Sunday, March 11, 2007

Spring

Spring is here in Austin. There are some early season bloomers that have burst out this week, and they are my favourites. Texas mountain laurel and red bud. We have a red bud tree, but I didn't get a good picture. There is one down the street that is astounding - I'll get a picture of it when the rain lets up. But we do have a small Mountain Laurel. The blooms smell like grape bubblegum. It can be trained into a tree shape, rather than the bush we have, but it is a slow grower and takes a loooong time to get big.

Spring also means it's time to enact my plans/hopes to grow vegetables. Last weekend I built raised beds. The big one has broccoli, cabbage and onions so far. I also want to add potatoes and maybe beets. The smaller one (which needs leveling) will have tomatoes, but it's still a bit early for those.

I'm going to try some vines too, probably zucchini and melons. They will go in the border garden so they can use the fence to grow, and also won't eat up my limited raised bed space. I hope it goes well, I'm excited about homegrown veggies.

2 comments:

Karen said...

I sooooo want to be in Austin with you right now. Maybe from now on I'll always plan a March trip to Austin to get out of this crappy Ottawa month.

I love the raised beds - they look great.

Anonymous said...

VERY PRETTY! I like them. They're gonna be great! What animals do you have down there to eat the veggies? (Other than you of course)?
-Erika