Hot and Smoky

It has not been a pleasant August.

There have been nice cool mornings off and on, but the afternoons are in the low 90s and it's so dry. The air runs most of the day, windows closed. This morning the smoke from wildfires is bad again and the house is closed up.

No measurable rain at all this summer, nothing since July 14 when we got half an inch after a month before that of nothing. It rained enough to wet the patio for five minutes when Greg was here on the 25th, but it was over quickly and nothing even measured in the rain gauge.

There have been sprinkles at times and daily dark cloud threats and rain all around us but localized. Nothing over us. Monsoon season has been decent, although the fire north of us still rages. But our little patch has had nothing.

I water and water daily in addition to running the irrigation four times a week. I'm keeping most things alive well enough, although several are struggling, others look grim, and the newest things planted last year and this summer haven't grown.

We go away to California in a week. We'll be gone seven days. The irrigation will run, but it doesn't keep the smaller plants moist enough and doesn't reach some vulnerable plants. The pots won't be watered for a week. 

I'm ready to give up.

Lavender and Rose of Sharon

Just as my foot was feeling more normal and I could do things outside in garden clogs comfortably, it got hot and smokey. Wildfires in the Sangre de Cristos sent smoke our way and 90+ afternoons beat down day after day. We've been staying inside all of August so far.

Usually August is the nice month, monsoon rains help and the late summer afternoons are warm but not so hot. Not this year.

When Greg was here at the end of July we got a brief 5 minute shower that wetted the patio, but we'd had nothing before that for weeks, and nothing since. The garden looks stressed.

But this morning was a little cooler and the smoke was not bad so I was able to go out and cut back the lavender in the front triangle. It has gotten big and one side of it is woody and dead, but the side facing the house is full.

I had plenty of lavender spikes after cutting, and I put them in a vase in the living room. I put little sachets in glass medicine vials in my bedroom and the guest room too.

Fragrant. Almost too much.

The rose of Sharon is blooming. My pruning helped with its shape. I tip pruned new growth in spring and I fertilized with tropical and hibiscus granules 5-4-6 in early summer. Those efforts have helped and it is better looking than last year but still not flowering as densely as I'd like.

It's okay, though. Healthy with lots of buds, just not covered in blooms the way it could be.

Winter Pruning Results

This winter during all the warmth we experienced, I did a lot of garden cleanup. One thing I did was chop back the butterfly bush in the corner of the kitchen courtyard and the caryopteris in front. I cut both down to about 8 inches of woody framework.

They both turned out well this summer, smaller and fuller and more nicely shaped.

The butterfly bush still wants to be a tall vase shaped thing, not the dense flowery form I see on other butterfly bushes.

But it fills the corner nicely without overwhelming the garden and the loose shape is a nice contrast with the stiffer and clumpier things below.

The caryopteris is just opening its flowers now in early August and it too is a much better shape after my winter pruning. The amethyst blooms are not showy. They are quiet but well formed. It does not flower as profusely as others I have seen.

It's 'First Choice' and it remains a smaller version of caryopteris, not bun shaped or dense, but looser and more natural looking. Mine is even more open and lighter colored than the nursery catalogs promise.

It is small and relaxed, the leaves are narrow and light, and the gently distributed flowers are a soft hue, so it doesn't look like much out in the gravel by the sidewalk. It's nice but not showy. 

The butterfly bush does have showy flowers, though.

I think I'll need to do the same kind of severe pruning each winter. Both shrubs had been awkward and branchy the year before, so I can see it makes a difference.

Two Gardens

Two very different Santa Fe gardens in mid summer -- one the professionally maintained S.F. Botanical garden, and the other my neighbor Andrea's garden. I visited both in mid July.

The botanical garden is of course much bigger with winding paths and wildland hills and arroyos mixed in with curated plantings. 

There is little shade, a design lapse in the original layout that would have been nice for visitors but makes for open sunny expanses and views. But there is gorgeous stonework. 

A plumbago tucked into one of the stacked stone walls was lovely. The stones give it just the shade it needs.

Elsewhere the big garden of lavenders and roses was spectacular. The pink roses had gone by, but their faded softness provided a loose counterpoint among the vivid rounded lavenders. But much of the botanical garden was suffering a bit.

Mojave sages had desiccated foliage. The bigger Mojave sages were better but still tired looking. The fernbushes looked dry and tired too. Little plantings -- pineleaf penstemons, phlox, shrubs and perennials were all little and some were stunted looking.

