My Corner of Katy

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Record Setting Bloom At Wit's End

on May 02, 2010

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It's Fall Bulb Season in Texas: Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day, September 2019

Long time no blog ... six months to be exact. It's not like I've got a shortage of gardening ruminations, laments, rants and celebrations to share. If I actually blogged, or even posted on Instagram and/or Facebook as often as I think about doing so, I hope a few kindred spirits would welcome my thoughts just as I welcome theirs. I make no promises but today's post is a start. The summer weather on my corner of Katy does have a lot to do with my lack of enthusiasm for ... well, just about everything. The last 3 summers, I've made trips to England in mid- to late June, visiting gardens in the Cotswolds, Yorkshire and East Anglia. I return from those trips with a renewed passion for gardening, which is quickly dashed by the realities of gardening in south central Texas versus the British Isles. I arrived back home on July 3rd this year, just as the temperatures headed into the mid- to high 90s, where they have stayed ever since. Rain fell on July 4th and for the n...

Absobloominlutely January: Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day, January 2019

On the first Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day of 2019, take a walk around the gardens on my corner of Katy with me ... watch your step, there are plants everywhere, even in the paths ... and ignore those leaves in the front gardens if you would. The oak trees haven't finished shedding yet and it's an exercise in futility to even attempt to keep up with their removal from the beds until the trees are mostly bare. We do our best to keep the sidewalk and curbs clear: the latter are especially important since we don't want those leaves clogging our storm drains and increasing the likelihood of flooding. The corner bed below has undergone some changes in recent months, with large flagstones added to give The Head Gardener room to move and work around the plants. Fewer plants, both desirable and undesirable, make for less work. The HG and I are 22 years older than we were when we started this garden ... how did that happen? The corner bed is the most colorful spot in th...

Coming to Terms With Composting

I think of myself as having become a gardener when I moved to this corner of Katy but I started taking the first tentative steps at my old house a few blocks away. My neighbors George and Billie were my first mentors. George tended the vegetable garden, which was bountiful, but it was Billie's flowers which captured my heart and imagination. The first seeds I sowed, Abelmoschus, were given to me by Billie. They also introduced me to composting: behind their garage, George had built a rectangular wooden bin into which they tossed their kitchen scraps and yard waste. I was so taken with that bin that I had George build one for me ... that may have been the first thing he ever built for me. It certainly wasn't the last: the bookshelves to the right of my desk were handcrafted by George in his garage. George was a foreman for one of the homebuilders in this neighborhood and his carpentry skills were superb. When we moved from that house to this corner of Katy, I brought the...

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