A beautiful sunrise.
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With a long day of plant shopping ahead of me, I was up early on Saturday and out the door before 8am to meet up with a friend 50 miles away for a longer trek to 3 of our favorite garden centers in Carpinteria and Santa Barbara
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I took a dozen quick photos of the view looking southeast toward Angel's Gate, the entrance to the Port of Los Angeles, but the 2 shown here are my favorites
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Rain.
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We got 2 solid days of light rain. I took this shot looking southeast between showers.
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This was the mid-afternoon view looking northeast. The rain was never heavy here, although there were flash flood warnings in some areas to the south and east of us. We had several breaks in the rain yesterday and even, briefly, sun and patches of blue sky.
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The garden got about 2/3rds of an inch of rain by 8pm yesterday. Scattered showers were projected to continue into the wee hours of Wednesday morning. Our 2023 "water year" total to date, counted from October 1st, is 1.03 inches (26mm).
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All 3 of my rain collection tanks are full, although my husband emptied water from the spa into my 265-gallon tank in October when he cleaned it out so not all of that was rainwater. I also filled the plastic trugs shown here, some twice. I used it to top off the fountain and to water pots and areas covered by roofing. I'll empty the rest in the perpetually drier garden areas later this week.
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My cat.
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Pipig is blissfully happy on this loveseat in my home office. There's a heating pad under that pink afghan blanket.
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She gets up only occasionally to eat and use her box, although she usually finds me to demand attention at least twice a day. She's still fairly spry but, at 15 years old, I suspect she's got a touch of arthritis so the warmth is probably comforting.
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She acknowledges me with a subdued, barely audible chirp when I come by rather than her usual more insistent vocalizations
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Even the small garden chores I managed to squeeze in between interludes of rain this week made me happy. The biggest one was finishing planting the bulbs I'd ordered (with the exception of seven Hippeastrum in need of pots). Three hundred sixty-eight bulbs is an all-time record for me, and not one I envision coming close to matching ever again. But I took care of some smaller projects too.
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I've been collecting leaves from our deciduous trees and yesterday ran them through a Leaf Hog vacuum to chop them up before dumping them in my compost bin
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I bought surprisingly few new plants during my Saturday trip but I got some of those planted, as I also worked at planting what I'd purchased over the summer. I lost a few plants in this area, including 2 Euphorbia 'Ascot Rainbow' and 2 Phylica pubescens, so I resorted to adding more succulents here, including a small Agave ovatifolia 'Vanzie'.
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I finally got around to potting a few things too, including this noID Stapeliad (maybe an Orbea) given to me by one of the plumbers who worked on our pipe replacement in September
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As long as I shut out the political news for a time, all is well.
All material © 2012-2022by Kris Peterson for Late to the Garden Party
