A brief glimpse at my garden before I leave

I see so much work that needs to be done in the garden, and my fingers itch to get in the soil and stir it up, prune and trim, and plant new things, but it's not to be again this year because our urge to travel is greater than my urge to garden.

But for now, at this time of year, our garden's need to grow wins out over our neglect. We have bundles of color all over the place. How nice to see all this before we take off and totally leave the garden to its own devices. We've had fairly good rains this year, and it has made a huge difference.

Lauren's azaleas, along the front entry, have outdone themselves again this year. I think we probably need to clip them back at some point to encourage growth of new branches, but Lauren's low-maintenance program - just feeding them from time to time - has certainly kept those blooms coming the last few years. We see buds for a long time, and then one morning or afternoon, we walk out the front door, and there they are - all pink and pretty. Such a lovely sight. Years ago, I tried growing azaleas. They don't like me one bit, but they love Lauren. I don't know if he whispers sweet nothings to them or not, but whatever he does, they bloom themselves silly.

In our back yard, the bougainvillea has outdone itself, too. I've clipped it back twice, and it just doesn't get discouraged, continually popping up clouds of color. We hope to keep it fairly short and stout this year so we won't need to climb a ladder to clip the tops.
Lauren pruned our roses way back a few months ago, and I wondered at the time if they would survive the pruning. Oh, it was definitely the right thing to do. We have blossoms everywhere. I will trim them back pretty good this week, before we leave for the U.K., and hope that helps them out while we're gone.


I would love to have another summer of roses. I always enjoy sitting in our porch room (used as my home office in years past and my sewing studio these last two years). The color soothes and inspires me.


We're going to have four amaryllis blooms this year. These are an accumulation of bulbs I purchased at WalMart at various times, and then we stuck them in the dirt when the bloom was gone. It's kind of fun to watch these pop out again from year to year - sort of a surprise. There's a good chance we're going to miss the blooms this year; but there will be another year.

This year, I hope to learn more about the plants we have and new ones to grow. I keep thinking we'll do a whole makeover of our back yard, but as the days begin to grow hot, that seems like a project to postpone until a spring when we're home. Today and yesterday, the temperatures have reached the 90s. The sun is searing, and the wind is pulling the moisture out of everything it can find. I have a couple succulents I planted last year, and they're looking good. Maybe I can enlarge on that this summer and add some interest to our yard with a variety of hot-weather friendly plants.

Hmmm... Summer may be promising!