I could do this. All I need is a white stucco wall and a euphorbia.

Richard Felber

Yes, indeedy.

No need to go into details. Melissa at Xanthan has the deets if you care to explore the minutiae of our aberrant heat phenom.

But something weird always takes hold of me about this time in summer. A sort of crazed defiance. I know that October will come and it will be a gift. The heat will break and we will be in the midst of a beautiful world. I look forward to that, knowing that there will be surprises. There are always surprise in nature; something that has heretofore gone unremarked will suddenly stake its claim on the landscape. I remember one year, vitex abruptly turned up everywhere in purple and became the shrub of the moment. Or a row of previously overlooked grasses is overnight gripped with halo of pink mist in the sunset.

Meantime, here at Aurora, the big success stories in this summer have been the grays. All things gray seem to be stalwart performers in this heat: sage, germanders, powis artemisia, cottoneaster, and lavenders all are hanging in there valiantly in my heavy clay soil. And they are happy companions to the desert reliables—blue-gray agaves, yuccas, and prickly pear.

One other plant of note: the Pindo palm. If you have any desire for a palm and you're on clay, plant this. It's abso fab and growing like a mofo. Takes what little water I give it and appears to be quite content.

De Nada Triangle

That little gray spot in the middle of Texas would be Travis County.

I Smell Dead Things

In my yard. The wafting is coming from here and there, presumably from small critters or birds. This heat is the killing kind. This is the hottest July in recorded history. Cool front this weekend will bring temps of 98. I was so worried about Brugmansia Charles Grimaldi this winter; but he is more threatened by summer heat. He looks like the character crawling across the cartoon desert. No amount of water can save him.

Summer Delights for Your Edification

Rosa Caliente Strangulata

Loquatus Burnus Crispis

Agapanthus Scorchiana

Crinum Tostadita

Rosa "Hot Mess"

All hail the lowly Sunflower of the Culvert

I didn’t plant it. Presumably it’s courtesy of some birdshit, because I've actually planted seed heads in the yard that failed to germinate. It’s growing in the driveway in 4 inches of gravel on top of 30 years of compacted substrate. I must carefully maneuver around it, which I consider a privilege given the fact that it brightens my every day with its relentless cheer. I've never watered it.

STOP ME BEFORE I TRANSPLANT AGAIN!

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.