It's February 1st and my southern California garden is still starved for rain. It sprinkled lightly for 5 minutes last Sunday and we got a light drizzle Thursday night but it wasn't measurable rain - more like Mother Nature spitting at us. Reservoirs are at all-time lows. Our governor declared a drought emergency in January and has requested voluntary water conservation of 20%. I've re-set our automated irrigation system, which means that some areas of the garden, like the back slope, will receive limited water. The wide shots below may be the last ones showing a well-irrigated garden here for awhile.
Since last month's wide shots, the backyard trees have been trimmed. The area is also undergoing a slow renovation with a significant expansion of the border surrounding the fountain (
as described here). My husband elected to dig out the lawn on his own, which means delays based on his schedule and availability. The edge of the new border has been dug, the benderboard is in, and some sod has been removed to patch lawn elsewhere in the yard but there's a lot more lawn to come out, hopefully, before the March wide shots!
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| View from the back door showing the work begun on expanding the border surrounding the fountain, still in its early stages |
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| View of backyard border from the right side |
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| View of backyard border from the left side |
The southeast side yard has seen very few changes since last month, although I did pull out the scruffy annual
Ursinia anthemoides planted along the patio and replaced them with 2 more dwarf
Anigozanthos (as I'd threatened to do
here).
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| View of side yard from the front lawn |
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| View from side yard patio |
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| View of side yard from backyard lawn |
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| View of the side yard from a lower pathway |
Other than swapping out a few plants and a light trim of the Hong Kong orchid tree (Bauhinia x blakeana), nothing much has changed with respect to the front border. The shrub roses, pruned in late December, are putting out new growth. I haven't yet gotten around to cutting back the ornamental grasses.
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| View looking toward the front door |
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| View of the right front border looking in the direction of the southeast side yard |
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| View of the left side of the front yard |
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| View from the front door toward the street |
The vegetable garden still has only herbs and flowers for cutting rather than vegetables. The navel oranges are ripe and the limes are over-ripe but the Mandarin oranges aren't quite ready for consumption yet.
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| The sweet peas have grown quite a bit but I still have no flowers |
The dry garden hasn't changed much either except that the Grevillea lanvandulacea 'Penola' is now in full bloom.
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| View of the dry garden from the back lawn |
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| View of the dry garden from the paved area on the north side of the house with the over-ripe guavas even the squirrels don't want prominently displayed |
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| View across the dry garden from the stairs at the top of the slope |
And I've done absolutely nothing with the back slope except water.
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| View from near the top of the stairway that runs down the slope - the area to the left of the hedge is my neighbor's vegetable patch |
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| View from the bottom of the slope looking up |
That's it for this month's wide shots, a monthly meme hosted by Heather of
Xericstyle. Please visit Heather's site to see a wide shot of her garden and to find links to other contributing gardeners' wide views. I'll leave you with this afternoon's view out to the horizon.
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| The Angel's Gate Lighthouse on the right marks the entrance to the Los Angeles Harbor. Long Beach sits behind the haze in the distance. |