The botanical garden is big and complex enough to make the visual tapestry still lovely to wander in. But individual plants looked not great.

Andrea's courtyard garden was the opposite. Tiny of course, bounded by walls and fences and quite lush looking. 

Shade is abundant and cool and we had coffee and strawberry shortcake under the patio umbrella in the shelter of her spreading crabapple.

It's a mature garden, developed many years ago. It is square shaped with paths that have room to wander around central beds, unlike my narrow courtyard that makes plantings line up along fencelines.

It changes each season but the structure and maturity are established and give a sense of calm fullness.

In my yard the flagstones and deck and gravel dominate, the plants are the background. In hers the stonework is simple and secondary to all the plants around it.

She has two seating areas -- the dining table and then a conversation area, and both look settled and tucked into their shade dappled spaces.

The aspen in the photo above was a volunteer seedling that just popped up there.

Nestled into lush foliage around the garden there are other sitting areas which seem they are more for decor than sitting, but they are nice accents.

She has lots of pots tucked in all over the whole garden, and even those are full and bursting with lushness. (Somehow mine are always a spindly thing too small for its pot).

Two such different garden experiences, the one vast and sun baked with strugglers and big hills and views, the other intimate and shady and calmly composed. 

Both had lovely plumbagos -- the one at the top of this post with little plants tucked into a stone wall, and Andrea's big thick mound of Ceratostigma plumbagoides under her crabapple, so lush and green it looked like a beautiful shrub.

Two very different very nice gardens.

I Went to Lowe's . . .

. . .  and spent $160 on some things to put around the patio. Now that the furniture is more open with the teak chairs and coffee table gone, and now that I can walk pretty well in shoes, I wanted to dress up the patio a bit. 

I got a big pot of blackeyed Susans, big and bloomy. I never could get them to grow in the ground for me, but in a pot it should do well. The tag says Rudbeckia fulgida, which is what I had tried to grow, but it doesn't look the same. 

It is actually Rudbeckia hirta, based on my research. Denver Daisy.

It should be nice and bloom well in a container, but it's a short lived tender perennial here I think. I'll see if it overwinters.

I also got six little bellflowers that are compact and sweet. They're in the two small terracotta troughs in front of the slider and I added a bowl of ajugas that I dug up. It's bright shade all day until late afternoon when they're in direct sun for a bit. 

It looks a little staged, but the plants are colorful and nice enough.

These too are tender and may not come back. They are Campanula medium Appeal Deep Blue.

Lowe's had big robust plants labeled "annual sage" but the tag said Salvia farinacae, which is the Texas mealycup sage I've been wanting to plant more of around the circle garden. 

I got four. I'll put a couple with the ones I have to make a fuller planting, one as an upright accent behind the bench with the blanketflowers and one in a pot by the deck. 

The ones I have already are 'Texas Violet' and that is a hardier cultivar, although still a little iffy for here.

The Lowe's plants did not have a cultivar name. I'll plant them in the ground and see if they are similar to what I have or at least as hardy.

Finally, a tropical for the brown urn in front of the fence. Crossandra Orange Marmalade. No idea, but I liked the clear orange flowers. 

This one won't winter over of course.

Coronation Gold

Coronation Gold yarrow is one of the few plants in my garden doing spectacularly well. It's out by the driveway, in too small a space, tightly planted against the fence and flopping over.

I just put in a Rocky Mountain penstemon next to it on the left, which I hope will make a nice complement. I like the loose abandon of this dramatic plant, but it's too floppy.

So I plan to rectify the situation:

In fall I will lift and divide it. One division is going behind the cardinal penstemon by the garage stoop, to fill the empty spot against the wall where the table had been.

The Sapphire Indigo bush clematis that is in the turquoise pot will stay, I like it next to the turquoise door. The yarrow will fillet next to it.

To keep the clematis more upright I removed the ring support and put the taller twist tuteur in the pot. I also tucked in Orange Kudos agastache at its side. 

I saw orange agastaches planted among and around other plants in containers at the botanical garden and it looked great. This mock up doesn't do it justice.

The remaining Coronation Gold division of yarrow will get replanted in the driveway strip, but I need a plan of action to control it. I'll need to replant it out away form the fence more (not much room to do that), I'll need ring supports, and I will need to chop back the front of it for shape in spring.

