A Fall Garden Walkabout + Lunar Eclipse Photos

Happy fall, y’all! Acorns have been falling off our backyard oak trees since late August (just a few then, but still pretty early). So each Saturday morning since then, Mr. Ethereal begins mowing the lawns by blowing them off our back patio for me. Then, I go out and rake them all into a monster-size pile and scoop them into our waste bin to go to the dump.

FINALLY we are having cooler weather here in North Texas!! I have heard that this past August and September were the hottest months temperature-wise ever recorded in history, and I believe it. Once it got really hot in late July, I quit going outside pretty much at all during the day to weed in the garden, and just watered plants hoping they’d survive.

Thankfully, before we drove up to see our son and his family over the third weekend of June, we spent a few days building a drip irrigation system to keep things watered. It isn’t perfect, and needed tweaking, but it sure helped!

Most of the yards were watered once a day, but the southern side of the house got twice a day watering for some areas.

Let’s see how the garden fared… 🙂

Right outside of the kitchen and dining room windows, in two terracotta pots, are two climbers. This one is Claire Austin. At some point they will get planted in the ground.

We have to finish fixing the sprinkler lines before I can plant them, since we will be moving some lines around. The oak tree on the left grew so much (because someone was actually watering the lawn, that between its own girth and its roots, this oak tree has eaten our #2 valve and three water lines… Hubby isn’t too happy about it and has been working on the lines as he has time. We really need a professional. It’s on the docket for this fall. 🙂

Along the shed, I planted a couple of pink mums and a little trailing vine which can overwinter and is rated for zone 4 for cold (we are 8a here). The tradescantia pallida purpurea has really taken off with the cooler weather. It produces really pretty small purple flowers and hopefully will bloom once more before winter sets in.

Rosemary, a boxwood and more mums loving the 80 degree days… The mums replaced a few plants which died from overwatering. I’ll have to really figure out how to cut back on watering for some plants next season (less drip holes or use a valve to control water better).

Along the shady southern side of the shed, the climbing rose, one lavender and other plants made it. A hydrangea and another lavender were under and over-watered. Go figure! I bought the azalea, which likes more water, to plant in that dead lavender’s place. 😉

This holly is finally taking off and I am not going to clip any of it until next spring. However, did you know that hollies have an anti-freeze type ability? True. I won’t have to worry about wrapping this one anymore.

Last week I posted a video on Instagram of our backyard before I started weeding and the yard was looking really rough… It’s looking much better with just a couple of areas left to weed out. now for a good edging!

A hydrangea I thought didn’t make it is putting out new leaves, so I imagine it will do better next year. I will make sure to put more water lines around it (and closer to its roots) so it won’t freak out in the heat again.

The Lunar Eclipse

Hubby texted me from his mother’s yard at around 10:20 CST that the lunar eclipse was beginning (he drove over to mow her yard next ~ around 9:45am).

About 11am, all of a sudden it was slightly darker outback and then… I was encircled by all these beautiful horseshoes!!!!!

*I realized later that I was facing the wrong way to capture the moon crossing in front of the of the sun. This is photo #2.

This is the photograph I took with my iPhone 12 and I think I captured the moon (dark round object up-left of the sun) coming towards the sun. This was around 10:20am from out front of our house (#1 in chronological order).

This angle clearly shows the moon is now crossing down past the mid-point of the sun’s path. This time I was facing the right way… 😉 – Photo #3

Fixing our backyard sprinkler lines

And here is the beautiful shady oak tree which is slightly notorious for eating our spinkler lines…

Here you can see where the three dug holes are:

1. The one leading towards the front of the house is covered by a large concrete pot saucer (never used for the monster pot we had our mandarin orange tree sitting in in California, but somehow made it into our household goods in the storage unit).
2. The water-filled hole under the oak tree which fills every time we water using the system with certain lines.
3. The last hole is kind of obscured and is in the tree’s shadow to the right, next to the hose leading around the yard (hooked up to water along the back fence).

We purchased a new b-Hyve timer to run the six lines from inside the garage (two of which don’t work because of the valves eaten by this tree out back).

We liked it so much, we bought this second one to run the lines for all of the planter beds. One of the four hoses is set up just as a hose so I can hand-water. We can manually run each line if needed and that worked really well.

Some final images

Cooler temps have really benefitted the butterfly bushes the most as they are producing the prettiest lavender blooms. We have had bees and butterflies coming around so much more and the tomatoe plants are getting pollenated. I am hoping for winter tomatoes! (no photos)

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Enjoy your week, dear friends!