I really wish I kept a more regular garden diary--at least for myself. (I have for some reason a backlog of entries I've never published so I'll try and get those on here soon.) This spring has been particularly miraculous around here; so much of the hard work of the past couple of years combined with the coolest spring I've ever experienced in Texas produced an over-abundant garden so lush with fragrance I'm quite happy to just be in my own garden. Never mind that the weeds are on steroids, too. I've barely had time for garden tours, especially my favorite at the Wildflower Center.

I've not had much luck with gladiolus here. I'm wondering if I plant them too late. Most Texas gardening advice suggests planting gladiolus corms in succession during April and May, but I almost think they'd do better planted even earlier. Glads are not tender here, and don't need to be "dug and stored' as they do in other parts of the U.S. Unfortunately, most bulb sellers don't start shipping their gladiolus bulbs till April, which doesn't give me a chance to try planting them earlier. Last year I planted six different kinds of gladiolus corms in April, and most of them just became a big bunch of floppy, ragged leaves with no flowers.

The Byzantine gladiolus, however, is another kind of glad.

This is usually the first rose to bloom in my garden, sending out multiple buds in February, and when they are open on the cool spring mornings, the fragrance is unbelievable. Soft and powdery at first, yet rich with complex spicy notes. Some roses just give away their beauty at first glance, but in every sense this rose has layers of beauty and sensuality. I spent the late afternoon with my nose stuck in in one of its thick blooms. Like all intoxicating fragrances, it brings up memories. The first is my grandmother's hand lotion. This is the scent that...…

I was busy taking adoring photos of my sweet peas last week (and I am embarrassed to say just how many) when I noticed the flicker of a jewel color on one of them. Sometimes even flies have iridescence, and so I ignored it until the flicker kept moving. Thankfully, this beautiful little creature had patience on me, as I crept closer. I'd never seen this butterfly before, the male Purple Hairstreak, but thanks to butterfly siting galleries i was able to identify him and his nearby friend who was also resting very contentedly on a sweet pea flower. And...…

It is a rich, full-bodied whistle,
cracked ice crunching in pails,
the night that numbs the leaf,
the duel of two nightingales,

the sweet pea that has run wild,
Creation's tears in shoulder blades

--Boris Pasternak, "Definition of Poetry"

We're still in the middle of nights that have the potential to numb leaves, but my sweet peas are starting to bloom, even the smaller ones nearly a foot tall.

The state flower of Texas, and the glory of the spring. No roadside or edge of a ranch, or even small garden like mine feels complete without them. Bluebonnets are diminutive lupines, but look stunning in mass. While they're the essence of meadow in Texas, they're also very pretty in carefully arranged garden beds. Bluebonnets are sown in fall, and occasionally you can find them as nursery-grown annuals, but the seed is so widely available and easy to sow, that it's worth it to always try some every year. While the peak of bluebonnet season is in April, they occasionally...…

Update September 2009: They did not live through the Texas summer. Seems like they'd need to be watered daily to survive. On a trip to Scotland this summer, I was walking by a small cornershop florist in a small village, and in front a lone pot of violas was blooming, labeled "Etain". I leaned in to smell and was surprised; it was nothing like pansies or annual violas, which often have no fragrance. I had to have one. I almost considered buying it and trying to hide it somewhere in my suitcase home. So you can imagine my excitement when,...…

After a beautiful week of temperatures in the 70s, the last few days have been shooting up and from the feel of it, summer is here. Usually at this point there is no turning back; the heat is on. (Why do I hear Glenn Frey in the background singing 80s style?) The spring bloomers are all going to seed and I started collecting my first bluebonnet seeds today. Some of them even got ahead of me and started popping open and dropping their seeds. I love doing this, thinking that just a few bluebonnet plants gives me about 100 more...…

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...…

As I sit here writing on my front porch, the sweet candy fragrance of sweet peas is dancing in the breeze. This part of the afternoon, fragrance often dissipates in the heat, and already the heights of the afternoon sun are starting to produce the kind of heat that makes me thankful for air conditioning (or at least the very protecting cedar trees in our yard, which just started to leaf out last weekend). pinks in the herb garden Last fall, I concentrated heavily on adding more fragrant plants to my garden, and I have to say I am not...…

