And the race is on!

We're still waiting on peaches, but these Katy apricots may ripen first! This is a relatively young tree; we put it in when we added the raised beds three years ago.

In other news, we hit our first 100 degree temperatures yesterday afternoon...the long hot summer is upon us!

Waiting for peaches

"They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles. They shall run and not grow weary; they shall walk and not faint."

We're eager to taste our first summer fruit, peaches from this tree which I think is the Desert Gold variety. The fruit is usually ready to pick in early May, so it shouldn't be but a couple more weeks before we can enjoy eating them. This is our oldest fruit tree and although it didn't set as much fruit as it usually does, we took special care to thin it properly for its overall health, and in hopes of larger, tastier peaches. There are about two dozen peaches on it now, and they are sizing up nicely.

I'm an impatient gardener. I don't like to wait in general....I like to finish things. For those of you familiar with the MBTI, I'm a "J", meaning patience is not my strong suit. This can lead to gardening mistakes, such as this honeysuckle/rose arbor. However, gardening is also a great way to learn patience. I know that the peaches won't be as sweet if I pick them in their current hard, green stage, and so I wait.

A picture is worth a thousand words

Larkspur, snapdragon, hollyhock, petunia, bachelor's button, and coreopsis. There are some nice yellow pear tomatoes setting fruit inside the tomato cage, too.

Pond remodel

Here's a picture of the completed (well, for now) pond remodeling project, following The Pond Gnome's advice to replace the sandstone with rip rap. We think it came out pretty well.

There are some people who believe that ponds in the desert are a wasteful extravagance. Actually, ponds use less water than lawns and provide habitat for wildlife, including pollinator insects that help our garden produce. And pond sludge makes great organic fertilizer!

Our next project will be to remove the small patio to the left of the pond, and merge the two raised beds so that plantings will come all the way up to the pond and streambed.

Thoughts while apple thinning

"For what shall it profit a man if he should gain the whole world and lose his own soul?"

Yesterday's impromptu garden tour reminded me that it's past time for me to get serious about thinning the apple tree. One of the first non-citrus trees that was successful in our poorly draining, heavy clay soil is this Ein Shemer apple.tree. It always sets more fruit than its branches can bear, and this year the fruit set was particularly heavy due to the increased number of "chilling hours" it received. There are hundreds of marble-to-half-dollar size apples on the tree, and a large percentage of them need to go. So I need to go to every cluster like this and remove all the apples but one, and there are a lot of clusters!

Thinning fruit is less enjoyable than weeding. When I'm weeding, I'm generally in attack mode, feeling totally justified in ripping out the unwanted invaders by the roots. When I'm thinning fruit, I'm forced to remove something desirable, just because you really can have too many of a good thing. Plus, I'm often looking into the sun and being poked in the face by recalcitrant branches.

I thought of some people I know who try to do so many things that they become stressed and overwhelmed, like the apple tree branches that sag and break under the weight of too much fruit. The apples don't grow as large on an unthinned tree, and sometimes people who try to do too many good things wind up doing none of them well. Then there are those people who seem to never have enough in the way of things, want to hold on to everything they have while grasping for more, and wind up losing something more valuable.

Just as it's easier for me to see the faults of others rather than my own, it's easier for me to write about thinning the apple tree than to get out of my comfortable chair in front of the computer and go do it. Time to go back to work!

Friends are the flowers in the garden of life

 "Make new friends, but keep the old. One is silver and the other gold"

I'm part of a group of retired educators who worked at the same school for many years, and now meet once a month for lunch and conversation. We usually meet at a restaurant, but this month I was delighted to have them come to our Arizona Backyard Eden for a garden tour and al fresco potluck lunch on the patio. I've known most of these ladies for more than twenty years, and they are my very dear friends in too many ways to enumerate. They're all really good cooks, too!

I've mentioned that I like to experiment and try new things in our backyard. Some plants and ideas are successful and some are not, and what works one year may not do so well another. I haven't been particularly successful with daylilies, for example, and the zipper cream peas I brought back from Alabama have apparently failed to germinate. Yet there are some I can always rely on for an exuberant show of color: nasturtiums, hollyhocks, and larkspur in the spring, and coreopsis, blanketfower, and zinnias in the summer.

Many people have come into and gone out of my life over the years. Some have disappointed me, and some have hurt me. But some have always been there for me, and those people really are flowers in the garden of my life, beautiful and sweet smelling.

The language of flowers

"But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own."

Some people are convinced that talking to plants helps them to grow. I don't really talk to my plants nearly as much as I listen to them, and sometimes they say things to me that help me to grow.

The yellow flower in the foreground is coreopsis, a member of the sunflower family, and it's just beginning to bloom.  Coreopsis is a great choice for summer gardens here because it is one of the the few flowers that seems unaffected by our 100+ degree temperatures. When everything else has wilted or died, it keeps blooming and will do so throughout the summer and fall. Like many members of the sunflower family, coreopsis is phototropic....its flowers turn to face the sun.

