End of Summer

Tomorrow it will be official: Summer is over and to be quiet honest with you, I am glad about it! This year summer was a torture for the garden with in general very high temperatures, a couple of heatwaves on top of that and the toughest water restrictions since I garden here in San Diego.

Because of the heat I hardly did any gardening since the end of June, except the most necessary maintenance chores. And when I did try to plant something in the last two months, it is very likely that I have lost it again by now. Lesson learned: Avoid planting new plants in the heat of summer.

I hope that temperatures slowly will come down from now on, even though in San Diego it is very likely that we will have some very hot, arid and windy days caused by Santa Ana Winds in September and/or October.

Besides my complains above there was of course a lot of beauty happening in the garden and I would like to share some photos with you that I have taken this summer.

On the first glance you could think that this is a rose, but no, it is an exquisite gardenia 'Veitchii' bloom.

This gardenia actually seemed to welcome the heat...

...and was blooming as profusely as never before.

And the fragrance of a gardenia, what can I say, it is simply out of this world.

'Neptune' has been doing well since transplanted into a big terracotta container on the backyard terrace. 

The blooms of this rose have a beautiful lavender color and the fragrance is equally pleasant.

The agapanthus were also liking the summer or at least putting up with it...

...and some were blooming generously.

'Yolande d'Aragon' had a good second rebloom.

I somehow like this shot quite a bit of the same rose.

The beautiful blooms of 'Cymbaline', an older David Austin rose that you don't see too often, were another nice surprise to me this summer. 

The plant with the tongue twister name Plectranthus ciliatus 'Mona Lavender' had wonderful blooms, but...

...couldn't withstand the heat and sadly I pulled it out about a week ago, since I have come to the conclusion that it is unsuited for my climate.

'Chandos Beauty' is one of the few roses that really likes the heat. The blooms are always gorgeous and the rose bush itself is very healthy.

'The Prince' fries easily in the heat,...

...but who can resist those flowers?

My bearded iris 'Platinum' also surprised me positively this summer and rebloomed not just once but twice for me. 

And I almost had thrown it away because it wasn't doing anything for quite a while. Now I am so glad that I didn't!

Hardy geranium 'Rozanne' is unfazed by the heat as long as it gets some supplemental water and is fertilized. 

I am on the fence, if I should keep the Mini-Flora rose 'Moonlight Scentsation' or not. I love the off-white blooms with lavender or even brown undertones, but the rose mildews on a regular base, which really bothers me.

It is kind of the same situation with 'Captain Christy': Beautiful blooms, but ugly powdery mildew. This rose is an heirloom rose that is hardly available in the nurseries anymore, so for that reason I might give it another year.

Here is a shot of 'Our Lady of Guadalupe' taken around 4th of July. This rose amazes me regularly with her profuse flushes of blooms. 

How do you feel about the end of summer? What ever your feelings are, I am definitively wishing you a lovely autumn!

See you in the garden!

Christina

Front Yard Garden Tour

Two weekends ago I did another Periscope broadcast about my front yard and today I would like to share it here on the blog with you. I hope that you enjoy seeing videos of my garden as much as I do taping the Periscope shows.

In this one I focus on showing some roses ('Our Lady of Guadalupe', 'The Prince', 'Pretty Jessica') that were blooming in the front yard and also salvia 'Mystic Spires Blue', which is a show stopper in my garden. I am also featuring geranium 'Rozanne, dianthus 'Floral Lace White', flowering cyclamen and other plants.

Thanks for watching the video!

See you in the garden!

Christina

A Caterpillar and Some Random Garden Shots

We were having an usual cool Memorial Day weekend here in San Diego (highest temperatures today were about 70 F/21 C and lowest temperatures predicted at 56 F/13 C) with mostly gray skies with very little sun and even a light drizzle from time to time, but unfortunately really not enough to water the plants.

I worked on Saturday, but had yesterday and today off and got at least some gardening done, like planting my last white dianthus (how many dianthus can one plant?) and finally fertilized all roses in containers on the terrace for the first time this year. I know that is way too late, but hey, nobody is perfect. I also weeded and cleaned out the Calla Lilies of spent flowers and yellow leaves. Since the weather was bad I didn't take any pictures this weekend, but was going over photos from the last weeks and would like to show you some of those tonight.

The decent rains that we were getting lately did wonders to the garden. And the rain drops look beautifully on some of the plants. Here is a photo of Stachys ‘Helene von Stein’, more commonly known as Lamb's Ear.
  

