Texas Gardening: Good to know ya!, 1 by patrob

patrob wrote:
1. My first name is Patricia.

2. My favorite plant overall is the daylily. It blooms in a wide variety of colors and over a long period of time. By choosing rebloomers, I have blooms during times of the year when many other plants are resting. Daylilies are also very tough and can take the horrid conditions Texas weather frequently inflicts upon them. Sometimes I think I have lost one, but a year or two later, it comes back.

3. One of my favorite trees is the southern magnolia. We have one in our yard that came from Georgia years ago in a trade. It started as a twig about a foot tall and is now making a real tree. I love the scent of magnolia blossoms and hope to have my own some year. My other favorite tree is the live oak. We have many in our yard and in the pastures at our ranch. They are beautiful year round and are long lived. So far we have been able to treat for oak wilt in town and have no problem with it yet at the ranch. I grew up in Midland and Lubbock, so nearly any tree could be my favorite tree!

4. My favorite shrub is the Georgetown Tea rose. It is about eight feet tall right now and about to be covered with big, fragrant pink roses again. It rests very little and grows like a weed!

5. My favorite perennial is the tall bearded iris. I love them for their beauty and hardiness. They do come in almost all colors of the rainbow and are nearly indestructible. Salvias run irises a very close second for me. I have lots of both in my front island bed, the deer-proof bed.

6. My favorite annual is the marigold. This explanation is beginning to sound repetitious, but marigolds are tough! They also reseed very well, so even if the spring is too busy, too wet, or too dry, there will be marigolds blooming by early summer.

7. My favorite vine is still to be decided. I like hyacinth bean and moonflower vines, but I have others that I am just beginning to use: passion flower, clematis, coral vine, crossvine, cape honeysuckle. Too many new ones to choose a favorite this soon!

9. My favorite houseplant is a ficus tree that my husband gave me as a pot plant in 1991. There were really several small trees in the pot, so I divided them. The main tree is about eight feet tall now.

8. I garden organically unless I encounter harmful bugs or diseases on plants. :>) I do try to use organic products on veggies and in the greenhouse because of the large toad population. The floor is rock on sand, so they have hidey holes for the winter.

9. I have been gardening for about 33 years.

10. We have owned our current home for 7 years.

11. I did compost until I found a place to buy compost very reasonably and in large quantities.

12. I like bees because they are good pollinators. Last spring, however, they lost points because they spent all their time at the rosemary and ignored the fruit trees.

13. My favorite bird is the barn swallow. They do make messes on the porches, but while they are here from mid-March until mid-September, we do not have mosquitoes. They are pretty, and I love to watch the little ones growing in the nests. The swallows become so unafraid of us that they swoop up under the porches and right over us as they are vacuuming for small insects.

14. Besides gardening, I enjoy my horses and cattle ranching. I used to read a lot, but I have not found fiction lately that holds my interest. I have lots of craft ideas for when I have time, but I am wondering when that will be. We’re thinking about a few trips to parts of the country we have not seen, but we have made no concrete plans yet.

15. We have five cats, one Great Pyrenees dog, two paint horses, and Simmental beef cattle.

16. We live inside the city limits of a very small town on 1.5 acres. There are a few neighbors, but none too close. (The horses and cattle are in the country).

17. There have been several big problems I have encountered with gardening: frequent droughts and extremely hot weather, weeds, deer, and having less stamina than I did when I was younger. Turning what was a rocky hilltop in a pasture just a few years ago into a garden has been a bigger challenge than I expected. I am bringing in a backhoe this winter.

18. The best information I have found about gardening has been from books and the internet, including Dave’s Garden, of course.

19. I am probably not addicted to gardening, but I do enjoy growing plants. I could give up the work if someone would come in and create the garden I want and maintain it for me.

20. Here's an old daylily showing off in my garden last spring: