Bloom Day - July 2017

It's bloom day! You can see lots of gorgeous blooms at Carol's blog - as always she is a most gracious host!

Most people have lots of great pictures of summer flowers in their garden, and are waxing poetically about summer evenings... Here, it's been over 100 deg F for 8 out of the last 12 days. And 12 out of the 15 days before that. Let's say there's a lot of room for improvement in how my garden looks in the summer. Especially since i'm not spending a lot of time out there right now.

Enough whining! Some flowers are toughing out the heat with me here:

some buddleja is still in bloom, here and there in the tree.

lantana (this is l. camara, which is the only one that's ever come back) just laughs at the heat.

the hoya kerrii, hiding in the shade, is making blooms and buds since the dove nest got moved.

does this still count as a bloom? Dasylirion quadrangulatum bloom

dicliptera suberecta is doing a lot better at making blooms this year. 

the grasses are kind of blooming - purple fountain grass here.

my vitex agnus-castus still has some washed out blooms

2nd flush of the daisies (i should dead head this one!)

a few erythrina x bidwillii blooms - more will come later!

you know it's hot when the russian sage looks washed out.

Coreopsis 'route 66' doesn't mind the heat.

here and there, a few sage blooms are still there - this is Salvia "Silke's Dream" which is new. 

most blooms wish they had protection like this late opuntia one...

Hey, one of the cacti is blooming! (wait...)

That's it for here! I'd say we're waiting for cooler temperatures, but that won't happen for a while. Maybe i just need more tough flowers - i'll spend between now and fall planting season thinking about all the potential heat lovers i could add to tempt me out into the garden in the heat of summer!

Project Update - Back Garden

I documented my progress on the front garden this spring here, and now it's the back garden's turn. I documented all the things i had to get done in this post, which includes a lot of pictures of ugliness! Let's see what progress i actually made...

Cleaning up all the trimmings was pretty easy, followed by weeding and trying to fix all the holes in the DG (getting there!) - so that's mostly done!

We'll call the wall color "rustic" and leave it at that...

 The bed with the buddleja looks better - i'm experimenting this year with succulents and aeonium this year. Several aeonium 'Mardi Gras' survived winter in that brown pot, so i'm optimistic!

the tree could probably be trimmed even harder next year?

 This spot used to be occupied by a caesalpinia pulcherrima (bird of paradise), which should have come back, but it didn't (or i ran out of patience). I'm now tempting fate by putting a grevillea there. 

i should find the tag for this one...

 The area with the woody overgrown sage got cleaned up and the sage replaced with a new one! This is also where i put a bunch of the xMangave that i got this spring. You can't really see them, but they're there... The little ball is covering a gopher trap, because of course that's still going on.

also added mulch & all the pups are from the agave just to the left.

 This area also got some succulent experiments! It also got mint that appeared out of somewhere? this could be a problem, but if it outcompetes the bermuda grass, it can stay.

i should add rock mulch here, i think?

 The pot area got cleaned out, and i finally got rid of the dead smoke bush. Instead of replacing it, i've added some other plants (a blue salvia and an acacia) - we'll see what survives!

the acacia purpurea is still deciding on "dead or alive"

 The area between the sage bushes has made a lot of progress! The xMangave 'kaleidoscope' came back, and new mulch and a few small ground covers (not shown) seem to be surviving. Gophers remain, so plants disappear every once in a while, but other than that, the area looks nice.

i just planted an echinocereus - we'll see how it does.

the yellow is from the palo verde blooms - i really should clean that all up.

 The hill side has made some progress - mostly things i cut back and then let grow. There hasn't been much new added at all.

the one section is still a bit dreary - perhaps a bigger spruce up in the fall?

the acacia redolens 'Low Boy" really needs to be cut back even more!

The bed that was the worst of all was the next one - and it's made a lot of progress! Of course, just as i was taking these pictures, a family of gophers with a taste for red hesperaloe moved in - hence the metal cover in these pictures. But other than that, this bed has seen a lot of changes:

overall view

view without the bucket

Here's the list i made back in january:

1. gopher mounds - the mounds are gone, and making progress on the gophers
2. a mess of dead plant parts in the areas that get no water - cleaned it all up, and added new drip lines under the mulch for the new plants (all cuttings from the garden). This also made about a million hesperaloe seedlings pop up. 
3. a massively leaning Cylindropuntia that is only getting worse and really needs fixing - pulled this one out, and took several large cuttings. They're now rooting in pots near the russian sage bushes. 
4. a weirdly shaped opuntia microdasys that lost half of its arms when they cracked due to the rains. It's now draping itself over a very pretty Agave 'sharkskin'. The opuntia should probably come out altogether, and be replanted (or replaced with something else, but it matches the o. microdasys that's in the other patio bed, which is the only part of the garden that looks good!) - removed the opuntia, and replaced it with o. austrina, which should have orange flowers. 
5. when the opuntia arm came off, it exposed a weird empty area between the opuntia and the callistemon 'little john', which needs planting - i didn't add much to this area of the bed yet - an agave 'Snow Glow' hiding under the flowers, and the opuntia are all that's there. I did cut back and divide the grasses, and put new mulch here too. The different shapes/colors/sizes of rocks feel a bit more natural, although sometimes also jarring?
6. the random autumn sage bush in this bed needs trimming, but at least it's not woody.   - done!

