Digging

Over at Gardening Gone Wild, the theme for this month’s Picture This photo contest, judged by photographer Saxon Holt, is Awakening. We don’t get much of a winter here in Austin. But the garden still looks a little drab after our hard freezes this year. Enter gopher plant (Euphorbia rigida), my...

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A few years ago, I’d never come across gopher plant (Euphorbia rigida) in local nurseries. But now it’s everywhere. And with good reason. Euphorbia rigida’s pretty blue-green foliage is topped in spring with chartreuse bracts and yellow flowers. After the hottest summer on record and one of the coldest winters on...

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Ghost plant looking gorgeous in late-afternoon light I’ve been working every spare hour on the sunburst patio around my stock-tank pond, and my back and legs are sore from moving so much stone, sand, and gravel. The fish are probably wondering what’s going on. All material © 2006-2010 by Pam Penick for Digging....

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I’ve started paving the circular patio/path around my stock-tank pond, which for a year has lain fallow with a temporary layer of decomposed granite while I saved up for brick or stone. I enjoy making paths through the garden, and I thought it might be fun to look back through...

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Thrusting sabres. Clashing swords. Yellow-costumed fencers are dueling in my garden. It can be a blood sport if you’re careless. But while Yucca filamentosa ‘Color Guard’ is armed with sharp spines, its leaves are fairly flexible, not stiff, and so less dangerous. Brightly colored leaves promise year-round color, unlike flowers that come...

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Let me just say, for the record, that I love Austin’s winters. For one thing, they aren’t summer. For another, they aren’t that cold. We often enjoy sunny days in the 60s, even 70s, mingled in with some 50s, and only the occasional hard freeze. It’s a great time to...

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Night owl news! The squatter squirrel has departed or been evicted by the new tenant. At last, after a year-long wait, we have a screech owl in our owl box. I noticed her (or him) on Tuesday, as I was out covering tender plants before a predicted freeze. She seemed to...

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In a couple of weeks, as bulbs begin to bloom, perennials re-leaf, and spring arrives in earnest here in central Texas, the floral displays at the nurseries will sing their siren song, and it’ll be all too easy to forget about the structural foliage plants that anchor and sustain the...

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Fat, fluffy snowflakes have quieted the garden and outlined the trees. After our super hot summer, lengthy drought, and record cold temperatures over the past year, I don’t know why this surprises me. But it does. According to Mark Lisheron at Statesman.com, it has snowed in Austin on just six days...

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Between last Sunday and this morning, 91 of you left a comment on my 4th blogiversary giveaway post! Many thanks for all the good wishes, and for playing along. At 10 a.m. I used a random number generator to select three numbers and matched those up to the comment numbers....

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After all the lovely comments (85 so far!) from all you lovely readers on my 4th blogiversary post, I’m still smiling and feeling like I’ve been to a fun party. Now I know I enticed you to comment with my giveaway offer of three sets of notecards made with my garden...

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My recent post about defeating naysayers seemed to strike a chord with readers who’ve dealt with internal or external critics of gardening efforts. To continue with the theme of encouragement, I am republishing this post from 2007, in which I argue that it’s not whether you kill plants but how...

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You may not want to let young children see the picture below. After leaving a client’s house this morning, I took the long way home along Old Spicewood Springs Drive in NW Austin, a scenic, 2-lane road with several low-water crossings with waterfalls, horse paddocks, and limestone cliffs. It feels like...

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Are naysayers haunting your footsteps in the garden? Is a helpful neighbor telling you that your soil is too rocky, the deer are too voracious, the grass was better than the perennial garden or vegetable beds you have in mind? Does a well-meaning friend shake her head every time she comes over...

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Today is Foliage Follow-Up, a day for garden bloggers to celebrate foliage after admiring flowers for Bloom Day. In my freeze-recovering garden, spring has been slow to make an appearance, which is why my favorite greenery right now is brand-new. Here is fresh new growth on one of my daylilies. And...

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