I never thought I'd be a snapdragon fan. As a child I saw them every summer in my grandmother's garden. They seemed too... familiar. When I first started gardening I was so obsessed with starting native plants that I usually ignored most of the 'annuals' table at every gardening center, but then, one autumn while I was looking for some color to fill in bare spots, I visited a gardening store I'd never been to before and they had rows and rows of snapdragons. And to my surprise, they were fragrant, so fruity and sweet. I had never remembered snapdragons...…

Traditionally, I've learned, fall is the best time in Texas to plant all spring-blooming annual flowers and almost anything perennial, whether herbs or flowers, or shrubs like roses. This is so plants get a good time to root themselves in over the winter in order to have stronger growth in spring before the heat sets in. It's when I sow all my wildflowers as well. I've learned the hard way that I don't live in a climate where I can sow many seeds outdoors after frost, as most seed packets inform you to do. Spring here is just too short, and by the time a plant starts germinating it won't have a change to bloom. My first year of gardening I tried this with several poppies, and they grew all right and started shooting out leaves but at the first hot day most of them began to choke.

If I could offer one piece of advice to a new Texas gardener, it would be to sow most of your seeds in fall, so that plants have a change to grow or settle in by November. October has been the best month for me to do this. This of course doesn't include all seeds, such as summer-blooming annuals which are not winter-hardy: zinnias, cosmos, and some others.

The most difficult job, however, of this past fall, has not been all the planting and the new landscaping--it was the total lack of rain. We had about 2 good days of rain between September and November. And since Thanksgiving it's probably rained once. I picked one of the hottest and drought-iest falls to start a foundational garden.

In spite of all this work, I've tried my best to keep up with my own projects, and even on this website am starting to list all the flowers, vegetables and shrubs I've planted in the "plantopia" section. Here is a small album of some of my recent blooms and projects:

Also called purslane, or its latin name portulaca, Moss Rose is really popular around here as a summer annual. It grows like mad, cares not for overwatering or underwatering, and I've had far more success with it than "ice plant". This plant would root on your finger if you let it, so be careful to dig it out where you don't want it to spread. It doesn't matter anyway, since it doesn't live through the winter. I bought this particular variety trailing beautifully over a hanging basket one late summer, then brought it indoors, where it promptly dropped all its...…

Do I love, love, love this vine. And I am so proud that something this ridiculously showy could be native to Texas. It has proven to me that wildflowers don't have to be rustic (and I do like rustic). After my failures with the Passionflower 'Incense', which was repeatedly chomped on by caterpillars, I decided to try another type. This is definitely the more frequently-grown kind, and the showier. Passionflower incense--i.e., passiflora edulis--has smaller leaves, and smaller flowers which are pale purple whose petals sort of fly backwards, rather than splay out. Passionflower incarnata, however, takes over with just a...…

April 2007. I saw these at the Natural Gardener a few weeks ago and I was shocked. I had thought this plant was a weed; why would anyone want to pay $8 for a gallon of it? Last year I spent a day on my knees in the lawn digging out the hundreds of little bulbs of this stuff. It grows everywhere... in the lawn especially but also around my flower bed. This year I decided to leave it alone and watch what it does. It is actually very pretty and sweet. Each one grows into a big dome-like clover...…

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