I was waiting and waiting for December to arrive so that I could start my pruning. I only have two fruit trees left and I don't prune all of my roses, but I do prune the hybrid teas and I probably have about a thousand of those, so it takes a while. December finally did arrive, but it coincided with a nasty cold snap. Nighttime temperatures have been as low as 24 degrees and promise to drop into the teens. I realize this doesn't sound so terrible to people in North Dakota, for instance, but our houses in California aren't built for cold. We mainly insulate against heat and welcome the cold air in through the uninsulated spaces around our windows and doors. We also don't have winter wardrobes. I don't even own a pair of pants, so I've had to wear those 1980s leg warmers with my skirts, looking like a refugee from Discoland.
There won't be many photos in the blog for a while. The evergreen plants still look good, but most of the other plants look like thawed-out frozen spinach. Not a pretty sight.
Here's the first camellia bloom of the season and a dianthus that wasn't affected at all by the frost.
The Swan River Daisy was similarly unaffected, and this hydrangea, Sir Joseph Banks, has lost its colors, but it looks good any time of the year, even when the colors have faded.
Here are two pretty pelargoniums. These pictures were taken the day before the first frost.
And there are still some roses in bloom, of course. These next two are Shazam, a floribunda that usually looks more like a pink blend. The apricot is its fall color. The one on the right is Nicole Carol Miller, a grandiflora.
Folklore and Fandango are hybrid teas.
Confetti is a floribunda and Ambridge Rose is one of David Austin's shrub roses.
Pensioner's Voice is a floribunda.
Our first frost is predicted to arrive in a few days, so I spent much of today bringing my tropical plants inside. The plumerias came in a week ago, but today I brought in the kalanchoes, mandevillas, and some of the hibiscuses and pelargoniums that were in containers. Some of the clivias can come inside, but others are too heavy to move and will have to be content with a cover on frosty mornings.
The tibouchina, podranea, and a couple of the passifloras still have not progressed beyond the bud stage. This is the second year they haven't had time to bloom before the frost arrives. I'm tempted to dig them up, but their foliage is pretty and they did bloom three years ago. Hope springs eternal.
There are no big splashes of color in the garden now except for the Nerine, which is going nuts, and these poppies, which bloom all year.
Mambo has regained his fat winter face. His body's pretty fat too, but in winter it's so easy to see that domestic cats are related to lions because his head, especially with the addition of the winter mane, is too big for his body.
The roses continue to bloom, of course. These are Won Fang Yon, a sprawling tea rose, and Sweet Surrender, an extra-tall hybrid tea.
Red Rover is an old mini-rose and Princess Margaret Rose is a hybrid tea.
Gail Borden is another hybrid tea, and so is Mirandy.
I decided thirty years ago that Charisma was my favorite rose, and I still haven't found one I like more. It grows equally well in sun and in shade, where the color is so vibrant that it brightens up those shady corners of the garden. The other photo shows the end of a hanging cane of Climbing Happy. This winter light is good and bad for photography. I'm able to capture reds faithfully, but all of the photos are more blurry than usual.
I will buy 15 or 20 yards of twice-shredded redwood bark and cover the pathways with it. This is no place to skimp on cost. The "bargain brand" of pathway mulch is full of jagged pieces of wood that invariably stab me in the middle of my plantar wart every time I take a step. The pathway mulch is essential. I spent too much time weeding the pathways this year instead of concentrating on the flower beds.
I will treat every plant on my property to some overhead watering once a week during the dry season from April to November. I'll try to do it efficiently by keeping to a schedule. I have seven garden hose faucets and there are seven days of the week, so it should be easy to make sure that every plant within reach of every hose gets watered by hand every week. This year I tried to save time by using sprinklers, but the ones I use hit the plants at only about 6 inches above ground level. Consequently, aphids were a problem this year, and some roses that had never exhibited any signs of powdery mildew suddenly started succumbing to it. The lack of rainfall here for five or six months out of the year makes this absolutely essential. Overhead watering gets rid of most of the pests, retards powdery mildew, and keeps the foliage sparkling clean. I'll use the sprinklers on the other days of the week.