Here's the plan:

🍂 Fall

• Cut the plant back when it dies down.

• Lift and divide it. Coronation Gold benefits from division every few years because the center can become woody and less vigorous.

• Replant the main division 4 inches farther from the fence. That extra breathing room will let the stems arch naturally instead of immediately hitting the fence and then spilling onto the driveway.

• Plant the extra division by the garage stoop behind the cardinal penstemon.

❄️ Winter

• Install one or two support rings before the ground freezes.

🌱 Spring

• Let the plant get established.

• Early to mid-May perform a Chelsea Chop on only the front half of the plant. Cut those stems back by roughly one-third to one-half.

• Leave the back stems alone.

That provides:

• taller stems in the back to soften the fence,

• shorter stems in front that help support the taller ones,

• a longer bloom season because the chopped stems flower a week or two later.

Don't overdo the chop the first year.
Since I'll also be dividing and moving the plant, start conservatively—remove only the top third of the front stems. Then be more aggressive the following year.

And Then It Rained

Greg was here and got the patio furniture moved and we set up the table and chairs. Then it rained. Hard. And I did NOT have to bring any cushions in. 

That was my goal. 

Also, the new set up allows more space for Jim's walker. And although the hotel style lanai look of the big teak chairs and coffee table was  more elegant and visually more substantial, this looks more like a patio and less like a duplicate living room.

It needs some greenery -- a few small pots and some flowers, so I'll work on that. And a tablecloth for when I want to have someone over for patio conversation or drinks or coffee. 

I won't leave a cloth table covering out -- it will get sun bleached, but for occasions I'll have one ready. I ordered this one from Amazon (A.I. mock up).

The sun came out quickly and the next day on a blue sky still morning Greg and I had our breakfast and coffee at the table. 

It was wonderful having him here. We visited, he moved furniture and cut back some branches for me, and we went to the movies together to see The Odyssey.

🧡

A few days later, after he left, I got the tablecloth and on a too-hot night we had after dinner drinks on the patio. I've been having my coffee out there in the cool mornings and that is delightful. Love the tablecloth.

I like the new patio arrangement a lot. It feels and looks so much more like a patio and not so much like an outdoor living room.

Table By The Door

Over the years I've tried to dress up the wall next to the kitchen door. 

I've had the tiered plant stand there, I tried the large white cement colored container with a shrub in it (cuphea once, a failed blueberry once). I put the little bistro chair there. I'm trying to keep it simple.

 

It's blank stucco, punctuated by the hose faucet, although the hoses are around the corner. This corner is our entrance to the back yard, down the walk. 

With the rosemary gone it looks utilitarian. It needs something. But not another large pot or a collection of containers.

Plants would fill out the area next to the chair and hide the hose connections a bit in summer, but I'm creating a collection of containers right across from it by the garage door stoop. 

I don't want to keep solving garden issues with more plants. 

And this is a hot sunny site, with reflecting stones and bright hot wall. It would be easy to water with the hose right there, but I don't want more pots to tend every day.

On a whim, before I placed the black mesh table on the patio to replace the armchairs, I put it next to the door, with the bistro chair. 

That created a vignette that seems nice. Useful, too, providing a place to put things coming and going from the kitchen door. 

It visually fills the blank wall and brings the eye toward the door, not around the corner so much.

But wait. 

I found a southwest tiled table on Wayfair. Smaller, 24 inches across so the size of our living room end tables. 

Note: After I ordered, I noted the table is not supposed to be left outside in cold  --
Not sure how cold or if that matters? I may have to bring it in during winter?

The black metal table is intended to go on the patio. This little mosaic bistro table dresses up the corner without creating more pots to water and nothing to see in winter.

I like the way this dresses up the blank wall, distracts from the faucet while keeping it accessible, and offers a little welcome spot as you enter from the gate. It's a bit of a pause and destination rather than  this area simply being what you go through to get to the kitchen door.

I think the bistro table and chair look a little staged, maybe a little fussy. The black metal table was too big for the spot but it looked more natural, like it just "happened". Maybe a small potted plant on the table to add some greenery will help. But overall I like it.

🌞  Note: 

the colored tiles are probably going to fade quickly

 in the intense sunlight. This spot gets no shade

It was $150. I was happy with staging my alcove furniture without spending any money, and solving the empty spot by the garage door where the mesh table had been by plopping pots there. But this doesn't seem like too much for an upgrade to the kitchen door.