October 9th Before and After 2018

Exactly seven years ago on October 9th, 2011, just a few days after I began this blog, one of my first posts was a "Before and After" of our front garden and I've kept that theme as an annual feature to show my yearly progress.

2010 (before the blog)

Just a year into a complete revision of our landscape I took this photo to document how good it looked.  We had just finished putting rocks in the mailbox strip along the road.  The deep pink Salvia greggii had been in place about 15 years when we divided and replanted them to fit the new scheme.  Just a few months later those blooms were the highlight of our landscape.

The following year in 2011 we had the first of two severe drought years and everything looked terrible.  October 9th just happens to be a date for which I had a good "before" photo from 2010 that I could use to write about my disappointment here on my new blog.  Toasted grasses and under performing salvia were a step backwards in 2011.

Over time I expanded the view to include the driveway and front corner of the garage.

2018:  Today's view was taken yesterday between torrents of rain which have fallen on a near daily basis since early September (nearly 30 inches in four weeks).  Good thing since today turned out dark and rainy too.

The new Yucca rostrata has been in place nearly a year behind the big Agave ovatifolia and the smaller Yucca rostrata in the island bed is growing up nicely.  Native muhly grasses are beginning to bloom and a yellow blooms of Damianita, Skeleton-leaf Goldeneye, and gold Lantana make up for missing sunshine.  I am so impressed with how desert native Skeleton-leaf Goldeneye (Viguiera stenoloba) has weathered our rain that I'll feature it in a future post.  We've lost a few drought tolerant plants with all this rain but most of my favorite agaves and yuccas are mounded up with gravel for drainage for just such an event.  New to this area are the 'Blonde Ambition' grama grasses I featured in my Blogiversary post last week which are just visible behind the Texas Mountain Laurel to the left of the mailbox.

Here's last year's (2017) view for comparison.  This year in the spring I cut the salvias back to the ground again.  They have responded by growing greener and fuller.  Blooms might be sparse due to a lack of sunny days.  Wow, the small Yucca rostrata (center) has grown a lot with all this rain!

Back to 2018 this wider view photo taken earlier in October on a rare sunny day includes landscaping at the end of the driveway and gives a better view of the new yucca on the garage corner.

And now with seven years of blogging behind me this post would get quite long if I included all of the photos with changes over time.  You can see details of my previous October 9th posts and the changes I've made over the years at the links below.

October 9th 2011
October 9th 2012
October 9th 2013
October 9th 2014

October 9th 2015
October 9th 2016
October 9th 2017

October 9th Before and After 2017

On October 9th, 2011, just a few days after I began this blog, one of my first posts was a "Before and After" of our front garden and I've kept it as an annual feature these past six years.

Here's the 2017 view taken this morning.

Mexican Feathergrass, which softens the rocks and gravel, has gone tawny for fall which allows the silvery yuccas and agaves to stand out.  The Yucca rigida which was planted by the garage corner about 18 months ago is not happy and a tall Yucca rostrata is on order as a replacement.  As it has almost every year, the front right corner has undergone a change with Agave cornelius from last year replaced by a Variegated Yucca gloriosa.  Agave cornelius has been moved to a part shade spot since it gets sunburned too easily.

There isn't much special about October 9th other than it just happened to be a date for which I had a good "before" photo from 2010 before I began this blog.  Interesting to note Salvia greggii seems to have bloomed earlier the last few years making photos since 2013 a bit colorless when compared to previous years.

From my original post a 2010 view from one year before I began this blog.

Looking very nice considering most of this reflected just two years work.  We had just replaced a brown shingle roof with standing seam metal and recently dug and divided existing pink Salvia greggii which produced a nice bloom prompting me to take the photo below.   Little did I know that we were about to get hit with a two-year drought that would kill or set back most of these plants significantly.

As the post was getting a bit too long, I condensed it into a GIF slideshow:

You can see details of all my previous October 9th posts and the changes I've made over the years at the links below.

October 9th 2011
October 9th 2012
October 9th 2013
October 9th 2014

October 9th 2015
October 9th 2016

Last year I mused about changing the date since the Salvia greggii have bloomed earlier each year.  This winter we will lift and divide them and I will probably post a full-bloom photo when they recover in the fall of 2018 instead of a fixed date.
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The Garden Conservancy San Antonio Open Days Tour is this Saturday, October 14th from 10am to 4pm.  For more information click this link to the Garden Conservancy website.

October 9th 2016: Before and After

On October 9th, 2011, one of my first posts was a "Before and After" of the front garden and I've kept it as an annual feature for the past five years.  There isn't much special about the date other than it just happened to be a date for which I had a good "before" photo.  Since it's the five-year anniversary of this blog I'll take you back through the years.

