esrosedotblog

This is a Mexican Firebird outside the front wall. Not ours but I treat it like it is.

Labels: flowers

Another new thing around the house are cut flowers.

Not a big deal but a definite plus.

We have never been much for indoor plants or flowers. I say we but that means me. I am the gardener.

On the other hand, I am not the florist. The arranger. That is John.

So, I have been buying a bouquet at Ralphs for him to arrange.

I am learning about what to buy. Roses do not last worth a shit. Daisy types of flowers a lot longer. So daisy types it is.

I don't get the selections that include dyed flowers. And that is a lot of them. Mostly the daisy type and lilies.

The prearranged stuff tends to run to color selections. The ones I bought today are yellow. A little sunflower, some carnations, some daisies.

It is not a big deal but worth a mention.

Labels: flowers, shopping

I was inspired to buy some gladiolas from Ralph's last Friday.

They are still doing pretty well. I wanted to take one out since it was getting shriveled but John wouldn't let me.

So it is imperfect. But they did last a long time.

Glads are fun but hard to raise. They don't look like much all stalky and all and I don't think that they like to be in clumps.

But cut and in a glass vase they do not mind being crowded some.

We do not have flowers around as a rule. I don't know why. Maybe I am too cheap. Or maybe I don't much notice. In any case, this time I was inspired.

They are really inexpensive, those super market flowers, and these have lasted.

Maybe I will try again. These may make it through the weekend and I do not want to throw any away too soon.

One thing is sure, there would be no glads in the desert. All flowers are tough to raise unless you hang right over them. I do pretty well outside with the hibiscus. I have a few flowering cacti. Even some that look like they are deciduous plants. Is that the term? I am not up on my nomenclature.

So for today, they are fun and pretty and do not smell. A plus. I also suspect that they are not allergenic. At least no one here has had symptoms.

Gladiolas. I like to write the name.

Labels: flowers

SURVIVAL

Last fall I bought a desert rose plant to fill out my cactus/succulent collection on the patio.

I went against a long standing principle which is to never buy a plant that is in bloom.

But it was so pretty, I brought it home. And while it does not look like a cactus, it lives like one. Well, one that needs a bit more water.

I think that it is deciduous. I am too lazy to look it up. You do it.

The blooms lasted for a month or so and then, winter came, lower sun and all, and it bore no more blossoms.

OK.

Then about 6 weeks ago, it dropped all its leaves.

This confirmed my worst fears. But a few leaves stayed and so I let it go. I had nothing to fill the space.

Soon after, there appeared to be buds all over the stem ends.

The buds grew.

Now the first spring blossoms are in full life and there are many many buds.

I guess it has two seasons!

Well, it has had two, whether that means two a year is not yet clear.

A lot of plants do this in the desert. They get the unfiltered sun and the heat, spring forth and have a full bloom.

The summer heat puts them in dormancy.

Then the fall comes and the plant revives to do another set of blooms before it has its winter and fall (of a few weeks) and begins again.

Hope so.

Labels: botany, cactus, desert, flowers

ROUTINE BREAKS

The very air around us is balmy and filled with the hypnotic scent of citrus blossoms.

Spring.

The sweet odor is great until it isn't when it gets cloying and pervasive. But right now it is inducing a bit of sweet spring fever.

Along with that is a shakeup of the schedule.

Yesterday, the 6 week haircut took the movie space. Today a regular meeting meant to be held another day fell into this afternoon. Tomorrow we are back at the vet to have Booker's bandages re fitted. Nothing wrong. Just a routine change.

He is doing very well. He can get up on most every couch or lounge now. He can actually do his dribble the tennis ball tricks. There is no doubt that he is using the cone as a kind of weapon to get ahead on the walk, get attention for going out, getting a snack or whatever. He rams it into the back of our legs. "Coming through".

He is a smart guy and know how to take care of himself.

The weather is on the presummer groove now, I think. Sunny, clear. No weather weather.

Warm days cool nights. The beginning of the best weather of the year.

DST this weekend. A little extra sleep. Gain an hour.

And a return to the regular routine by Sunday. Welcome.

Can you smell it?

Labels: Booker, desert, films, flowers, life

EASTERN SPRING

Booker and I went out back this afternoon to bask in the 80+ degree weather.

We strolled and then sat and then strolled again.

As we were heading back to the house I saw, there on the ground, a dandelion.

I have never seen a dandelion out here. Well, never in 12 years.

It is small. Bright yellow. Probably a seed that drifted from another wetter place and somehow landed in just the right place.

I grew up with dandelions.

I tried to get rid of them when I had the lawn obsession in suburbia. That didn't last long.

I learned to love the flower and welcome it.

Now, I have one right here to look at.

I hope that it matures and gives us a puffball of seeds but that is unlikely.

The gardener's helpers go out there every week with the weed whacker and I am sure that dandelions are not on their "save" list.

It is a nice thing for today though. And for the next three and a half days until whack time.

