Austin has been blessed with an extremely mild winter this year, the 7th warmest on record for those of you who keep track of such things. Nature doesn’t follow the calendar and even though it’s the end of February the annual rebirth of green has begun in earnest. This has prompted folks to get out and begin the joyful, or arduous depending on your perspective, task of readying their yards for Spring. The vestiges of cold weather damage are trimmed back, leaves and detritus are gathered up and bagged or composted, beds are thinned of overgrowth and rogue pups, tubers and seedlings are either transplanted or discarded.
This is the time of year when it’s possible to enhance one’s landscaping by just walking around your neighborhood. Case in point, the other day on my walk I found a perfectly good bulbine plant, roots and all, tossed to the curb. For those of you not familiar with it, bulbine is a popular landscape plant that’s sort of a distant cousin of the aloe vera. It’s easy to grow, tolerates drought conditions and has either yellow or orange blooms. It does however freeze, which is why I no longer have any. Until now.
You’re probably thinking, well, if you wanted bulbine couldn’t you just go to the garden center at Home Depot and buy a pot of it for $4.95? Yes, I could, except I would also buy 3 hibiscus, 2 flats of begonias and a mandevilla vine that I have no idea where I’m going to plant but I’ll worry about that when I get home. I have no self control in plant nurseries.
But secondly, and more importantly, that’s not the point. I walked 2 miles holding a bulbine plant in my hand until I got home, found a pot and some soil, planted and watered it. Before long bulbine will abound. And all because I happened to find a discarded one that I put some effort into. Needless to say, there’s something immensely gratifying about that.
By the same token I put out a lot of landscaping material from my yard; ruella, spider plants, sedum, cannas, blue agave pups, etc. and if someone spies them by the curb and helps themselves it makes my green thumb shoot up in approval.
Springtime only comes once a year. Enjoy it to the fullest. Go for a walk. Get your hands dirty. Or better yet, both.
I'm Just Being Frank 