Don't garden with your mouth open

There's no great story there, just something I learned the hard way and thought I should share.

I figured I should post pictures of the garden before it all dies, which is seriously any day now. If we could just get rain ONCE A MONTH my garden would be soooo happy! I don't mean "spit-like moisture for 10 minutes", I mean a good soaking that lasts for a few hours. Yeah sure, it will flood the rest of Austin because of our poor drainage systems but I'm beyond caring now. I'm pretty sure everyone else is too.

Check out the Pachys - they got huge!

I extended two of the oldest beds. I figured it was an opportunity to plant more stuff, and the grass was still pretty dead-ish from last year's drought (this year clearly doesn't look promising either). I think it makes the garden more interesting - there's more swoopiness now. And for once, I bought very few new plants: instead I re-purposed plants from other places in the yard.

For this bed I stole some of my Bearded Iris and Catmint.

I think this is my favorite new bed:

Extending the bed seems to take some of the ridiculousness out of the Madame Berkley rose's size. That's what I tell myself, anyway.

I bought a Salvia Clevelandii (stinks so good!), 3 Nikki Phlox, and a fantastic blue palm from Peckerwood Gardens that can handle shade. (I saw it with my own eyes, it's true.)

Then I re-purposed 2 Bush Germander Azure, some Canna Pretoria, and an Artemesia.

Oh! And I bought a Rootbeer plant, which neither looks nor tastes like rootbeer but has really cool swirly leaves.

Not bad, eh? (Don't hold the bad photography against my garden.)

I managed to grow one Zucchini and one Yellow Squash before both plants died.

I did have success with one of my three tomato plants, however! I love them - none of them are tart or acidic like the store-bought ones, they just taste great! I'm going to buy more next year for sure.

My next garden post will likely be of the carnage after this summer.