Labels: flowers, nostalgia

ECONOMICS I

I didn't mention that I got a beautiful bouquet from my husband for Father's Day.

It was mostly green things but there was some queen anne's lace mixed in.

I grew up with this flower except, when I was a kid in Pennsylvania, it was a weed.

It grew everywhere.

Here we have the law of supply and demand in full flower, so to speak.

When a plant, no matter how lovely, is ubiquitous, no one wants it. It is a weed.

But in a place of scarcity like the deserts of California, which is most of the State, there is no wild queen anne (or even a sedate one) and so the flowers are in short supply.

Bingo!

A dollar a stem in the wholesale market.

I wonder if they were flown here from back east?

I doubt it.

But maybe. They didn't last all that long. Two or three days tops.

Anyway, we enjoyed them and are happy to have had them on our dining room table.

A reminder of the distant past.

Labels: flowers, holidays, horticulture, nostalgia

WILTED

Just the other day, I told John that I miss the New England Flower Show.

This was prompted by seeing some trees (growing wild) that looked to be acacias. The Flower Show made a big deal of placing acacias along the walkway into the Show each year.

No more.

Economic Crisis Takes a Toll on Flower Shows

(The acacias are mentioned in the second paragraph)

They will have to come out here to see their acacias.

Now, to be honest, I have to say that I did not really enjoy the Flower Show that much. It was just something that we had to do every year. Like it or not.

You can miss something you don't particularly like especially if you did it over and over again.

We would get up early and go stand on line to get in before the big crowd. That was the main thing. I hate crowds.

Right after the crowds, I hate standing in line.

Nevertheless, we stood and then went in and moved as swiftly as possible to the exhibits, mostly man-made tableaus (I have used this word two times now in the last three days) of various settings.

The main point was the flowers of course. The smell. The warmth and humidity. The pure fug of dense flora, artificially assembled or not.

We would ooh and ahhh and then go to the arrangement competitions. Dead boring. And then the sales area where we would always buy something that we did not need and, as it turned out, that we were not able to use.

Altogether a negative experience all around. But we kept going every year.

Now, for now, it is over.

I put an article in the blog yesterday about economic dislocations. This is probably one of them.

The Flower Show had long since transitioned from an activity of the Horticultural Society for its members. It had morphed into an exhibition for the garden and landscape industry.

This is not one of those industries that I would want to be in right now. The idea of high artifice is likely to disappear from many of our activities.

So, nostalgia or not, another time honored tradition falls to the wrecking ball.

Maybe it will come back in a form that is more humble and less extravagantic. Perhaps "do it yourself" gardeners will again prevail. Maybe we will begin to let nature be nature and that will guide us around larger environmental issues.

For one, I am taking another look at growing grass and petunias in the desert. We are 90% there already. Maybe we will go the last ten.

Labels: environment, flowers, horticulture, nostalgia

BY ANY OTHER NAME

First roses today.

John saw them first.

I pruned them down in January. Towards the end of the month. A little late. There were still blooms.

So it has taken 6 weeks.

The bushes are a little spindly still but there is a nice medium red and two yellow blooms.

Very nice.

I was a little worried earlier in the week. We had a visit from two young raccoons and Franklin's barking got them up the trees at the rose bed.

No damage. Except to the 'coon's and Franklin's pride. They for climbing for nothing and he for not being able to get to them. Forced to stay inside by Dad's who would rather go back to bed than out treeing raccoons.

Labels: flowers, garden

FULL BLOOM

The white hibiscus bush out front got its share of frost damage in January but it is back with a vengeance.

Look at these hardy blooms.

And it gives me a chance to demonstrate my prowess with the new camera (all set on automatic).

Labels: flowers, horticulture

ODORAMA

The hot weather has gotten us quickly into citrus blossom time.

The air is redolent.

It brings back old memories--a mock orange bush in the back yard of the first house I lived in.

I used to stick my little head into the bush and 'dream' of being someplace where the real oranges grow.

Well, a boyhood dream is realized.

I have to say that, while it is wonderful, there are two downsides. The first is that the air is also filled with pollen. Sniff.

The second is that the air is also filled with bees! A dangerous time.

Every gift horse has its mouth.

Labels: citrus, flowers, nature

SUMMER

We are heading to summer with temperatures in the 90s this next week. We had spring; the last couple of weeks.

It has been a long tough winter.

You know we had ice.

The ice and I became intimately connected.

We had severe frost for two nights. We lost the banana trees and all the hibiscus and bougainvillea leaves (not the plants).

He had wind. But that was more the spring part.

It has been tough all around for us here in the desert.

But the orchid tree is in its fourth week of splendid bloom; the new leaves are sprouting on all but the most severely 'burned' tropical plants and even the banana tree 'pups' are beginning to grow the plantation back.

Of course there are roses! The new plants are coming in after their pruning and they are abundant.

The cold, dreary, ice ridden days are over.

The pool water is even up to the high 70s without nighttime cover.

Life is good.

Labels: flowers, weather