How Green Is My Texas Valley (Yard really)

Very green, as it turns out. Vibrantly green. Again. I wrote of what an unexpected delight it was to realize, at the right season, I didn’t really live in a desert but in a jungle and then the heat and humidity arrived and the grass withered and life looked pretty crispy again. Oh, but Blessed Rain, Buckets of Rain, that’s what we’ve been treated to this week and it looks like spring all over again. The speed of growth here dazzles me. Tomatoes that I wouldn’t even have in the ground yet on Cape Cod, (planting by Mother’s Day was my goal but a tad risky, mostly they wanted you to wait until Memorial Day but who could wait that long when days were long and lovely?), already have baseball size tomatoes on them, banana peppers are long and practically touching the ground. Yikes, if all goes well, I will be canning by June.

Ironically, I have this stolen minute to write because a class I would have done on the freshwater marsh was canceled. The irony is, last week I was worried that there wouldn’t be enough water for the kids to scoop nymphs out of and now today, it was canceled due to floods! Go Texas, nothing in moderation apparently. And here is a wonderful bonus to the rain. A flower called a Rain Lily (Cooperia Pedunculata) seems to appear overnight whenever we have a heavy rain, and it can do this from spring to fall. Last year it must have waited patiently in its bulb for the rain that never came, but so far, this year I have seen it appear twice. What a treat to “walk the land” yesterday to find I had dozens of them scattered about both in beds and along the path. I know I have paid a price in chiggers and burrs for leaving a swath of plants alone that border the winding path, but from that 1 ft or so width of wildness I have been treated to Rain lilies, Mexican Hats, Texas dandelions, Stemless primrose, Prairie Verbena, etc and so have mitigated the pain of the burrs and chiggers. Back to the Rain Lilies, they are also called Fairy lilies and I wonder if that is because they begin to unfold their buds at night, then, are in full bloom by day. They truly appear so suddenly and so completely that they have a magic quality about them. And they disappear just as quickly. I went to take pictures today, after the rain, of the ones I saw yesterday but they were already on the wane. Of course, something like 2” fell in one hour and any delicate petal would have taken a beating I suppose.

Still I spotted some others that are just budding, so I will try to capture a picture tomorrow then. I also look crazy because I set out every trash bucket and 5 gallon container I had to catch all this glorious water. We have a well, so it isn’t that we pay the high water prices others do, but I know how precious rain is and this ought to provide at least one, free, fruit tree watering without feeling guilty about the aquifer. I really need to look into buying those large rain barrels. We have a “rain chain” which at first glance I took to be a most pathetic Tarzan swing, but what a job it does at delivering all the rain from the roof into the barrel below-full in no time. Like I said, I defiantly need bigger barrels. Well, I have squandered much of my free time from the canceled class on trying to make the pictures I took of the yard into a slide show to send friends. I made it, even added music, but for the life of me, I can’t figure out how to send it, or where it is actually saved. Really, this old dog might be learning new tricks of which plant is which but remains steadfastly untrainable in the technological arts. If I manage to include some pictures of my “how green is my TX yard” then consider it nigh upon miraculous.

I can’t count on too many, “cancelled due to rain” days, but if another comes along the blog that’s clogging my brain at the moment is one about the incredible array of locust,

grasshoppers, walking sticks

etc that hang out on my deck daily. First I have to figure out who they are, what they do, and then I can share that with you.

It all takes time though, and what do I keep saying I have little of –time. But this full life with little time is suiting me well so far. Some hot unbearable day after I get caught up inside, we shall just run the tape backwards and share all the things that wowed me in these past fecund months. Also a “Hats off to Lepidopterists” blog awaits writing. Enough Pat, enough.