The Price of Rain Is...

 

This year's Hellebore float, one from each plant that is in flower

Hellebores are best admired floating in a shallow dish of water, their growth habit being that their flowers face downwards.  

  There's a reason for this:  in the climates where they evolved, late winters are very rainy.   Flowers face downwards to keep their pollen dry.  One instance of the price of rain.  Another is...

 ...weeds!  Most of the past several days has been occupied with weeding.  It's important for me to pull weeds before they flower and set seed.  That means fewer weeds next year, at least in theory.   

This area looks weedy, but it's one of the areas I weeded.

It desperately needs mulching, too:

What appear to be weeds below and between Narcissus clumps and Yucca 'Bright Star' are seedlings of the native Lupine, L. succulentus.  Not weeds.   Valuable food source for bees of all kinds.   And what appear to be weeds above the Narcissus and 'Bright Star' is the native Epilobium (Zauschneria) canum, common name "California Fuchsia", a valuable source of nectar for bees and hummingbirds.   Not a weed--though weedy looking before and after flowering, and sometimes during.   No matter--food for hummers!

A few more thistles to pull:

Those really spiky thistles come right out of the ground but are painful to grab hold of without good gloves.  The non-spikey thistles are easy to grab hold of, but hard to pull out of the ground.   Weeds.   They know what they're doing. 

Besides weeds, planting what I can and a couple more roses cut back.   The big 'Golden Celebration" rose is the only one left.  I might not get to it, but GC can be cut back hard after the spring flush instead and still have a great year.

This 'Bishops Castle' took several hours.  I didn't get to it last year so it was about 8'x8' and very twiggy.

This is the "after":

We're forecast to get a very strong wind storm tonight with gusts 60-70mph so I was rushing to get purchases into the ground.  Powerful winds are very damaging to small young plants--some times even blown away, never to be found.

Yes, a few purchases over the weekend, mostly annual Marigolds, like those that that did so well last year:

While I shopped Beloved got some excellent photos of the garden center we visited.   Their stock was wonderful--fresh and beautifully healthy and vigorous.

These two looked a bit ticked off:

Blogger in habitat:

Even the hills were green:

Planted what I could before the wind roars in.  Dahlia tubers of 'Eveline':

 Most of the Marigolds and the TJ's Hellebores planted, and one Hellebore moved because it spent last year in darkness, covered up by one of the Hydrangeas.  I moved it forward a couple of feet--that might be enough.  It was really floppy perhaps because it spent all summer in the dark.  

Garden is kicking into growth gear.  Bulbs...

Leucandendron 'Cloudbank Ginny's moment arriving:

And the roses look great.  Several soakings in February made them very very happy:

Where roses were concerned, the price of rain seemed very reasonable.