Leucadendron 'Pom Pom'
While recovery continues, I've been unable to do much of anything. I focused on what I can do, which didn't amount to much, but was less frustrating than fretting about roses not deadheaded and weeds not pulled.
I managed to pot up a Begonia that rooted in a glass of water:
Wise to focus on what we can do, no matter how insignificant. It may be insignificant in the scheme of things, but it wasn't insignificant to the Begonia. Besides the Begonia I managed a few photos.
'Brass Band':
Leucadendron 'Startreuse':Sweet Pea 'My Navy'Sweet Pea 'Cupani':'Princess Alexandra Of Kent', resting her chin on a twig.Callistemon 'Slim' has been shaking with nectar-feeding birds enjoying the flowers. No less than three male Hooded Orioles were battling over control of them. Later I saw one of the Orioles inviting his mate to feed. I guess he won the battle.'Golden Celebration' among the sweet peas. It would be nice if more of the sweet peas would get around to flowering. The 'My Navy' deep purple-blue would look striking with this rose:'Belinda's Dream':Both of the Geum 'Totally Tangerine's flowered this year. It would be nice to get sustained flowering over months, which is what this plant is described as doing instead of two-stems-and-done-until-next-year. We'll see:
Wise decision to focus on what you can do. Especially hard for a gardener to do. The upside is it will hopefully allow you to enjoy the happenings in the garden more. I agree that yellow rose and the deep blue sweet pea would be a gorgeous combo. Hang in there. Resting now means quicker healing and back into the garden sooner.
ReplyDeleteThanks! Doing my best to do the right thing. A walk in the garden is part of the healing. :)
DeleteI thought of you this morning as I tended to 2 overused wrists. April is frustrating when downtime is necessary for physical reasons but then In our climate downtime is a challenge in any season.
ReplyDeleteYour roses look happy and I'm sure they'll forgive you some delay in deadheading. My sweet peas have been VERY frustrating. Although I saw the first blooms of one variety in February (!) and blooms from another in March, the other 3 have yet to show up, while mildew is already setting in courtesy of foggy mornings following warm, dry afternoons. I didn't thin them out as well as I should have so some of the problem may be of my own making. As to the Geums, yours are looking great while mine have yet to return.
I thought about delaying the knee to summer but it was getting difficult to walk and garden anyway.
DeleteRoses have HUGE flowers with 2x the petals this year. Rain is magic!
I got like 2 of those gorgeous 'My Navy' flowers and now a whole lot of 'Cupani', which were volunteers I moved around.
Surprised--your Geum foliage goes away in the winter? Mine are very evergreen. ???
Gorgeous, I can only imagine how frustrating it is not to be out & about at this time of year. The yellow rose is really amazing, everything looks so perfect. I hope you're healing speedily and feeling 100% soon!
ReplyDeleteThanks! Every day, a little bit better. Surgery does take something out of you, no stamina at the moment.
DeleteI share your frustration, arising from a different source, with the LB zone 10 garden -- a quick early April visit revealed incredible wind damage -- among lots of damage, highlights included enormous potted Goliath knocked over, the tetrapanax toppled, the hedge-like creeping fig sheared off the back CMU wall landing over half of the garden. An entire dumpster was needed to handle the mass of creeping fig detritus. I don't think that geum likes our zone 10. I moved a clump up here and it bloomed for months, as it is reputed to do! Take care of yourself and go slow, HB! The gardener's health takes priority over the garden!
ReplyDeleteWind damage?!? Must have been strong there. We didn't get that much here.
DeleteI'm hoping the Geum's "leap" year will make the difference. If it doesn't, well, it was a noble experiment.
I'm going very slow, whether I want to or not. Knee is in charge right now.
Focusing on what I can do vs. spinning my wheels into a paralyzing rut has been a philosopy I've tried to follow for a very long time. Those ruts can get pretty deep. It's not that I give up on what I can't do, it's more like I make plans and strategize for when I can do it. Everything in its time. Helps keep me sane. Your garden is lovely. The roses are beautiful and the begonia is a nice surprise. So much color and so much variety in your little part of the world. One of the things I love best about my garden are the birds. Their chirping and chatter and play brings me joy. The clematis I planted last year came back! I'm so excited. It didn't thrive last year, so when it died back I figured it was toast. Not so much! Any advice on learning how to do my irrigation system myself? I'm getting tired of paying people to do it, they don't really do what I want, and it's expensive. Daddy always said that if you wanted something done right, do it yourself, so maybe I should give it a try. Elizabeth
ReplyDeleteWatch a lot of youtube videos on irrigation, read up on it, and practice. It's like Legos--you stick pieces together. It's not that difficult. The more you do the easier it gets (like gardening). If I can do it...
DeleteClematis like water!
Recently, during a class about propagation, a distinction was made between water roots and soil roots. I never heard of it before and so I wonder: is the Begonia show signs of stress moving into soil?
ReplyDeleteChavli
What I read is that if the roots are sitting in water "too long" they can't adapt to soil. The roots were just breaking out on that cutting so it wasn't "too long"--what ever amount of time that is. No, no stress showing on the cutting. It looks dandy. I did this in mild overcast weather--much less stress that way. We'll move into May Gray/June Gloom weather soon--perfect for cutting propagation!
DeleteI've often wondered about those labels that say everblooming, repeat bloom, et cetera. I have had the same experience with our geums. Our G. coccineum 'Koi' didn't bother to bloom last year and is definitely in the one-and-done category when it does deign to bloom at all. It makes me think that either the people writing the labels are being loose with the truth or that they are pushing their display plants with more fertilizer than most people would use. Startreuse made me chuckle.
ReplyDelete