Make my garden a beautiful place of refuge

Usually, when I think of my in-laws visiting, I get this tightening in my chest and await the coming of the corsette to choke the air out of me for a week. They’re cleaner, eat healthier, have more energy, and get up earlier than me. But God bless them. When they came over this time, my father in law saw me working in the yard, trying to catch up on a year’s worth of overgrowth, and helped me out. He was out there every morning pulling weeds and tidying up so when he left, the front yard actually looked decent.

My yard, both front and back, look pretty awful right now, because I have not been able to work on it for close to half a year, because of the pregnancy. I’ll have to do a lot of damage control in the fall. My husband was nice enough to spend a couple of hours weeding, but as he says, it doesn’t look any better at this point. It’s hard when he doesn’t really know what he’s looking at and I’m the one who shapes and prunes things.

Maintaining the garden will be a little bit tricky this year. All I can say is, I’ll be working on this as long as I am able. Like tomorrow. The first day of the new year!

My husband is thinking of constructing a long cage for unusually shaped gourds and squashes. Must remember to order these from the catalog.

New Year’s Day. Continue working in the front garden. First priority is to finish pruning my roses.

Today was the first day in quite a while when I’ve actually been able to work out in the yard. We had the fires and then the heavy rains. I tidied up the side planter but discovered, to my dismay, many seedlings from the palm tree which I pulled out. In the front, I pruned my roses, cleared the weeds, and pruned one of my Mexican sage bushes. Sometimes you add to a garden by taking away from it. I’m hoping I’ll get next weekend to continue doing the same.

I’ve officially started working on my fall gardening chores, after the busy-ness and flurry of my in-laws visit. That visit actually got me a bit down and I only started recovering my motivation to clean and to resume work on my garden middle of last week.

Had our two palm trees, bee tree (I don’t know the name of this one but it attracts lots of bees in the summer), and Chinese elm trimmed and now everything tree-wise looks beautiful and neat. Also planted six primroses with their delicate, papery pink blossoms between the purple salvia bushes to give contrast.

Currently am thinking about lining the front yard with tiny paths between the plantings for easy access to the plants.

Also filled out one bed with a variety of herbs: 3 basil, 3 mint, 1 rosemary, 1 oregano, 1 salvia, 3 pineapple sage, and 1 apple strawberry ice plant (not an herb but oh well).

Next weekend I’ll be filling out the second bed.

I’ve been making progress on this goal, though most of the focus right now is really on the front yard and not the backyard. With the help of my husband, we planted 5 bushes of Breath of Heaven, a salvia discolor, and another bush that I forgot the name of. I also weeded around a patch that had been looking mangy for a while. Things are coming along, though I wonder what it looks like to the neighbors. I suppose it doesn’t look very pretty, but it just needs a year or two to fill in. Then it will look very wild and pretty.

Three storm systems have passed over southern California. The soil is still very wet because of the cold. Today I aerated the soil in the narrow planter bordering the garage. Tomorrow I will aerate another section. It doesn’t take very long, but it helps the plants breathe and I can see how rich our soil is getting with the addition of the vegetable scraps we add to it. I’m also going to plant two bareroot roses in pots, since I haven’t decided where I want to put them yet.

Lately, the weather’s been gorgeous, sunny and chill.

This weekend, I trimmed the sage bushes back. The hummingbirds will have to look elsewhere for food, but the new shoots were already coming out and the old ones, with the flowers, were already drying out. I also cut away the spent blooms on the roses and did some weeding.

I also bought five beautiful miniature roses which came with clay pots for $2.00 from Home Depot. When I saw them, I couldn’t believe the price. It remains to be seen how hardy they will be, but my other minis have lasted about five years so far, and they just grow into larger bushes.

Swept up the mess caused by the Santa Ana winds and the fires all over California. So much dust, ashes, leaves.