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In a Vase on Monday: Freesias everywhere
Freesias weren't the starting point for any of today's vases but somehow they managed to find their way into all three of them. Those blooms are plentiful in my garden now, come in a range of colors...
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Tell the Truth Tuesday (Late Edition): Cutting Garden Woes
My impression is that spring has been slower to arrive in coastal Southern California this year. In examining records of the progress of my cutting garden, this conclusion seems abundantly clear. I'm...
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Bloom Day - March 2019
I looked back at last year's March Bloom Day post, finding that I'd highlighted bulb blooms. While some of the most spectacular bulbs that were in bloom last March, like Scilla peruviana,...
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In a Vase on Monday: The Blues
I decided to focus on the blues in my garden this week for In a Vase on Monday, the popular weekly meme hosted by Cathy at Rambling in the Garden. If it has a blue flower and it grows in my climate, I...
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Wednesday Vignette: Winged Visitors
A good stretch of rainy weather and the resulting explosion of flowers brought hoards of visitors into Southern California. I'm not referring to the humans streaming into our desert areas to see the...
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Top Ten (New) Blooms - Late March 2019
Chloris of The Blooming Garden posts a monthly top 10 list of what's flowering in her garden and invites others to join in. I don't routinely participate as what I'd cover would frequently be a rehash...
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In a Vase on Monday: Pulling Out the Stops
You may not believe it but I do hesitate about cutting some flowers in my garden to fill a vase. This week, I decided to go all in with some of my selections. The first of my Dutch Iris started...
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Tell the Truth Tuesday: Stumped for Inspiration
The area on the east side of our backyard patio is particularly sandy and, after we removed the last of our lawn there in 2016, I used succulents to fill the narrow area between the patio and the...
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Foliage: Lost among the flowers?
In early Spring even the most foliage-focused gardeners I know can be distracted by the colorful blooms that take the stage by storm. For someone like me who's a bit flower-obsessed to begin with, it...
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In a Vase on Monday: Spring is in hyperdrive
Our Santa Ana winds returned this past weekend, humidity levels dropped dramatically, and our daytime temperature reached 80F (26C). While there's a slim chance of light rain later this week, absent a...
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Spring Plant Sale
A friend and I paid a visit to my local botanic garden last Saturday for its annual Spring Plant Sale. We drove through the gates only minutes after the garden officially opened to find the parking...
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Wide Shots - April 2019
For most of March, I felt that spring was slow in getting started in my area of coastal Southern California but, toward the end of the month, temperatures began to warm and, after looking back at last...
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In a Vase on Monday: Nothing to spit at
My Osteospermums are doing especially well this year so I decided to make one variety the focus of this week's vase. After cutting a couple of stems, I realized that they were covered in a sticky...
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Failure to Focus
I've got a number of projects to tackle in the garden but focusing my attention has been a problem of late.This is the area I featured in an earlier Tell-the-Truth-Tuesday post. Since then, I've...
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Cactus & Succulent Show & Sale
Last Saturday I attended the annual Cactus & Succulent Show & Sale hosted by the South Coast Cactus & Succulent Society at my local botanic garden. The event is held inside an auditorium...
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Spring Bounty - IAVOM & Bloom Day, April 2019
With cooler than normal temperatures and heavier than usual rain through our winter months, I'd expected a bountiful Spring but I think even I was unprepared for the sheer volume of blooms in my garden...
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Wednesday Vignette: Watching and Waiting
I've been on leaf watch for a couple of months now, anxiously waiting for signs that what remains of our large mimosa tree (Albizia julibrissin) still has the will to live after being cut back by half...
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My Favorite Spring Plant Combinations
I took photos of some of my favorite flower combinations in preparation for my Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day post but, as it turned out, I'd accumulated so many flower photos, I couldn't bring myself to...
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In a Vase on Monday: Spinning through Spring
Spring has suddenly become very busy. That's partly due to preparations for (gulp!) an upcoming home remodel; partly to a significant increase in the docent tours I'm conducting at my local botanic...
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Wednesday Vignette: Hell's Kitchen
Our home remodel is no longer some generally imagined event set for an indefinite future date. After nearly a year of myriad delays involving bureaucratic red tape, geological surveys, asbestos...
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