Close-up shot of Stachys 'Helene Von Stein'. Don't the rain drops remind you of diamonds? Who needs real diamonds when you can have something like this for free?

Zooming in even closer. Nature is simply fascinating!

My second alstroemeria 'Little Miss Sophie' has finally bloomed, after giving her plenty of fertilizer.

I think it is such a pretty variety and the best thing is, that the flower stalks don't flop over, because they stay short and don't become leggy like so many other varieties do.

I didn't have too many blooms on my Calla Lilies, zantedeschia aethiopica, but the ones that I got were lovely. Unfortunately, Calla Lilies are anything but drought tolerant, so their future in my garden is uncertain. 

I went to the spring garden tour of the San Diego Horticultural Society. Besides the gardens that could be visited they had a big market place where many vendors were selling plants and garden related items. I came late and things were pretty much picked over, but these two beauties immediately caught my eye and I managed to get a hold of them. As far as I remember the vendor told me that they are miniature pelargoniums and he claimed to have bred these plants himself. 

This one is called 'Linda Zee'. I really love the cheerful little flowers. Usually the color of the flowers would be a little bit too bright for my taste, but somehow it didn't bothered me at all. As a matter of fact I really find them quite charming exactly how they are.

The other one 'Cornelia O Plume' picks up exactly the color hues of a regular size Martha Washington pelargonium that I already have in my garden. I think these two are just the perfect addition to my small collection of pelargoniums. Now I just have to find a good place in the garden for both of them.   

To my knowledge coleus are annuals, but I cut mine (coleus 'Wasabi') back hard in winter anyway and to my surprise it came back just fine. It actually stayed more compact so far than last year, which I like even better. The chartreuse color of the variety is just perfect!

My recently bought heucheras 'Lime Marmelade' got planted into the ground in close proximity to the chartreuse coleus mentioned above and are doing fine. For a heuchera you can call them almost vigorous, which is rare in my climate. And so far they hold their chartreuse color well, just as the label promised. 

My white flowering bell flowers (unfortunately I lost the label with the name of the variety) are blooming for the first time since three years and have formed a nice ground cover around one of my Pygmy Date Palms. I believe that this is due to the winter rains that we got. 

For many of you maybe not so special, but I just love the dainty white blooms. 

First open bloom on my dark violet gladiolus (sorry, I have lost the label of this variety, too).

  

A few days later the plants looked like this. Gladiolus offer only a short show in my climate, but they are totally worth growing in my opinion.

My 'Iceberg' beaming in the morning sun!

Hardy geranium 'Rozanne' seem to be even more blue after the rain.

And now we come to the caterpillar.

I found two of these hairy fellows in my garden. One was happily munching the petals of my white Hybrid Tea 'Pope John Paul II' and therefore needed to be provided with another food source outside of my garden!

Doesn't he look fascinating?

For a better size idea we put him on the cuff of my husband's shirt.

The caterpillar was quite agile and quickly made it down to my husband's knuckles...

...and fingers. My husband tried to identify him but no luck so far. Does anyone of you have an idea what the name of this guy is? Does he become a butterfly or a moth?

Always interested in trying out tech things my husband put his Iphone on the concrete of our terrace and took this slowmo video of the caterpillar. At the beginning and end you see the real time speed of this little guy. I think he was impressively fast. 

Just want to mention at the end that recently I passed 250.000 pageviews. That is a quarter million clicks on my blog! I find this a mind boggling number considering that I am not blogging that often. Thank you all for visiting and reading my blog, you made my day!

See you in the garden!

Christina

Gardening in the Heat of Summer

I will say it right away, summer is not my favorite time of the year in San Diego. It is way too hot to garden comfortably outside except very early in the mornings and late in the evenings. On the other hand there is so much to do in the garden. At this time of the year I am mainly busy with hand-watering, weeding, deadheading roses, fertilizing and mulching. Unfortunately I hardly find the time to plant anything new.

Most people assume San Diego has a very mild and temperate climate and that is true when you live directly on the coast, but many people, like us, can't afford to buy a house there and are forced to move more inland. With every mile away from the coast temperatures seem to rise and in the summer time you are reminded every day that you are living in a desert. But enough complained, I am happy that I do have a garden and just try to make the best out of it at any given time of the year.

