Celebrating Seven Years of Blogging

I published my first blog post seven years ago today.  My garden was in its early stages and I thought regular posting would push me into gear to set goals for improvements while also sharing my progress (or setbacks) with other gardeners in San Antonio and beyond.  Just before hitting "publish" on that first post I wondered how long this blog would run.  Five years seemed like a good goal at the time.  I blew past five years and here I am at seven.  In honor of seven blogging years (is that the same as dog years?), I am sharing a fall tour of my garden.

With over 25 inches of rain last month it's a good time for a tour because the gardens have sprung to life after a tough summer.  Since I have a tradition of showing wider views on October 9th to compare progress year to year, I'll focus on closeups for this post.

We'll start up front by the street where last spring I was inspired by Christy Ten Eyck's local landscape installations to try a row of 'Blonde Ambition' grama grass in the front garden.  I moved some that had been scattered around the back garden and added a few new ones.  The seed heads start out chartreuse and turn tawny over time.

I like the effect and plan to move a few more from the back where they don't show up as well.

It takes a lot of space to mass them by the hundreds as in a professional landscape but I have found that five have a nice impact placed among spiky plants and salvia.  One of the golden barrels has bloomed for the first time this year.

Red barrel cactus bloomed for the first time this year with bright orange but quite inconspicuous flowers compared to other cactus blooms.

Native clammy-weed has found a place in the rock garden.  After seeding prolifically for several years it nearly died out but has returned in one of the hottest, driest spots.

A lack of rain over the summer led to a reduced crop of American Beautyberries (l) while the darker Mexican Beautyberries (r) seem to have weathered the summer drought much better.

Behind the Beautyberries I found this combination amusing.

Below you can see the face pot sits alone at the end of the path.  Two years ago I pulled out a ton of messy liriope and planted various sedges.  Various because it wasn't easy to find enough of a single variety.  That's Berkeley Sedge on the left of the path and locally native Webberville Sedge on the right.  They look very close in texture so it works.

The fountain still rocks.

There's been so much rain the Cenizo sage along the driveway blooms sporadically instead of all at once.   

Kitty enjoys rain lilies which have been spreading around the garden.

Keeping in mind that I have invited a group to tour the garden next May there seems to be work to do in the back garden as this area still lacks some definition and needs attention.

Flowers are overflowing the tank in the circle garden.

Pathways have been overrun.



Salvia farinacea has filled the tank to the point where I'll need to take some out in the spring.



Vignettes of all my collected stuff in the garden.



I reworked the flower "bed" last spring and it's looking a good deal better now.

Yes, we're still in Texas.

Loving the purple of Salvia Amistad which is the only Salvia guaranitica I can grow.  Hummingbirds also love it.

Brugmansia noid enhances my view from the kitchen sink and that Crinum to the left looks like a good candidate to divide and add some contrasting texture to the front fence garden I mentioned earlier.

Mexican Lime is almost ready for Key Lime pie.

Bougainvillea, gold lantana, cactus, and Yucca rigida in the back corner with Cow's tongue prickly pear.

My favorite view of bending oaks over the path we use most often.  Taking out the trash is actually kind of fun, especially walking back down this path.

That's the quick tour to celebrate my seventh anniversary of blogging at Rock-Oak-Deer.

Five years and still blogging

Five years ago today I hit the publish button on my intro post and immediately realized there would need to be a second, third and many more posts if this blog was to keep going.

Five years is quite a milestone and several bloggers I used to follow quit posting after a few years, in fact the only Central Texas blog I know of that was started about the same time and is still active is "My gardener says..." by Tina in Austin who hosts the Wildlife Wednesday meme I link to on the first Wednesday of each month.  Of course the primary inspiration for my blog, Digging by Pam Penick is going strong at 10 years.

Five years and 566 posts (including this one) published, plus more than a few unfinished posts stored as drafts.  And that brings up one of my challenges to blogging--getting over the need to have each post be perfect.  For example, had I known my post on propagating barrel cactus pups would be linked to Gardening Know How bringing in thousands of pageviews I might never have published it.  In retrospect the post isn't perfect but at least it's a step-by-step on separating and growing those baby barrels to help those who want to learn about the process.  Neal says he would have put on nicer gloves if he had known he would be "Mr Hand" to so many people.  Sometimes a pep talk is needed, something along the lines of "it's your blog so have fun and just get the info out there".  Neal also has a saying that "better is the enemy of good enough".  Maybe I'll even dust off a few of those unfinished posts and publish them as throwbacks.

This five year point is a good time to look back at some of my memories and milestones.  With so many posts to choose from, it's not easy to narrow down the choices so I've included links to each year's wrap up post.

2011

In my intro post I shared my goals for this blog and how I arrived at the title.  I decided early on that readers would get pretty bored looking at my somewhat new landscape and garden every week so I promised to tour you around my beautiful city of San Antonio along the way.  Along those lines, one of my first posts was a visit to the newly renovated Japanese Tea Garden.

Off to a fast start with 32 posts in three months and I ventured into showing my own garden progress with an October "Before and After" feature which I continue each year to document changes in my garden and began Walking the Walk from north to south along the 15 miles of the San Antonio River Walk.

With just three months of blogging under my belt, I decided a retrospective might be a bit presumptuous so I took the Top Ten Challenge and selected my favorite photos to close out the year.

