Apparently, I am allergic to Texas. Bermudagrass and most of the native trees in Texas makes me break out. It used to be just itchy eyes and uncontrollable sneezing…but these days I’m dealing with the rashes and hives. My face looks like a giant bee sting. Must…resist…scratching.

Of course, it doesn’t help that I’m puttering around in the garden. For the past few days, I’ve been weeding, clearing more debris, and dumping out pots of soil to level the herb garden. The man also did some mowing, kicking up some of that dreaded bermudagrass into the air. On Sunday, I started in earnest taming the jungle. I pulled out more weeds in the front door bed, pushed back on the yarrow in the blue bed, removed the dead gardenia, plucked out a dead salvia, hard pruned the basils and did some tidying. The man, for his part, removed the overgrown stand of boxwoods that lined the path to the doorway. I ended up raking a mound of leaves and trash that had no doubt been trapped by the boxwood hedge for months, if not, years. To finish, my man removed the dead JM and emptied the dirt into the sidewalk bed.

Motivated by the sight of vacancies in the front yard, I had to do some shopping. At Strong’s, I picked up an Autumn Embers Encore azalea to replace the dead one in the front yard bed. I also drove to North Haven Gardens to pick up some shrubs and groundcover. Of course, plans don’t always turn out the way you want them…I ended up with a whole lot more than I set out for. I also dropped by Home Depot to pick up 6 bags of cedar mulch and 4 bags of top soil. I couldn’t resist picking up another aster however.

I’ll be providing more details on the newcomers in a future post. But for now, I’ve ingested a Benadryl-equivalent to tame the swelling and the congestion, the side effect being an early bed time.