Lesmel - Benign neglect in the garden - part 2

May my thumb turn green in the new year (it won't).

When I got home, I checked on my fig tree. It's grown again. I'm going to need to move it into the ground this year. It still had a handful of figs. Crazy tree. It decided to put out fruit in Nov...just tells you how crazy our weather is.

We have had a shift in weather. It's 41F right now. At noon, it was 83F. By tomorrow morning, we should be dipping just below the freezing mark for 1-2 hours max. We will have a repeat on Tuesday morning.

The figs will probably fall off tomorrow. No matter, they weren't going to ripen. I may nip any fruit that tries to produce this year. Make it focus on growing healthy leaves and roots. Is this even the right thing to do for a fig?

Holy hannah is it cold. It's 38F. It was 83F at noon yesterday. I'm pretty sure we only dipped to 30F. We have another dip into below freezing tonight and then we steady out above freezing for our lows for 7+ days.

I looked this morning. Most of my gardenias were trying to bloom. I have no idea if the gardenias will be affected by our weather. Sometimes, the gardenias are hardier than expected; sometimes they are little hothouse babies and wilt at the first sign of 40s.

The volunteer begonia (geranium? -- I have to look at my previous threads) is begonia-ing. It decided to grow in a pot on the north side of the patio this time. I swear this thing is sentient. It travels all over my patio beds. It's hardier than any plant I've ever purchased.

My fig is making fruit babies...



Why is the world is my fig trying to fruit?? Here's what I pulled off with the hope it will stop producing fruit.



The fruit isn't ripe at all, not surprising.

!!Now?!!

Where do you live that your fig even has leaves in January?

Texas. We have had some pretty hot weather. It was 80-90s through Christmas. Only in the last week have we gotten true Winter. We should hit low 70s this week before we plunge back into solid 40s.

If you want to grow year round with minimal risk of freezing, live in my hometown (or any part of the Rio Grand Valley in Texas). This year, it was 92 on Dec 30th.

This is why we can run pipes in our attics. 🤣

Well, 3-8" of snow was not on my 2025 bingo card. https://spacecityweather.com/a-winter-storm-warning-is-now-in-effect-for-the-ent...

Honestly, I have doubts that we will even get 4" in my neighborhood; but whatevs. The next three days will be "interesting."

>8 lesmel: Stay warm and cozy!

How we started (pre-snow):

How it went (light snow 7:30AMish):

How it's going (snow stopped at 11AM my time):

We got about 2" of pretty snow! This is the snow I like. It falls like the movies. It melts fast. It doesn't leave us with dirty slush for more than 24 hours. You can see all my pics from yesterday and today (and probably tomorrow).

See...pretty movie snow!

I probably have enough boxes to do some serious smothering of weeds and grass this year. Now if the weather will cooperate just a little and allow my yard to dry out some.

Nearly a month after the snow of 2025 and the yard is still an unhinged mess. We keep getting rain that turns my yard into a swampy mud lake. We are also reaching the part of Texas winter where the weather can't pick what it wants...late Spring or dead Winter...usually on the same day.

I have been chatting with my Sunday Night Ladies about trying a communal garden. My cousin is interested, too. We need to make some decisions on plants. I am thinking either 2 smallish planters or one largeish planter. I have no idea if this is worth the effort. In my mind, maybe the farmer's market is a better choice? I expect food prices to continue to rise. Maybe backyard gardening can help.

In my experience you should remove fruit until a tree is established. We have a fig tree. Some years I get figs. Some years the raccoons strip it before the figs are ripe. A couple years ago it was covered by huge green beetles, so I removed the damaged fruit and beetles and fed them to my chickens.

I like 2" snowfalls that melt the next day. That's our usual type of winter weather here. Not this year.

Community gardens sound good, but the 80/20 rule applies: 20% of the people will do 80% of the work. I experienced that once, now I do raised beds in my backyard.

I say "community;" but it's really 4-5 women. We plan on using my backyard since I have the most space, exposure, and everyone will be able to get in/out of my yard without a problem.

>18 lesmel: oh, that's different.

Called AT&T at lunch today to report exposed cables. The tech came out in less than two hours. I showed him the cables. He cut them with HOUSE SCISSORS! I mean, he asked if I had a land line first; but scissors like I have in my house.

