Yard Update

A few pictures of the yard as the weather levels out at around 100 degrees. Everything is doing fine with regular water, no casualties yet.

Below are my hosta and love-lies-bleeding.

Here are the porch plants, the Easter lilies are still not blooming, but thinking about it. Another love-lies-bleeding, and herbs growing like wild. When I get back from my trip I'm going to take down the 2x4 slats across the top of our arbor and use them to build a raised planter on the porch, allowing the herbs more room to spread. I'll then replace those 2x4s with 2x2s, taking some of the weight off the top of the arbor.

I wish I had taken more care with my zinnia seeds this spring, in the process of planting roses and other things in the same area, I think I buried the seeds to the point where they couldn't sprout, or didn't get enough water to come up. Below are the two that HAVE come up, I have another four or five I'm waiting to see what color they're going to be.

Two pictures below are from the Easter lily, the only blooms so far.

Hot!

Holy cow is it hot out there! Wee too early for 100 plus temps, but we've got them, and they don't seem to be going away. Thankfully I have shade a-plenty under our back porch and our mesquite tree which continues to consume the south side of the house. I must have been smoking some really good stuff when I planted some of these things, our water bill is going to be brutal this month. In actuality though, I hope it's not so bad since I had to cut down the two thirstiest trees in the yard, the ficus that were damaged by our freeze in January (which seems like such a distant memory when it's 102 degrees out).

Below are a few recent pictures, including:

The orange jubilee on the south side of the house, damaged by the freeze, now a jungle again and blooming heavily, despite the heat. You just can't kill these things.

On the back porch, my lamb's ear is somehow still alive, and in the foreground, the dutchman's pipe, which still smells like rotting garbage, mmmm.

Here is an upclose picture of a bloom on this bizarre little plant. It smells worse then the leaves, if that's possible.

Under the mesquite, one of my favorite plants, the turk's cap, which is blooming also. This plant struggled the last few summers, but I think now that the mesquite is throwing a heavier shade, it will do just fine this year, as long as it stays wet.

Finally, two different versions of love-lies-bleeding. The first which came up from a seed off last years plant, dwarfing my bush river willow tree that's in the same pot. Directly below that is a purple variety of the same plant.

These seeds apparently re-germinate even in these arid conditions. Besides the one plant that showed up in this pot below, I have three more growing on the opposite side of the house. Every part of the plant is edible, from the leaves to the seeds.

Close But No Salami

We almost had rain this afternoon. You could see it, you could smell it, you could FEEL it. There was thunder rumbling, lightning flashing, and an old dog whining, but NO rain. Boo, hiss! It shouldn't surprise me seeing as it's May and in the desert it NEVER rains in May (it never rains in June either). I still have this back East mentality that when it thunders, rain is to follow shortly behind. Ha ha, the jokes on me! Mother Nature has a cruel sense of humor out here, we have probably seen the last rain until after the 4th of July.

Anyway, two pictures of what might have been : (

More Pictures From The Arboretum

I never get tired of going to this place, how can you beat having this only half an hour from your house? Even in the dead of summer you can go there and cool off under the shade of 100 foot tall eucalyptus trees. Spring and fall are my favorite times to go out there, but I can go any time the weather is decent.

Keep scrolling after this post for updated pictures of our yard, including more rose blooms!

Yard Update - May

So far I haven't had to move anything inside, although there are a few things that are on the borderline, including my hostas (below). The mesquite is not throwing enough shade to keep the brunt of the heat off them. So far they aren't wilting too horribly, keeping them wet has helped. The maroon plants that are mixed in with them are seeds that blew in there from my back porch, a variation of love lies bleeding that I though would be green leafed, but I guess I got another member of that particular family by mistake.

Next picture is of my new plumbago that I planted about a month ago to compliment the white one on the south side of the house. This first summer will be tough for it, I'll have to water this thing almost every day to keep the leaves from getting crunchy. It'll be worth the work though in a few years when this bush has grown to six feet tall, and covered in blooms in the spring and fall.

The rest of these pictures are of various roses that are blooming around the back yard. I suspect in a few more weeks these will all be looking pretty rough once we're consistently over 100 degrees every day.