Catching up

I'm so bad these days at posting regularly.  It's been near a month since I last posted.  In that time, my wonderful readers have identified my mystery flower as Grapes Gomphrena, and I'm most appreciative!

We've survived our season's first freezes, but not all our plants have been so lucky.  I'll admit to being fairly demanding of my plants -- I won't do a whole lot to care for them unless I have a lot invested in them, and that includes being very diligent about covering everything when I'm expecting a freeze.  To be fair, we've had some relatively hard freezes (for our area, that means temperatures in the 20s) that no one (not least the meteorologists) were expecting.  So some of what I posted for December Bloom Day is brown and crunchy now, and the rest has found its dormancy finally.  But everywhere, I see signs of life waiting to jump forth in spring.  I've never spent so much time looking at plants before.

Now is the season in Austin for digging for new beds, planting dormant trees and shrubs, and pruning things back to encourage spring growth.  That's what I've been busy with, on these last few beautiful days.  In the last month, we've planted a pecan tree and two peach trees in our back yard.  All three look like dead sticks sunk into the ground, but I'm hopeful that they'll start looking like plants again soon.  We're tilling up our side yard (southern exposure) to plant blackberries, potatoes, and whatever else suits our fancy, and we're planning to build our second raised bed in the area where we've pulled up our peanuts in our fenced-in garden.  I'm starting to covet a separate bed for an herb garden, as well.   And we're making plans, this first January in our new house, for other improvements we'd like to make, short-term and long, inside and out.  We have lots to do, from reducing our turf to adding in rainwater collection.

I find myself with more gardening questions lately, and I'm hopeful that my readers have answers.  I'm starting a series of questions, general and specific, and I hope you'll provide input.