I booked an appointment with Xfinity yesterday (for today), to check the line and figure out why I have terrible internet service. The tech replaced the whole line, all the connectors, and bypassed a satellite splitter in my attic. He said it should take a couple days for my service to really improve. He thinks my dropping wifi should disappear.

I'm not sure that's the case, but I will wait before I make more changes.

I do think I already seen more stable service. My tv streaming doesn't seem to buffer or stutter like it had been. Xfinity will be back to bury the cable in a few days.

More rain and cold weather over the weekend. At this point, the ground may never dry out. That's dramatic and untrue; but when you look at the lake that keeps forming in my backyard, you would agree. The ground right now is totally saturated and every rain is producing nothing but run-off.

In true Texas fashion, it's warm enough to wear t-shirts, shorts, and sandals. We have had weird dense fog in the mornings. It burns off by 9AM. The nights and early mornings are cool. It's muggy 24/7; but with the lower temps and some breezes, it's probably the most perfect weather we can expect.

We are having a True Texas Spring. It's warm. It's cold. It's warm. It's cool. It's windy. It's foggy. It's crystal clear. Supposedly, we should have the most ideal, ideal March ever. Like, the REASON we live in Texas. March is usually the month that reminds me why I put up with July - October in Texas.

We're bouncing between warm and cold here in Georgia, too. We had a bit of a cold snap, went to sunny and 76 yesterday, and it's cloudy with a projected high of 60 today. At least it looks as though we'll get some rain today and tomorrow, which we can use.

Have you been getting enough rain?

It feels like a ton of rain; but I saw a map that showed us in drought. Now, I have looked at the US Drought Monitor and that map says we have "abnormally dry" conditions.

My brother and nephew have been here all week working on the second 3rd of the fence. As of about 5:30 today, I have 2/3 of a completed, new fence. The north line was done post-hurricane. Now the south line is done. The west line is left. Only 5 panels are left before I have a totally new fence!!

I'll post some pic tomorrow. When, hopefully, I will have a couple photos of the blood moon!

>27 lesmel: looking forward to photos!

There's a section of our chain link fence that needs to be replaced, but I haven't been able to find someone to fix it, not yet.

>27 lesmel: Hurray for the new fence! Would love to see the photos of the moon, too. It was cloudy here.

We have a fence that needs mending. Don't want to spend the money on it so we keep patching. Homeless people steal the patches, then their dogs get in our yard.

Sadly, there were clouds over the blood moon. Boooooooooooooo!!

The best I got from the blood moon was a live stream on YouTube.

The fence is so purdy!!

Yes it is!

>31 lesmel: love the "new" wood look.

Why are some of the panels facing in the opposite direction? Inquiring mind here. :)

>33 fuzzi: It's called "good neighbor" fencing. There are two ideas behind this -- it's easy to split the cost of fencing when you have an easily identifiable split; "good" neighbors share the ugly aesthetic.

In the fence that faces the street, I have the ugly side inside my yard (per HOA rules)...





In the last piece of fence that needs replacing, my brother will be facing the ugly side to my neighbors since. Back when the fence came down, they put about 1/2 (not quite) the fence up with the ugly side facing me only instead of using good neighbor swapping. Also, the dude that fixed the fence didn't bother digging up the old posts. He just sank new posts which forced that section of the fence to be off alignment for good neighbor fencing. He also used yellow pine pickets which isn't allowed based on the HOA guidelines/rules.



You can mostly see the fence that will be replaced (to the left, all the grey wood) this week in this photo:



There are 5-6 panels. The scary part is the gas line that runs under the fence (perpendicular). My brother doesn't want to dig up any posts if he doesn't have to. Also, we are going to try to re-use as many of the old pickets from the street-side fence as possible. Those pickets aren't very old.

Reader, you may be wondering if my neighbors are splitting the cost. No, they are not; but I don't plan on replacing the next fence that blows down. If they want to replace it, they can pay someone. If I sell this house before the fence blows down, I'll make sure to note that for the new owners.

I expect my house to blow down before my brother's fence does. Every post has 100lbs of concrete 2+ feet into the ground. The concrete is V shaped to further stabilize the structure.

>34 lesmel: "good neighbor fencing", that's a nice concept. And how wonderful to have such a talented brother to assist.

The last section that needed fixing!



My brother used most of the old stockpile and the all of the new stockpile. He only needed to buy rail and rot boards. I am contemplating using all the old fence pickets for raised beds. I have a huge mess to manage on the north side of the house. While my brother did an excellent job making the fence, disposing of the waste was not in his plans, apparently.

