Wednesday Vignettes: pretty summer pictures

I'm dealing with the usual "February is Spring, right?" thoughts right now. I know it's not Spring yet, but it's starting to get warmer, there is sun, all the poppies/weeds are growing..

To keep me from doing completely seasonally inappropriate gardening tasks, here are some pictures from last year. Soon enough, it will be Spring and Summer for real!

changed out one of the gravel beds

so many mangave in pots!

everyone growing together! Will the lantana come back this year?

curves and plants growing over the edging

the stairs (currently covered with poppy seedlings)

this one grew! now to see if it comes back this year

Ok, now back to things like pruning and cleaning up leaves. And maybe a bit of pre-ordering for more plants?

2020 Gardening Goals

star of the garden in 2019

2019 was an exciting year in the garden - my pond was wonderful, lots of plants did really well, I mostly stayed on top of the weeds, and the patio was a great place to hang out, even in the summer!

looking good even in October!

For 2020, there are a whole lot of things i want to do, but here are 4 big ones:

• finish the right hill side - i started this last year, and while some of the new plants worked, others didn't. I still need to find something robust yet low to the ground to fill in this part of the hillside. 
• be better at pruning - i put off pruning forever, because i always worry that i'll do it wrong and kill the plants. The plants laughingly take advantage and grow to giant green blobs, taking over steps, pots, the entire garden. This year, i'll be better - starting with learning the best ways to prune!
• fix the upper sprinklers - these sprinklers haven't been used in a few years. I started to switch them over to drip, but the pressure is too high... so i'll have to do something about that. Once i unlock this, i can have more pots on the top of the hill. Because of course i need more pots?
• redo the bed around the butterfly bush - this starts with being better at pruning the giant bush (see goal #2) and then figuring out what likes to grow under it. I planted some things a few years ago that turned out well, but are now covered under a layer of butterfly bush leaves. So cleaning that might be the first order of the year. 

even with flowers!

I know better than to set goals about weeding, not buying new plants (ha!) or not buying plants i don't have room for (sigh)! I can dream of a bigger pond, but i'm guessing that one won't happen this year. I do know of several plants that need to move, and gopher holes that need filling, but for now, I'm going to start by dreaming and planning fun things! Oh, and pruning...

Here's to a great gardening year!

winter weather

Like the rest of California, we've had some crazy cold weather - night time lows in the single digits and teens, and barely getting above freezing during the day. Given that we're technically zone 9A now, that's very unusual. Today was my first chance to take a look at what this Arctic front had done to my garden. It was pretty sad - that's what I get for not putting on all the frost blankets I should have...


Frost-bitten everything...

 The sedum x rubrotinctum in the upper left is usually OK with just the leaves from my neighbor's tree covering it, so it should recover in the spring... the plants in the both center pictures will go back under a blanket, and hopefully the centers and pups will stay alive in the spring. The Crassula coccinea 'Campfire' might be done for though. And a lot of the branches on the Feathery Cassia look grey - I'm hoping the plant will be OK, although the blossoms might not be.

My saddest loss was due to my own stupidity:

I didn't get home in time to cover him...

 My Pachycereus schottii f. monstrosus is black. :( They're hardy to 20 deg F (about), and I didn't get home in time to cover it or move it indoors. Sigh.

Some things actually look almost pretty with the winter damage:

This succulent is almost translucent. And probably dead.

 But not all is lost! Most of the plants are fine, even some that I wasn't sure about. Most of the (soon-to-be) larger agave are fine, and the Callistemon 'Little John' is under a frost blanket, and looks OK.



Agave ovatifolia is happy, even with a bit of water from the sprinklers 

Both Optunias are fine, and this one has taken on even more purple tones

 And apparently winter completely missed my crazy Pleiospilos nelii, which is getting ready to flower:

Don't tell it that it's technically a zone 9-10 plant...

It's been getting warmer this week - but I'm leaving the blankets on for the next few days. I hope spring gets here soon!

Blooms for the New Year

Here is what is blooming in my gardens on the first day of the new year. I know it's not Bloom Day, but I wanted to start the year on a high note:

sweet alyssum, in the back pipe garden

 How do you know that a plant is not well suited for the desert? After spending all spring, summer and fall looking not all that great, the sweet alyssum (Lobularia maritima) has completely perked up in the last few weeks, while everything else froze. And with no watering either! I'll have to remember this for next fall...

This is Senna artemisioides, also known as Feathery Cassia or Silver Cassia. One of the branches is starting to flower! I think that's early for this plant, but since it was just planted last year, I'm not sure. This is a drought tolerant, interesting-looking plant, native to Australia.


