rosemary, so that we'll have a bit more herbs at our disposal.

Corner flowerbed

And as a bonus, I also fixed up this bed again.  You may remember when we fixed it up last year.  Alas, the freeze killed everything in there except a little piece of the lavender, which is coming back now (YAY!) and of course the large Texas Lilac (Vitex) next to the stairs.  So I pulled timbers out, stacked them back together, straightened up the birdbath (still need to clean the inside), pruned the Vitex, and then planted some marigolds around the perimeter.  

We also decided to stick in a couple of mint plants.  Spearmint and Peppermint.  Yes, we know they are invasive, but we're OK with this bed being taken over by mint.  It will look pretty and lush, we'll still have the pops of color with the marigolds and as a nice bonus, fresh mint right by the stairs to the porch.

I also worked in the garden, more on that tomorrow!

TUESDAY MORNING UPDATE:  Our building had sporadic Internet last night so I was unable to finish the post on the garden.  I got the pictures loaded but then we only had intermittent connections.  So I guess that update is coming Wednesday!

Thanks for the comments and the birthday wishes.  Yep,  yesterday was my birthday but I seem to post about it every year, thought I'd take a year off of doing that, ha.  But thanks for the birthday wishes!

Check back tomorrow!