2012

My first full blogging year saw 157 posts and my first blogger meet-up with Austin bloggers for the a fun day on the Garden Conservancy Open Days tour.

I even ventured farther out of town for the spectacular Chihuly exhibit at the Dallas Arboretum which resulted in one of my best photos ever.

You can read about more of my 2012 memories here.

2013

This was the year our gardens began recovering from several years of drought and record heat waves so an entire post on rain celebrated the occasion.  While attending a talk by Pam Penick, I discovered the Gardening Volunteers of South Texas (GVST) and added garden volunteer to my busy retirement schedule.  Joining my local garden club and GVST has opened up many new opportunities to blog about private and public gardens in San Antonio.

Traveling even farther than Dallas, I shared a chilly visit to the U.S. Botanic Garden in Washington, DC where we had lived for a number of years and then on to Neal's hometown of Harmony, Pennsyslvania for Thanksgiving.  We found time for a snowy trip to the amazing Phipps Conservatory in Pittsburgh and Amish country to the north.

For 2013 I listed all the plants I acquired during the year whether purchased, swapped, or just plain free.  Interesting, but it was the last time I attempted that particular stunt.


2014

In addition to more sights around town I posted a Before and After of my back garden.  Such posts are encouraging as they remind me of just how much we've accomplished in a relatively short time.

My first blog giveaway was a copy of Rebecca Sweet's book Refresh Your Garden Design with Color, Texture & Form.  I was thrilled to help promote her excellent guide to taking your garden up a notch by applying a few basic design principles.

For 2014 I focused on outtakes, those photos I liked but somehow didn't get posted during the year.

2015

In April 2015 my tank garden arrangement wowed visitors to my garden.  This photo was linked and pinned more than a few times.

Previewing the Inside Austin Garden Tour last fall was a first for my blog and just one of the many highlights of 2015.  Not only did I spend a day with Austin bloggers touring gardens, I got to visit Pam Penick's garden for the first time.  I've followed Pam's blog Digging for years and she encouraged me to start blogging when I was on the fence about the idea, so it was fun to finally visit and see her garden which has been so inspiring to those of us with similar challenges of tough climate, rocky soil and deer.  I got my first (and last) look at Moby before he bloomed and died in summer 2016.  Just last week Pam dropped off a batch of Moby Juniors, so Moby lives on!

Another favorite was a memorable visit to the vegetable garden at Haven for Hope where homeless families learn to get back on their feet.  I was so inspired I keep this post up as a featured post on my sidebar.




2016

From your comments I know many of you enjoy touring San Antonio.  Almost any tour of our sights is a can't miss hit since I live in one of America's most beautiful and popular destination cities.  Beside those obvious tourist spots, I also appreciate how readers have motivated me to explore corners of the city that I might not have taken the time to see such as the contemplative space of Chris Park.

I joined my first book launch party and second giveaway for Pam Penick's second book The Water-saving Garden.  It was fun to have a peek at the process of getting a book launched.  The book is an excellent source of inspiration and information on growing a gorgeous garden even if you don't live in a water-challenged area.

I'll have a retrospective on 2016 later in the year.

Thank you all for reading and commenting all these years and I'll start year six tomorrow with a Wildlife Wednesday post.  Every single post has had at least one comment, and those comments are truly appreciated.  Oh, and I updated my profile photo in honor of the occasion.

Four years and counting...

Four years ago today I published my introductory post on this blog.  It's fun to read that first post again and see how my early goals for this blog have held up.

"In addition to sharing progress in my own yard, I will also highlight gardens, gardeners, and garden events in and around this beautiful city of San Antonio.  I'll post interesting things I see along the way as well."

Looking back, I note I have covered all those things and more.  We've walked the River Walk, attended lots of garden tours and events, and have seen many of the sights our city has to offer.  I thought I'd better include my city and its gardeners not only because San Antonio is a beautiful place to live, but at the time my garden was in pretty rough shape!   Focusing on my own garden progress would make a very boring blog.  This blog also provided a challenge for me to get more done in the garden.  Much of that progress has been and will continue to be shared here in my "Before and After" posts like our driveway project which have turned out to be popular with readers.

Two Year Blogiversary

This blog is two years old today and, as it happens, it's also my 300th post.  Two years and 300 posts is just a little less than three posts a week, so I guess I've been having fun...haven't I?  Well it's been enough fun that I plan to keep on going.  In celebration I'm sharing the story of this blog ("My Blog So Far....").  It is also Marilyn Monroe's birthday, the anniversary of Sputnik, and the day Janis Joplin died.  Somehow my blog anniversary is not on the list of the important things which happened on October 4th.   Yet.

I've never been busted flat in Baton Rouge, but I have been beaten silly by the Texas caliche.  Not much rhythm in there, but it feels similar.  And I haven't orbited the earth, but I have circumnavigated my circle garden a few times.  And regarding the seven year itch, that will be a post 5 years from now.

Anyhoo, back at the south 40, when we began planning our retirement move from Washington DC to San Antonio in the spring of 2008, I also began to search for landscape inspiration.  In addition to the many excellent local gardening articles and radio shows offering advice, I knew I needed a lot more.  I wanted a landscape that would reflect both my style and our region.

Circle Garden Spring 2013

First Blogiversary today!

Today I celebrate the first anniversary of this blog.  One year of blogging.  What else is there to say? Quite a bit actually.   I've learned so much and had such a good time with my 147 published posts.  In honor of the occasion I'm sharing a few observations.