A Spreadwing? A Darner? A Dancer? A Forktail?

I thought there were only dragonflies.  But no, many other names for similar creatures:  Speadwing, Darner, Dancer, Damselflies, Forktail.  This one was quite large, and it was not the only creature of its kind flying around down in the gully garden yesterday.

Also yesterday I pulled the 'Pacific Sunset' Coprosma that looked so odd.  The intention was to move it, not discard it, but it took heavy damage in the move.  A "Lucky" or "Bandana" series small shrubby Lantana hybrid would be a suitable replacement--either the one that's mostly white with a little yellow, or the one that's mostly yellow with a little white. 
Two struggling small roses removed here.  In summer this area is extremely hot and dries out too fast.  The small roses have been struggling for at least a decade in various places.  Time to try something else, or let the Dymondia grow in.  There's a new own-root 'Top Gun' rose in the space between the day lilys.  Let's see what you can do, 'Top Gun' (I hate that name). 
I will with some regret also pull the nearby Hymenolepis crithmifolia (Athanasia parviflora) after it flowers, which it soon will.  
It would have been perfect in the dry gully area, because it can take fierce heat and grow with very little water, but it is too large where it is now.  It was fun to have grown for a while.
  This morning, we won the widely scattered light shower lottery.  A 20% chance of widely scattered light showers was predicted, and we got one, yielding a millimeter of rain.  Made some nice ripples in the surface of the koi pond.  

 Collected a little rainwater.
 The shower cleared pollen out of the air and into the bucket.  No sneezing for a few hours! 
 The sun soon returned and everything, briefly, sparkled.

Big excitement:  The Telopea 'Fireball' has something going on with a flower bud.   Signs of life, yay!  The scorch marks on the leaves are from an autumn heat wave.  I put the plant into the ground a few weeks after that.  It perked up immediately, though of course the scorchs will remain.  

Oooh, will there be a flower!?!?!

'Princess Alexandra Of Kent'
 'Firefighter'
 'Jubilee Celebration'
  That's what's doing here.  How about you? 

Comments

  1. HB, we are having much rain here lately, rain and heat...not the best combination at all! Seemingly we'll have more rainy weeks ahead, not good news for my roses but yours look splendid, the iceberg rose near the window looks breathtakingly beautiful.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Rain and heat is a bad combination for roses. Drought isn't so good, either. :( We gardeners must play the cards we are dealt.

      'Iceberg' loves Southern California, and Southern California loves 'Iceberg'!

      Delete
  2. I love reading your posts. You've always got something interesting going on. Dragon- or damsel flies are so difficult to identify. Maybe we don't see them often enough?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The dragonfly I always see every summer is the orange-red one. This one was not one of those. I guess it is a matter of practice. I'm better at plants than birds or insects. You are way better at birds than I!

      Delete
  3. Yay for the rain! After the prior storm passed us by completely, I'd no expectations of this one but we got a tenth of an inch in total - every little bit helps. I couldn't figure out what was floating atop my buckets and even in my 50-gallon tank but, yep, I guess we have a pollen problem too. Too bad about the coulter bush - can it handle transplanting?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Sheesh! A tenth of an inch!?!?! Waaaaaaay more than we got. But every bit helps, yes indeedy.

      I read the coulter bush should be replaced every few years anyway, so I'm okay saying goodbye. So many plants, so little space...

      Delete
    2. Fantastic to see what your garden is bringing you!!! Overhere we suddenly got summer temperatures. We are not used to have it . Even for my doggy it's to warm. It's lovely to see the garden coming back to live. It's so facenating to see that your roses have difficulty's with the warmth and drought while I have asked myself how wonderful it would be to be able to send my roses to learn to swim.
      Have a wonderful day Hoover Boo

      Delete
    3. I complain but should not! Having a garden is a privilege and a joy.

      Keep your doggy cool, he is so cute. Mine are dropping their winter coat now. I do not know why they grow one, as they don't need it.

      Delete
  4. I'm pouting because I still wake up with a 3 as the leading numeral in the outside temp. Of course I took all the frost blankets off last weekend. 2 frost mornings since then. Fortunately the frost was confined to the rooftops and open areas. I happy you got rain-we did too. We are about at 15 inches here and normal is more in the 25 range. At this point I would be surprised if we got more than another inch.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. 15 inches. Sigh. We've gotten 4.5. True desert plants which once didn't do so well here are now happy.

      What is this "frost" of which you speak?

      Delete
  5. "Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens...these are a few of my favorite things." Great pictures of your unusual and welcome rain shower. If I ever grow up, I want to be more like you in your ability to identify and move/discard plants that just don't work where they are. I tend to keep things far too long that should simply be gone. Here we're happy that the rain has let up for a couple of days and we'll have a few days with warmer temperatures like 60 degrees. (You may laugh here.) Next week, we may even see 70 which will be our warmest temps since fall.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I never used to discard--it seems to take experience to learn to do that. Or maybe focusing on the whole appearance of the area instead of on individual plants. Which might have to do with taking a lot of photos of the area, looking at the photos and thinking, "oh, that looks out of place".

      60F sounds really good to me. 80F every day gets old real quick, as tedious as 6 months in a row of rain must be!

      Delete
  6. Even one millimetre makes a grateful difference to plants. Running around with buckets of water today. First greywater into the garden to make space for this evening's rain. Once the tanks were full ... I filled all the buckets!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Always interested in your thoughts.

Any comments containing a link to a commercial site with the intent to promote that site will be deleted. Thank you for your understanding on this matter.