Beauty Farming Life

 Chinese Pistache Tree in Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter We have an area on the farm where there is a back pasture that belongs to 2nd family.  We were thinking of planting some trees along the fence line, as a kind of wind break from that big field, and to give us, and them, something nice to look at. I found an interactive "tree guide" for Texas online and every time I searched, I kept coming up with a list of trees that included this one, the "Chinese Pistache".  The arborists at Texas A&M rank it as one of the best shade providing, easy to grow trees in Texas.  Once established, they are even drought tolerant, which could be important in future seasons.  Another feature is that they have year round style and color.  Most all the landscaping on the farm is green and then goes to "dormant" in Winter with no color.  These actually turn red, orange and yellow in the Fall.  That would be a welcome change. Cl...

This is the original path going from where everyone parked, up to the steps of the porch. Since we are moving the steps over, and making them wider, we felt it was time to change the path that leads you to the front porch, and that I needed to pull up the timbers and the pavers. Our new path will be wider, reflecting the new 4 foot wide stairs, and it will be curving toward the parking area instead of a straight line.  We like curving lines at the farm.  Perhaps because the city house has very straight lines now; the driveway, the front flower beds, the sidewalks, they are all straight and geometric.  We want curves and a more fluid, natural looking design at the farm. So last Sunday, I took all of this up!  For now it will just be left as is, but once the weather cools down and we're ready for some landscaping, we'll do something creative out there. We can always do the walkways and flowerbeds now and then do the p...

Mixing Crepe Myrtles into the landscape I REALLY like this idea. Recently, I posted a blog entry about finding some Chinese Pistache trees, and using them for a windbreak across part of the property.  Alas, this isn't our yard (not yet anyway, ha). I saw this random photo online and I immediately thought how cool it would be to mix in some Crepe Myrtle trees.  No one says all the trees have to the be same all the way across the fence line.  They would grow a little faster than the Pistache and would provide faster color and detail while the other trees were catching up.  I like having a variety like this.  It adds color and texture to the landscape and that's always a good thing.  Crepe Myrtles, down here anyway, are always a good choice, they are disease and pretty drought resistant as well.  The only downside is they require the proper pruning to get them looking like this.  But more on that when the time comes....

Red Berry Anyone know what these are?  I see them springing up around the property.  I'm sure it's some sort of decorative berry but I'm trying to identify the stuff we find out there on the farm.  I've been a city boy for too long, LOL! I do know it's not a holly berry because of the leaves. But after that, I'm stumped. Thoughts?

The little tree is no more.  Ironically, I just had a post ready that I was going to make about this tree and how it had died in the drought we have been having. I was going to give it a second life in an outdoor art project. Alas, Mother Nature had other things in store and when I stopped at the farm the other night, this is what greeted me as I pulled up... The tree was not really big enough to cause damage (though I suppose it could have broken out a window) but it's still scary to see a tree fall so close to your house.  Thankfully, all the large trees around the house are healthy and in no danger but it's still kind of unnerving to see as you drive up... I'll replace the tree with another one elsewhere on the property.  We always try to replace any tree that has to be removed (either willing or unwilling, ha)  with a tree in another spot.  That way, it feels like we haven't lost anything. RIP little tree 200? - 2011

I'M SO EXCITED! Over the weekend, I found something I had been looking for.  2nd Family down at the other end of the property found it a few years ago and has used it extensively to make some paths around their yard. I had found them online but I was hoping to find it locally.  I finally did find it at Lowe's carried it but was out and Home Depot did not carry it all. Here it is at Amazon:   Quikrete 6921-32 Walk Maker It was even on sale and had Amazon's free shipping plan. It's the Quikrete Walk Maker . What is that you ask? Quikrete Path Mold It's a 2' x 2' mold that you put down on the ground, mix up some Quikrete, fill it up and level it... ...then you lift it off the formed concrete, move it to the end of what you have just created and then start over.  Just repeat this step over and over, and you end up with... Example of Cobblestone Path ...something like this!  A nice cobblestone path for the yard!  ...

Remember this tree? It was right in the line of sight from the front porch. It was too close to the house and the newly repositioned porch steps. It wasn't a "desirable tree", it was more like a junk tree that sprouted up once upon a time and was just left to grow. Well,we decided it needed to go and as of this past weekend.... ...here it is, or more accurately, here is what is left of it.  Just a stump.  I'll need to figure out a way to easily remove the stump.  Not sure if there are roots that go under the house/pier so I'd rather not just rip it out of the ground.   Side note:  See how the yard has greened up since the summer?  Amazing what a little rain will do. I know there are chemicals you can use, but I hate to start pouring toxic stuff around the yard.  Anyone have any suggestions?  Any natural solution?  We surely don't want it sprouting back, so something needs to be done. 

A few weeks ago, I had numerous posts about the fields of dewberries we had growing wild.  Then I discovered (through the help of you all) the passion fruit/maypop vine that will produce fruit and there are quite a few of those around.  And of course we have lots of Mesquite trees whose pods can supposedly be dried and ground into mesquite flour.  I'm not sure about that just yet, but might just try that next Fall.  We've also seen in the past, a small wild hot pepper plant that springs up randomly. So all this got me to wondering something; Is it possible to create naturalized food plants on a piece of property? Wild Dewberries on our farm I'm not talking about fruit trees of course, I'm planting lots of those.  Or building gardens, yes we'll have those too.  I was thinking about the things that just grow wild in other places without intervention of watering, or fertilizing, and just do their thing.  For exampl...

