Going Away

This time when we go out to California for a week I am having someone come to the house to water all the pots. No more setting up an elaborate sprinkler on a timer with all my scattered pots gathered into one space to be watered automatically.

In the past that worked, kind of, but I don't have an open space big enough for the sprinkler to reach everything when gathered together in one spot. The sprinkler actually overshoots too wide an arc, and it's hard to adjust it down without losing coverage. And the timers are a pain to set.

So I've hired Tommy Tapia, a handyman in the neighborhood, to come every day and hose water everything. It will cost $20 a day.

I offered to move all the pots to one central location, but he says not to, he'll go around and get to each where  it is (there are a couple small pots tucked in the garden, I'll move those out for him). If anything in the ground looks wilted he'll water those too.

This is better than asking a neighbor to do it as a favor -- I really need daily watering even this late in the season (especially this late, the big plants are potbound).

The Table By The Door

💧More rain again last night. 

Just a quarter inch but it was a gentle soaker and it arrived overnight, keeping the soil moist for hours.

The arrangement of pots on top of and around the table looks good. There's a cascading effect as everything has grown in. 

The visual composition is nice with the tall blue door framing the fall of blooms next to it.

But I keep thinking I'd like a simpler look. It feels fussy.

Maybe move the metal scroll trellis next to the garage door and make it the focal point as you look down the yard?

It's hidden behind the redbud, although it fills the blank wall, especially when the redbud's leaves are down.

If I moved it over by the garage door, I'd grow a Major Wheeler honeysuckle on it. The one I have below the railroad ties is lovely but in too much shade to bloom well or fill out.

I'd keep the new little cardinal penstemon in front -- the honeysuckle needs something to hide its bottom bare stems, although that would be a red flowering vine + red flowering penstemon together, too much? I'd keep the blue container of deep purple bush clematis at the foot of the trellis as well.

But the trellis is rusted out and there is only one prong to set in the soil, the other is propped up with a haphazard pile of stones and a brick. 

That supporting mess is shielded by the thick sumacs, but would be visible right at the garage stoop. 

So I don't know. . .  

The composition at the door seems too busy, and yet I keep saying I want a lush, complex, mixed garden look.

The redbud needs to get some height to rise up above all the pots and the sumacs below. That will help, so everything isn't at the same level.

Ehh, I don't think the trellis will work all that well. 

It's okay where it is, and is surprisingly stable even though it's precariously balanced among rocks.

Cumulus Clouds

This summer we've had such unsettled weather with plenty of rain. Wow. 

But the thunderstorms that pop up in the afternoons aren't the violent kind we've gotten in other summers. Mostly they deliver a bit of noise and flash and a steady soaking rain. 

Gray and black clouds hang over the mountains often.

But this week there have been the most incredible cumulus clouds billowing up over us. Everywhere I looked there were giant poufs of marshmallow white. 

The skies looked unreal, like an overly exaggerated painting of a western sky dwarfing all below. The sky was brilliant blue, the clouds dazzling white, the shadows in the folds deep silver.

No real storms, just giant cottony ballooning puffs. What a summer.

Dining Room Window Garden

Planting under the cottonwood tree on the east side of the house was probably a mistake. The cottonwood sucks up all the water, smothers plants in dropped leaves and it's been hard to get anything going with the root competition.

But those windows dominate the whole east side of the house and they are positioned low, so the ground level area under the cottonwood is visible from inside the whole length of the dining room and den.

So I planted.

Now, in late summer, the ground is getting covered with early leaf drop. Later there will be way, way more.

The groundcover plumbagos at the front of the garden and the rock swale are completely smothered.

This should be the plumbagos' season. They should be visible, thickly massed, deep green with vivid blue flowers. Other patches in other gardens look lovely now.

Mine have light green foliage, a few sparse flowers and are not really visible at all. And it is still summer really.

The tall Woods rose at the back stands up above the mess of leaves and the taller plants like the Texas betony and Icicle veronicas are vertical enough to still be seen among the leaf litter.

But I should probably do something about the plumbagos.

I originally wanted this garden to be a shrubbery with greenery and texture, not really a flower garden. 

I still do, but getting shrubs going in the root competition wasn't working. The shallower perennials took. At least some did.

The plumbagos have been spreading over the years, but like all my plants, the individual clumps don't touch, don't mass together. They are nice enough edging the rock ditch, but I have seen such rich looking groundcovers elsewhere, and this patch doesn't look like much.

I guess at a minimum I need to get the blower out and regularly blow the area clean. So many more leaves to fall, though . . . 

Thyme Does Not Creep

The creeping thyme under the white bowl has not spread one bit this year. It's green and healthy, but not filling in any bare spots where I had removed perennials last fall. 

Perennials got overrun by the creeping thyme

When I had tried to grow perennials -- blanketflowers, sages and blackeyed susans, obedient plants, dwarf agastaches -- in the carpet of thyme surrounding the birdbath, they failed. 

The thyme overwhelmed each, growing right over each little emerging perennial every spring. The creeping thyme completely choked everything out.

So I removed the plants, letting the thyme spread where it will.

But.

No action at all this year. I replaced the birdbath with the white bowl. I watered in the bare spots all summer, added compost, encouraged it. It hasn't spread anywhere all summer, not even an inch.

All summer it has looked healthy but has not spread

Why did it spread so quickly and aggressively before but has stopped at its existing boundaries this year? I'm puzzled.

Rose of Sharon Needs "K"

August 2022

Ever since the big Spanish broom was removed in 2021, the Rose of Sharon that had been strangled behind it has done better and better. 

I pruned it way back in the winter of 2022, and it formed a nice shape and bloomed pretty well the following summer. Here it was in August 2022. →

Actually it bloomed okay even hidden behind the broom with little sun. In 2018 it was badly affected with aphids, but since 2019 it has been getting a winter soil drench from Coates and aphids have not been a problem. 

in mid August 2020

← It bloomed pretty fully in 2020 as it reached out from behind the Spanish broom to find some sun.

But now, four years after clearing out the broom, the Rose of Sharon continues to have a nice shape but just isn't blooming much. 

In August it had flowers and buds but they seem scattered oddly and sparsely. Pretty enough, but nowhere near as densely flowered as other Rose of Sharons I see, and not even as flowery as it has been in the past.

What's going on? Same issue with the butterfly bushes this year.

August 16, 2025

I gave it extra water all spring and summer and a couple applications of 2-8-4 fertilizer when I watered. It has irrigation emitters.

But somewhere I read the following:

Many flowering plants prefer plentiful phosphorus -- the middle number in the N-P-K ratio -- but Rose of Sharon and its hibiscus relatives favor potassium (the K) instead. 

Citrus & Avocado fertilizers of 5-3-4 are formulated to provide greater potassium, and hibiscus needs iron and magnesium too.

The leaves are not chlorotic, but inability to take up iron is an issue in my soil. And I guess I needed to use a citrus fertilizer or something with higher potassium?

The individual flowers look nice. A close up shows that. I've inspected for insect damage, but all the buds and flowers look fine.

There just aren't very many of them.