Oleanders
Growing outside her door
Soon they’re gonna be in bloom up in Annandale
I can’t stand her
Doing what she did before
Living like a gypsy queen in a fairy tale
My Old School
Steely Dan
Well, at my back door, the oleander has yet to bloom. It’s only a foot tall, propagated 2 years ago from a cutting taken near my house. On my way to San Antonio yesterday, I saw that despite the disease that ravaged so many oleanders over the past few years, there are still lots of O’s on the highway that have endured, robust and blooming. This time of year, the crepe myrtles and oleanders really deserve our respect.
In my garden now, the invincible soldiers include the indefatigable crossvine, the deep-green and visually cooling liriopes, dwarf palmetto, upright rosemary, cenizo, powis artemisia, and all the blue-green agaves, yucca, and cacti. Not a long list, and short on flowers. If I could tell the the iceberg roses to not bother blooming, I would. They continue to valiantly produce buds that open into strangled and stunted things that can hardly be called flowers.
The worst thing about the heat is that I tend to get cabin fever and commit gardening atrocities. This morning I stepped out just to get the paper and ended up doing two hours of crazed labor. One of which was TRANSPLANTING. I have a long sad history of transplanting things during intense summer heat. To make matters worse (because it only encourages me), quite a few of these crimes have resulted in success. Today I dug up chunks of palm grass from the backyard and put them in the front bed and moved a rooted bunch of Port St. Creeper to the back fence wall. Fortunately by that time, it was around 10:30 and I had the sense to withdraw back into my air-conditioned cave before heat prostration ensued.
Palm grass, an invasive pest in Asia, goes mano a mano with Austin clay.
The variegated ginger is blooming a lot, but you have to get close to see the orchid-like flower.
The Pindo palm loves the heat and is throwing off new fronds happily. It gets fed frequently and is mulched heavily with leaf rot. At right are fencerow of crinums that have yet to bloom at this house.
