News From Hades, TX...

Greg grows the spice...well, he orders the onions and plants the pepper starts, then I do the rest...but once they're on the counter, he usually does the cooking.  I'm more one for eating raw.  One guess as to what he's making for dinner?

 That's right...Texas Chili, all from the garden...and some prime organic beef as well!

 I was looking for something to share for Wordless Wednesday when I discovered these Siamese twins.

 Yesterday was the hottest day on record for Austin in the month of June, 108...this is what it looks like this morning.

And this is a little Russian cup my sister-in-law sent me, it was an elephant but when the Elm dropped a branch, it lost it's trunk...so it's become a butterfly feeder.  Please don't forget our pollinators and animal friends in this horrid weather...refill your bird baths daily!
Tonight's speaker at CAMN is Michael Warriner and he has this to say about the talk: “Despite their critical roles in agriculture and natural ecosystems, bumblebees have gone relatively unstudied in Texas.  The last published review of species in the state was in 1912, 100 years ago.  There is a real need to evaluate the status of these insects in our state to assess how their populations are faring and if conservation actions are needed.”

CAMN meetings are open to the public and begin at 7pm at the Nature and Science Center at Zilker Park.

Happy Gardening!

Beautifying Crestview...Firestation #16

8am Saturday and we're all up and ready to work on the Fire station! This is the best of possible ripple effect scenarios. Emily Wilson, my friend and neighbor, was my first client, ever. She lives on Cullen street and she wanted a "cottage garden like my grandma's." How fun is that? I drew it, she built it, it's in and she loves it but she didn't stop there.

That was just the start. Last year she coupled with another client, Hedrich Michaelsen to form FOBP, Friends of Brentwood Park, our neighborhood park. She pulled me in to help with the design, and I volunteer of course, but she and Hedrich do the grant writing, organization, newsletter writing and volunteer round-up.
She didn't stop there.

She lives a few houses down from Crestview Fire Station #16...our neighborhood Fire Station.

I've wanted to do something with the Fire Station since I moved here...but simply never got around to it. When she called a few months ago and asked if I would do the design, it wasn't even a whole second before I said, or rather shouted into the phone YES!

She's a fabulous organizer, I'm not and I get to do what I love...design. We're going to turn it into a Wild Life Habitat, but also install several beds for the guys to do square foot gardening!

We had a few meetings about the logistics, she did all the phone and foot work, and today was the day!

Volunteers from both Crestview and Brentwood neighborhoods showed up along with a few Habitat Stewards and CAMN members...around 15 folks in all!

We covered the hell strips with cardboard and layered about 4-5 inches of free mulch from Asplundh. The city dumped around 2 cubic yards of dillo dirt, and that was spread over the lawn and around the base of the existing trees, after we pulled up the grass.

I'd say we got about 1/2 of the hell strip done before we ran out of material but we still had an extra 20 minutes of our original 3 hour time slot.

Here are a few volunteers taking a break beneath one of the huge Pecan trees.

That's Emily on the rope there, when it was finished several folks took a turn climbing the rope for fun...one, two, three!

Go Mark!

This isn't the whole bunch 'cause a few folks had to cut out a little early but most of us stayed through 'til the end! I'm never sure what or why anyone gets a spark and runs with it, but image a world full of people who want to make it a better place....hmmmm.

If you would like to donate time, money or supplies to either FOBP or the Crestview Fire Station #16 Wild Life Habitat project you can e-mail me at greengardener@grandecom.net or Emily Wilson at pamelagrierrocks@yahoo.com

There will be several workdays before we plant in the fall and we'd love to have you come help!

Happy Gardening!

CBC Update

I've been meaning to post about the various projects at the Crestview Baptist Church, my neighbor across the street for sometime now. If you scroll down to the bottom of this blog you'll see a variety of short snippets in the left column and lots of photos cataloging various beginnings of earth related projects chronicling the last 2 years. Two of these projects continue. The first was a collaboration with Tree Folks, my neighbors and friends on Dartmouth Ave and the CBC. We planted 17 trees two years ago this November. Of the original planting, 15 trees made it through the hottest summer and coldest winter since the 50's...which I think is wonderful. The other is the Rose Garden seen below, on Earth Day 2009, two months after we put in 9 Martha Gonzales Roses, and the day we installed the Solitary Bee Habitat and two Cecille Bruenner climbers on Melvin's Pergola.

They don't look to shabby for 2 month old roses!


And here are the two climbers and the bee-box.

Melvin loves concrete...you should see his backyard. Anyway, the sign appeared without a word...I called him when I saw it, at that time...I don't think he knew my name yet.

Here is a view looking up Dartmouth...the trees are doing great! The grass that we'd removed came back, it was St. Augustine in full sun! Bermuda has taken over...not what I'd planned, but what can you do? Bermuda is hardy and I'm stunned that it grew over 8 cubic yards of Davey's Mulch...which really isn't mulch, but super rough wood chips.

