From California correspondent Scout 211:
In Northern California, it’s spring! We had a very wet period at the end of last year, but it has been mostly warm and sunny this January and February. We are starting to see spring blooms appear when what we really need is more cool, rainy days. Fire season is right around the corner and we are all dreading more late summer “public safety power shutoffs.”
Here are some pics of our early blooming plants. Pic at the top is one of our Tea Tree bushes. I believe this one is a New Zealand Tee Tree (Ruby Glow), Leptospermum Scoparium.
Pic #2 is one of our Lavender plants (just starting to bloom). I think this is Spanish or French Lavender. Lavendula stoechas.
Pic #3 is one of our many Rosemary bushes. This one is Creeping Rosemary. Rosmarinus officinalus ‘Prostratus’.
Pic #4 is one of our other Rosemary varieties, Tuscan Blue Rosemary. Rosmarinus officinalis ‘Tuscan Blue’.
It’s not only pretty, but bees love all of our Rosemary bushes. This one is also edible.
***********
What’s going on in your garden (planning), this week?
Baud
My bushes are blooming before I’m ready for them to.
JPL
Beautiful. My daffodils have been blooming for awhile and the daylily plants are emerging . Spring is coming but it is coming slowly. Rain has been plentiful here and the pattern doesn’t appear to change.
Quinerly
No garden post from me because I’m in beautiful Window Rock, Arizona! Last time here was in a January and definitely greener yesterday. 60 degrees! Great day at the tribal park at Window Rock around the Navajo Nation capital buildings and Code Talkers memorial. Went to a flea market and a live concert broke out with 3 Native bands. Did a drive about on Indian Rte 12 and stumbled on the most amazing Navajo Veterans Cemetery at Ft Defiance. Indescribable and so moving. I highly suggest Googling it. No pictures or videos can do it justice, though. I spent 2 hrs just wandering around in awe. Working my way north on back roads on the NM/AZ border to the 4 Corners area today. Last leg of another amazing trip. Have a great day, Juicers. Go Joe Biden! (my original choice was Kamala)
Quinerly
Gorgeous photos. Thanks.
Lapassionara
I love lavender and rosemary. Thanks for the lovely photos.
And good morning, everyone.
satby
Thanks for the pretty flowers to brighten our morning Scout211. Today will be sunny and get up to 52°, so I’m going start kale in one cold frame. The next two weeks will stay in the just above freezing zone overnight, so once all the snow melts off today and the ground dries I can start some yard cleanup. I’m so ready for spring!
And next Sunday is the start of daylight savings time, which I love because it means the long days are on the way. ??
Phylllis
Beautiful. We will surely have an early Spring here in SC, as I see some of the dogwoods and azaleas already blooming. Also, I’ll be in DC in mid-March and barring a late season blizzard, the cherry blossoms should be starting their show.
Sab
@Quinerly: Do the Navajo still have their radio station broadcasting all in Navajo?
NotMax
@satby
re: time change
It’s so deeply ingrained in my psyche that the time difference between here and the east coast is six hours that every single year I actually repeatedly have to stop and take a moment to remind myself it is only five hours during the approximately one-third of the year that is so.
Immanentize
Scout — thank you for the pics. I am vividly imagining myself wandering through your garden, hands out to touch and smell your plants.
Meanwhile near Boston, it got up to 60 two days this week. Some buds on trees! I did some yard cleanup without a coat. In February. Weird.
Quinerly
@Sab: Yes! Another cool thing yesterday was the bands were alternating popular 70’s/’80’s music with Navajo songs. ?
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone ???
Sab
I asked this yesterday in a thread. A friend of mine has been asked to moderate at a chatroom about dogs. Puppy pictures. Breed discussions. Etc. She says it’s mostly fun, but can get ugly when the breeders go at it. She would love to do it but worries about litigious puppy mills.
Lawyers out there: is she actually at much risk?
OzarkHillbilly
Thanx for the pics Scout, that tea tree is extraordinary.
Winter may be on the ropes here, but it can still throw a punch or 2. We had 2″ or so of snow Tuesday night (i think it was tuesday, time flies when i’m having fun), mostly gone by Weds eve. Winter’s way of saying, “Fuck you.” Supposed to hit 65 today, rain tonight, than back in the 50s for the rest of the week with sunshine. Happy temps for me.
Temps are supposed to be above freezing all week so I started planting my tree seedlings yesterday. I only managed to get 40 in the ground in about 2 1/2 hrs. I am not at all surprised at how time consuming it is, considering what I am planting them in. A sharpshooter shovel to make the hole with, and a framing hammer to pound the clay back around the roots, so that hopefully there are no air pockets. Planting the cedars to fill in the holes in the *winter vegetation screen* along the highway is soul killing drudgery but putting in the redbuds and deciduous holly is fun. The exact same amount of work per seedling, but the cedars are utilitarian where as I look forward to watching the redbuds and hollies grow. I wonder how I’ll feel about the shortleaf pines when I get to them.