Growing vines can be addictive. They're instantly satisfying to an inpatient gardener, as some of them can grow to monstrous sizes in just months. I've been reticent to grow vines until I'm sure I won't be spending my days getting rid of their seedlings (see my woes on the trumpet vine below), but I have so many fences, bare walls, and things just in need of green and lushness. I just love how quickly vines grow and cover a wall, a trellis, a fence... instant green, instant color (and sometimes, as in the case of sweet peas, loads of flowers...…

Most of my daffodil purchases are (hopefully) invested in bulbs that will return year after year, but with a few exceptions. The big-flowered, big-cupped kind don't usually come back year after year in Texas (either they need a longer winter to initiate their bloom, or they bloom too late at a point which it is too hot for them). Pouring over one of my cool bulb catalogs, I couldn't help myself from at least ordering a few of these to try with the others.I have to admit I was drawn to Billy Graham for its name; my husband took me...…

Mrs. R.O. Backhouse is a beautiful heirloom daffodil, introduced in 1921 to great astonishment as the first pink daffodil. (Which is funny sounding as I write it, I just love that the horticultural world is "astonished" by new flower developments. As if the flowers are divas.). There are all kinds of pink daffodils now, but from what I have read it is still difficult to count on them being a true pink but this would be as close as they come--a soft peachy pink. And like many daffodil blooms, it fades with age, and this fades to a lovely blush.I'm...…

Penstemons are becoming hugely popular in gardens, it seems, and they encompass a wide range of species native to the U.S. Since I first started gardening, I was attracted to foxgloves but haven't had much success with them so far, as with many perennial cottage garden plants they fare better in cooler summers. I was also on the lookout for spiky tall plants for parts of my garden that needed less sprawly things (I seem to have a lot of sprawliness). I've tried Mulleins, foxglove, larkspur.During one trip to the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower center I noticed a clump of foxglove-looking...…

I couldn't quite capture the orange of the cups, but this daffodil is a very bright yellow with cups that darken toward the edges. In some photos I've seen, the cups look closer to red, but I'm beginning to think that many garden colors wash out in the Texas sun. (Some roses are lighter here than is often pictured.)This was one of my 'throwaway' daffodils; most of those I picked out had been mentioned in one place or another as doing well in Texas or the south, but this one was just a risk. (Not to mention I refrigerated it...…

Mrs. Collier, an old-fashioned sweet pea Someone should have warned me about romance in the garden. In pictures, in catalogs, in nurseries--all it takes is a bit of romance about a flower and you must have it. Somewhere, anywhere.  You might not know how big it gets, or if it works in your climate. Who cares? It's like trying to get those amazing shoes to fit when they only had one size left. And yet unlike the expensive romance of vintage clothing, or furniture, or any other object with a historical, mysterious beauty, plants are quite cheap. Seeds are...…

This trumpet-cupped daffodil was first introduced in 1956, and as you would guess, is an "early" daffodil. Which makes for a good try here in Austin, as most of what keeps daffodils from doing well is either the lack of cold winter, or the very hot spring when most of the big trumpets and big cups bloom. It was the first of all the big daffodils to bloom in my garden, following shortly after the early jonquils and their pretty, fragrant flowers.These are big and yellow and bloomy and all that is classic daffodil....…

I sowed these in early fall of 2007, during a Dianthus craze. I was buying just about any Dianthus seeds I could get my hands on, and during a trip to London I bought a packet of these and one of 'Ipswich pinks' from the gift store at Kew Botanical Gardens. China pinks are hybrids of Dianthus chinensis and are very popular as winter bedding annuals in Austin; they can flower from October to sometimes as late as July. In some cases they even struggle through the summer to start blooming all over again in fall. I have had some...…

In the spring of 2007, I went in in search of shrubbier larger plants. Almost all of my gardening had been limited to flowers, herbs and two rose bushes, but suddenly it dawned on me that I could grow trees, too. And perhaps I needed to add some larger elements to my garden to give it a little more oomph. I ventured over to the 'shrub and tree' section of my favorite gardening center, which was previously uncharted territory and looked at all the beautiful trees. I loved the quinces, and as I was deciding which one to purchase, in...…

Fall 2007. I go on a huge bulb buying craze, buying daffodils and tulips by the dozen. There are many daffodils that do well in Texas but tulips do not fare so well. One, tulips generally need cold to flower, as most of the modern Dutch-grown tulips are made for colder places. So most Texas gardeners go through the 'buy every year, chill in fridge, plant in December' method to simulate a winter chill, but treat the tulips as annuals since they won't come back unless you dig them up and chill them again. But after reading about Tulipa praecox,...…