Nathan took this excellent photo.

We IDed the beetle on BugGuide.Net.

The beetles came out around 1 pm this afternoon and yesterday afternoon and have stayed out for the warmest part of the day.  A few amorous couples are finding cozy spots to share in the leaf litter in our yard.

We spent most of our time this morning cleaning up after our 6-month old puppy, Ash, who decided to mulch the dry creek bed that BioGardener just designed and installed for us (before and after photos to come).

We shoveled all the mulched rocks out, we’re cleaning them, then replacing them in the dry creek.  Quite a pain.  And something tells me this won’t be the last time.

We found all sorts of cool stuff to explore in the backyard this morning.  The new rocks in the creek bed are an endless source of interest for B and M.  We also found the first falling cedar elm leaves, snail shells, a cricket, and a possum (?) jaw bone buried in the soil.

Balcones District Park oaks and cedar elms

False garlic growing under the oaks.

Also under the trees were yellow wood sorrel and Southern anemone (above).

There were a few of these around…

And lots of broomweed (I think).

Broomweed covered the shady slope under this oak as well as the sunniest spots of the wildflower area.

I saw only this one Indian Paintbrush at Balcones District yesterday afternoon.  But I spotted blankets of them this morning in the median along 360.

Prairie verbena

Indian Blanket

Anyone know what this is?  Looks like some kind of poppy?

Here it is again, growing along Duval Road.  I loved the way the drooping seed heads looked next to the road.

Here’s another that I don’t know.  These spikes were about a foot tall, I think.  Can anyone ID it?

The soil here is different; I’m discovering how each time I dig.  The soil here is rockier than the black clay of our previous garden, but still seems dense.  It is unfortunately tightly compacted in most spots.

The most exciting thing about our new outdoor space?  The trees!  I was in love with them the first time I saw this place.  A big Arizona ash tree sits in front of the house, as well as several cedar elms.  Behind the house, we have a large live oak, lots more cedar elms, and a few young red oaks.  Glorious shade!

I don’t know anything about gardening the way I want to in the shade.  I want to grow natives/well-adapted non-natives and vegetables.  I have a sense that I have only to research and learn more about the former.  As for veggies…there’s a sunny spot or two in the front yard, and I can only hope our HOA will be amenable to the raised bed or two that pops up out there.

That’s it in a nutshell: we’ll be caring for more trees, we’ll be learning about shade gardening with Texas natives, we’ll be trying to grow veggies in the front yard.  Wish us luck!

I’m still caring full-time for two other little seedlings under the age of three, too, so who knows?  It may be another six months before I post again.  Until then, we’ll be checking out bugs under the shade of the cedar elms, daydreaming about tomato vines in raised beds, and trying to loosen the dirt here a little.

The daisy, which is in the new circle bed we installed last spring, managed to survive this nasty beast of a summer with truly minimal care and watering.  It’s now flourishing on the fresh fall rains, and is officially on my list of favoritest Central Texas plants ever.

It’s good to post here again.  Almost as good as it is to be able to tolerate being outside again.

I’ve missed lots of garden moments, and I’ve missed lots of you, but this year has been intense in more ways than one.  Caring for two littles under two leaves precious little time for gardening or for blogging!

Hope you’re all enjoying the turn of the seasons wherever you are, too.

and beets, which I’ll likely steam with a little salt and pepper, oh yum.

Plenty of chard and kale to harvest now, too.

After seeing the coops on the tour, we decided that we want a walk-in coop for ease of cleaning and maintenance; we learned that the deep litter method really works; we learned that you can select among breeds of chickens for different temperaments, heat tolerances and egg types; we learned about different feeding and watering set-ups; and we saw several different ways to integrate a chicken coop into a backyard garden.

We’re excited about starting our own backyard flock, but we’ll probably wait until next Spring to get chickens, when the babies are a little older.  Hopefully then we’ll be a little less slammed around the house than we are right now, and the babes will be better able to appreciate watching chicks grow up.  Which means we’ve got about a year to build our coop–whee!

The circular design is inspired in part by recent posts on Digging and The Grackle.  The stones for the limestone border are from the cemetery on Hancock Drive.  They dig up a lot of the stuff there at the cemetery, and they’re only too happy for gardeners to cart the limestone off for free. Random, but true.  A great tip that I got on the Austin Permies list.  (And lucky for me Nathan and my father-in-law were willing to haul rock from a cemetery for me.)

Can’t wait to fill this new space with native plants!  I need to get my hands on a copy of the new Grow Green Guide.

veggies are growing:

Detroit Dark Red beets

Calabrese broccoli,

Dinosaur kale,

Red Core Chantenay carrots,

and Ruby chard.

The redbud tree is blooming,

the apple tree is blooming,

the loquats are ripening,

and the figs are all leafing out.

Here’s hoping for rain soon,

water to sustain

this early spring burst.

I’m looking forward to getting back into gardening and garden blogging as time permits.  Which may not be very often given that I’m now a mother of two under two.  Most of my time and energy these days goes toward making sure that we’re all decently fed and wearing clean clothes.  Nevertheless, I found time last month to plant beets, broccoli, and kale in our raised veggie beds, and most of the seedlings survived last night’s hail.   My son is now old enough to appreciate digging in the back yard with me, so that makes it easier to get outside and get my hands in the dirt from time to time, too.

Besides these major changes to life in my family, I’m making a few changes to Seeds itself.  First, I’ve removed my list of other Austin garden blogs from the right sidebar.  I returned to garden blogging last month only to discover that new blogs about gardening in Austin are popping up faster than dandelions in my neglected lawn, and I just can’t keep up.  I don’t want to leave anyone out, and other bloggers, such as Pam of Digging, are doing a better job than I am of keeping a list of bloggers in our community.  Thanks, Pam!  I hope to get to meet some of the new Austin bloggers sometime soon.

Just for fun, I’ve added a map that tracks the location of visitors to Seeds to the right sidebar.  I’m keeping a link to current weather conditions here in the Wooten neighborhood as reported by Victor Engel’s weather station on Weather Underground.

Finally, I imagine that new Seeds posts will be relatively sparse over the coming year, and that the character of these posts will be noticeably different than those of the first year.  I imagine that I’ll have more photo-only posts, more posts consisting of short notes that I’m recording primarily for myself, and shorter posts generally.  I read and appreciate all of the comments I receive, and I’ll try my best to make timely replies.  Bear with me, dear readers!  It’s hard to type one-handed, as I’m doing now, while a baby naps in my other arm.

Happy gardening in 2009 to all of you, and thanks for visiting.