I always thought gardening, unlike some other topics, was a fairly safe topic for conversation. But recently I was stunned and hurt to learn that there are some people who think it is morally wrong to have a garden like ours in the desert. I've always considered myself rather environmentally conscientious, and I don't agree. Green spaces help mitigate the urban heat island effects which are a significant problem in Phoenix. The evaporative cooling effect of plants located near buildings means less energy is needed for air conditioning. Green and growing things help remove pollutants from the air, and provide food and habitat for wildlife. Home-grown fruits and vegetables don't require transportation from a distant location to get to the dinner table, and less in the way of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides are used to produce them. I know what I think, and what I believe, yet I was still bothered by the judgement of others.

Then I listened to what the coreopsis had to say. It sends its roots down in search of water and nutrients, and  keeps its face to the sun. Plants don't worry or obsess about what others think of them. They just go on doing what plants are supposed to do, and in the process share their gift of beauty with the world around them.

A visit from a heron

We managed to get a photo of this heron atop our rooftop gazebo this afternoon. We've seen him lift off a couple of times before, but weren't able to get a picture. We're pretty sure he has been fishing in our backyard pond. Fortunately (for us, not the fish) we only have "feeder goldfish" that we rescued from the pet store, not koi.

Monitor and adjust

"Monitor and adjust" is one of those teaching mantras every educator must learn to use. Carefully made lesson plans may not work as anticipated, so a good teacher observes what is happening as he/she teaches, and makes changes based on those observations. It's a continual. ongoing process. What works well today may not work well tomorrow.

The technique works in many other areas of life, especially gardening. This photo shows the back side of an arbored seating area overlooking one of our ponds. I originally envisioned it as a rose arbor, and planted  Iceberg and Don Juan climbing roses on the sides of the wooden arch. After a couple of years of years with very little in the way of rose growth up the arbor, I got impatient and planted Hall's honeysuckle last year, which I knew would grow quickly.

It did, but this year to my surprise the roses have also taken off. The Iceberg canes are blooming about a third of the way up the arbor as you can see on the left side of the arbor, and the Don Juan canes are about half way up the other side. Assuming their progress continues, I will likely want to remove the Hall's honeysuckle vines.

The bare branches in the upper right belong to an orchid tree which has apparently been killed off to the ground by this winter's unusually cold weather. It's coming out from the roots, but I am losing hope that any higher portions of the tree have survived. For a moment this morning, I thought I saw new green growth on one of the branches, but on closer inspection found that it was an errant Hall's honeysuckle vine taking advantage of its scaffolding. At some point I will need to decide what to do about the tree...whether to take it out entirely and replace it, or cut it back and see what happens with the new growth at its base. Some articles I've read suggest that the result could be a beautiful, multitrunked tree in place of a rather spindly single-trunked specimen. So I think I'll give it some time and see what happens.

Monitor and adust, monitor and adjust....

A few changes and surprises

This bed has shown a lot of changes in the past couple of weeks. All three of the tomato plants that I thought were dead (see March 5 picture here) are flourishing, and the Early Girl has begun to set fruit. My second planting of green beans (behind the tomato cages) was more successful than the first, with plants now about two inches high. In the midst of the bean planting, there are a few surprises: lots of zinnias and one tomato that I didn't plant. And in the rear of the bed, the asparagus roots I planted on Valentines Day have sent up ferny shoots that are about six inches high now.

The marigold seeds I planted around the edges of this bed never came up, so I took advantage of discounted  pony packs at Lowe's to remedy that. As I deadhead the spent blossoms, I take the seeds and toss them in other places, mostly where petunias and nasturtiums are currently growing. Those won't make it through the summer in any kind of attractive format, but the marigolds and zinnias will.

Growth. Change. Adaptation. Surprises. That's gardening, and that's life.

The tomatoes are coming! The tomatoes are coming!

Three of our tomato plants have begun to set fruit, including Phoenix, a variety we're trying for the first time this year. It's tricky getting the timing right on tomatoes here, because although they are a warm-weather crop, if they don't set fruit before the 100+ days get here, they never will. We usually have good success setting out transplants around Valentine's Day, but if we get a late frost, they're toast. If you want to grow tomatoes from seed here, you need to start (and keep them) indoors in January. I don't attempt too much indoor growing because our cats will devour anything green. One of the cats even ate a miniature rose bush I mistakenly placed on a windowsill!

My usual tomato varieties are Early Girl and Roma, yellow pear, and Sweet 100 cherry tomatoes, and then I like to also try a few other varieties. Basically, for spring planting I try to look for something with a fairly short time-to-harvest, and small to medium size fruit. The large beefsteak type tomatoes don't do well here, at least not for me. It's theoretically possible to harvest a fall crop of tomatoes here by planting in July and protecting the young plants from the sun, but I've tried that twice and been disappointed with the results. Once, we had dozens of beautifully progressing green tomatoes on the vines, only to be hit by an uncharacteristically early December frost. The other factor is day length-tomatoes need long days to mature, so even if the frost doesn't get them, they will take forever to ripen, and when and if they finally do, they don't taste as good as summer tomatoes.