I will not scold the cats for taking naps in the flower beds. Any plant fragile enough to be mortally wounded by the weight of a little kitty does not belong in my garden.
Things are starting to look quite boring here. There's very little color left, although some spring blooms are already visible and the roses are still producing sporadic blooms.
The tiny flowers of the Bridal Veil Spiraea have started to open. The bush should be in full bloom by Thanksgiving. The first Narcissus blooms are also a welcome sight.
Some of the irises here never stop blooming, and the cannas are still going strong, as is the Society Garlic.
Today's stars in the rose beds are Baronne Edmond de Rothschild and Rainbow Sorbet. I never thought I'd see a rose outperform Bill Warriner, but Rainbow Sorbet now blooms more frequently and more abundantly than any other rose I'm growing.
Here are Chantilly Lace and Love Me Tender, which is now about 10 feet tall and may have turned into a climbing sport of the hybrid tea.
Something else that's growing way out of bounds is the Fuchsia magellanica. I chopped it down to ground level in February and now it's about 12-14 feet tall. The rose is Emsie Girl.
Today I planted the nine daylilies I received from Oakes Daylilies yesterday. When I won the $50 gift certificate in the not-a-raffle raffle, I was going to buy the Beginners Collection (of course), but I luckily mentioned it to my trusted adviser, Calif_Sue, who told me that some of the daylilies in that collection wouldn't work in zone 9. I ordered the Evergreen Collection (Bitsy, Frank Gladney, Frankly Scarlet, Lavender Vista, Pandora's Box, and Touched by Midas) instead, as well as Real Wind and Little Grapette. Oakes sent me Midnight Magic as a bonus.
The plants were packed very nicely in excelsior, and the individual ones looked like this:
This looks quite impressive to me, although I've never bought daylilies that weren't already planted in a container, so I'm not a good judge of the quality of these plants.
While I was walking around the garden, I noticed that my red surprise bulb was still blooming beautifully. This bulb (probably a Lycoris of some sort) suddenly appeared in one of my containers and started blooming at least a month ago. These photos were taken on October 13th, and the bloom still looks good today, two weeks later.
The spiders are still out in force, keeping the insects at bay. Here's a little one on a Marriotta bloom, and then there's the big one I almost walked into. Arghhh!
The roses are still blooming. Some of today's best blooms were About Face and Lady Waterlow:
Nimbus and Parfum de Grasse:
Sequoia Ballet and Sisters at Heart:
The Pilgrim and Wimi:
Now that October's here, the blasted Arum is taking over the entire garden, as usual, and obscuring all of the short plants. This poor alstroemeria is doing its best to rise above the arum, but only a few blooms can be seen through the arum foliage. Too bad the Cannas are almost finished for the year. They could never be obscured by the arum.
I can't believe how long it's been since I posted in my blog, although I did have the best intentions when I started.
I discovered this year that I've finally learned a few lessons. The first is that I now remove hanging plant containers before I start weeding or doing any other work beneath that spot. In years past, I've knocked myself silly several times by standing up too quickly and hitting my head on a heavy hanging basket. So far this year, no knocks on the head.
Second, I no longer exert myself when a weed doesn't come up easily. First I check to make sure I'm not standing on the other end of it. That's something I caught myself doing numerous times in the past and it's comparable to lifting yourself by your shoelaces. It can't be done and it can lead to nasty back spasms. If that's not the case and the weed is still too hard to pull, I go get the shovel and dig it up. It's saved me from a lot of wrist pain and back pain this year.
I've also learned that it's not a good habit to walk past certain problems and think to myself that I should dig up that thistle, tie up that vine, cut down that dead branch, etc. someday soon. These things somehow never get done until everything has ballooned almost out of control. I probably never will train myself to walk straight to the garage, get the necessary tool, and take care of the problem immediately, but I have arrived at a compromise solution. Next year I'll continue to file the problems away in my memory, but I'll walk around the garden every Friday with a cart full of loppers, clippers, shovels, rakes, Velcro tie tape, and whatever else I might need, and I'll take care of everything that day.
