new thread
To those of us living in the Northern Hemisphere, we are smack-dab in the middle of the dead of winter (yes, even in California we have such a thing). But I'm already anxious for spring -- which here in coastal Northern CA, we don't usually see the first signs of spring flowers blooming until sometime in February... OMG, that's almost a whole month away!
Here's a pic that Bill & Larry took of me last year in late April, when they came out to visit the little rose garden that I planted and take care of (where I work primarily as a cook in the town of Castro Valley).
Any pics that will follow this one will be completely off-topic; but since there are a lot of fellow gardening and rose enthusiasts in this community, I might as well share them now.... Why should I suffer with Spring Fever all alone, when I can torture other folks here in the Northern Hemisphere along with me? (LOL)
And as far as you Southern Hemisphere longhairs go: I am SO DAMN JEALOUS of you being in the middle of summer right now!!
- Ken
This apricot-colored rose climbing on the top of the arbor here is an old French Noisette variety from 1904, called "CRE'PUSCULE" (which apparently is translated to mean "twilight", in English). It grows well in mild-winter regions of the world, like: near the Mediterranean Sea, here in California, many parts of Australia and New Zealand, South Africa, and also central Chile in South America.
The purple flowered vine growing with it is Clematis viticella "Polish Spirit", a terrific variety of Clematis that even has some amount of drought-tolerance (a rarity among Clematis vines)!
The tall trees in the background are native California Coast Redwoods (AKA Sequoia sempervirens, for those who like to know Latin names). They live on the neighbor's property to the North.
I never thought of a Sequoia as something that could be is somebody's back yard. Nice.
Now, over here in the Great Lakes, we're experiencing quite the El Nino winter. Ordinarily there are a couple of feet of snow on the ground in mid-January.
Going to work today, a guy walking his dog in the cemetery took this pic of me. Sorry, no hair content.
And I suppose it could be any mouthbreather on a bike. You'll just have to take my word that it was around lunchtime today and that's me. Only the third day of the season that I've used the bike with the studded snow tires.
LOL, I believe you I believe you!!
Yes, coast redwood trees do exist in people's back yard -- and even sometimes front yard! Coastal California (including a bit inland into the coastal valleys, towards the interior) is the original native natural range of the Sequoia sempervirens (the Sequoia gigantea are the other type of giant redwood trees, which are native to further inland, on the slopes of the Sierra Nevada mountains).
We are experiencing the "El Nino' effect as well -- lots and LOTS of rain (which we need, so actually I'm NOT complaining)!!!!!
I'm originally from the Great Lakes region myself (born & raised in the Chicago area); but moved out to Calif. when I was 24 y/o, in Nov. of '77... OMG, I can't believe I'm still here in SF! Thank you for sharing this pic of you riding your bicycle in the snow -- now that's what I call "dedication!"
- Ken
The yellow and/or white Lady Banks rose (shown here in this pic is the double form of both colors, with a barely visible lilac bush in bloom in-between), is name after the wife of the famous British botanist and explorer Sir Joseph Banks. All 4 Banksia rose varieties were originally found in subtropical China, having grown there since ancient times, long before wealthy British explorers named plants or wrote history books.
Another example of a rose that only does well in mild-winter regions of the world (a great rose for the Deep South, the SW United States, including coastal California, the Mediterranean region, and other similar climates throughout the world), this pic was taken in early March, on a drive I took up through Napa Valley a couple of years ago. But the yellow Lady Banks rose can start blooming as early as late February here -- easily a full 2 months ahead of the rest of rosedom!
Be forewarned though: this rose can eventually get HUGE, even large enough to swallow up a small house!!
Here is a closer look at a single stem from the yellow lady banks rose (picked from a baby plant of it where I work, where I planted it inside the deer fenced rose garden 2 years ago). I happen to do most of the flower arrangements around the building where i work, whenever I have the free time to do so. I always enjoy a bit of color contrast; so it was great when I found this dark purple bearded Iris to go with the soft butter-yellow Lady Banks' blooms!
