The Garden in January

We're not having winter this year. I'm told it's a national phenomenon. Today was almost wintry, with gray skies and cold air. I took the opportunity to water.



Typically, it only rains in California when it's cold. I wouldn't have mentioned that, but I lived in Atlanta for a spell and I found it so remarkable that summer was the rainy season there. A life lesson: Things are different in different places. That what makes them different.



So it goes. The gray-skinned buckeye in the top picture will leaf out soon. I saw leaf tips emerging from buds this morning. I hope it flowers too. It would be the first time. Buckeye flowers would make my whole spring. Usually I cut the grasses back in winter, but this year I only cut back one that I thought really needed it.

This is my favorite picture from today and, hey, it's all foliage. That should make some people happy.



I like the Phormium 'Black Adder' so much I bought a second one last fall. It seems to grow kind of slow for a phormium, at least in my garden. That's one of the reasons I like it. They get congested and unappealing so quickly. Take it slow.



The moss on the birdbath comes back thicker and more lush every year. In the summer it dries out completely. I once said "it disappeared in summer" and someone, a designer, on Twitter, said to me, "I don't think it disappears, I just think it gets really small." What an idiot, I thought to myself. Did this woman really think I thought the moss just seasonally DISAPPEARED? Like it de-materialized from this earthly plane? People who do not understand what figurative speech is drive me nuts. I un-followed her immediately.



Here are the glass balls I regret not buying more of when I was in Rome last summer. Well, I was already pressed for room in my luggage.



Besides, we have glass balls in California too.

The slow motion garden

It's easy to take the garden for granted this time of year when everything is happening in slow motion. The days are getting imperceptibly longer but spring is still 84 days off.



As long as we have flowers, I can't complain about winter.





It's the time of year for close ups for sure.







All the bulbs have leaves poking up. These belong to watsonia.



The emergent fennel reminds me that I haven't even thought about ordering any vegetable seeds yet. I'm reading the catalogs tho'. I see an order for summer squash seeds in my near future.



I got some kale at Annie's last fall. Haven't eaten any yet.



I picked a handful of raspberries the other day. That was nice, but now I have to cut down the two-year-old canes to make way for new growth.





I'm still working on simplifying my space. The hoarding tendencies are hard to overcome, but today I threw out a lot of container stuff that wasn't doing very well. I created a hole when I moved a pot here. "Great," I thought, "I can put a foxglove seedling there." I stuck the trowel in and hit a bulb. No room for foxglove here.

In which I remember that I have a blog

You know I've been very busy with school. There's only another week of classes before finals and then I have a few weeks off. But get this, I've been summoned for jury duty! In case you forgot, I just had five weeks of jury duty in May and June 2009. I'm so ticked I could cuss. Well, they're going to hear all about it.

Anyway.



We've had a lot of rain lately. And they said this would be a dry winter. Not yet. Heck, it's not even winter. But it sure feels like it. It's going to be a long haul to March.



Besides planting out a few foxglove starts, I haven't added anything new in awhile. No substantial changes.



Things are starting to attain mature sizes, however. I'm always in such denial about that when I plant. I feel like I might as well be. You never know for sure how things are going to work out. Plants do what they want. The more I garden the better I can sense their wants. Wants and needs. Too much anthropomorphizing?



I like to think things will be different in the next garden.



The plan is to move to the suburbs in two years. Like, Redwood City or something. We're talking about it anyway. We talk about it so much, a sense of inevitability has settled in.



We'll have a regular-sized yard. Maybe even slightly larger-than-regular. That would be awesome. It's not like there's anything else in the world I want to invest money or time in besides a garden. Summers will be warmer wherever we go, so there will be a lot more food gardening.



We'll have more artichokes, not just one.



It's likely there will be frost in the next garden, but not much. Here there has been none. That's been nice for me, but I'm a gardener who doesn't know anything about frost. It's probably not as big of a deal as I imagine it to be.



But I never think about frost now.





And a lot of my favorite exotics are not suitable for frosty situations.



But some are.



And some I just don't know.



We'll definitely have grapes in the next garden.



We'd have to be crazy not to.





I will always maintain a high level of commitment to including lots of California natives.



Maybe even some big ones. I'd like to have a buckeye again. I think I should cut this one down before we move. It'll become a problem in this small space without regular attention. A lot of the plants in this garden would be problems without regular attention. It's that denial thing I just mentioned.



More roses, too. I would love to have a lot more roses in the next garden.



I would like there to be less clutter,



And more groovieness.



What will the next neighbors be like? Could they be more problematic than the one I've got now? I'm happy with him today, actually. He cut his yard down again this weekend. I don't feel like putting a picture of the results on the blog, but you can see it here. Believe me it's a huge improvement.

Intro to the winter garden

We set the clocks back this weekend, got an inch of rain, and saw temperatures fall in to the mid-50s. For all practical purposes, winter has arrived.



The days get a little bit shorter for another month, but things don't change that much between now and March.





I wasn't expecting this cordyline to sprout from the roots. What should I do? Please advise.



I'm starting to see the effects of massing monocots (plants with parallel venation in the leaf) on this side of the garden--the grasses, cordylines and one phormium are all doing well. I may need to move two Asclepias curassavica that I just planted, and add more grasses to extend the theme.



Nothing captures wind and light in the garden like massed monocots. I need to start thinking carefully about color. There's the red cordyline back there, and the black phormium up front... In between I seem to have mostly green grasses. Maybe I could add a few orange-y Carex testacea. There's a whole world of colorful Carex cultivars.

Echiums are not monocots, but the bladed leaves are similar enough.





For sure, it's time to put the dahlia pots away. I left them out to soak up whatever residual sunlight they could get. They're dormant now and the clutter only accentuates my hoarding tendencies.



Let's look away. There is some fall color on the grape vine. As long as there's still some fall color to enjoy, we know it's not really winter.















The witch hazels are too small to have any fall color impact. (But note Salvia 'Jean's Purple Passion' in the background. Nice, huh? She's a small, lanky thing now but I think she'll fill out well.)



Witness the sorry state of my vine maples. Sigh.



Even though we're sliding into winter, we still have flowers. I think Tithonia diversifolia could go for months.



Same thing for Cestrum elegans. For what it's worth, this has been a much better Cestrum for me than C. auranticum or C. nocturnum. (I don't have any experience with C. newellii.)



More pink from three Nerines blooming very late in the year for Nerine.



Dahlia imperialis is blooming, but not for me. The tall stalks lean out of my garden and into my neighbor's view.



Same thing with Montanoa grandiflora whose flowers are way high up on tall stems.





An unknown white rose from Annie's Annuals (they call it 'Marble Gardens Mystery Rose') has a few flowers.



Looks like Rosa mutabilis did not love recent rains.



The rains did not wash away the spiders. That would have been nice.