Nasturtiums in unusual places

One of the things I enjoy the most about or garden is taking a stroll and seeing what's new or surprising. I tend to be somewhat of a guided laissez-faire, serendipitous gardener. I let plants go to seed, wait to see where they come up, remove the ones that aren't where I want them, and fill in the bare spots with things I think will be attractive in those spots. 

Since I've been doing this for several years now, I often find plants growing in areas where I didn't plant them. This morning I spotted nasturtiums growing up a trellis intended for a snail vine, and nasturtiums springing from the rocks surrounding one of our ponds.

Nasturtiums and hollyhocks are the most prolific of my "let it be" plants, but this time of year I also find larkspur and lettuce in various locations. My most unusual discovery was a viola growing in the nonplanted, nonwatered gravel pathways.

Honeysuckle in bloom

I like to choose plants for their fragrances as well as their appearance. This Hall's honeysuckle is planted on the block wall behind our gazebo, and has begun to bloom this week, adding its sweet smell to the potpourri in our backyard.

It has flourished in this location, and now covers several sections of wall. In fact I have to keep trimming it back so it doesn't hang over on the HOA side of the wall. Personally, I thought it looked nice, but apparently someone complained about it, so I cut it back from their side of the common wall. I let it hang down on into our front yard on our wall, though.

Since I really would prefer to look at something green and growing than bare block walls ,I've tried several kinds of vines in various locations. The two that have done the best are this one and snail vine. Snail vine has attractive purple flowers which have a longer blooming period, but it dies back in cold weather. The honeysuckle stays green year round.

It's been rather unseasonably cold and windy today. I ought to appreciate it while it lasts, because 100-degree days are not too far in our future. However, my retiree group is coming over tomorrow for lunch in the garden, and I hope the weather cooperates and is pleasant.

Roses in bloom

As predicted, the roses are blooming early this year. I think these are "Queen Elizabeth" tea roses. Of the vines I planted on the block wall last year, only the snail vine and Lady Bank's rose survived, but the snail vine now covers several of the trellises. And the nasturtiums, which reseeded themselves from last year, are carpeting the ground beneath the roses and spilling over the side of the raised bed.

A friend very helpfully brought me a few bags of pine straw she raked up on her property in Flagstaff, and I used it to mulch the roses after I cut them back in January. Not only will this help to cut down on weed germination, conserve water, and cool the root zone, it should help acidify the soil a little as it breaks down.

Poolside in the garden

I haven't posted a picture of this corner of our yard in a while, so here is one. There are rosebushes along the block wall, and this year we added two new bare-root peach trees that we got from a Valley Permaculture Guild plant sale. We also added trellises for vines on the wall, made from recycled metal pieces of an old gazebo that had begun to deteriorate.

We planted two banana trees in the planter areas behind the pool last year. One died, but the other has come back nicely and appears to be multiplying...there's a baby banana tree next to this one which isn't visible in this photo.

I don't think we will get any key limes this year because of the freeze. The same thing happened a few years ago when we had another hard freeze. Limes are more susceptible to frost damage than other citrus fruits, but surprisingly enough we have a few limes on the Bears lime tree, which is a lot younger than the key lime. Luckily for my grapefruit-loving mother, grapefruit is the least susceptible and our Ruby Red tree wasn't affected at all.

The rosebushes are still blooming, but the nasturtiums and larkspur are gone, to be replaced with marigolds and zinnias. The large marigold directly behind the waterfall is a holdover from last fall which survived the frost. I've collected seeds from it and scattered them along the perimeter of this raised bed, the planters behind the pool, and other places in the yard.

The bushes in the center left edge of the picture are yellow and orange Tecomas ("Yellow bells") Like the banana, they were taken to the ground in last winter's frost, but have rebounded vigorously. The plants in the center right edge of the photo, and in the planter in the foreground, are Little John bottlebrushes, which seem to be quite frost-tolerant.

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!

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.

It's greener on our side of the fence

Today I noticed the snail vine was starting to creep over the block wall again. I think its cascades of dark green leaves and lavender flowers are lovely, but apparently it's a big no-no as far as our homeowner's association is concerned, so I snipped off the strands that threatened to peek over the wall behind our gazebo. All vegetation must be strictly confined to our side of the fence and not encroach on the HOA side. Our "green wall" consists of snail, lilac, and honeysuckle vines, and they are very vigorous growers. Besides being much more attractive to look at than concrete block walls, the vines cool the area by transpiration and blocking reflected light, making the gazebo an even nicer place to sit and relax. The honeysuckle also has an intoxicating fragrance in the spring.

The plants in the foreground are sweet potato vines. This was the first year we tried them, and we've been very pleased with how well they work to line the streambed leading from the upper to the lower pond. They spread vigorously and are easily rooted, yet aren't invasive. When we first built the system, we made the mistake of letting umbrella plant grow in the streambed. That was a bad decision; not only does it grow tall enough to block the view, it also sends its roots and shoots everywhere and actually caused water to start spilling out of the streambed and into the gazebo. I'm not sure how long these vines will last and how they will handle a freeze, but at the rate they grow, replacing them won't be problematic.