Bloom Day December 2017



 Rosa 'Barcelona'.  Amazing how the roses have held up to 5% humidity.  Long established roses can do what newly planted ones cannot. 

Aging Hydrangea flowers offer an array of colors:
 Tagetes lemonii, Copper Canyon Daisy.  This was supposed to be the compact version. 
 I have no idea why these Shasta Daisies are blooming like crazy in December.  (But it's nice.)
An Agave 'Joe Hoak' is going up in the foreground;  behind are a trio of Agave 'Blue Glow' flower stems in various stages:  flowering (alive with bees), drying, and the one on the far left has some seed pods.
 This Aloe ferox is supposed to be the form with white bracts instead of the usual red.  We'll see what happens.  This is its first bloom. 
 Grevillea 'Kings Fire'.   Me likey!
California native Calliandra eriophylla,  "Pink Fairy Duster".  It's a bit dessicated, as is so much in the garden right now.  Yet another one for the hummers. 
 Kalanchoe marnieriana
  Protea 'Mini King' flowers last quite a while. 
 Still painting, painting, painting while waiting for the extreme dry weather and Santa Ana winds to finally ease, in between slogging away at computer software problems.  It's been, what?  Two weeks of Santa Ana wind? 
Happy Bloom Day anyway.    

Comments

  1. I am glad you have solved your software problems. I look forward to reading your posts. I read that the longest Santa Ana event lasted 24 days! I can see a deep fog/smoke layer to the west out my kitchen window. Santa Monica Airport and Huntington Beach are reporting 49% humidity. I'm still at 17% which is a whole lot better than 5%! I thought all the bees were on my Agave attentuata spike!

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    1. 24 days. Cringe. I do not mind Agaves blooming, because it makes the bees so happy, and the hummers too if they can find space between the bees. We need good luck tonight; one more night of bad winds in this Event. Still working on software issues, stumbling along with a second computer. Sometimes you have to set a problem aside for a while to avoid throwing things.

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    2. Here's an example of "be careful what you wish for": the humidity is up to 49% but the sky is brown and the sun is bronze, smoke!

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    3. And it looks very scary for Montecito and Santa Barbara right now. :(

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  2. HB, Those red roses look terrific! the second spring is wonderful in your garden! amazing that your roses can endure 5% of humidity without getting shrivelled! my roses shrivel in the sun with 35 % and that is the average lowest humidity rate we have here in december the driest month, rest of the year humidity is over 50%. Have a great weekend!

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  3. Is the paint drying quickly at least? We had one nice morning (yesterday) with humidity levels near normal levels but we were back to the single-digit level today and I noticed that the red flag warning is now in effect through Sunday. Unbelievable! The Camellias hate it and it isn't doing all those seeds I sowed earlier this fall any favors. I really like that pink-flowered Calliandra and blooming in winter is also a plus - I'll be looking for it.

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    1. I miss having Camellias, but it's proven impossible here. The paint is drying TOO fast, actually. That Calliandra stays petite, about 3x3. I recommend. The flowers are much prettier than the photo shows; that one is pretty dried up. Bad wind tonight, but the week ahead predicted finally cooler and windless. Fingers crossed.

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  4. Hello Hoover Boo,
    What a lucky bird you are, having so many beautiful flowers at this time of the year.
    I keep my fingers crossed that some unexpected rain will turn up.
    Have a wonderful weekend ahead.

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    1. Yes so very lucky! More bad wind tonight, but this week finally the wind stops and it cools down. This will help the firefighters, if they can get through tonight.

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    2. Love ' Barcelona' -- painting and computer problems? How do you stay so zen?!

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  5. That Grevellia bloom is so interesting! Everything looks spectacular.

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    1. Thanks! Isn't that Grevillea cool? The form of it is "secund"--like a toothbrush--everything is on one side.

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  6. That Protea 'Mini King' flower should have been at the end of the post. I was too distracted by its beauty to concentrate on anything else.

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  7. A nice selection of blooms! Apparently many plants have decided to just bloom because they want to and ignore the calendar!

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    1. Thanks for visiting my blog, Leslie. I think the plants were celebrating surviving October's terrible heat waves--I certainly did!

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    2. Oh you Gardening In Davis, of course. Didn't connect the name.

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  8. Such dry air sounds awful... I hope the winds die down soon. I have been following reports on all those fires, and can't imagine as even keel as you seem, being that near them. Scary as all hell... Anyway, enjoyed seeing all your beauties, as usual. Out of all the fires down there, King's Fire takes the cake, and I love the Calliandra, too, as well as the Protea. I don't imagine either of those would do too well up here, so I'm glad I get to enjoy them vicariously through you. Hope fires are extinguished without delay, and your computer problems are resolved soon. It would be hard to get into the Holiday Cheer with that going on...

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    1. 'Kings Fire', I'm crazy about it. A new favorite. I enjoy vicariously a lot of the plants that thrive in the PNW but can't grow here, so we're even! :^)

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