garden planning . . . or undoing

My illustrated journals are really a "one place for everything" gathering place. Notes, memories, testing art supplies, snippets of daily life -- all find their way into my books. And by posting everything on this blog (and remembering to add labels!), I can always find something later on.

We moved into our cabin during a drought; now we have seen the effects of flooding rains and scorching summer heat. So some changes need to be made to the planting beds that were here when we moved in.

Along the walk leading to our front door was a flower bed that I turned into a culinary herb bed. But the heavy downpours of rain continually washed the sandy soil onto our patio, leaving drifts of sand dunes and drowning the herb plants. Bill plans to redo the drainage system ___ the French drains were not installed correctly ___ but we also are letting this bed go back to grassy sod to stop the erosion.

On the other side of the patio is a flower bed where former owners had zinnias. They only lived here five years, all during the drought, so the flowers thrived. But during heavy rains, this bed becomes a wet swamp. So we are going to lay in some decorative rock here and set some containers of herbs. We can always move the pots away from the heaviest rain as needed.

The existing lantana that was in the rose bed have been moved to the south of the cabin where they are doing much better in full sun. So I am considering doing a new herb bed here. The patio cover shades it part of the day but it seems to get a good amount of sun as well. And if I include plants that attract hummingbirds, our constant stream of hummers will be happy as well.

I jotted down more garden notes on the next couple of pages. We have a separate raised vegetable garden near the woodshop but are still trying to figure out which tomatoes grow best here. So I listed some varieties a central Texas gardening book recommends. All names we are not familiar with. I wonder if some are actually the same varieties we grew in Kansas but under different names? Bill likes to grow ingredients for homemade salsa.

We also need to replace a photinia shrub that died; a dwarf holly would add green color all year while hiding the AC unit. And our birds might enjoy the berries.