Monday morning dawned fresh and cool with a minor epiphany. Stepping out the backdoor, the opening of the first poppy scrambles a sleepy brain with the sensation of a delicate jellyfish floating over the garden (upside down).
This week’s West Coast heat wave has been written up in all the national newspapers. Yesterday, taking in our nightly PBS Newshour, we were dumbfounded to be looking at our local park on the newscast, near the beach where Marty runs, with locals being interviewed on how hot it’s been. As much as 35 degrees above normal for this time of year, is how hot it’s been.
Monday wasn’t too bad, with a lovely scrim of morning fog, then reaching mid 80sF in the afternoon. Tuesday soared to a stupor-inducing 99F. Wednesday is predicted to stay in the 80sF here at the coast and through the week.
With the garden set to return to autopilot when we leave in a few weeks, it’s time to get the final tweaks in as far as best chances for survival. Emergency moves included a large clump of pyrrosia that was poorly sited and getting burned by some sneaky shafts of sunlight penetrating the grevillea’s canopy. Neighbors have promised to check in and water the pots.
A couple weeks ago the Garden Conservancy put out a request for volunteer docents for their Palm Springs Open Days this Saturday. What a great day trip! Checking the forecast, I was dumbfounded that it could get that hot in March. Regretfully, no way. Not a good look when the docent passes out in the garden.
A box of plants arrived Monday from High Country Gardens, impeccably packed and on time, most destined for the Oregon garden (intriguing Verbascum ‘Letitia’). I built the order around the only source I could find for sideritis, plants I really miss having in the garden. I’m hoping these two Sideritis syriacus reseed, as it has in the past. With the forecast showing cooling at the coast, these were planted this morning.
There’s been more activity at the far boundary wall since Bilbergia ‘Hallelujah’ was introduced there.
Other shady characters are on the move to the cool back wall too, including more bromeliads and a few ferns, Blechnum gibbum ‘Silver Lady,’ Asplenium bulbifera and Pleopeltis lepidopteris. The latter tolerates dry conditions very well, not sure about the other two…
What I’ve been calling couch grass has been identified by a landscape restorationist neighbor as African Veldt Grass. It is a fairly recent menace and of the very worst kind. Ehrharta erecta (annual) and Ehrharta calycina (perennial) are both perpetually in seed spread by birds, wind, shoes, etc. One of my short-lived theories accounting for its vigorous presence in the garden was that the generous spacing around plants now that I’m not here full time allowed in more weeds. There was rarely bare soil showing when I gardened year-round. But this nasty weed penetrates the densest clumps of sesleria and tulbaghia and sneaks in under the rosettes of large succulents. It infests the entire neighborhood now and needs constant vigilance to control. I really don’t recall it in the garden prior to 2020. My neighbor used Fusilade when eradicating this weed from acres of native plant communities.
Take care! More soon, AGO