Transplant From New York Learns to Love Her Hot, Scratchy Texas Garden

I did not move to Texas just to have a garden. That would be crazy. After all, the state's official plant is a cactus, and its other attractions include tumbleweed and tornadoes.But it never occurred to me that I couldn't have a garden in Texas. After all, I had scratched out lush perennial beds on a windy hilltop in upstate New York, in soil so rocky the local motto is "Two Stones for Every Dirt." That garden wasn't exactly a showplace, but it gave me what I really wanted: something new blooming every week from when the ice melted in March to its return around Thanksgiving.  Continue reading...