It’s March and the rains are still coming, but much lighter than the storms of February. Still we hope to have a March miracle. We turned the clocks forward and for the first time, I felt like I truly sprung into spring.
I noticed blooms on my apricot tree. I am hoping the strong wings don’t blow them all away this year. I also see small grapes on my red seedless grapes in the container by my house. This is the first time they have had grapes since I planted them two years ago.
The fig tree has tiny new leaves and I spotted a very tiny fig on our honey fig tree. In the past if it got cool, those early figs would just drop off. It is certainly cool now, but just recently we had three days in the 80’s. Now it has dropped to the 50’s and 60’s with one day where it stayed 47 degrees all day. Our nights are also cool and in the low to mid 40’s.
The warm weather did make the freesias bloom. They have spread all over the yard and are no longer just contained to the planter. I love to see flowers pop up where you least expect them. I do not have a manicured garden as I prefer a more natural look to the yard or as some have said, to my fairy garden. I like a profusion of flowers that look like fields with mixed varieties. When I moved into this house, there was a rose garden off the side of the patio, a few Agapanthus plants in purple and white and what looked like a bush of yellow daisies. Some of the roses were really beautiful. My favorite was a thornless pink rose which died during the last drought. The hardiest rose has deep red velvet like flowers. It also has the most treacherous thorns that have caused some pretty serious injuries. There is a beautiful pale orange rose that I love. We have a few tea roses as well but they aren’t my favorites. Bottom line, roses with thorns are a pain (literally) to work with. We removed several roses that died but the tea roses keep coming back.
The yellow daises I removed long ago. The Agapanthus struggled during the drought and we also lost a few to the gophers or voles that love our yard. Even though these plants don’t need a lot of water, the drought from 2012-2022 took a toll on them. After the rains in 2023, the plants started blooming again. I am down to just two of these plants now.
Our soil was so dry before the rains came that it actually cracked and looked like the desert soil. I did water during these years, but after one year when we only got 2.5 inches of rain the whole rainy season, we were restricted to 5 minutes of watering once a week. You could also bring buckets of water to the plants but they never got a deep soaking. In 2023, the rains came, unexpectedly, because we were still in a La Nina cycle. The rains restored our hedges and made the trees grow several feet.
Last year I planted a lot of flower seeds by my house but very few came up. Our apricot tree had grown several feet from the 2023 rains and shaded that part of the garden. This winter I had the apricot tree pruned to a move reasonable height for picking. We did this with all the fruit trees. Hopefully this helps the flowers and the berries that grow behind the apricot tree.
In general, the weather last summer was not conducive to productive summer crops. The spring through mid-July was very cool with temperatures in the 50’s and low 60’s. The Farmer’s Almanac is predicting another cool May for us in coastal southern California. Yet I hope I have a leg up with a tomato plant that came up in August and is now three feet high with blossoms on it. The plant is in a warm spot in the yard so fingers crossed that it makes it through a cool spring and delivers early tomatoes to us.
Until next time, enjoy the bounty of the spring with all the asparagus, artichokes and peas popping up.
Reflections Outside My Window 