A short walk in the garden

No one would be more surprised at my garden than I am. Even with all the hours and sweat and work that has gone into it, I am constantly surprised at the result.

 

When Rob came here, he was already an experienced Texas gardener.  He gave me feedback that I did not appreciate at the time.  But, it got me to study and learn to garden here, where we alternate between constant drought and intense flash flooding.  There are some things that do well in the warm wet winters and the blazing hot summers and there are some things that do not. 

The best lesson I ever learned was to stop spending all that time molly-coddling something that didn’t like it here (azaleas) and instead, spend that same amount of time on several things that were native or adapted to the weather.  And, the result is my garden.

Daylilies love it here.  They have a couple of months where they are the stars of my garden and most of them are evergreen through the freezes of winter.  It takes a lot of time to keep the dead fronds cleared from the base of the plants, but for a bloom like that, it’s well worth it. 

Here is another stand of these yellows on the other side of the yard.  Later, there will be reds and oranges and peach and even a green blossom.

These are the plants I bought to add this year.  The rest of the new plants this year are from dividing things that do well and spreading them out so that there is some color around most of the year.  The garden has to distinct microclimates and sometimes, the same plant will bloom on one side of the yard earlier than the same plant on the other side of the yard.  That adds even more variety to the garden.

A couple months ago, this was flat, frozen back, dirt.  Now, it’s lush and overgrowing the path.  I’ve had to put up fencing around some areas of the path to keep the plants back so that I can walk through the center of the garden and don’t have to just look from the outside.

That path serves another purpose, too.  I have clay soil and while I’ve amended the heck out of this garden over the years, it will still compact under any kind of weight.  So, I have the stone path to walk on and I can keep my big feet off the dirt around the plants. 

I hope your gardens are green and blooming. 

Today is my 30th anniversary with my employer.  That either shows great dedication or a serious lack of initiative.  I haven’t always done the same job.  In fact, I don’t have any idea how many different job titles and job descriptions I’ve had over that time.  I think at one point, I counted 26 different bosses who had written or contributed to my annual performance evaluations.  I’ve stood it through several reductions in force and once, I was reduced out of the force, but welcomed back in a short enough time that I kept my tenure.  The company has been family.  We’ve fought and disagreed and there have been many times I just wanted to get up and pack my stuff and walk out.  But, we also share the weight of a common burden that we all put our best effort into.  So today, I’m celebrating my ability to stick with it and not walk out when the going is tough, and the dedication it takes to say I’ve been here since before most of my co-workers were born. 

Everybody have a great Thursday.  Lane