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Trailing Blackberries
This is a native trailing blackberry. Usually you find it down along the creeks. I transplanted a few along my lower fence line 20 years ago and the blackberries have never looked back. Tis year the ground squirrels and I are in a battle to see who will get to eat more of them. So far the squirrels are winning.
Hydrangea All Pink this Year
Last fall I put up a rain gutter that redirected water from the roof to the camelias and hydrangea on the side yard. Whatever is in the roof runoff, for the first time all the hydrangeas blooms are pink this year.
Cleveland Sage in Bloom
One of my favorite native plants, Cleveland Sage (salvia clevelandii), which gets its name from the nearby Cleveland National Forest. Looks great, smells great and requires close to zero water and maintenance.
The Eagle has landed.
Okay, it's not an eagle, but a young Cooper's hawk who happened to be perched on the no parking sign just down the hill. He let me get just ten feet away to take this photo. After posing he dove into the brush for breakfast and then flew off.
Sweet Corn by Memorial Day
It's only Mid-may and the Bon Apetit Sweet corn is going gangbusters. I wouldn't be surprised if there's fresh corn on the BBQ this Memorial Day. (Note: this photos was taken less than 3 weeks after this one).
Corn & Tomatoes 2 Weeks later
Exactly two weeks after this photo, this is now what those corn and tomato plants look like.
That’s a lot of pollen
I thought high pollen counts hit me pretty bad. I can only imagine what it's doing to this bee. It flew out of the wildflower field and landed on the bench to unload a bit before moving on.
Corn & Tomatoes Going
The warm weather has also allow me to get corn (foreground) and tomatoes (background) in the ground several weeks earlier than usual. I'm hoping they're ready by Memorial Day.
Volunteer Wild Flowers
After last year's wildflower planting we didn't bother to re-seed. We just let the old wildflowers stand through the winter (such as it was), and the garden came right back with plenty of volunteers.
What a difference a couple of weeks make
We pretty much had a non-winter here in San Diego which allowed me to get a lot of things in the ground well before normal. By January of this year I had lettuce, cilantro, onions, snow peas, broccoli and cauliflower all planted. Normally I can't do that until early March because sudden frost snaps kill everything. This year, however, aside from a gopher taking our most of my cauliflower, everything else did absolutely splendidly through the winter months. We're currently eating all of the above and I've already got corn, peppers, tomatoes, squash and cucumbers lined up in pots ready [keep reading...]
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