Getting The Hang Of Spring In Texas

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It seems the 6^th season is the charm.  This marks my 6^th spring here and I think I finally know what to expect.  First, and always most shockingly, is that “spring” really begins in February.  By Valentines Day, a number of garden chores MUST be done.  Pruning for instance.  Prune your roses, prune your Esperanza’s, be done pruning the oaks or you risk the dreaded Oak wilt. 

If you want to plant new things; bushes or trees, better do it now so their roots have a chance to grow before the heat arrives, as early as April. Actually, it comes even sooner than that for it can be 80 in almost any month in Texas, it just isn’t constantly that temperature.

In March you ought to attempt to get tomatoes in.  There is a risk in this though, it may get cold, and curtains for them, but I have found to wait, is to have it get too hot in June and curtains for them again. This year I am trying for March, praying that they do, as the tag says, come to fruition in 60-75 days because on the 76^th day I hope to be headed North. 

I have had little luck so far, for that matter, last years “harvest” fit in the palm of my hand, 3 cherry tomatoes!  Not exactly making the cover of any Burpee catalogue!  I have raccoons who must favor fried green tomatoes for they eat them well before the time to pick, plus the mockingbirds just like to peck at things and then say,  “Yuck, not ready yet”.  They did that with peaches one year. Every green peach pecked, followed by a “yuck”, and then, left to fester.

March is the time to get out there with a hoe and huge leaf bags for every weed that boasts a thousand stickers each will be coming up as though fed by atomic fertilizer!  They made Tuck’s life a misery, coating his fur and then making their transfer to our rug, to our clothes to everything!  With Dakota, my rescue Brittany, I will try having her clipped and see if that lessens the cling-ons: Burr clover, Hedge parsley, Malta thistle, Velcro plant, they cover the landscape and, like so many other things, must be dealt with in March.

The icing on the “break-you-back-cake” is that March is when all the live oak trees, of which we have a large number, drop their leaves with a vengeance over about a 2-week period.  Annoying that they didn’t get the memo that leaves were meant to fall in the Fall when other gardening tasks are done. So add endless raking to your March list.

But, thank you God, the weather is beautiful, most days it’s in the 60’s and 70’s so I leave the indoor chores and head outside happily.  For that matter, this needs to end here for in an hour I will be hosting some neighboring dogs to come and romp while I prune trees and pull weeds. It is Spring Break this week so some volunteering tasks are on hold.  Only some, consequently  if you note that spring is light on blogging that is because there are only so many hours in a day.  And we just lost one!

When time permits, I must write of getting a better sense for who is flying over when.  Hawks are migrating and spring is the times to gather the puffs of feathers for my simulated crime scenes as bird eating hawks have our house on their fast food list.  Flocks of cedar waxwings visit the many Ash junipers in the yard, and robins do their best to ferret out worms, which are not exactly abundant here.  But again, that’s another blog for another day.  Need to unbury the deck from the latest leaf dump before people and their dogs arrive. 

So, to you Northern friends who might be shoveling out and envying me my lack of winter, think again, there is more than one way to break a back!