Look what all the rain has done... A month ago, this was turning brown in spots and getting sparse.  Here is the view from the porch looking toward the front mesquite tree.  Grass is rebounding everywhere and while the green is indeed beautiful, it's definitely out of control.  That bench under the tree is even starting to get covered up. Here is another view and you can see how tall part of the yard is.  Yes the grass there is about a foot tall.  If it sounds like complaining, it really isn't.  Regular readers of the blog know that I love my time on my John Deere riding lawn mower, or as I call it, my big green zen machine so mowing is OK by me. This close-up shows that it's not just grass, it's grass and weeds and who knows what else.  Whatever mix of greens it is, it all needs to be mowed.  So this weekend, with a couple days now of drying out and no rain in the forecast for a change, I'm hoping that I can spend some quality time doing ...

So this weekend was mowing weekend.  After almost 3 weeks of rain, the yard was out of control.  Here it is as a work in progress, you can see the difference in before and after.  We also did some tree trimming. After about an hour and a half, I had the area around the house done and it was time to tackle the trails and fence line.  Here is an example of the fence line before I mowed. It doesn't look too bad but that's about a foot tall.  Side note, frogs EVERYWHERE.  Must be all the rain and tall grass.  I tried to stop where I could and let the move away. ...and here it is after.  Much nicer and easy to walk.  It's always nice to keep the fence line cleared so we can make sure nothing is wrong with it, lest we end up with the neighbor's cattle in our yard. Here is the front yard, looking nice once again.  I still need to do some edging around the trees and along the back pasture fence line, but it looks ten times better than...

Image courtesy of Houstongardencenters.com This past week was a great one for shopping...plant shopping to be more specific.  I went plant crazy at a local nursery chain we have, Houston Garden Center, as evidenced by the image above. I stopped in Home Depot for something else and decided to roam through their garden department.  I found a whole table of perennials, $2.00 each.  I got 4 Blue Plumbagos, 4 Black Eyed Susans, and 4 Lantanas.  Then I went to Houston Garden Center (ad above), where they have a 70% off all plants sale! I bought 2 Mexican Firebush, 2 Purple Rubellia, 2 Balloon Flowers, 2 Firecracker Plants, 2 Durantas and 3 pots of Cannas (2 bulbs in each of several varieties). Perennials Then I went to another location a few days later and bought even more! More perennials I bought 2 Oleanders, 3 more Lantanas in different colors, 3 Mexican Heather plants, 2 Pentas in different colors, and 2 Esperanza Yellow Bells.  I still ne...

I posted a few weeks ago about our hole dilemma .  I mentioned an earth auger as a possibility and I took everyone's advice into account.  I was going to rent one but 2nd Family's "R" gave me some advice as well so I decided to pull the trigger.  Here is my new yard helper: Earth Auger from Lowe's I bought a 'one man' auger at Lowe's.  It came with the power head and a 10" (or maybe 8", I can't remember now) spiral bit for digging.  I did some reading on the best way to handle them, started slowly (it has a throttle) and proceeded to make a hole! Auger holes in clay soil Then another, and another....until I had five holes in a row along the side of the driveway.  I was a bit messy at first, until I got the hang of it.   I used my Rubbermaid Cart  to carry the trees and bags of soil down the LONG driveway and put them at each hole (not as hard on the old body). My shiny, new auger, not so shiny now but...

So, one of our local garden centers is having it's annual 70% off everything sale.  Yay!  We headed off to look for some ornamental trees (still need a few Vitex/Texas Lilac for the driveway).  We'd also like to get a plum tree and one more peach and one more pear.   We also want to try citrus again so as we were roaming around, we went to the citrus section.  These tags were on every single citrus tree, lemon, lime, orange, grapefruit...it didn't matter, it was on all of them: In all the years I've been venturing out to garden centers and nurseries, I've never seen this on any plant.  Very odd.  Needless to say, since our farm is outside of Harris County, we couldn't buy any citrus.   When we got back home, I had to look it up and see what it was all about.  I found THIS ARTICLE .  There is a disease called Citrus Greening that is going on.  In July, they apparently banned ALL cit rus sales ...

We love a plant sale!  Here in Houston, one of the chain garden centers has a great sale.  They do it every year at the end of the season.  All plants/shrubs/trees are at least 70% off.  When you are in the store, some smaller plants are as much as 80% off.  Now we don't buy veggies and/or more unusual plants at the chain places, we prefer the local nurseries and feed stores for their more hard to find local and heirloom varieties, b ut since we are trying to add more color to the farm, any generic ornamental tree/shrub is fair game.  We love our greens and of course the seasonal wildflowers in the Spring, but we need more.  So earlier this year, we planted five Vitex/Chaste trees along the driveway.  Click HERE to see that.  They are also known by the more descriptive name of "Texas Lilac" due to their resemblance to lilacs.  We just didn't have enough to line the entire driveway. We already had one in town, so we ended u...

We stayed in town this weekend which turned out to be good.  We got some errands run, and I made it to the garden center.  Bought two more Texas Lilac/Vitex bushes...for a grand total of seven...then I bought three more Texas sage...for a grand total of six of those. Then I added these two varieties (forgot to take photos): Blue plumbago photo from Southernliving.com Two Blue Plumbago  bushes.  We love the pale blue flowers on them.  We may end up with a few more of these as they are supposed to do well in our heat.  Esperanza, photo courtesy of davesgarden.com The other variety I got was Gold Star Esperanza , another Texas plant winner that is drought and heat tolerant.  Three of them.   Now if only we could be be more drought and heat tolerant... LOL ! Speaking of, it was a hot weekend.  The rains stopped and the heat came back. Hard to believe tomorrow is the first day of Fall.  It might be where you ...

"I think it ticks God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it..."                                   - Alice Walker "The purest and most thoughtful minds are those which love color the most..."                                   - John Ruskin These photos were taken at the farm.  It's some basil that sprang up randomly near the garden and a purple, wild, morning glory type vine that also randomly sprang up.  It's almost like nature is giving us the colors we wanted, ha.