Yes, it’s been Spring for many weeks. I need to keep reminding myself of the fact since temps have often been above 100 this past week. But, better late than never! We are up to 7.4 inches of rain this season – including all of the storms since last November. Our last one, the end of April, yielded a very welcome 0.5”. Our hills have however not regained their green. We will be stuck with gold until next fall.
The winter months were very good to us in terms of greens! We had a constant supply of bok choy, napa, tatsoi, and the tuscan kale and chard are still producing abundantly. We enjoy green smoothies several times per week and never have a short supply. When Heidi visited in January, we got the bamboo into the ground, shopped for pots (and started the collection with the lovely yellow and green one the succulents live in now), ordered our avocado and Fuyu persimmon trees, and planted lots of seeds. She also planted the artichoke, another baby fan palm, and picked out the most wonderful shrub. The hummingbirds love its
petite bright red blooms, reminiscent of snapdragon shape, and its lemony-minty scent lingers on your nose. We have no idea what it is but I love it!
We also went on a couple of plant-finding missions, working toward the goal of native gardening here. Some of what we brought home survived!
It was the middle of February when I suddenly noticed little shoots in the kale/brussel sprout bed – oh yeah, she planted little onion sets too! Totally forgot about that.
In March it became evident that the persimmon, fig, and pomegranate survived – they leafed out beautifully. The apricot was slower, and has almost no leaves on the branches, but from the trunk there are lots of new shoots, which are above the graft, so I am assuming it is OK too. The peach shows no signs of life, sadly.
Our barrel cactus gave us over 20 blooms, even though I feel quite incompetent as to its care. Which is to say I just ignore it. The prickly pear pad I picked up from the side of the road has budded and produced several new sprouts. Two of them have bloomed, lovely bright yellow short-lived splashes.
Our biggest garden development of late is our 5 planters which form the border of our (yet to be developed) outdoor living area. We found a local craftsman who made them, finished them, and delivered them to their final location. In one our Meyer lemon lives, in another the Mexican lime. A ponytail palm with several succulents live in the third, the barrel cactus with more succulents in the next, and the last has a grass which has pink new growth. We love them!
To prepare to plant them, we needed to do a very counterintuitive chore: collect rocks! We went to the catch basin access road and got plenty, but it is funny to me that for years we made huge piles of rocks from our tiny garden in Boston, while here on our entire acre there is hardly a pebble to be found.
Our new shades are not really part of the garden, but somehow I think they belong here anyhow. Rather than blinds we have rolling shades outside that keep the sun from getting to the house in the first place. I’m very happy to have avoided the hard decision about what to get indoors!