If the weather cooperates, we should be picking dozens of fresh tomatoes by late May, and of course they all seem to ripen at once. That isn't usually a problem for us, because we like homemade fresh tomato soup, and I also freeze some in zip-lock bags for later use. It isn't even necessary to blanch and peel them first...just wash them and put them in the freezer. When you are ready to cook with them, you'll find the skins slip off easily.

A blustery day

It's too windy to work outside today, almost like monsoon season, but unfortunately with no rain. I still get a childish thrill from being outside in the wind, and it's fun to watch things blowing around. The Hall's honeysuckle is beginning to bloom, and the wind is lifting it up the part overhanging the fence like a sail. That's a Keiffer pear tree in the upper right, bending in the wind next to the gazebo.

More roses

We have three tea rosebushes in this raised bed adjoining our patio, along with various herbs, asparagus, tomatoes, hollyhocks, petunias, and marigolds. The tree in the background is a Santa Rosa plum

Larkspur

Larkspur has joined nasturtium, bachelor's button, and roses in blooming.

Prime time in the garden

This time of year is prime time for our garden, both in terms of enjoying its beauty and of being able to work in it without risking heatstroke. For the past couple of weeks, I've been taking full advantage of the weather and spending a good part of each day working in it....and capping off the work day by enjoying happy hour in the gazebo .Although it seems we are always in the midst of some new project, most of what I usually do is rather mundane and repetitive. Plant, mulch, water, weed, and repeat.

When I was a child I dreamed that I would someday accomplish something great that would change the world for the better- discover a cure for cancer, or invent a time machine so that I could go back in history and "put right what once went wrong" (and this was years before I watched my first episode of Quantum Leap), or possibly wind up in a cannibal stewpot as a martyr for my faith. I didn't become a doctor, or a quantum physicist, or a missionary. Instead I became a teacher, a wife, and a mother, and so far have led a rather ordinary life. Some might even think it has been rather mundane and repetitive. I am learning not to see it that way.

Like gardening, life is organic and evolving. It is made up of many small actions that may seem inconsequential or boring at the time, but have the cumulative effect of creating a greater whole, one that is (hopefully) beautiful. It's fun to imagine and start exciting new projects, yet we still need to keep up with the weeding and the watering.

Our backyard garden isn't perfect, but it brings pleasure and beauty to us and to others who spend time in it. I hope that at the end of the day, my life is as beautiful as our garden. And if by some chance I actually invent that time machine, I will certainly go back and warn my past self not to plant Mexican primrose!

First water lily bloom of the year (but not the first gardening project)

The first water lily bloom of the year appeared  in what we call the Lower Pond, which we're in the process of remodeling. We originally lined the perimeter of the pond with red sandstone flagstones, thinking of how the color and style would blend in with other elements of our hardscape. The gravel covering nonplanted areas of the yard is red, the patio is composed of red patio pavers, and the raised beds for plantings utlilize reddish stacking blocks. However, it turned out not to be the best choice. It was crumbling in many places and did not sufficiently hide the rubber pond liner in others.

I'd met Paul (The Pond Gnome) in a Master Gardener class, and he was willing to come out for a consultation, which was money well spent. Not only did he have some great ideas, he later gave us a bunch of free plants! One of his suggestions was to replace the flagstones with rip rap, which could be piled up in and around the pond edges. We've only begun on this project, but are very pleased with the improvement so far. It looks more natural, while still blending in with the overall colors and design of the yard. I also think it will provide a much better habitat for aquatic plants than the pea-gravel-filled pond baskets we'd previously tried. The plants can spread their roots out among the submerged rocks, which will better anchor them and allow them to spread.

As you can probably see in the picture, we still are battling string algae to some extent. We've noticed that it goes away about the time the water lilies wake up, and have always thought it was because the lily pads were depriving the algae of either sunlight or nitrogen. However, Paul said the real reason was that beneficial algae-eating organisms wake up about the same time the water lilies do, and suggested an enzymatic treatment to speed the process.

Easter roses

As promised, here are the roses in bloom!

These two are Queen Elizabeth tea roses we've had for several years. Roses do surprisingly well in the Phoenix area. We usually prune ours back severely in January and fertilize them with nitrogen and phosphate at that time, and I like to add Epsom salts as well. Rather than using flag drippers, we made shallow wells around each bush and ran a circle of 6-inch drip emitter tubing around each bush. We usually see two nice flushes of blooms, one in spring and one in fall after it cools off a bit.

This year, I planted a variety of vines on trellises mounted to the block wall. We have eight of them, made from the recycled remains of a portable gazebo. By this time next year I hope to be seeing less concrete and more flowers and leaves. In addition to being more attractive than a boring block wall, I think the vines will improve the microclimate in this area by preventing the wall from absorbing and radiating back so much heat.