| Today it is back to reality after the wonderful evening spent at the Willow Ball at Willow Manor. Nevertheless, I am happy to be back in my yard reinventing it after the wildfires did their damage on Sept 4-6. It is a real challenge.  |
| Dead ivy around the pine tree |
After a terrible summer and drought to beat all droughts
in central Texas and after over 3 weeks without
any water, the ivy bit the dust.
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| Removing the cross-ties that surrounded the pine |
The railroad cross-ties are waiting to go to the
final resting place of all cross-ties.
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| Rebuilding with interlocking stones |
Our neighbor, Jim, is rebuilding the retaining wall
with salvaged stones from his parents yard.
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| Rebuilding in process |
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| Removing the ivy |
It was really hard work to remove the dead ivy.
Some of the roots were huge.
This ivy had been there for 20 years.
Adios English ivy you served your purpose well.
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| Sweet potato vine planted |
The G-man wanted to try sweet potato vine around the tree.
It may last over the winter if we don't get too many freezes.
It's fast growing and inexpensive to replace if it dies.
Pretty pale green.
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| More plants from a weekend sale & a trip to Austin. |
Lowe's was having an unannounced weekend sale on plants.
Some were 75% off and the rest were 50% off.
Not sure why they did this, but the reason may have been two-fold;
one to have a year-end sale;
two to help out folks who lost most of our
plants from fire, heat, and weeks of being without water.
Thank you Lowe's.
My friend BJ & I went to Austin on Tuesday to the
Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center to get ideas.
Then we went to the Natural Gardner and bought
things for home.
My favorite is the purple aster; I bought 4 to replace
the one that burned in the fire.
This will be a continuing saga for some time to come.
This will be a continuing saga for some time to come.
11 comments:
I have English ivy along the little creek in my back yard. I'm encouraging it to grow further into the yard. (I'm all about ground cover and less mowing!) But the neighbor's grape vine has just taken over and I have been pulling that out of my ivy and trees.
Is this sweet potato vine a good ground cover, and I wonder if it would do well in this part of the country??
i love your drive to get back to how it was before.
take care!
JJRod'z
Thanks for your visit to Textilosophy. That pulled out ivy is a basket-weavers dream! People often looked suprised if I look at their discarded pruning or weeding and ask for some for that purpose.
From a neighbour's date palm leavings once I returned to them a hand-woven basket and they were thrilled.
Your garden efforts look beautiful.
lizzy - i wish i could stand right in front of you and tell you how in awe i am of your work. i know just how hard it is to turn something like a garden around and you have so very achieved that!!! steven
Your work looks great Lizzy/Cheryl...
Doesn't green make a difference to how you feel?
Happy days
Rick, sweet potato vine is good ground cover here. Lots of folks are using it. The leaves are varying colors: dark green, light green, & a deep reddish color. As for grass, we are attempting to reduce the size of our mowing area. We need to replace the St. Augustine grass with something more drought tolerant like Buffalo or Zoysia or a mix for this area.
JJ, my drive is just about to kill me! We are going to my husband's 55th class reunion this weekend so for 3 days I'll be away from this and can recuperate.
Pam, it was nice to visit you once again. As I was tossing those vines & roots I too was contemplating the making of a basket. I have done that in the past, but I think it's too much to tackle right now.
Steven, I am so humbled to read your words. Hopefully we can turn this blighted land into something pretty. If we can get some normal rainfall Nature will take care of a lot of this and I won't have to work so hard.
Delwyn, green is wonderful!!! One sometimes takes the green for granted until once day a fireball rolls through and turns it all brown and black. I'm so trying to get a bit of green back into our lives.
Thank you all for stopping by to see my progress. Monday I'll tackle it again.
Happy planting, Cheryl!
So glad to see the new plants and greenery rising from those ashes! It was so sad to see the empty holes where the tree trunks had been, in your earlier post..
It is way too cold to plant anything in Canada. Frosty times are close at hand. The nice thing about living in Texas is not having to worry about frost as much as we do. Plants always add beauty and peacefulness to a landscape. It is wonderful you are able to put plants in now. Enjoy the simple gifts of the season, dear Cheryl.
Linda, I totally agree with you about enjoying the simple things. If we went around looking and expecting the big things to make our lives enjoyable we would be sorely disappointed.
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