01. April 2017

March has departed in a highly leonine fashion here, with a roar of winds, fluctuating temperatures, sun and clouds and sun and clouds, and plummeting humidity. Nevertheless, it has been a beautiful month in the garden, as cold gave way to warmth and ample sunlight. Everything is still feasting on the extra rain we received in January and February, no small gift in a desert garden! The month began with Narcissus...

22. March 2017

Worth the wait in more ways than one. I am finally getting to use flowers I have been waiting for all winter long - Calendulas planted with Monday vases in mind, Cerinthe which helpfully seeded itself into the North Border, and Tetraneuris which disappeared entirely late last year but has returned in a glory of little yellow daisies. All of these were just ready on Monday, and then I had to wait again. It does seem like a run of bad luck: a strained (sprained?) back all last week, light case of...

15. March 2017

First a confession. Wandering around the garden today, camera in hand, peering here and there to see what is in bloom, for the first time I was thrilled with the garden. Not with the idea, or with this or that plant or combination of plants, or even with a particular piece of it all, but with the garden itself. For the first time I can feel it as a whole, however tentatively. There is still chaos here and there; the hedging must be completed; big gaps and outright errors need to be remedied;...

16. November 2016

It is the middle of the month now, the middle of November at that! Time for a look at what is blooming in the garden with Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day, hosted by Carol at May Dreams Gardens. This is a lush season here in the desert, as temperatures are quite comfortable. It might be even lusher if we could get some rain, but so far that hasn't happened. Perhaps a little later... Meantime, here is what the garden is doing. This month I divided the plants according to seasonality, only to find that...

08. November 2016

This week we are celebrating the third anniversary of the "In a Vase on Monday" theme with Cathy at Rambling in the Garden. For the occasion she set a theme of "three". I decided to combine three sets of three flowers, based on color and, more loosely, type. Earlier I had ambitions of creating three separate vases, but I decided that was a bit beyond my energy level as I'm still getting over the flu. So today's arrangement is a threefold celebration, but in one vase. First of all, there are the...

17. October 2016

For me, yesterday's Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day coincided with a chance to visit Summerwinds Nursery, an opportunity which unabashedly ousted my Bloom Day post till today. After all, this is the start of planting season here and the tables were loaded. Every minute I could spare today went to planting, and there is still plenty left to do! Meantime, I didn't want to miss my Bloom Day post altogether. So out I went with camera in hand, only to find my flower photography preempted by an even more...

04. October 2016

This is the first regular post from the new site, so I wanted to express some of my pleasure over my new project by a lusher bouquet than usual. And the garden provided the material, what with roses beginning to bloom and late summer flowers giving a burst of blossom as well.