Looks nice and private!

I'm slowly whittling down the leftover mess from the fence job. I've reached a point that I can't break anything else down and need to contact someone about hauling the trash. Back when I had a much bigger pile, I should have considered The Bagster. The collection fee is $220 in my area plus the $30 bag. It's a single-use dumpster bag...which sort of sucks; but it would have made clearing the debris easy. I will probably get a tree service out to take the maple down and ask if they will haul the fence debris, too.

I've been hoarding cardboard and paperboard for a while now. I'm hoping come Fall, I can start sheet mulching the yard where I want 1-2 beds. I'm not committing to it; but I would like to work over the winter on getting the backyard in better shape. All the beds look terrible. The brick borders need to be dug up and relaid.

I may have killed my fig. I did not realize that it had managed to send the tap root through the hole in the barrel. I ripped it out of the ground while trying to clean up that little section of the patio beds. This tells me I really need to get it in the ground. If I could pick where to plant it! Assuming I haven't killed it.

I worked a little on weeding the western fence bed. It's wildly overgrown with grass.

To add to the "must get rid of fencing mess," I need fill along most of the fence. I haven't mentioned it before; but I have a puppy arriving around the 20th of June. The largest gap (fence to ground) is 5". No way can I feel safe letting a puppy play in my backyard -- supervised or not -- with that kind of gap.

*sighs* I've put off posting about this. The puppy was killed the week before I was supposed to pick him up. The entire litter was killed by a snake. We will never really know what happened; but the best explanation is that the puppies saw the snake as a toy and it defended itself with tragic consequences. Life is not fair; Nature is not kind. I grieved for little Bruno and his litter mates. I spent a lot of time trying to decide if I was going to find another puppy and what that would look like. This weekend, I may be adopting a four month old Boston mix. It all depends on how Blue and Chip get along at the meet-and-greet. I don't foresee anything making this adoption not happen; but Blue takes priority.

In yard news, the gaps are mostly filled. The fence debris is gone. My yard was just mowed. The grass had gotten nearly knee-high because we have had some really great rain that I hope continues through July. I still need to sprinkler tech to come by to fix at least one broken head. I also am hoping I can get him to flag every head in the grass because I am going to figure out how to protect all of them. Current plan is to excavate some grass, lay some weed/grass barrier, sand, and rock for each sprinkler head in grass. This way, MAYBE, my lawn guy will stop breaking the heads! I know there are plastic donuts and concrete donuts. The plastic donuts break -- a number of neighbors have them and they are in varying stages of destruction. The concrete donuts I have yet to find in a store.

>40 lesmel: I'm so sorry to hear about the puppy. Damn snakes anyway. Intellectually, I know they have a place in this world, but I despise them none the less.

Meet Chip!



He was 5 months old on Saturday. He's a Boston Terrier mix. I'm waiting for his DNA swab to find out what exactly his mix is. I adopted him from a central Texas rescue that focuses on transport out of high kill shelters and/or high kill/low resource areas. He originally came from Eagle Pass. More pictures!

Cutie! Congratulations to you and to Chip!

>42 lesmel: adorable! I'm happy for you.

Nice to meet you, Chip!

My backyard is... *sighs* I have two standard poodles living with me; it's temporary.
They have eaten my fig.
They have eaten most of my flags I use for poop patrol or whatnot.
They have dragged dirt and mud all over my patio.
They have chewed several fence planks.
They have dragged every loose branch, bark, and twig onto the patio.
They have started to dig holes in my flower beds by the patio.

I have no idea if my fig will recover. It has surprised me before. I am hoping it will surprise me again. As soon as Fall hits, I need to start my backyard project. I really need to do something with the patio beds. I cannot stand that both of my four-foots seem to LOOOOOOOVE chewing the bark mulch. It would be fine if they would chew it outside. Nooooo, they like to drag it in the house and chew it into tiny bits all over the house.

The fig has come back from the dead! I have a ton of leafy growth. No telling if it's strong enough to survive the rest of the year; but I'd like to plant it in the Spring.

The front trees got a hard trim and the dead maple in the back is no more! Should be interesting to see what happens out front. My grass should love the new level of sunlight. I'm probably going to have to re-landscape. Last year or year before (?) was lazy landscaping to keep the HOA off my back.