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3.30.03 Spring is here!

April 18, 2003:. 86°, hazy

Yesterday marked the third year in the row that the nigella have sprouted and bloomed by reseeding themselves. These started with seeds gathered from Nancy Turner's garden many years ago. They do well here, but I don't see them in any other gardens. Maybe they're my little secret!

April 14, 2003:. 85°, sunny

Today was our first big go-live date at work, meaning we worked on-and-off this weekend into last night and then had an unusually quiet Monday. Both of these facts mean that I postponed my taxes until today, leaving early just in case. I luckily got them done by 6:30, and could spend the remaining daylight (yay, DST!) planting some dianthus, cosmos and basil in my sidewalk bed. This is my third spring here, which means that I can start dividing things and moving volunteers to fill new beds. I moved a daylily, a rainlily, and several verbena bonariensis volunteers. I bought the latter after admiring it at Longwood Gardens many years ago. There it grew to about three feet, here it grows to about 7! Maybe I need to put it in really bad dirt...

Even though we have moved into phase 2 of our project at work, I am going to try to leave at 6 every day for the next couple of weeks to work on the garden. I want to move some of the agapantha babies and some of the unknown bulbs that are leftover from the previous house. I think they have just gotten buried too deep, and will bloom if moved.

I spooked the mama dove yesterday, which spooked the baby (turns out there was just one) as well, right down to the ground. A quick call to the bird lady encouraged me to try putting it back in the nest just in case it wasn't ready to fly. I tried, but it flew away. The mother watched it all day in the neighbors' yard. I hope it is okay!

April 11, 2003:. 74°, sunny

A dove built a nest in our arbor, and when I walked under it this morning I noticed it was full of larger-than-expected birds! I am glad she was successful this year because I think she is the one who tried a nest in the senna tree last year only to have high winds destroy it and the eggs. The arbor was a much better choice.

Some of my mums have started to bloom. They usually bloom in both the spring and the fall here.

I planted some basil 'Valentino' in my new sidewalk bed. I highly recommend this variety. It has very large, curly leaves. It's quite pretty, and looks like it will produce a lot of pesto.

March 30, 2003:. 75°, sunny

This is the best time for gardens in Houston. The bulbs continue to bloom, the azaleas are past their peak but some are still showing color, and it's bluebonnet time! Ed and I went for a drive up to Washington-on-Brazos today to look at them. We also saw Indian paintbrush, pink primroses, verbena, coreopsis, baby blue eyes, spiderwort and mustard.

Two weeks ago I dug a new herb garden in the front yard next to the fence. Today I started what will be a long project, putting beds in between the sidewalk and the street. This project will be long not only because of the labor required, but because of the cost of the plants it will take to fill that area, which we actually don't even own. I will be moving some things from other beds out there, though, because some beds are overcrowded.

I started using the 'purchases' page. So far it only has yesterday's purchases. Also, it hasn't been formatted - it's sharing the front page formatting, and rather badly at that. But I'll work on it.

By the way, we almost had a frost last night. I checked bright and early this morning, and it was 34 degrees!

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