Drought

Leucadendron salignum
"Golden Tip"

It has been a dry winter. Really, really dry. And of you're a gardener you already know this. If you're not, and you didn't, time to start saving water.

We haven't watered the trees at Pennsylvania Railroad garden in a few weeks, but today it was time - they're supposed to get 15 gallons each per week for the first two years, and it's only been a year since they were planted. Matt and I headed out, fixed the hose (again) with parts from Center Hardware and set up the trees for their drip, water courtesy of Fregosi Paints.

Ice plant - what is your name?

We're also going to switch off the weekly sprinkler at Pennsylvania Garden, which has been keeping this looking great all year. Admittedly it's not a lot of water - it only comes on once a week, and only hits about 1/3 of the garden in total. I don't think the garden will suffer from a dry spell too badly - after all, we chose most of the plants because they're xeric or drought tolerant.

Tidy, with extra Agave!

After setting up the drip line for the trees, we headed up to PG and set about some tidying tasks. We weeded the middle back bed, cut back half of the Aster "Bill's Big Blue"  and planted a nice big Agave shawii there, after removing some ratty looking Aeoniums, over-enthusiastic Crassula lycopodioides, and lots of grass that likes to get in among the Dasylirion wheeleri which is very hard to weed around, having leaves like saw blades as it does.)

Afterwards the area was nice and clean - you can see how much that Dasylirion has grown. Here it is when we first planted it in May 2009, though we moved the Aloe glauca in that pic shortly after that pic was taken.

All sorts of things are in flower right now - Leucadendrons, the cherry plum trees, Narcissus, Cordylines, and the ice plant whose name I can't remember in the brights bed - come and see!