** (our house sits about 300 ft off from the hwy and during summer one can not see it at all from our house (or vice versa) but after the leaves fall… Part of our frontage has a cedar and pine screen and I intend for it all to have one)
I’ve got all of my garden seeds under the lamps. If I can control my myself, I’ll have 30 tomato plants (15 different types), 8 eggplants (4 types), 12-18 hot peppers (6 types), and only 4 sweet peppers of one type. The other stuff I will start from seed in the garden. Speaking of which, my lettuces and cabbages will get started this week. I should have started the cabbages a month ago but was preoccupied.
If the rains hold off, garden construction projects will begin in earnest this week.
Quinerly
@rikyrah: Good morning!
Baud
@rikyrah: Good morning.
satby
@OzarkHillbilly: I figured the kale was ok to put in though my season lags yours by a few weeks; so what temperature range do you start your lettuce in? I’ve only grown it in a deck pot before, so started indoors. Doing it in the cold frame this time.
satby
@NotMax: no DST for Hawaii? I didn’t know that.
@rikyrah: Good morning ?
Dorothy A. Winsor
Scout, that garden smells wonderful all the way from here.
Sab
@NotMax: Where are you as far as latitude? I always figured in line with Baja Caifornia. Is that close? If so, makes sense to not have daylight savings when you are almost in the tropics. Florida shouldn’t have DST either.
chris
Not quite spring here but it’s close. Some pics.
Whisper is visiting for a couple of weeks because his people ran off to warmer climes.
Whisper and Bert.
The three (mostly) amigos. Whisper weighs 100 pounds but he’s afraid of Steve. Steve, of course, takes an evil feline pleasure in this and takes the odd swing at the poor dog just to watch him jump.
Steve resting. A long walk on short legs.
And Bert resting. Getting older. Me too.
satby
@chris: aww, nice!
OzarkHillbilly
@satby: I have a sort of cold frame set up (barrels filled with soil that I can easily cover if temps get too low) so I don’t worry too much about temperature. This year, with as mild a winter as we have had, I probably could have started them a few weeks ago too. But March 1st is the day I have set in my brain’s calendar so that is when I do it.
debbie
That top photo is stunning! A neighbor has two six-foot-plus, bright red bushes which I first thought were red azaleas until I realized the blooms were much smaller. Maybe they’re tea trees. Whatever they are, I hope they’ll be as beautiful as Scout’s 211!
WaterGirl
What lovely pictures. So much color! Great way to start this Sunday morning.
laura
I’m on track to finish hate-weeding the long raised bed today! Spouse will then take over and add “amemndments” of the chicken variety and then a thick layer of mulch to minimize chances that the dog goes a rolling in the stank as he’s wont to do. We may get a trace of rain today as a reminder that its winter, but this may be the warmest I can ever remember with mid to high 70’s for the last couple of weeks.
211’s blooms are lovely – I cant walk past either lavender or rosemary without getting a hand on them.
zhena gogolia
@chris:
Wow, pretty critters, pretty country.
satby
@OzarkHillbilly: well, then I’ll be right on time ?
OzarkHillbilly
@satby: Yeppers.
Amir Khalid
With the focus on, well, other things, I wasn’t able to mention this before. But here in Malaysia we now have a new prime minister. Subsequent to Dr Mahathir’s resignation, the Agong (King) has appointed Muhyiddin Yassin, the number two in Dr Mahathir’s Party of United Native Ethnicities of Malaysia, PPBM (yes, that really is the party name in English).
I do not like this: PPBM claims to be a less corrupt version of the Malay-supremacist party UMNO, which had dominated the previous ruling coalition Barisan Nasional since before independence. Muhyiddin is notorious for calling himself Malay first and Malaysian second, an obviously divisive sentiment. We have had race-based political parties in Malaysia for too long as it is.
I also expect the political turmoil to continue. Anwar Ibrahim’s People’s Justice Party, PKR, are going to feel hard done by: the original deal with PPBM in 2018 was for a handover from Dr M to Anwar. There’s going to be a fight over Muhyiddin’s legitimacy as PM, Agong’s decision or no.
WaterGirl
@Amir Khalid: OT, but I didn’t appreciate the harsh attack on you for being disappointed about the outcome yesterday. Screw that, write what you want, and I for one find it normalizing and a little bit calming to hear about things we cared more about before trump lit the world on fire.
debbie
@WaterGirl:
Seconded. That was uncalled for and inexcusable.
J R in WV
@Amir Khalid:
Gosh, and I thought our political environment was weird?!?!
NotMax
@Sab
Apologies for delayed response, sleepy time intervened.
Approximately 20″ 47′.
hotshoe
Rural NorCal here: it’s spring for this town, too, of course — I could be right down the road from Scout211and not know it :)
I don’t ever think it’s true spring until I see the first native CA poppies, and I saw plenty yesterday while out hiking.
Wild cherries — or are they wild plum trees? Flurries of pinky-snow-blossoms along the trails.
The strange thing is that we already have garden roses blooming. Because we don’t get ice and snow, don’t have to prune roses back unless you do it to shape the bush (and to abate next year’s fungus) — the branches won’t be killed back by frost anyway. So it’s not crazy to get spring roses from bud tissue that was set last fall and overwintered. But it is a little crazy to get blooms open before March.
Valley oaks haven’t leafed out, though, which is some consolation that it’s still early spring according to the native plant calendar, and still time for us to get lucky with some life-giving rain.