So not bad! It's been helpful having these blog posts to look at and hold myself accountable for fixing these things. Fixing these areas has pointed out other areas that now need to be fixed. But that probably won't really happen until fall, when it's less hot. I'll try to document them this summer, so i don't forget!

Curling Up!

A lot of plants will react to prolonged heat/sun exposure. I can tell it's been ridiculously hot here (we had a whole week of above 105 deg F) when all my agaves (and similar plants) start curling up on themselves. Not all of them do it, and some do it more than others. They usually all "relax" again after the temperatures go back to "normal".

Mr. Ripple, normally

Mr. Ripple - earlier this weekend

I suppose this could also be an indication that he's getting ready to bloom... But after carefully sticking my head through his arms and looking, i only see new leaves. Still worth keeping an eye on him, i suppose. I have no idea what to do if/when he blooms (or more to the point, afterwards...)

Next up is xMangave 'kaleidoscope':

This one recovered from a rough winter, and was starting to look good again...

...but closed up a lot this week, although no sunburn (yet!)

However, this was on the winner's table at the Huntington Cactus & Succulent show... wow!

I have a bunch more pictures of that show & garden visit - so many awesome plants! I may have accidentally bought some more plants, which is of course a very bad idea when it's a "cool" 95 deg out.

This poor Agave salmaina var. ferox 'Green Goblet' certainly warns against planting anything:

how to minimize sun exposure...

That plant lives up in the corner of the hill side. It barely gets any water, so has grown a lot slower than it's 2 siblings. The black things at the base are dried up old leaves, not cracks in the ground.  The block wall to the side it of it also radiates heat. But it's not dead, and that's an accomplishment on the hillside!

I learned a while ago that because our "full sun" is really full sun, that certain delicate agaves, especially any with variegation, really need to hide under something. Somehow, that's kept this agave pototarum 'Kissho Kan' alive for several years.

hiding in the shade of an opuntia, which just laughs at the sun

It's not even supposed to be winter hardy here, but don't tell it that. As long as it keeps surviving the cold and heat, i'm happy. Now, i'd like someone to explain why the heat isn't keeping the weeds from growing, but that's something different...

Distracting from the heat!

We got our first crazy heat wave. While I managed to avoid the worst of the heat myself, the garden didn't. Here are some pictures from the beginning of the heat wave...

Turning this into a tree worked well this year!

This is a fun color combo right now.

There used to be a path here...

Some late opuntia flowers

Everything here is yellow right now!

This corner is looking much better now!

I like this combo too - still seeing whether this plant plans to survive...

It's very hard to get a good picture of the xMangave

It's been so hot, even the lizards are hiding! The heat is supposed to break tonight, so hopefully next weekend will be more gardening time!

Wordless Wednesdays

As a break between project updates, here are some vignettes from the past month.

A visitor

Rosette

New and old favorites

Last austere poppies

Textures

Project Update! - Front Garden

Alright, even if the calendar doesn't point to summer yet, the temperatures definitely do. It was ~90 degF by 9am this morning! Since it's kind of already too late to plant anything, let's see what kind of progress i made on my projects. This might be interesting only to me.

After ignoring my garden for too long, i documented what i wanted to finish this spring in the front garden and the back garden. Let's start with the front...

I mostly identified things that needed cleaning/cutting back/clearing up. I did most of that, and am making progress on the *stupid* bermuda grass that keeps growing. The front garden looks pretty, although i think it still needs a refresh?

I like this view - that orange lantana is the only one that ever comes back for me.  

The area behind the fucraea still needs some cleaning up - i'm not exactly sure what to do with everything that's back there. 

a. "low boy" is going to get way too big for this spot but looks lush right now.

Grevillea 'Red Hook' is still alive too, and even made a flower! The caesalpinia  pulcherrima (Red Mexican Bird of Paradise) is just now (6/4/2017) barely starting to come back. It gets another year reprieve, at least for now. One of the Russian Sages is not very happy, and will probably get replaced with something more interesting.

The germander (teucrium) is starting to fill in and cover the rocks (and blooming!)

I chopped the roses back a lot, and they responded! The pictures below are from early may, when they were at their peak:

The cherry tree also had a very successful year. 

The roses look a little washed out here - in person they are a dark red.

 One extra project was replacing one of the grasses on the dry stream bed, since it got too much shade to ever bloom. That's been done too, although i'm not sure the replacement is working 100%. But all in all, not bad progress for spring! 

Now, some goals for summer/fall:

• find something for the blue pots - since whatever i put here needs to survive with almost no water, it should be ok to plant before fall.
• keep on top of the bermuda grass!
• find some interesting plants to replace some of the original plants - i know it makes for better "garden design" but i don't need that many red sages...
• figure out what to do with area next to front door
• trim up the opuntias next to the cherry tree

As a whole, the front garden shouldn't need too much work to look good this summer, which is yet another benefit of getting rid of the grass. My neighbors probably appreciate this look better than my poorly cut lawn!

Progress has been made in the back garden as well - i'll document that next.