A female cardinal eats loquats from one of the trees in the backyard.

It’s been nearly a month since I’ve updated Seeds. My MacBook died, and I needed to take a break from garden blogging after Spring Fling anyway. Although I haven’t been writing, I have been watering, and the garden keeps growing.

Most of the action right now is in the veggie beds. The pear tomato plant has grown to nearly five feet tall and has about a dozen tiny green fruits on it. The Chadwick Cherry tomato plant that I grew from seed is long and leggy, but otherwise doing well. The cucumbers, bell peppers, and crookneck squash are all growing nicely, and the jalapeños are about to flower. (Something’s eating the basil, though.)

I’m happy to announce that veggies aren’t the only thing I’m growing around here at Seeds–Nathan and I are expecting our second child in December. I’m excited (and nervous! about having two under two), and in all likelihood I’ll miss the better part of fall planting because my mind will be on the little life growing inside me, and less on life in the garden. We’ll see–I’m sure I’ll get around to scattering a few wildflower seeds, at least.

In the mean time, I’ll post photos and garden notes here as I have time and energy. If you’re still reading after my month-long hiatus, thank you. And Happy Mother’s Day to all the other mothers who read Seeds! May you have a day filled with joy, peace, and love from the ones you love.

The blue passion vine in our front yard has a handful of blooms on it, with many more buds preparing to open.

Passion flower blooms look almost otherworldy to me. The blooms on this vine smell a little like pineapple. Apparently the bumblebees enjoy them, too.

After lunch at Nuevo León, and after spending the early afternoon shopping at The Natural Gardener, the garden bloggers toured the garden of Austin landscape designer James David. His Rollingwood garden is two acres of pure gorgeous–my words simply won’t do it justice. My photos really don’t either; the alternating harsh afternoon sunlight, dappled sunlight, and shade were challenging conditions for an amateur photographer like me. But in the interest of documenting a visit to an amazing space, I’m sharing a few of my photos anyway:

Rectangular containers cascade down the steps outside the front door.

A staircase behind the house leads to a large goldfish pond. The stairs are divided in half by a small stream.

Goldfish pond

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After touring the Wildflower Center, the garden bloggers drove a short distance to Nuevo León, a Mexican restaurant in Circle C, to have lunch and to listen to a talk by Soul of the Garden’s Tom Spencer. Pam arranged for us all to take a group photo, which she kindly shared with those of us who were there:

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Yesterday more than 30 garden bloggers from around the country converged on Austin for a day of celebrating gardens around town and connecting with other students of nature, gardening, and writing–It was the first ever Garden Bloggers’ Spring Fling! Thank you to Pam of Digging, Diana of Sharing Nature’s Garden, Bonnie of Kiss of Sun, and Melissa of Zanthan Gardens for organizing an inspiring event.

I plan to journal about the event in three or four separate posts. In this first post, I’d like to share some images from the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, which we Spring Flingers visited on Saturday morning.

Bluebonnet

Pink evening primrose with bee

Sculpture in the garden

Texas vervain

Havard agaves

Sotol

Next Spring Fling post: Lunch at Nuevo Leon, with a talk by Tom Spencer

Today I built a toad abode to attract toads to the backyard, following instructions I found on the National Wildlife Federation website.

I used a hammer to break apart a 10-inch terra cotta azalea pot that already had a crack in it. (But, of course, the pot doesn’t have to be cracked for you to take a hammer to it.) I stacked the fragments into the form of a house, using the largest pieces of the pot as the main walls.

I located the abode in our wettest, shadiest bed. I left the bottom of the abode open, so its tenants can burrow if they like, and I added leaf litter to the floor. The main entrance is just over three inches tall–plenty of room for the tallest of toads–and I provided several other points of entry/exit in case any of the residents need to leave quickly by alternate route (as in case of snake). The final amenity I added was a dipping pool, which I made by sinking an extra terra cotta saucer into the soil outside the abode.

Now that construction on the abode is complete, we’re just waiting for a toad to wake up from hibernation and find it. I can’t wait to see who takes up residence.

