Georgia Hoes

In contrast to our yard, below are some pictures from my parent's house, where they had more rain yesterday than we've seen since February.

The Longest Yard Blog In Existence

It's around 95 today, and although we're supposed to cool off into the 80s later this week, I see the writing on the wall. Most of my blooming plants will be burnt to cinders in about a month, so I'm posting as many pictures of them in their glory until time is out.

The wildflowers will be the first to go once we're consistantly over 100, and they're beginning to get past their peak anyway.

Below are some of the california poppies that are still blooming and spreading everywhere. I may regret planting these, if we have another wet winter I may have a carpet of these next spring.

Same goes for these evening primrose. At least they spread by underground runners instead of seed, so they won't be popping up much farther away next year than where they are right now.

Here's a bloom on my ornamental pomegranate. While I have at least 20 blooms on it, my two fruiting varieties of the same plant are hardly blooming at all. Go figure, I probably wouldn't like pomegranates anyway.

Over on the north side of the yard the creeping trumpet vine is doing more than creeping, it's taking over the tool shed. I can't wait to see this thing bloom again in May/June, the flowers are beautiful. This thing also spreads by runner, I have one I've started to train up my hobo arch, which you can see to the left of this picture, I have another that's started growing at the base of the house (good idea?), and transplanted another one to grow up the pergola off the back of the house.



Here are some soon-to-be-grapes-in-my-belly. I'm guessing May/June, unless the birds get to them first.



More free range golden fleece. I'm finding this thing all over the yard, very pretty and nice that I didn't pay anything for them.

My bouganvillea on the west wall of the yard is actually blooming this year, go figure. Usually it's so much in the shade that it doens't bother.

Here are some seeds that I've started, because I have so much time on my hands. I have one bee balm plant that came up, a ton of chinese lanterns, and two sensitive plants (the leafs go limp when you touch them, or so I've read).

Here are my columbine that I started from seed last November from my mom. They're still surviving, although the heat is getting to them and I'm not sure where to keep them as the temps go up.



Another plant from mom, I have about seven of these coming up in the same place, but I don't remember what these are supposed to be. There appears to be a stalk with a bud in the center coming up, I might know more when it blooms.

Here's a better view of the blooming cats claw. This thing can't spread quick enough across the pergola, I'll be relying on this vine to shade us on the back porch from the relentless summer sun.

This is supposedly a blue emu bush... looks purple to me. I'm just thrilled it's blooming for the first time. The is the most delicate looking emu bush a have, very slender leaves and stems.

Here's another emu that's blooming, the easter egg, named for it's multi-colored blooms. I see purple, yellow and orange in this shot.

I have no clue what I'm going to do with this plant if it survives the summer, this is an Empress Tree that's supposed to grow a foot a month (not a year). We saw some of these in Colorado last September, covered in purple blooms, and I've seen them sold here at our local nursery. I doubt this tree will amount to much in our heat, but I thought it's worth a shot.

I've torn down the arches on the south side of the house, to make it easier to walk through the jubilee bushes, at least until the colapse on top of each other to form a natural tunnel. I'm going to paint the leading arch pictured here black to match the pergola and think I'll leave it where it is in this picture.

Here's the south side of the house, minus the tunnel of cheap five dollar arches (leaning up in a pile in the back of this picture. It won't take long before the jubilee on the right side of this walk catch up with the left.

A Few New Blooms

Below are a few new things in the yard of interest. The cats claw vine that I had to pull off the old arbor, has come back from near death and is blooming more this spring than I've ever seen it The blooms are a little hard to take pictures of, but here are a few.



Here's the first rose bloom of the year, Tropicana, I believe is the name of this one. We'll see if it survives past May or not. A nice faintly citrusy aroma.

More Spring Color

Here's another quick yard update.

Our bouganviella in the corner of the yard that was killed back to the ground two winters ago, has made a complete comeback. To the right is part of the chinese pistache, now leafing out nicely.

We have golden fleece coming up all over the back yard, and even the front yard near the sidewalk. I haven't planted these in over three years now, but every spring, depending on how wet the winter is, they reseed in various places. This past spring I only had one plant come up in an Aloe pot (the blue one pictured above), and apparently it either multiplied something fierce through seeds blowing around the yard, or there were other seeds that laid dormant for a year until a good winter season brought them up.

I'm a glutton for punishment and bought this 1 gallon azalea, for the heck of it. Chances are it'll be dead by June, but it looks nice now, and is happy sitting in the shade most of the day on the back porch. Home Depot is notorious for selling plants out here in the spring that aren't native, like Magnolia trees and wisteria, but I figured putting this guy in a pot I may be able to control it's environment and limp it through until the monsoons.

Besides the golden fleece, here's another plant that keeps coming up periodically from one spring to the next, even though I haven't planted it in years, the primrose. For two years this plant was completely absent and I thought it had died during the summer, when it typically goes dormant. Then last year it came up, and this year, with the winter rain, it has spread across a 15 square foot area on the south side of the yard, and is now covered in these beautiful blooms.

I posted a picture of this red columbine a few days ago, but it was blurry. Here's a better look at it.

Sunflowers, A Blurry Columbine, And Gazanias