December roses, impatiens and lemons

There are two bright yellow Meyer lemons on our tree (three, before
we gave one away); there are buds on several of our rosebushes; and
the impatiens are fully blooming, despite a wee bit of frostbite.
The crape myrtles have gone completely dormant in the past two weeks,
but the St. Augustine grass is full and lush. Happy New Year!

Jason has observed that the roses along the fence are probably
competing for water with the St. Augustine (which has formed great
big clumps at their bases, where the mini-sprinklers are).

I've decided that since he is almost certainly right, it's time to
declare that rosebed permanent! I've been resisting putting in a
border and mulch on the theory that if the roses simply don't survive
there, we can pull them out without having damaged the lawn. But they
are surviving, and probably would do even better with the extra
water, so it's time to make their bed!

That is probably the major change we will make in this coming year.
The new grass in the front is beautifully established, so we've
eliminated one major hassle (pruning the shrubs that were there).
The beds, trees and pots are all on a 5-day timer now, so they don't
require even the minimal effort of my remembering to water them. If
I can remember to maintain the birdfeeder, and if we neaten up the
backyard bed.... and maybe build a dog gate and some low-voltage
lanterns to cap the deck railing posts ... then we'll have exceeded
our plans!

Schoolhouse lilies bloomed Sept. 8

At least that's the first time I observed them. And that is despite an astonishingly rainy summer that actually caused the clay soil to heave the bulbs out of the ground, a la frozen soil! I thought they were toast but no, they are blooming.

Holding steady amid the rains; pruned roses

Pruned the sickly roses pretty heavily about a month ago (NOT the approved pruning time!) and was rewarded with a flush of healthy new growth. It's been raining heavily for about a month and everybody's lush... now the heat will set in!

Other crapes in the neighborhood are blooming but not ours yet; Mom speculates those in full sun may be warmer, thus starting earlier.

Daylilies have been blooming for at least a week -- the soft peachy one is blooming its head off and just lovely.

Ruellias are green, not blooming; narcissus greens have just started to go brown.

Two potfuls of impatiens on the front porch, planted about a month ago, have been blooming steadily the whole time; ditto two pots of petunias in a sunny corner of the back deck. Really pretty.

Roses sprayed, fertilized

That's Don on the left, with a couple blooms, and High Hopes on the right, blooming more than ever before. This is their first full year in the ground and I think that's the difference. After five years of waiting to find out what High Hopes' flowers looked like (I moved a lot, and these guys stayed in big growers' pots) I am delighted to report that they are perfectly charming -- long, narrow, photogenic peachy-pink buds, opening up to warm peach flowers with a sweet fragrance -- just lovely.


This is the mystery volunteer rose that came up from the rootstock High Hopes left behind (the big pot sat on this spot for nearly a year and roots went down; when I moved the pot, I severed the top of the roots, but this guy came springing up). He's also thrown up some very tall canes, so that matches the Dr Huey diagnosis -- Dr Huey is a climber. Contrary to my belief, though, it's not used as rootstock because it resists disease. It must just be extra vigorous. The photo would bear this out!

Those are my strapping but nonblooming spuria iris to either side of the Doc.

Sprayed with copper soap yesterday and put fertilizer spikes on the arch roses, Kordes Perfecta and all the weaklings along the fence (i.e. everybody except Belinda and McCartney). Shouldn't need to fertilize again until June 16, at which point it'll be interesting to see if the weak links are catching up.

A good month for roses; crapes are green

This is Kordes Perfecta (I thought it was Sonia but I must have gotten the labels swapped) and it is blooming along with most of the other rosebushes. High Hopes and Belinda's Dream are particularly lovely now; McCartney Rose, Apricot Nectar, Don Juan are all blooming; and both "Olly the octopus" (unidentified cherry-red climber) and the dark red mystery rose I believe to be Dr. Huey are covered with flowers. There are buds on the others, including the new Gemini I planted a couple weeks ago.

This photo is actually a little yellow-tinged -- the roses are more cream-colored than golden, with the lovely soft pink edge and great form.

I think the cold weather followed by buckets of rain have everyone's roses very happy.

The crape myrtles have been fully leafed out for almost a month now, since about March 23-24. (I.e. about 15 days after I last observed that they looked completely dead.)

Narcissus bloomed Jan-Feb; Larry blooming

The Grand Primo bloomed healthily from mid-January to mid-February -- I think that's its third year to do so now. It has developed into a thick stand of lush, sturdy green. A few feeble blooms on the Texas Star at the same time.

As of now, in early March, Larry the lemon tree is covered in blooms (a bit early, I think) and bees.

The roses have all leafed out with flushes of healthy, burgundy-colored new growth. With their Rose Hose that I am proud of installing, they get regular measured doses of water right to their roots!

And every bulb in the garden has its greenery up, making mid-March an excellent time to install watering systems or weedcloth or anything else that requires that you know exactly where all your plants are! The schoolhouse lilies, narcissus, spuria iris (they made it!) and daylilies are all fully green right now.

The trees are getting their first sprigs of spring green. And the crape myrtles, as is traditional, look so dead that we are afraid, as we are annually, that this is the year we killed them! But we have faith.

Broad-leafed weeds took over the yard in the last half of February. We didn't do doodly squat in the way of corn gluten prevention or anything, so we deserve what we get. However, we've requested estimates for installing a sprinkler system -- healthy grass will choke out weed growth naturally, or so we hope.