Garden & Yard Update

Nothing particularly coherent to write about, but there were a few things I wanted to note for posterity.

Yesterday I planted green beans in the south-side bed. Originally I had saved that space for my wife to use. She wanted to get more involved in gardening, and we had researched the best things to plant given the late month. I was excited by that when she decided – it would have been a nice way to connect. But May stretched into June, and she hadn’t done anything with it. A week ago she finally admitted she wasn’t going to do anything with it. Disappointing.

So without a whole lot to lose, I planted green beans there… two rows of 3 seeds per mound… about 10 mounds. Already today they are sprouting. Beans are FAST! Now, it being almost July in Texas, it remains to be seen if anything comes of them. A long shot… but again, what’s to lose? I already had spare seeds.

Which reminds me, I need to hook up a water line to supply that bed from the sprinkler system. I have a micro-sprinkler tap nearby, but I need a few small parts to make it a go. Currently I have a hose-end sprinkler and chlorine filter supplying that bed, but with my 40+ year old brain, I’m likely to forget and leave that running all night.

And speaking of water, I have a PVC pipe over on the north-ish side of the house that captures the water from the A/C condenser. I had disconnected it over the winter – not a lot of A/C use until about February or so. I reconnected it today to water a small bed over there that contains a small thorny shrub whose name escapes me now. Damned 40-year-old brain. But it occurs to me that would make a good spot for the Gulf Coast penstemon, too… moisture and shade. I have had that plant for months, and I have yet to plant it. Poor thing. A wonder it’s still alive.

Lastly, since it has been Bug Week around here, I have to leave this post with yet another striking visitor to the yard: