Garden Memories

7/23/12

part of my desert garden

     For the past few days a depressive mood has settled upon me in part because of the cloudy, rainy, cool weather.  On Saturday, our high temperature was 68 F, the lowest high temperature for that date ever!  But I also miss my huge flower gardens I had in the past.  When I moved to the desert, I missed my former Virginia garden.  Now that I have moved back to Virginia, I am missing my desert garden.







zinnia


     I think when gardeners invest energy and time to create and design gardens using color, height, fragrance and shape, we want to hang onto them for the delight they bring us.

vinca

     Since we are renting, I can't dig up swaths of grass and put in gardens.  Even if I could, I wouldn"t want to put in the effort and money for gardens, only to leave them behind in a few months. 











celosia


     I decided to look at the photos of my former desert garden, and it immediately brightened my mood.  All these  photos are of the beautiful flowers I grew in the desert.

pansies and petunias

 white petunias

garden angel among the petunias

Mr. Lincon roses

blue cup

gazania

     This garden will be tucked away in memory for the joy it brought me.  I"ll remember gardens past and dream of future gardens.  Do you remember and cherish gardens in your past?

Midsummer in the Garden

Zinnias

7/30/11
     It seems like it has been longer, but we are just halfway through our 120 days of over 100 degrees F (38C).  The vegetable garden with its lettuce, carrots, radishes, and spinach stopped producing two months ago.  I have a few chard plants straining to put forth a few small leaves.  I'll keep watering them in hopes they kick into normal production in the fall.  My pepper and two tomato plants never did recover from being wind burned.  They struggled but were unable to produce flowers before the real heat set in which did them in.

     The flower garden is blooming, but without a lot of plants it started out with.  As I posted before, all the cosmos died when it hit 118 F (48C).  The marigolds finally gave up this week.  And the two petunias I kept watering and watering said, "Enough" and quit flowering.  All the strawflowers died, and the weak blue cup,

zinnia flower

Marguerite daisy, blue dianthus and gazania are laboring to produce a flower or two.  They are shadows of their former bloom state and are essentially done for the summer.  The zinnias are the stars of the garden right now and are blooming profusely.   They have filled in a lot of the bare spots left from plants that died.  The celosia and vinca, two workhorse plants that bloom through the summer heat, are doing well in another part of the garden.

Celosia and Vinca

red celosia

white vinca

     Out in the yard, the oranges and grapefruits continue to slowly grow bigger.  We look forward to the fall harvest.  The lime tree produced no fruit this year, but since it lost half its leaves in the freeze last winter, it has grown new leaves on all the bare branches.  Maybe next year.  The flowering bushes (bougainvillea, yellow bells and oleander) are doing well, and going through bloom cycles as are the lantana scattered throughout the yard.  Many trees and plants don't struggle in the intense heat and sun here because of adaptations they have developed..  I'll talk about some of these adaptations in my next post.

grapefruit

lime tree this summer



lime tree after freeze







Slow Garden, Slow Home

Celosia and Vinca

7/1/11
     With the continued heat things are really slowing down in the garden.  This extremely uncomfortable week started with 117 F (47C), went down to 115 F (46C) for two days, and then dropped to 113 F (45C).  My reliable summer bloomers - roses, celosia, and vinca - are doing fine.  The zinnias and the moss rose are doing ok so far.  But my cosmos are fading fast, and some of the marigolds don't look good.  Everything else has died or stopped blooming for the summer.  I have found that if you water at least twice per day, you can keep some flowers alive here in the summer.  I tried with my petunias.  They will stay green and produce a few blossoms, but they won't be vigorous and full of flowers.

Zinnias

But I don't want to spend the extra effort and water when other plants will do much better in the heat.  Even flowers that can take the heat have to be watered daily in summer as opposed to three times a week the rest of the year. We get about eight inches of rain a year.  The last time we had rain was in March. I don't do much in the garden now, except to prune dead blooms or pull out dead plants.  So I have a slow garden, but what I'd like is a slow home.

     The slow home movement, inspired by the slow food movement, is a philosophy of home design that emphasizes livability and sustainability.  To me that means a home that is easy to live in and works for me.  It could mean different designs for different family needs.  Slow homes eliminate little annoyances that are irritating or stressful.  Some of these annoyances would include:  bathrooms that open directly into living areas, an entry area without a closet or place to put stuff (keys, mail, backpacks, purses), indoor areas without good daylight, bedrooms without adequate closet space, bathrooms without sufficient counter space, rooms with wasted space.  Slow homes have a smaller footprint, reduce unnecessary energy consumption, and incorporate green building principles.  The slow home movement will grow because consumers will tire of the products builders are turning out:  cookie cutter houses with extravagant features and square footage that are costly and difficult to live in.  It is all about good design.

Dying Cosmos

 

The Heat Is On

Bougainvillea Bush

6/11/11
     Well, our brief "cool spell" of mid to upper 90's is gone.  Triple-digit heat will now be with us everyday for the next 120 days. Yes, that's one thing I did not know before our move here.  On average it is over 100 degrees F for 120 days.  The heat can climb to 120 degrees, but most of the time it is 108 to 115 degrees F.  There are several other things I did not know about living in the desert.  The merchants put pot holders on their door handles because they get so hot you can't touch them.  Ditto for steering wheels.  We cover our car seats with towels because the leather/vinyl is scorching hot.  There is no such thing as a cold shower in the summer here.  Water heaters are turned off because the temperature of the water coming out of the cold faucet is 105 degrees F unless you spend a thousand for a chiller.  We use a lot of ice.  Neighborhoods are like ghost towns in the summer because no one goes outside.  You can go for months without seeing your neighbors.  In the middle of summer it never goes below 90 degrees F at night, so forget about exercising out doors.  The thing I dislike the most is keeping all the blinds closed all summer to keep out the heat so the A/C bill is not $600 a month.  You come to hate the sun, and wake up thinking, "Oh, no.  Not another sunny day!"

Bougainvillea Blossom

     But despite the heat, some flowers will bloom all summer here.  I went to Lowe's today and bought celosia and vinca, two reliable through-the-summer bloomers.  I pulled out all my dead pansies and scraggly petunias and will start planting tomorrow.  We do have several bougainvillea bushes trellised against our backyard walls that blossom all summer, as well as the lantana plants scattered throughout the yard.  I am told that lisianthus will also bloom all summer.  I am waiting to see how long my zinnias and cosmos hold up.  The colors of my dwarf zinnias seem to be fading in the sun.  A lot of things get bleached in the strong sunlight here.

Celosia

White Vinca