Welcome to the first issue of the Bridlewood Ranches nature newsletter. We have responded to the Board of Directors request to publish a newsletter that would inform our members of the interesting aspects of plant and animal life on the ranch and in Central Texas. We are situated in an interesting part of Texas because we are between the blackland soil to the east and the caliche soil to the west and between the heavier rainfall of the east and the sparse rainfall of the west. In addition to the plant and animal life, the newsletter will provide information on local organizations that offer information on these subjects. Most importantly, please note the word interactive in the title. Readers are encouraged to send us text and pictures that they would like to share with other readers in the newsletter and on our website. Please send that information to dgtusch@aol.com.
Spring Lake Garden Club in San Marcos will meet on February 8 at 9:15 a.m. at McCoy’s Headquarters. The program will be Earthkind Gardening presented by Master Gardener Marilyn Love. Visitors are welcome, so if you are interested, you may attend this meeting at the time and place. Call Dee for details if needed.
Wimberley Garden Club will meet on February 14 at 9:30 a.m. at the Lutheran Church of the Resurrection, 101 Spoke Hill Road. (This road is right off RR12 between the “junction” and Wimberley) At this meeting, Darrell Vasquez, a local coffee roaster, will present information on coffee roasting and its by-products. Both this program and the one in San Marcos should be interesting to many of us.
Our website, bridlewoodranches.org has a tab at the top of the screen labeled Natures Gallery. Clicking this tab will take you to a page describing the intent of this gallery and a way to then migrate to an offsite blog we maintain as an inventory of what animals and plants we can observe here on the ranch. You can go to this blog directly using this internet address: bwranches.wordpress.com. We are always looking for input on stories and pictures of what you have observed on our 1600 acres.
For some reason, two of our plant suppliers in the area have decided to end their businesses. They are: C & J Nursery and Reid’s Nursery, both to the east of I-35. In the immediate area, we still have Lowes in San Marcos, and King Feed in Wimberley. If you haven’t checked out King Feed, do so as they have excellent selections of seeds, plants, trees and shrubs and Tim writes a very good, free gardening letter. It’s also fun to check out the new little chicks, quail and parakeets. Please let us know if you’ve found any other reliable plant suppliers in the area.
If you take the local Record newspaper you have no doubt seen Joe Urbach’s gardening page on Sundays. Urbach, affiliated with the AgriLife Extension delves into his subjects deeper than most and he has a very interesting website. He can be found at www.gardeningaustin.com.
Okay, so what is first to let us know that spring is not too far away? Leucojums, aka snowflakes, are up with their bell-shaped white flowers with the little green dots on their scalloped edges.
The daffodils’ tall, spiky leaves are up, but no flowers yet. Quail have not yet started to sing, the rattlesnakes are still hibernating, but phoebes have made themselves heard along with chickadees. We saw a rufous-sided towhee the other day in the woods doing its usual frantic scratching around in the leaf mold looking for food. On the way in or out we always look for the American kestrels taking off from the wires on Bridlewood Ranches Dr. These are the birds we used to call chicken hawks.
Speaking of birds and the interconnection of prey and preyed upon, do some of you remember the hordes of mice that existed here a few years ago? It was a dramatic change and we had a terrible time keeping them out of the attic of the house. We also saw and heard owls more frequently who obviously were happy with the mouse population explosion. Then for some reason the mice disappeared and now we rarely see or hear any owls.
This reminds me of the odd sighting we had during the summer. We were returning from town in the middle of the day and we heard a bird that we’d thought in the past was some sort of nightjar. It was a descending call that was quite unusual. I got the binoculars and finally discovered the bird quite close. He was a good-sized bird with a streaked breast, but with a long, narrow beak! That was a surprise. Our mystery bird was a roadrunner. I never would have guessed from the sound of its call.
It will soon be Valentine’s Day and for those of us who garden by the holidays that means it’s time to plant, fertilize and prune roses. So Belinda’s Dream is looking at a haircut in the very near future. She has been a wonderful, carefree, bountiful bloomer. The Mutabilis was planted last year and is doing well. A rose with single petals, it doesn’t require pruning and its beautiful claim to fame is the changing colors of the flowers from pale yellow to white to pink.
Hope to see some of you at the garden club programs and hopefully hear from you with info, pictures or both.
R & D Tusch
