It's Friday, but Sunday's coming

Not to go overboard with the symbolism here, but as of Good Friday the rosebushes are filled with dozens of buds getting ready to open, and I'm predicting by Easter Sunday they will be in glorious full bloom.

Almond tree

It looks like we will get a few almonds this year for the first time!

Back to basics

This morning I noticed that some of the vines behind the gazebo were daring to creep over the common wall again, and decided I'd better clip them back in order to avoid any HOA complaints. What I thought would take a few minutes escalated into a major pruning job.

First, I decided to prune back the lilac vine (Hardenbergia) rather severely because it was looking pretty shabby this year. There were very few blossoms, and most of the new growth was on the top of the trellis.
That done, I moved on to the next trellis, which was overgrown with Hall's honeysuckle and had a lot of dead material showing underneath. I hadn't even planted Hall's honeysuckle on this trellis....it wandered there from another location and looked rather nice last year, so true to my "Akuna Matata" gardening style, I let it stay.

That was a mistake, Hall's honeysuckle is rather invasive making it exactly the wrong kind of plant to have on the HOA common wall, although it works well on the wall where I originally planted it. So I cut it back to confine it to its original location, and excised its wandering tentacles from this trellis. Much to my surprise, I found new growth on a snail vine planted at its base. The snail vine is a better choice for this location, and should do much better now that it is no longer being suffocated by the more aggressive honeysuckle.

As I often do when working in the garden, I thought about how what I was doing applies to life. Sometimes our lives become overgrown with activities that, although attractive and good in their proper places, crowd out or hide other things that are perhaps better or more desirable. Sometimes organizations become so constrained by a tangle of competing values and goals that they can't effectively accomplish the tasks they were created to perform. I think sometimes cutting everything back to the roots is healthy and invigorating. And sometimes you will be surprised by what you find!

The snake in the garden

Here's another picture of our "lilies of the field" garden under the key lime tree. In addition to the nasturtiums, bachelor's button and larkspur are beginning to bloom.

All the citrus trees are in bloom now, and the smell is delightful. Unfortunately this week I have learned that for every gardening Eden, there is a snake determined to spoil the pleasure one can enjoy in it. The snake that is rearing its ugly head for me right now is seasonal allergies, something I'd previously thought myself immune to suffering. Ha!

Actually, allergies are not usually caused by citrus, or the other kind of things in my garden. Flowering plants like citrus and these nasturtiums are insect-pollinated rather than wind-pollinated, and usually the pollen grains produced by insect-pollinated plants are too large to be inhaled and cause trouble. It's more likely that my symptoms result from the neighbors' ash and mulberry trees, or from the current crop of spring weeds infesting every patch of ground in the Valley area.

Experiments in composting

I had lunch with my retiree group at Desert Botanical Gardens today (and by the way, I recommend Gertrude's...the food was delicious) and of course the conversation went to gardening. I told them about the contact I'd had with a Master Gardener who was doing an article for Phoenix Home and Garden, and how I thought I was going to back out from consideration because I don't think our backyard is magazine worthy. I do not plant things in neat, color-coordinated groupings. I let things go to seed, pick the seeds, and toss them somewhere else. Half the fun is watching to see what comes up, and where and when. I also like to experiment, and not all my experiments work the way I hypothesized they would. One of my friends said I should describe it as a "willy-nilly" garden! She's probably right.

This is one of my current experiments. Mike built this trellis for climbing things out of scrap wood, and right now there are snow and sugar snap peas growing on it.  I planted the Zipper Cream peas I brought back from Alabama and a few Armenian cucumbers with the idea that they would take over once temperatures rise. The experiment is that I am open composting in the middle of the tent created by the trellis. I have been throwing coffee grounds, banana peels, eggshells, and other kitchen waste in this area for several months, and when it came time to pull up kale and Swiss chard plants to make room for spring plantings, I added them to the pile. Then I topped it off with a layer of dirt. And now, I'll wait to see what happens.

Asparagus

It amazes me how fast new spears pop up....this is two day's worth of growth! This picture was taken from the rear of this bed, which borders our side patio. The asparagus is in the back of the bed; there are roses in the middle which should be blooming in a few weeks.