2010 (Before Blogging)

Looking pretty good there considering most of this reflected just two years work.  We had dug and divided existing pink Salvia greggii which produced a nice bloom prompting me to take the photo below.

2011

We were going backwards after all that work!  I started this blog in the middle of a drought so my first "after" looked more like a "before" with dead ornamental grasses front and center.  Salvia greggii and lantana which looked so good the year before are struggling.  After a summer of drought and record heat I looked forward to autumn rains which never happened since we had another year of drought ahead.

2012

Things were a little better the next year with New Gold Lantana in full bloom and Salvia greggii recovered enough to bloom.  I widened to view to include the garage corner.  All the better to feature the Agave ovatifolia growing enough to hold its own.  By then I had replaced the struggling salvia and orange lantana with Golden Barrel Cactus (Echinocactus grunsoni).  Miscanthus grasses in the island bed have been replaced with heat and drought-tolerant Yucca recurvifolia.

2013

Much better.  We had removed the scraggly Cenizo sage dominating the island bed last year in favor of smaller, low growing plants.  By then rains had returned and the drought tolerant yucca in the gravel circle (foreground) got too wet so I decided to try ornamental grasses there with mixed results.

2014

Pretty obvious ornamental grasses don't work that great in the gravel circle in the foreground by the street since this is the second one to fail there.  Those green dots in front of the agave are Damianita which replaced New Gold Lantana.  Damianita are evergreen and more drought tolerant.

2015

The gravel circle out by the street got a soil makeover for better drainage and a nice Yucca 'Color Guard' was planted.  It looked pretty good for a while but I replaced it with a pennisetum grass in the spring of 2016 about the time the agave weevil struck my garden. I added pennisetum grasses to the island as a replacement for the Yucca recurvifolia which died after blooming.

2016

Again this year Salvia greggii finished blooming a few weeks ago and were cut back to get another bloom before the end of November.  Interesting to note Salvia greggii seems to have bloomed earlier the last few years making these photos a bit colorless.   I could change the date but then that would defeat the concept of posting on the same day each year.  Currently an Agave quasimoto occupies the gravel circle up front.  The Vitex by the garage was replaced with a Yucca rigida last spring and that Agave ovatifolia has grown large enough to show off as a major feature from the street.

Pennisetum grasses in the island bed are going away as mentioned in a recent post.  They're flopping all over the place and shading out the sun-loving damianita because they don't hold up in wind and rain.  But I still like the idea of ornamental grasses to soften all the driveway concrete and landscaping rock.

Over the years I added different views of the driveway and back gardens. I focused on the original front angle view for 2016 and will show more views in another post.  You can see all my previous October 9th posts at the links below.

October 9th 2011
October 9th 2012
October 9th 2013
October 9th 2014

October 9th 2015

October 9, 2015: Before and After

Shortly after I began this blog in October 2011, I also began a series documenting my front garden with Before and After photos.  I chose that date as the best "Before" shots I had taken from the prior year before I began blogging.

Each year these photos provide a documentation of just how my plants have changed or held up during the previous year.  Although 2015 has been a tough year for San Antonio plants due to drought, from the driveway view things don't appear to have changed much so we need to compare with 2014.

October 9, 2015

Before and After: October 9, 2012

Shortly after beginning to write this blog last year I posted my yard for the first time on October 9th, 2011.  I resolved to check on progress consistently and I chose the date primarily because I had a good photo from the previous year on the same day.

This year's October 9th photo looks so much better because it's been a good year for rain and (relatively) cooler summer temperatures.  Even though I now document progress throughout the year in this blog, I still plan to do this annual assessment.

October 9th 2014, Before and After

One of my first posts on this blog back in 2011 was a "before and after" look at my front yard.  The choice of October 9th is entirely due to the existence of previous year photos on the same day.  There are not as many photos taken prior to my blogging days as there are now.  The October 9th post has become a tradition now.  To see the starting points from October 2011 click here.

The front view taken this morning

Before and After: October 9th 2013

During the first week of this blog two years ago I posted "before and after" photos of my front yard to show changes over the past year.  There's nothing magic about October 9th except it is a date for which I could find a "before" photo from my pre-blogging days.  As I begin my third year of blogging I continue the tradition to take stock of the yard during what is typically a peak bloom season.

The front landscaping today, October 9th, early this morning.

October 9th, Before and After

When landscaping you hope your "after" photos look better than the "before" photos.  It did not work out that way this year.

Last year on October 9, 2010,  I took a photo to document progress.

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.