Catching up - Part 1 - Gardening

Our wonderful surprise lily (sometimes called belladonna lilly or naked lady, a member of the amaryllis family - either a native of South Africa or Japan, depending on which variety we have or depending on the web site I research) popped up out of the ground recently. We had three in the back yard and one in the front this year. Sometimes we get a group of almost a dozen in the pond in the back yard (the pond is filled with dirt), and sometimes we get a group on the east side of the house. We're just not sure where all these bulbs are planted. I don't know if we accidentally move the (that would seem difficult by accident since I believe these bulbs are big) or if they just don't bloom every year. But it's such a joyful surprise when we see one that I'm in a good mood the whole time they're in bloom.


Our backyard garden is a hit and miss affair. This year, since I'm not working any longer, I hope to make some permanent changes to it, but we just can't quite get a vision of what it should be like.


I decided to replenish our potted plants for summer and started with the corner I see most of the time while I'm sewing (my main focus these days, and the subject of another blog - yet to come), and I'm pretty pleased with the efforts so far. Our roses are in a bloom stage right now, and they bring us a lot of pleasure. But the grass is a problem - a big problem. It's not good grass, for one, but we don't want to go to the trouble to replace it. And no matter what kind of grass, it takes water - and lots of it. We water several times a week, but I don't know that we could water enough to get something we really like from it.

When we came back from Alaska and knew we would be home for a while, Lauren planted a couple tomato plants for us, at my request. He just knew they wouldn't grow because it was too late in the season. Not so. We have such a long growing season here that the gardening resources I look at tell me that we can expect two harvests for tomatoes - one in the summer and one in the fall. We covered these with shade cloth because our sun is so hot and lasts so long during the day, and they are growing, growing, growing. They have quite a few flowers on them, so I'm expecting some really nice-looking, healthy tomatoes in a couple months. Yippee.

I also planted a few types of thyme and some basil in pots, and have partially cleaned out a couple other pots of herbs that I planted a couple years ago but got too busy with work to take care of. The older ones haven't died, so I think there's some hope. One year, I planted basil and oregano in our rose garden area, before it was full of rose bushes, and I loved the flowers and the fragrance. Hmmmmmm!

I've ordered a few nursery catalogs and have in mind that I will create a succulent garden and plant some more bulbs this fall, in a somewhat organized fashion. Hopefully, I can learn a few things. I ordered some gardening books from Amazon today. My Sunset Western United States book is from 1995, but things don't change much, and this time I ordered a succulent book plus a used American Horticultural Society book that I saw at Barnes and Noble.

Speaking of Barnes and Noble, I become increasingly disappointed in their offerings unless I'm looking for fiction or cookbooks. They had two bookcases of gardening books, but they were totally disorganized. These days, I find myself occasionally going over there to look at books, plus I go to the library periodically, but most of my buying happens on Amazon. The prices and selection are superior at Amazon, especially once I know for sure what it is I want.