That's a beautiful arrangement, Ken.
One of my favorite roses is an English rose (by British hybridizer David Austin), called "STRAWBERRY HILL" -- it had pretty much everything you could ever want in a rose: a fantastic delicious fragrance, nice color and shape to the bloom, a graceful plant with healthy foliage (usually), and a decent repeat bloom all summer long (blooms on & off in "waves").
Here is the one I planted in Feb. of '08, and continue to take care of on the property of where my job is located, as seen from underneath the shade of a Japanese Maple tree, on the outside of the protective deer fence, looking in...
Just to take a moment to clarify:
These pics I'm sharing right now are NOT "recent" -- some are even from a few years ago!! I'm just having any unusually early case of "Spring Fever!"
Anyway, here is a closer view of the Strawberry Hill rose -- with the neighbor's coast redwood trees in the background... Ahhh, if only you could take a whiff of this rose's heavenly fragrance!!!!
Vases need not be expensive. Most of my favorites I bought at a place called "THRIFT TOWN" (basically very similar to a Goodwill clothing store, only I focus on finding cheap vases!). Although this particular "vase" happens to be an antique sherbet glass, I have a lot of similar-looking colorful martini and wine glasses that I float individual blooms in water to look at.
This is a close-up indoor "arrangement" of an individual Strawberry Hill rose bloom... The patients at the nursing home where I work love to sniff, as well as look!
Probably the main reason people like Daffodils so much is that they are the first sign of "sunshine" to come, arriving in early spring when the sky is usually still quite gloomy.
This bright yellow rose is named "GRAHAM THOMAS" -- a classic David Austin "English" rose that is both historic (a major color breakthrough at the time when it was first introduced to the gardening public, at the famous Chelsea Flower Show in the early 1980s), as well as transforming (helped change the gardening world's perspective of what a modern rose "should" be like)...
Recently voted "World's Favorite Rose" by 40 different countries, it is one of my all-time favorites -- I just can't get enough of it!
A more recent new variety from David Austin's rose breeding program, this awesome yellow rose is "CHARLES DARWIN" (named after the famous scientist who first introduced the controversial but hard to disprove "Theory of Evolution", of course!) -- an incredibly handsome, as well as deliciously fragrant stunner (as seen with a bloom of the magenta-purple ground cover Geranium icanmum)...
...I have always loved that photo of you Ken and thanks for sharing an early "Spring". I have been working in Texas for the past 7 months and travel the State. Tyler, Tx has a garden called America's Rose Garden, that is spectacular....the Dallas Arboretum has year round blooms.
Meanwhile back at my home in the desert, wildflowers are already in bloom.
Thanks for Sharing
Great hearing from you, Walter, and WOW, what a great garden pic!! My guess is that this year, more than other years in a long long time, the desert will be literally EXPLODING with spring blooms after all of this winter rain... What a spectacular show that will be!!!!!!!
I live in Tyler :) Small world !
Thanks, Ken! I live a bit above you on the West Coast and have been daydreaming about spring all week. Luckily for us, we get spring a lot sooner than the poor souls on the East Coast.
Do you have Daphne bushes that far south? They bloom in February. Mine has buds on it already! They smell like nothing else--so sweet and delicate. I really can't wait.
Thanks for the wonderful photos.
Yes Steve, we most certainly do grow winter Daphne here in the SF Bay Area -- and I'm madly in love with it, too!! It's an odd plant though: it can be looking just fine & healthy without any problems for 3 or 4 years; then suddenly, without any seeming logic, the plant will die.... Weird, huh? Maybe you don't get that weird kind of behavior further north; but even very experienced gardeners & landscapers here forewarn people who plant winter Daphne of the likelihood of the plant just "checking out" like that.
Other than the above-mentioned problem, Daphne odora is absolutely one of my all-time favorite flowers for its unbelievable fragrance. I like to pick a small cluster of blooms to float it in a little bowl, then walk by it as many times as possible all day long, "taking a hit" off that killer delicious fragrance - ahhhh!!!!!!!