Wildlife sighted in the garden during the month of March 2008:

• European starlings (in the photo above)
• Great-tailed grackles
• White-winged doves
• Carolina wrens
• Blue jays
• American robins
• Northern cardinals
• various sparrows
• a woodpecker (probably downy?)
• Eastern fox squirrels
• and a green anole

This weekend Nathan and I had the opportunity to play outside, since grandparents were visiting the baby, I mean us. I re-sowed cucumber seeds where Sam dug them out last weekend; this time I planted straight eights instead of mideast prolific cucumbers. And Nathan devised a solution to keep Sam out of the beds, at least until the veggies are sprouted and grown up a bit. He cut sheets of wire mesh fencing to lay over the beds. The weave is wide enough to let plenty of water and sunlight through to the soil, but the fencing should still make the veggie beds less attractive to dogs. *fingers crossed*

After re-seeding the cukes, I planted a couple of African irises in a bed against the house. With a name like that, they’re obviously non-native, but I think I have a good case for planting them anyway. The bed I planted them in doesn’t receive much light, and African irises are supposed to tolerate shade reasonably well. Their 2-foot-tall, sword-shaped leaves contrast nicely with the purple and white trailing lantana that I’d already planted in the bed. African irises aren’t on any of the lists of invasives that I’ve seen, and they’re supposed to have low water requirements, too. So I’m being a bad nativist and giving them a shot:

Finally, I planted herbs in a set of square containers that I picked up at The Great Outdoors last week:

I planted chive seeds in the large green container. The lavender container holds chocolate mint, and the small mustard container holds peppermint. (I wanted some mint plants, but wasn’t brave enough to unleash them unfettered in any of the beds.)

Thank you for all of your kind comments on my last post–it’s helpful to hear words of encouragement from other gardeners who plant things in spite of their dogs, and the perspectives of other mothers who have survived the experience of parenting young children with some of their own interests intact. I look forward to meeting many of you at Spring Fling this weekend.

I’d like to share a quote from an essay I was reading this morning on reconciling Buddhist meditation practice with parenting; sometimes a little validation goes a long way, and I have a sense that many of you may appreciate the sentiment expressed in the essay, too:

The work we are doing as parents is often on the scale of picking up toys or cleaning scraped knees, yet it is joyous and vitally important. Our children will shape the world to come, and especially at this precarious time on earth, what is more vital than raising sane children who are compassionate and have an inkling about the world’s interconnectedness! 

-Amie Diller, “Practice at the Hearth.” In Dharma Family Treasures, edited by Sandy Eastoak.

May all children be happy and free from suffering, and may all mothers find the time to plant some veggies (or herbs, or whatever it is that they want to plant).

We spent a good part of the weekend resting and celebrating the arrival of spring, so I didn’t accomplish much in the garden over the past several days. Yesterday I did at least finish preparing one of the two raised veggie beds for planting. Then I planted a couple of tomato plants, a few pepper plants, and some marigolds, and I sowed cucumber and basil seeds.

A pear tomato plant that I picked up at Shoal Creek Nursery:

Not long after I finished sowing seeds, our Great Dane Sam dug out a Sam-sized sleeping spot in the freshly planted garden soil. He didn’t disturb the tomatoes, peppers, or marigolds, but I’m not planning to see any of the cucumber seeds sprout (unless it’s in the lawn next to the raised beds). Maybe some of the basil will make it, I’m not sure.

And this morning when I went out to check on the new transplants, I noticed that one of the chadwick cherry tomato plants that I grew from seed and then planted yesterday is gone. Simply gone–there’s just one lonely leaf lying on the ground in the tomato cage that I placed over the plant yesterday. *sigh*

Add to these unfortunate events that I feel it’s a struggle to find the time to work in the garden in the first place (mostly due to the obligations of feeding and caring for my beautiful 7-month-old boy)…

And I’m feeling really discouraged right now.

Maybe I just need to accept the losses and keep planting? It’s not like I expect every seedling to grow to maturity, or every tomato plant to produce fruit.

Or maybe I need to be a little less ambitious about gardening projects for the time being? After all, it’s easy to water potted plants on the front porch during naptime, and containers can be moved to dog-free locations.

Last night I signed us up to participate in the Great Sunflower Project, a study by biologist Gretchen LeBuhn of San Francisco State University. The goal of GSP is to assess the health of bee populations across the country, using data reported by citizen-scientists (that’s us!). Can’t wait until my sunflower seeds arrive. Cheers to Susan Harris for posting about GSP on Garden Rant, where I first read about the project.

Bees have been frequent visitors to the blooms on our redbud tree this month:

But as many of you have already heard, bees are struggling. And declining bee populations are a cause for concern, since bees pollinate all our plants, including plants that produce food. I don’t know about the rest of y’all, but I really want to continue eating broccoli.

So again I say: go, bees, go.