Unexpected Gifts from the Rain

So after getting almost 9 inches of rain this week, the grass is crazy long, the fences are still drying out, and there are a few less birds visiting the fountain.  This morning I took a Town Lake walk with M and saw remnants of the flooding there: weed-draped benches, beached docks, and long expanses of muddy muck where the trail used to be. When I got home I took the time to walk around the park in my backyard and see how things were drying out.

The okra plants that had fallen/bent way over under the force of the wind and rain had start to grow in an "s" shape back towards the sky.  I found more twine and posts to force them upright. Then I picked a plate of okra.  Those plants are hardy.

The tomato plant is draped way down over the basil and pepper plants. I have a trip to Lowe's planned today to see if I can find some better supports.  For the record, still not cool enough at night for tomatoes, but I'm not giving up early this year.  I'll keep that plant going until the first freeze before I give up!

There were also a few surprises.  This volunteer didn't look like the usual suspects when I saw it on Thursday, so I let it grow.

Turns out it was a rain lilly, and more popped up in the lawn and herb garden within the next couple days.

Funny that they don't crop up from being watered with the sprinkler.  You definitely need a good soaking before they emerge.  Not sure how they propagate but I'll leave them be where I can so that they have a chance to come again after the next big rain.

Moving on. In the back of the yard near the strawberry patch everything looked normal. Then I thought I saw  a pot of gold coins tipped over near the rosemary. Turns out, the jack o'lantern that I'd dumped by the fence to rot last year had a heck of a lot of seeds.

I doubt they'll grow into anything, but I suppose I should still clean them up.  Or maybe see if the squirrels do...
And finally there were these little surprises sprouting up from dried husks of ancient purple alien flowers.

Artichokes back from the dry dust of summer! The one on the top left is really close to the thyme (upper left corner). I hope the thyme learns to grow northwest because it's going to be fighting for sunlight in another couple months if that artichoke continues to grow. The artichoke sprout from the second plant is not looking as strong, but now that I know it's there, I'm going to make sure to water it regularly.  Hopefully these plants don't need 8 inches of water a week to grow, but it's still exciting to see them after months of nothing.

Catching up: Spring review of artichokes, ladybugs, and alien purple flowers

Last year I tried growing some bare root artichoke plants that I got from the Natural Gardener. Although the plants sprouted, they never got very big and died as soon as the heat hit in May. This year I tried again, but planted transplants instead of bare root subjects. Now, perhaps I also paid more attention to them, watering and fertilizing more regularly, or perhaps it was just the breed of plant, but this spring, my two artichoke plants really took off.

(ps that's a baby dill plant in the far, upper left.  More on that guy later)

Though I got the transplants at the same time from the same nursery, the one on the left decided to grow tall and the one of the right decided to grow short. The above picture shows them young and happy.  I found out later that artichoke plants can get pretty ratty as they grow, and require pruning to remove dead/dying leaves  that the roly-polys love to chomp on.

And you know what other bugs love artichoke plants? Aphids!

I sprayed some neem oil on the plants, but by the time I saw these buggers, I thought for sure the infestation would win.  But then I saw a new form of foe.

Ugh! I felt like the worse gardener ever! I was totally powerless to help my plant.  But then, I put aside my panic and did a little research.  Turns out, these guys are 2 different forms of developing ladybugs.

(Sorry. That's the best shot I have of one.)  So the ladybugs had come to munch all the aphids.  Yay! The system works!  Really.  After less then a week I never saw any more aphids on the plants.  I was amazed b/c watching the ladybugs, I never actually saw them eat anything.  In fact aphids would just walk right up to a ladybug and then walk away unscathed.  Well, at least as far as I could see.  Apparently, they were way scathed when I wasn't looking.

And then came the first hints of artichoke.

I was totally stoked. And come to find that a plant can produce more than one artichoke at a time.

In my case, the secondary artichokes were never as big as the first one. Plus, the first one wasn't that big, but it was tasty.

Dan and I had to do some research about how to prepare and eat them (read: Alton Brown cookbook from Christmas) but it was a fun experiment.

Because of the smallish size of the artichokes we were picking, we thought we'd wait longer to see if they would get bigger.  In this case, the just started to flower.  But that's okay too.  As artichoke eating by nature involves a lot of butter eating and it was probably time for us to cut back on that for the spring.  Here's a photo sequence of the flowering:

Overall we got three purple flowers, but the heat is really taking a toll on the plants.  Most of the leaves are yellow and shriveled and the flowers look like someone singed them with a lighter.  I don't know if the plants will survive until next year (it's not likely in texas) but if not, I'll be looking for transplants to grow in 2011. And this time I think I'll give them more room to grow.  They start small but become very big additions to the garden.