Hey, Ken. I haven't heard of Daphne dying so suddenly here in Oregon. Mine is about...seven years old and seems to be doing very well.
Hey if you like the fragrance, you should check out this scent made by one of my friends here in Oregon. It's really uncanny!
http://olofragrance.com/products/dumbo
Progress on rose clippings, apple tree pruning. Now in raking phase.
Thanks for the wonderful photos.
Don
Delphinium, last summer.
Don
Holy *%$#**@#*!!!!! I have never seen a Delphineum in that type of neon-pink color! That's amazing. And it looks incredibly TALL, too!!
Thanks so much for sharing your photos, I really enjoyed seeing your pics, too!
- Ken
Hey Don,
That's amazing that you are already this far along with your winter pruning chores, especially considering how much rain we've had! I used to do full-time maintenance gardening work (and occasional new garden installations), did that for about 14 years -- until my knees gave out, I got too fat & old to do so much physical labor, etc. (LOL).... Nowadays I only take care of a small deer fenced rose garden, as a volunteer only; but I still have to do the annual winter rose-pruning chores of course... which I haven't even begun yet this year!
Your photo with the metal orchard ladder in the background made me nostalgic for my own orchard ladder (which was stolen off my truck about 5 or so years ago -- I'm still mad as hell about that!!!) -- nice pruning job, too!!
- Ken
Well, I'm looking forward to a bit of colour from my witch hazel. "Diane" is just about to bloom. The flower buds are starting to open, so any day now, I should get some red blossoms.
I'm pretty excited because I got her last year to go in the new garden, which started off from a lawn, a few paving slabs and a fence. The only plants that seem to have survived the frosts are the witch hazel, some cyclamens, a couple of euonymus and the fruit trees. To be honest though, for the first year of a new garden with poor soil and a pathetic summer, I don't think that's too bad.
Spring means digging in a heap of compost and manure and rethinking the planting, but the basic structure is in so, from now on, it's all about fine tuning and getting the right plants in the right places. (Not to mention a lot of hope!)
Not bad at all, Viking!
Yeah, I love the planning stages of a new garden -- and as you said, includes "a lot of hope!" Fine-tuning a garden is one of those never-ending projects. Sometimes what I THOUGHT might be a brilliant design idea ends up being something that needs some serious revision -- or worse: some "shovel-pruning!" It's all about finding what makes us happiest in our little "sacred space", what color schemes please us the most, what companion plants work best with our favorite treasured plants, and then including fragrance, maybe some garden structures, etc., etc... Over time, it evolves into something quite remarkable!
Thanks for your reply!!
- Ken
Every garden is a work in progress. We just started work on this one last spring, so it's got a long way to go. The soil is nowhere near as good as we'd first thought, and we didn't really have a summer last year, so a lot of the plants didn't thrive. Fingers crossed for this year though.
Here in SW Florida we can have orchids blooming almost all year. Here is a recent bloom - Catasetum pileatum 'Jumbo Green Gold'
Marx, that is just breath-taking! I've never seen such an exotic looking orchid -- and believe me, I've seen A LOT of orchids (I used to regularly attend the annual San Francisco Orchid Show)!
Can this type of orchid grow outdoors in South Florida? Here in Northern Calif., Cymbidium orchids do very well outdoors (although look better if protected by an overhanging roofline). There are a few other varieties of orchids that do OK outdoors here -- especially in the more frost-free micro-climates of the Bay Area. But generally speaking, orchids that are originally native to high-elevation tropical cloud forests do the best in coastal California's cool summers... which I imagine is extremely different from the hot humid climate of Florida!
Thanks for your reply!!
- Ken
Hi Ken, Yes, this orchid is growing in our outdoor orchid house. If there is a prediction of temperatures dropping into the mid to low 30s or lower, we bring some of the orchids in the house for the night, but otherwise they are outdoors all year. Although I have grown orchids in the past, it is my husband who has the passion for growing orchids. My passion is enjoying them when they are in bloom.