On Valentines Day 2010, the rose garden was merely 1 year old. If you're not convinced that location and proper planting make all the difference in the world...you should see my puny Martha Gonzales planted the same day, which is almost exactly half the size. What the church has that my yard does not, is space and full sun...two main ingredients to successful roses.

The roses cover the wall, are stunning and in 2 years time should cover the pergola. I haven't seen Melvin in months, they got a new "fire and brimstone" preacher since the projects of '08 and'09 and that seems to make all the difference, there. All relationships ebb and flow, and the CBC has been my neighbor for nearly 14 years. Right now, they've let all the plantings that Melvin and I did in the parking lot for last years Earth Day die, but the Martin box remains. We (Regine and I) continue to try and explain what is a plant and what is a weed to the ground crew, who weekly whack down flowers that we've been trying to establish on the space between the sidewalk and street. But, the roses thrive, and the trees are taking root. By the time the children born on our block in the last two years are grown, our street will be lined with fruit and flowers and Mother Nature will have the last word.

Happy Gardening,

and thank you to all the wonderful people who helped with these projects!

What's Going on at Hornsby Bend?

Last Saturday morning, my friend Patty, a fellow Master Naturalist and I went out to Hornsby Bend to check things out. It was the official Audubon's Monthly Bird Survey, which is a serious event and we wanted to take it easy, look at the plants, the bugs and all the other critters as well...so we did.

This guy was sunning himself in the middle of the road. I took a million pictures trying to get him with his tongue out but my camera has too much of a delay.

The understory was peppered with sunlight exposing yards of Baby Blue Eyes.

The yellow flower, gorgeous as it is and is blooming all over town on roadsides is "Bastard Cabbage," and I can't find the purple flower in the wildflower guide...anyone know this?

We were marveling at the American Coot not 20 minutes before we found this guy on the side of the road. The feet are beautiful, iridescent green and black with a snakeskin texture.

At one point we were wondering through the wildflowers, some several feet over our heads...like the Queen Anne's Lace, when we disturbed a group of Dragon Flies...this handsome fellow was brave enough to let me hone in on him!

Philadelphia Fleabane

The description in the Wildflowers of Texas guide describes threadlike petals...yea, you could say that.

Sweet Baby Blue Eyes up close.

More of the forest floor and the Baby Blue Eyes.

and still more...it was really magical in a way that my little digital camera just isn't able to capture.

The green house is a settling pond with a carpet of duckweed. The acoustics in this place are eerie, like a scene for a murder. The frogs, spiders, birds and bats love it!

I wonder what traveled this way?

The sweet face of the Day Lilly...a favorite food of my chickens and rabbits.

Wolf Spider on the edge of the pond. It was an easier day than the serious bird count and we got to geek out on the plants and critters and thoroughly enjoyed this perfect Texas Spring! Thanks for coming along!

Happy Birding!

Nandina? Way Out Here with the Mushrooms?

Early last Sunday morning Christopher Fritel, Patty Collier and I set out to take part in one of the many CAMN activities and, in my opinion one of the most fun and that is Invasive Specie Removal. It may not sound like fun to you, but being out on pristine protected land where natural wonders appear at every turn, is my cuppa-cuppa...essentially I feel like a kid all over, exploring the woods only this time with a real mission. Christopher is our guide. He has attended all of the training classes and has the GPS to track and record our findings, and he knows the combination to the locks making him also, the proverbial gate keeper.

Christopher and Patty leading the way.
You must have permission to be on the land, and you want to make sure you do that because on other tracks of the Balconies Canyon land Preserve (BCP) this weekend they were wild hog hunting.

Small Palafoxia (Palafoxia callosa) In bloom alongside the road was glowing in the morning light.

Corn on the ground just inside the hog pens.

You can see the tracks in the soft mud leading into the trap. They disperse the corn all around and the trip lines are actually quite a distance from the gate so that when it's triggered, the hogs can't get out before the door shuts. We found tracks throughout the morning that were fresh, but didn't see or hear them...or the hunters for that matter.

We hiked in about 20 minutes before finding the plot of land that Christopher has been clearing for some time now.

He's showing me here where we are, and half way across the map, where we were going to Track AA.

The forest floor was cover in moss and flowers, the sunlight playing on the insects made it seem like a faerie world.

Mushrooms and various fungi were everywhere. I searched for a name for this beauty and was getting frustrated until the same name kept popping up: Tom Volk, a mycologist and professor from Wisconsin. It seems that mushroom identification is one of the most difficult endeavors...considering there are over 70,000 species and more are being discovered all the time. What I wanted to know though, he had neatly written in a list of 10. Here are the 10 edible mushrooms...according to Dr. Volk:

Morchella esculenta ("morel") -- This unusual pitted grayish to yellow mushroom is many people's favorite collectable edible. It is one of the harbingers of spring and is usually found in May to very early June. A good place to look for them is near dead or dying elms.
Grifola frondosa ("hen of the woods") -- This delicious edible typically grows at the bases of oak trees where it forms large clumps resembling the many-layered feathers of a hen. The ``feathers'' are usually grayish-brown with white pores underneath.
Agaricus campestris* ("meadow mushroom") -- This is a wild relative of the common white mushroom found in stores. It can be recognized by its ring and its free gills which are pink when young darkening to chocolate brown in age. It is a firm, meaty mushroom with a white to brown, smooth to fibrillose cap. Typically, it grows in grass and the large smooth caps can often be seen poking out of the ground in yards or along curbs.
Cantharellus cibarius* ("chanterelle") -- This is a golden-colored mushroom with a flat to sunken cap and blunt ridges rather than gills running down the stalk. The odor is distinctive and mellow fruity, somewhat similar to apricots. Chanterelles frequently start to fruit in July.
Coprinus comatus* ("shaggy mane") -- This is one of the distinctive ``inky-cap'' mushrooms whose gills and flesh darken and dissolve into an inky-black mess. Before this happens, though, it is a beautiful white mushroom with shaggy upturned scales. It is commonly found in grassy areas in the fall.
Pleurotus ostreatus* ("oyster mushroom") This is a large, fan-shaped, moist, whitish to tan mushroom with little or no stalk. The widely-spaced gills jutting straight out from high up on a tree trunk often make this mushroom a beautiful spectacle.
Hydnum repandum* ("sweet tooth") -- This is a firm, compact tooth fungus with a buff to orange cap that is often flat-topped and with paler white to yellowish teeth.
Hericium coralloides* ("bear's head tooth") -- This is also a tooth fungus, but does not have the usual stem-cap form. Rather its teeth hang from a cluster of white fleshy branches. It grows on decaying wood.
Leccinum insigne/aurantiacum *("scaber stalk") -- These are pored, bolete-type mushrooms with orange-brown to reddish-brown caps and dark projections or scabers on the stem. They are usually associated with aspen or birch trees and are quite common. A related species which is also edible is the light gray-brown-capped L. scabrum.
Flammulina velutipes* ("velvet foot" or "velvet stem") -- This is a small firm mushroom that grows in clumps on wood. It is noted for its sticky reddish-yellow cap and dark-brown velvety stem and for the fact that it often can be collected even in cold weather when there are no other edible mushrooms around.

Now to find images and learn them...and hunt them...and find them...and eat them! I love mushrooms!

This may be hard to see, but if you look closely the barbed wire is stretching some 12-18 feet up through the tree. It must have been a sapling when the fence was first erected.

I've had a hard time trying to identify this fungus, what I've learned is that it's a shelf-fungi and that fungi grow in a range of organic material - soil, live trees, dead trees, and scat. The fungi that grow in coniferous trees differ from those growing in deciduous trees. Saprotrophic fungi feed on dead organic matter. Parasitic fungi feed on living organisms and I can't remember if I even looked up when I took this picture. There was so much more going on down below and this was only about a foot from the ground.

This is a fungi growing out of a nurse log. That's just a dead log or a wound in a tree where decay has started and some fungi have taken advantage of the location.

I had some of these pop up in my garden after applying mulch this fall, I love to catch the sunlight through the gills.

Turkey Tail (Trametes versicolor) which is a bracket fungi which is another name for fungi that grow off of a tree or log. The portion you see of this type of fungi is like the "flower" while most of the tissue, or tail extends into the host. Turkey Tails grow from May to December and can last several years. They are also known to grow from wounds in trees, mostly oaks.

This bumpy dry...mushroom? Was growing out of the rock in the road.

Well...Patty and Christopher found 5 Nandina domestica and 3 Pyracantha coccinea...I managed to walk away with some cool photos of mushrooms and some rusty stuff that may find its way into some yard art soon. It's amazing to me that stores like Home Depot and Lowe's are allowed to sell plants that are taking the resources from the land, creating a dense growth the sun cannot penetrate, crowding out natives while altering habitats.
It was shocking to find so many Nandina thriving on the forest floor. I have two area's in my yard that I still need to remove, but until I plan out the removal and replacement I cut off the berries and throw them in the trash. They are a beautiful plant, especially now when the new growth creates a soft burnt orange umbrella above the rest of the plant and the red berries are very cheerful. I used to cut them and display them indoors...now they just look evil.

Christopher is super dedicated, as is Patty but we took the rest of the day off. After lunch Christopher got with two other volunteers and went out again. When I see baby Nandina anywhere, I do a double take and yank it out...the problem with that is that no-one knows about it, therefore funds for such projects as Specie Removal don't get the benefit...and the biologists don't have true accuracy with citizen volunteers collecting data. There in lies the dilemma, to yank or not to yank? What do you think?

Happy Gardening