This lovely clay statue was made by a friend and given to us as a house warming present after we bought our first house in Menlo Park, California. I couldn't find a good place to put it for a long time until in the beginning of summer I decided to give it a try in my Hybrid Perpetual rose bed. The roses are casting quite a bit of shade there on the ground, so that the lilac scabiosas, that I had originally planted in this location, didn't grow and gradually declined. I surrounded the statue with impatiens 'Super Elfin White', which seem to be surprisingly happy there and I like how they and the white statue lighten up this area. 

This is hardy geranium, commonly called cranesbill, 'Rozanne'. The plant is non-stop in bloom from spring until up to now and will probably go on until late autumn. It is such a grateful variety.

When I saw this Martha Washington geranium, pelargonium domesticum, 'Regal Elegance Purple Majesty' in spring, I had completely fallen in love with its color and had to have it. At $ 16.99 for a three gallon container it came with a quite steep price tag, but I gave in, because I knew it would complement the David Austin rose 'The Prince', which is growing nearby, perfectly. I thought that Martha Washington geraniums would only flower in spring, but this one keeps going although less profusely and the flowers are smaller than in spring.

This white flowering cyclamen (unknown variety) is gracing our front door. Nothing special about it on the first glance, except that it starts to bloom in the heat of summer. Can you see the little flower bud peeping up? My understanding is the cyclamen are only flowering when the weather has really cooled down in autumn in my area.

I think that the foliage of this cyclamen looks so pretty.

Fungi growing in the mulch. In the summer they can appear from one day to the other. I have read that fungi only grow in healthy soil, so I embrace them as a good sign.

I am gardening in a dry, arid and hot climate, where one would think slugs and snails wouldn't be such a big deal, but let me tell you that is wrong. Even in the heat of summer these little critters are quite a problem in some parts of my garden.

I am so in love with this chartreuse colored coleus 'Wasabi'. I think, the color is just fantastic! It is another of my spring acquisitions that I haven't shown on my blog, yet. I wouldn't expect a coleus to grow well in my climate, but this one does. Besides its obvious beauty, this plant is special to me for an entirely different reason. When my eighty two year old mom, visited me in spring I dragged her to a nursery and she found this plant and pointed it out to me. So whenever I look at the coleus it reminds me of her and our nursery visit, which is really nice. Thanks mom!

Something is wrong in this picture. Do you see the big variegated leaves at the base of rosa 'Chandos Beauty'?

Close-up of the leaves from the photo above. I am not a vegetable gardener, but to me it looks like a vegetable.

Even though the foliage is fairly pretty, it had to go since it is stealing nutrients from the rose. Turning to the vegetable growers of you out there: Do you know what it really is? I am sure the seeds came from our worm bin, which contains kitchen scrapes, when I spreaded the worm castings underneath the rose bush.

Rosa 'Pierre de Ronsard' in severe need of deadheading after its second flush.

Aaaah, so much better already! After a good feeding with Biostart organic rose fertilizer, alfalfa meal topped off with compost...

... it is gearing up for its third flush.

'Pierre de Ronsard' is certainly one of my favorite roses in the garden. The flowers have a beauty that is hard to beat!

In August, seemingly out of nowhere, this plant is arising its snake like head from the ground.

Fairly quickly it begins to open its buds...

...into these lovely blooms.

More and more buds are opening...

...unfolding themselves...

... until finally this beauty emerges. The plant still has made no leaves, yet. It is an amaryllis belladonna and was supposed to be the white flowering variety 'Fred Meyer Whites', but obviously it it not. Anyway, this pink variety is very pretty, too.

Summer is also the time when the agapanthus blooms. This dark blue variety is called 'Storm Cloud'. I have the impression that it is not flowering as profusely as the light blue more common varieties.

These six little plants of geranium x cantabrigiense 'Biokovo' I also bought in spring already and believe me, they have looked better then. 'Biokovo' has light pink almost white flowers and I thought it might be a nice perennial addition for my White Garden Bed. If you squint, you might see two tiny blooms in this picture.

Planted freshly in the ground the geranium is stretching itself already a little bit and seemed to like it better there than in the container.

You almost need a magnifying glass right now to find the geranium 'Biokovo' in this photo. They are planted to the right and left side of the cycads. They are supposed to grow 12 - 18 inch high and 18 - 24 inch wide, so I think that soon they will have more impact. The rose in the middle is 'Moonstone', a white flowering Hybrid Tea rose with a pink center. I hope that the geraniums will complement this rose nicely. 

Even though the roses do struggle in the heat of summer and don't bloom that profusely, occasionally they still can be magnificent like 'The Prince' accompanied by salvia 'Mystic Spires Blue'.

See you in the garden!

Christina