These spider lilies (Hymenocallis occidentalis), blooming happily in a pond at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, always remind me of a formative point in my life that probably eventually led to my discovering an interest in gardening.

When I was fifteen and a freshman in high school, my biology teacher gave us a collection assignment.  We could choose between collecting insects, marine organisms (I grew up on the gulf coast), or wildflowers. It wasn't hard to choose which I'd work on.  My friend and I worked as a team to collect as many unique species of native flowers from around the state as we could find.

Fortuitously, our wildflower collection project coincided with Spring Break, and I took a trip to New Orleans with my grandmother during that time.  My grandmother is game for any kind of cool project, so we went to New Orleans equipped with my heavy-duty flower press, lots of plastic bags, and a trowel for digging up specimens.

So off we went, on I-10, and we stopped periodically on side roads to look for interesting flowers we hadn't seen.  The moment you get to Louisiana, much of the ground turns to swampy marshland.  I remember seeing tall white flowers in the marshy medians; they didn't look like anything I'd seen before.  Finally, we found a place we could pull over on the shoulder of I-10 (those who are familiar with this general stretch of road are free to cringe and shudder here), and I set off to investigate this mystery flower, across three or four lanes of traffic and into the median.  But it was far too muddy for me to walk all the way to the flower without being mired in muck, so my grandmother tied plastic grocery bags onto my feet before I went. 

When she tells this story, she says that she'll never forget the moment when I finally dug the spider lily, bulbous root system and all, up from the mud and held it triumphantly over my head before crossing I-10 again and returning to the car.  I remember how proud I was, and how excited that I'd have such an unusual specimen in my collection.

I pressed the flower itself, but the bulb-like root was too thick to press and dry.  Instead, I potted it and planted it in my other grandmother's backyard fish pond, where it lingered and eventually died, never to bloom again.  Obviously, our poor imitation of a habitat didn't match up to the real thing.

At least I got an A+ on the project.

The Natural Gardener, an organic nursery and gardeners' amusement park.  This is my favorite nursery in Austin and well worth the forty-ish mile round trip once in a while.











































This piece of garden art is just merchandise, actually, but I find it to be such interesting, textured merchandise.  And the light was lovely in this spot, though it was early afternoon, which is a photographer's nightmare.

This field of poppies called out to me back near some of the demonstration gardens.  They grow en masse in a large bed here.


David-Peese Garden




I became quite aware of some of my own photographic idiosyncracies as we toured this magnificant gardens.  I love my macro lens, and I use it (perhaps even overuse it) quite a lot.  I'm entranced by the small details I see, and those are what I generally try to convey in my photography.  But this garden is clearly intended to convey scale - sheer enormity - and my macro lens just doesn't do that.  So, I gave up and made a lens change about halfway through.

This is probably the last macro I took before I switched lenses.  It's the amazing gothic voodoo lily, which is incredibly large and rather obscene looking.  From the right spot, it smells like death, and the flies come from all around to pay homage.  You can see one in the bottom right corner here.  It's actually quite beautiful, in its dark, ugly, phallic, nauseatingly smelly way.  Just don't stand downwind.





















Here's a nice wide-angle view of the grand staircase that leads from the lower garden up to the upper garden and the house.  It's hard to tell from here, but the middle of the staircase is a small channel down which water runs.  (It reminded me a bit of the sewage system I saw in Sighisoara, which is a medieval city in Romania, but that, as well, is another story.)  The sheer scale of this garden was overwhelming.

Once I contented myself with taking specimen photos, I was much more pleased with my results.


These are Spanish bluebells, noxious invasive weeds in the UK, apparently, but exotic, beautiful, and very unusual in the Texas hill country.

This California Mikado poppy was luminescent and just gorgeous.  Next year, I will ensure I have some in my garden, as well.



Finally, a brilliant red St. Joseph's lily, reminiscent, yet so much more vivid, than the soft pink amaryllis in my own garden.  I've had the pleasure of seeing Zanthan Gardens in the fall, but I thoroughly enjoyed seeing it again in the spring.

...And maybe that's a bit of a retrospective, after all.

Made my week, my amaryllis.

Our little house is on a busy street, with quite a bit of traffic, of both the pedestrian and vehicular varieties.  We're located the  perfect distance away from both a convenience store and a fast food restaurant, such that people finish eating their snacks right in front of our house and promptly throw their litter into our yard.  Sigh.

So we don't spend a lot of time in the front yard.  Our more secluded back yard is far more inviting.  In the front yard, I plant things that won't (generally) require me to water them, because chances are I won't remember.  Everything in the front yard must thrive on neglect, and I still have a lot of work to do to turn it from the yard it is, into the garden I'd like for it to be.

All this is to say that I've done absolutely nothing to the bulbs and plants I've installed into the front yard, aside from digging a bed, mulching it, and some very occasional watering.  So imagine my delight to see such colors in my front beds!

















Not all the color is even visible here.  In this one long, skinny bed that runs along the driveway, I've got bulbines flourishing (as always), vivid red ranunculus, irises preparing to bloom, bright poppies, and of course, my amaryllis.

My gaura should kick in later in the summer, and in the fall, I'm hopeful that MSS' oxblood lilies will bloom, as well.

















The bright ranunculus, closer up - such a vivid contrast to the orange and yellow bulbines...

...and the first iris of the season. 

My aloe vera has hit the peak (more or less) of its bloom for this year.  I haven't noticed much interest in it by the butterflies that have been frequenting the garden.