Because it was somewhat overcast today, I was able to accomplish quite a bit more than I usually do. The biggest task involved shoveling dirt to raise an area where I wanted to plant the zipper cream peas I brought back from Alabama. I also did a fair amount of weeding in several locations and worked on getting some of the sludge out of the bottom of a pond. It ought to make good fertilizer.

Asian pear tree in bloom

Our Asian pear tree is loaded with blooms this year. Last year, it didn't produce a single pear. It is my understanding that some fruit trees bear heavy crops in alternate years. Maybe we will get some this year!

I noticed the first bachelor's button flowers open this morning, and a few of the larkspur as well. There are also blossoms on many of the citrus trees, and their fragrance is beginning to fill the air. We had a nice dinner last night of roasted asparagus and steamed sugar snap peas, and today I will need to pick them again.

We found the pond plants Paul gave us Saturday new homes in the streambed. The larger ones look a bit droopy, but the watercress wasn't fazed by its abrupt relocation.

Morning meditations

For the beauty of the earth

For the glory of the skies

For the love which from our birth over and around us lies

Christ our God, to Thee we raise this our hymn of grateful praise.

During the last year, I've begun to practice (albeit sporadically) what some call meditation and some call centering prayer. It involves quieting my mind, concentrating only on breathing, and listening for the voice of God. This time of year I find it especially nice to do this outdoors, although I really must keep my eyes closed or I will see something I need to do, like pulling weeds or thinning peaches. Today it was the words of this old hymn which came to my mind. I think we often tend to get so bogged down in "doing" rather than "being" that we forget to appreciate the simple things in life, and to be grateful.

I think of this spot under the key lime tree as my "lilies-of-the-field garden". Last spring and summer, as annuals succumbed to the heat, I threw their corpses in a pile under this tree and left them alone until the spent flowers, seedheads, and leaves dropped off. I didn't do anything else here, other than add the revamped grid drip system we've been installing all over the yard, and try to stay ahead of the weeds by pulling them out as I saw them arise. And right now, this spot is the most colorful one in the yard, with very little effort on my part.

And now it's time to go and thin the peaches, pull out a few weeds, and pick some asparagus for tonight's dinner.

Nectarines in bloom

Our dwarf nectarine tree is loaded with blossoms this year. The peach tree behind it is already setting fruit. I also noticed one of the calla lilies blooming today, and I picked a nice bowlful of sugar snap peas and some asparagus.

I have to amend yesterday's "no squash seedlings" observation. I replanted the mounds with some seedlings I'd started indoors, and watered them in well. Today what should I see but a cotyledon from one of the zucchini seeds I'd planted in February breaking ground!

What a difference a week makes!

I've been gone for a week visiting my family in Alabama, and there have been quite a few changes in just a week. Things are finally waking up! There are blossoms on the apricot, apple, nectarine, almond, pear, and plum trees, and leaves on the crape myrtle. The roses have leafed out and should begin blooming in a couple of weeks. The three tomato plants I thought were dead have put out new growth, nasturtiums are blooming and some of the other annuals won't be far behind. Hollyhock plants are about two feet high. Even the grass is beginning to green up somewhat.

No beans or squash yet; I think that last cold snap hit at the wrong time for successful germination so I'll need to replant. The potato bush has come back nicely from the frost and the plumbago and snail vine are showing growth at the roots. The thevetia hedge hasn't really come back yet, although it's beginning to show signs of life. We pruned back the hibiscus and bougainvillea even further and never did find green wood, so it will be a long time before they come back.

We had Paul from The Pond Gnome over yesterday for a consultation and got some good ideas for projects to improve our ponds and streambed. We used flagstones to line the pond banks and streambed, and a lot of them have deteriorated. He suggested replacing them with rip rap, which will give us the same red rocks look and be more stable, and also replacing some of our pond plants with less invasive species.

Life will find a way

"Life will find a way", as we were told in Jurassic Park. The three tomato plants that appeared to be dead are showing new and apparently healthy growth. The apricot trees are blooming, and the frost-damaged tecoma, plumbago, and thevetia shrubs are sprouting new shoots. It's too soon to tell about the fate of the hibiscus, but I wouldn't count them out yet.

Life will find a way, no matter what obstacles are placed in its way. What is true for plants is also true for people. Or, to quote another science fiction movie, "Never give up! Never surrender!"