Yes, golf is the main reason I haven't made time for any gardening lately, or as you can see, for much housekeeping either.
Let's see, golf books, golf balls, golf club covers, and the box from a camera...oh, and six varieties of roses from the neighbor's garden.
The large pink one is from our bush. We have yellow and red ones, too, but the neighbor has a profusion of orange and peach and variegated colors which he is generous in sharing. Some of his blossoms are smaller in size, but they are extremely fragrant.
If you are thinking of signing up with them, please do use my referral link, which I will post here as soon as I figure out what it is. In the meantime, my username there is drAnn.
Aside from all that, If it weren't so nippy out I would go about the neighborhood taking pictures of everyone's spring flowers because after raining and up in the mountains snowing all night now the sun is out and there are quite a few colorful blossoms peeking out here and there. Yes, and here in the desert it is wise to get pictures of the snow before it melts!
Finally, while I was writing this, another cyber buddy sent me the email that is circulating about the "World's Largest Flower" which I thought might also be the world's ugliest flower, and a useful site called Hoax-Slayer straightened out some of the statements in that email, but also indicated that it might be one of the world's foulest smelling flowers as well. Here is the unveiling if you have the stomach for it:
We have been watching the sparrows mate in our camelia bushes as we waited in anticipation of the thousands of buds to start opening, but this year we got a pleasant surprise. The bush with pale pink flowers that lives between the two red bushes had the magnificent bright pink flower shown to the right above. What a lovely result of cross-pollination.
The only things growing in my upstairs vacation apartment are a huge basil plant and a tiny "volunteer" plant that grew up out of the root of part of the landscaping on the commons below. Since the professional gardeners were going to get it anyway, I could not resist hacking it off and bringing it indoors to give my enclosed patio a bit more life.
I'll be back to my own little garden in a few weeks and it will be interesting to see what will still be alive there. I am especially interested in the well-being of my first 3 clusters of grapes from the root we dug up out of my late uncle's yard 2 years ago. What color will they be?
I don't have a Jacaranda tree, but they are a sight to behold in and around Riverside, CA.
Jacaranda mimosifolia is also known as Brazilian Rose Wood or Blue Trumpet Tree. They grow up to 50 feet tall and grower wider than they are tall. These trees can be cloned from softwood cuttings, grafting or from seed.
Interestingly, the drought-tolerant Jacaranda trees have no notable pests, but they must be placed in well-drained soil. Also it is not recommended to prune the Jacaranda very much.
As neglected as my little backyard garden has become, it still managed to have a few surprises for me when I came down from a trip back up to the San Francisco Bay Area where I lived for over 40 years. I took a friend who liked the Bay Area so much that we decided to stay an extra week and some of my plants did not like that.
But there were a few ripe strawberries awaiting our return, and although small, they were delicious. The other big surprise was that the bare root from my late uncle's grape vine which I planted in 2009 was doing great and covered with clusters of flowers. Last year the ground squirrels got that vine so I was not sure it would bloom this year, but we just may have grapes. I have no idea what kind of grapes they will be, but if they are anything like Uncle Al's figs, they will be awesome.
I have no idea what kind of fig tree that was either, but my clones are doing great. So is the parent tree over in Hemet, CA. I drove by the other day and it has filled out beautifully after my cousin pruned it last fall, and there are little green figs popping out all over again. That reminds me that we can now eat up the ones left in the freezer from last year's harvest.
Last spring I bought one package of purple anemone rhizomes. They bloomed nicely in the spring and then again in the fall and now some of them are coming back a third time this year:
We do not get freezes often here in the Palm Desert area, but recently, the weather did dip down to 29 degrees F for a bit while I was away on a trip and when I returned, some of my plants were dead. I think.
Sometimes they fool me by looking dead and then coming back. But it was nice to come back and find something blooming in the back yard.
Oddly, there was one pink anemone back there too. A neighbor had given me a clay planter with some old dirt in it sometime back, and not having had a chance to plant anything, I put it under a drain spout before going away. When I returned from my trip, the pot was filled with foliage and this flower was just starting to open, with several more buds coming up around it.
Obviously it rained some while I was gone.
The rain brings snow to the mountain tops this time of year even when it is sunny and nice down below. Here is a photo I took from the trail up to Hemet's intriguing Stone Maze:
After getting way too many spam comments that I've had to weed out from this blog, I was delighted today to find a relevant link provided in answer to a reader who likes my small space compost bin and wanted to buy one. The provider calls it Easy Pull Garden Tub and Barrow.
The downside is that although they can provide this product, the minimum quantity for purchase is 1000 units. The upside is that they supply Walmart stores, and that is where I bought mine. Anyway, they have a lot of neat lawn and garden products, so I enjoyed Jay Sun's comment.
Unexpectedly, I had to be away most of the summer. But before going on my last trip, I cut all of my Sun Gold vining tomatoes out of the garden, leaving just a few small plants in the raised garden, watered by a home brew sprinker system my neighbor Tim installed. There was a lipstick pepper, several rosemary clones that I rooted from cuttings, moonflower vines, a yellow snapdragon, and a tiny Chrysanthemum plant that I had bought at the 99 Cents Only store last spring and dumped in my backyard planter after it had stopped blooming and look for all the world like it was about to die.
This is what it looked like when I got home in November:
Another surprise was a big plate of glass, somebody else's discarded shower door. Now I have three of them and can set up a couple more raised planters in time to start some winter vegetables.