This one has grown a lot -it started from a small (1/2 gal?) size

 I'm not sure this next one counts as a flower, but my one winter crop that didn't get eaten by the bugs is making a broccoli head! I'm not sure I know when it's ready to eat, but I'm glad this one is working.

I wonder how it will taste...



The front garden doesn't have a lot of blooms, but the Camellia japonica near the front door has started to bloom! I'm glad I found something that will grow in this shady spot, and tolerate the summer heat. It seems to be doing OK with no water in the fall/winter, and a twice weekly watering week in the summer.

I like seeing the blooms right next to the front door

 And there is one sad bloom left on the roses on the north side of the house - I think it might be frozen:


Rosa 'Blaze' - apparently this species was introduced in 1932...

That side of the house gets very little direct sun during the winter... but I checked, and the cherry tree is once again already making buds! I've been planning a new garden bed over there, hopefully in the spring, once I find some time. I'm thinking a gravel garden... with the roses and cherry tree!

Happy New Year! May 2013 give you the garden you always wanted!

Beginning, again

Whoops.

2 months between posts is a little long. My only excuse is work - too much of it to both take care of the garden and blog, so guess which took priority? And I have been working in the garden - replacing summer veggies with winter ones (which the bugs all ate), uncovering the sedums underneath the melon (which promptly caused them to get sun burned) and planting more bulbs. At least that worked!

Daffodils coming up - do they know its still December?

 Since its almost the end of the year (and almost a year since the back garden got re-done!) I figured some comparison pictures might be good:

Manfreda undulata 'Chocolate Chip' (top) and O. macrocentra (bottom), when first planted (left) and now (right)

'Chocolate Chip' actually looked better a few weeks ago, before the crazy cold weather hit, but it's still going. I'm hoping it might make some flowers next year. O. macrocentra pretty much exploded in size, and has regained its purple coloring with the cold nights. It bloomed a lot last year - I wonder if the same will happen this year?

My project for January, to get back into blogging regularly, will be to follow Allison at Bonnie Lassie's example, and post one picture per day. It might be a few bleak pictures, depending on how the weather goes! It's been abnormally cold here the last few nights (down in the 20's, even 17 deg F!), so most of my time lately has been spent wrapping up some of the succulents/cacti... But tell that to the little stone cactus, hiding under the leaves and Mexican Feathergrass:

A flower bud again - I thought this thing would be dead after the first year... Maybe the grass helps to keep it warm?

A new beginning, again, for both the stone cactus and my blogging. Happy New Year!

My Back Garden - Part 1

One of my goals for this blog is to write down what I did/do to my gardens, so I can remember. One major project that just finished part 1 this year, and will continue to take a lot of time and effort is the garden in the back of the house. I'm going to break this story up into multiple posts, so I can record some of the details without this being super-long.

Part 1 - The Starting Point

When I bought my home about 3 years ago, it was bank-owned, as many available houses at that time were (and frankly, still are in this area). The bank had redone the inside, but the outside and garage were left in the "foreclosed on" state, meaning no water and no care/weeding/mowing. I don't even have pictures of what everything looked like back then.

The front garden was priority one to fix, since it was the second thing both neighbors mentioned, and it was absolutely the worst on the block. It wasn't too bad before the weeds started growing. So over the course of two weeks, I came up with an initial plan, got bids, and got the major work finished.  But that's another post.

Meanwhile, for over two years, the back yard languished. It looked like this most of the time, minus the 2 months in spring when all the brown stuff was green and growing:

Back yard, 11 Feb 2011, with the patio to the right.

And that's after my (new) neighbor replaced the fence with another ugly one. I tried mowing the grassy weeds one year, but mowed brown grassy weeds don't really look any better than long brown grassy weeds. The sprinkler system didn't work (turning the valves on manually made a pretty neat fountain in the middle of yard), and the weeds by the kitchen window were so tall they scratched on the glass, and scared me at night:

Weeds near the window!

And during the day too! There was a was strange sand pit (visible in the picture above), which based on google maps, used to be the foundation for an above ground pool. Now, the neighborhood cats were using it as a litter box.

There were three "trees". One is visible in the first picture, and two more here:

The other side of the house.

The trees were Siberian Elm (Ulmus pumila), which Sunset characterizes as "not a desirable tree". No kidding! The back two were really more overgrown bushes, and none of them really cast much shade, even in the summer. All the wood fencing along the side in picture 3, and the back had to be replaced, and the trees were in the way for that too. Other than those trees, there was nothing in the back yard at all - no bushes (other than overgrown weeds), no hard scape and no support (sprinkler system, shade, etc). And it sat like that for two years, while I planned and saved. I'll talk a little bit about that process next time!