colder than alaska

It’s been a cool sum­mer so far, fol­low­ing on the heels of a sunny but cool spring. I’ve been watch­ing the tem­per­a­tures in the paper for Fair­banks, Alaska, and most days the offi­cial San Diego report has been cooler. In fact it’s been cooler than almost any­where in the US except for maybe Anchor­age in Alaska. Brr.

At my July 4th party I was talk­ing to some­one there with ties to the Scripps Insti­tu­tion of Oceanog­ra­phy, and his thoughts were that this is typ­i­cal for an El Niño year. The phe­nom­e­non that the locals call “May gray” would be slow to get started (as was the case this year), and the dreaded sub­se­quent phe­nom­e­non the we call “June gloom” would drag on longer than usual. All that seems to be happening.

The gar­den natives don’t seem to be wor­ry­ing about the tem­per­a­ture as much as I’ve been. In fact the late-spring bloomers seem to be hav­ing a field day, extend­ing their bloom, look­ing nice at a time of year when they don’t always. Black sage is often done by this time, but there are a few lin­ger­ing flow­er­ing stems.

For stun­ning flow­ers, though, the black sage has passed the baton to Cleve­land sage. Here’s the com­mon and gor­geous cul­ti­var ‘Win­nifred Gilman.’

…and here’s Win­nifred in closeup…

One of local live-forevers, Dud­leya edulis, has had one of the more amaz­ing years that I can remem­ber. Here’s an 18–20 year old plant from above, all cov­ered with flow­ers. In this photo it’s sprawl­ing six feet across from one edge to the other.

The same dud­leya, viewed from ground level as it cas­cades over a short lit­tle retain­ing wall.

The San Miguel Island buck­wheat that I grew from seed two years ago, Eri­o­gonum grande var. rubescens, is finally hit­ting its stride, finally look­ing the pho­tos I’ve seen in books. Maybe the cooler weather will keep it look­ing nice longer.

Among the many non-natives that call my gar­den their home, this is Clero­den­drum ugan­dense, finally perk­ing up after look­ing like a twig until late in May. I think it’s been a some­what slow start for this plant this year, but it always waits until the weather warms to look like a plant you want to keep in the garden.

The com­mon orna­men­tal sage, Salvia ‘Hot Lips,’ is grown for its red and white bicol­ored blooms. I’ve heard that it blooms mostly with white flow­ers when weather turns cold. In the left photo these are the only two red and white flow­ers I could find on three plants. The rest of the flow­ers are white. In the depths of win­ter, how­ever, this plant is often com­pletely bicol­ored, so I’m not sure if there’s any truth to this color change rumor.

Some of the plants that I worry about the most are my Amer­i­can pitcher plants, these Sar­race­nia from the South, where the daily low tem­per­a­tures these days are often run­ning ten degrees above the San Diego day­time highs. For­tu­nately these plants seem to respond more to daylength than to tem­per­a­ture, and the plants look pretty good. Still, they might be taller by now where they originate.

Cool as the days may be, one thing told me for sure that I do not live remotely near Alaska. Mon­day night was the grand open­ing of the first giant bloom of this climb­ing cac­tus, prob­a­bly Hylo­cereus unda­tus. Even if it’s prob­a­bly been slow get­ting started this year, it’s prob­a­bly the best proof that I’m over­re­act­ing. Hardy to not much below freez­ing, one hit of arc­tic cold and you’ll freeze this plant’s tuchas off.

At eight to ten inches across, the only shy thing about this plant is that it only opens as dark­ness approaches. Peo­ple in cold climes covet being able to grow plants like this–or in fact many of our more ten­der Cal­i­for­nia natives.

That’s def­i­nite proof, Dorothy. We don’t live in Alaska. It just might feel that way these cool sum­mer days.

July 07 2010 06:30 am | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: • • • • • • • • • • •

13 Responses to “colder than alaska”

  1. Sheila on 07 Jul 2010 at 9:03 am #

    It is actu­ally rain­ing in OC today! Wait­ing patiently (kind of) for summer!

  2. Gayle Madwin on 07 Jul 2010 at 9:29 am #

    Cold?!? Oh, you coastal dwellers. If you need to warm up, just drive inland a lit­tle way and you can expe­ri­ence 105-degree tem­per­a­tures like the rest of us. Why you’d want to, though, I can’t imagine.

    I would never have guessed that that was a Dud­leya. It looks very dif­fer­ent from the ones up here. And I’m con­stantly admir­ing your wide vari­ety of sages. The only sage native within 50 miles of here, and the only one that’s man­aged to sur­vive so far in my yard, is Salvia sonomen­sis. I’m glad that at least I can grow that one sage, but dis­ap­pointed that it doesn’t seem likely that I’ll ever be able to grow any of the others.

  3. lostlandscape on 07 Jul 2010 at 7:38 pm #

    Sheila, I got pretty driz­zled on this morn­ing on my scooter on the way to work. Peo­ple are talk­ing about how strange all this is–and then we had that lit­tle earth­quake this after­noon to make things even more strange.

    Gayle, okay, I’m whin­ing a lit­tle. The desert, just an hour and a half to east, is well over a hun­dred, so there’d be an easy way to warm up. I’m sure we’ll get our heat waves even­tu­ally. Salvia sonomen­sis does grow here, though it’s a lit­tle on the touchy side. (The hybrid Bee’s Bliss is part sonomen­sis but seems to do bet­ter near the coast.) As far as the dud­leya, it’s a pretty dis­tinc­tive one. The rarer D. vis­cida has a some­what sim­i­lar look. I’m think­ing about a lit­tle col­lec­tion of some of the var­i­ous dud­leyas. They’re neat plants.

  4. Christine B. on 07 Jul 2010 at 9:36 pm #

    Roger that…we are def­i­nitely cold here in Anchor­age. We’re always colder than Fair­banks in the sum­mer but they are colder in the winter.

    I have none of the plants you men­tioned (and pic­tured) so you are most cer­tainly not gar­den­ing in Alaska. It’s usu­ally very pleas­ant in the sum­mer in the low sev­en­ties but right now I am wear­ing a sweater and have a wool blan­ket draped over my shoul­ders. We could use ten degrees of heat right now…maybe Ari­zona could send us both some?

    Chris­tine in Alaska

  5. SwimRay on 08 Jul 2010 at 7:00 am #

    Hey, send some of that weather my way, and I will return the favor with some of our 102–103 degrees. The weather is hav­ing an effect here too — my nas­tur­tiums are now toast!

  6. Susan Morrison on 08 Jul 2010 at 4:54 pm #

    Eri­o­gonum grande var. rubescens and Cleve­land sage are two of my favorite dry gar­den plants. Have you noticed some peo­ple love the smell of Cleve­land sage and even cut it for indoor arrange­ments, while other peo­ple can’t stand the smell? I like it, although I wouldn’t go out of my way to run my fin­gers through it or anything.

  7. Wendy on 09 Jul 2010 at 7:17 am #

    cold. How nice that would be — but I’m speak­ing from the 100-degree east coast!

    Love all that salvia. The dud­leya is really pretty too — I like how it spills over the wall. the hot lips are really cool. Keep us posted on the color-changing!

  8. Jean on 09 Jul 2010 at 6:39 pm #

    James, We in the north­east would be happy to send you (and Chris­tine) some of our excess heat. My late sum­mer flow­ers are already start­ing to bloom, and many of my plants are look­ing as hot and wilted as I feel. (I know, Gayle, we’re sissies here in Maine to com­plain about temps in the eight­ies and low nineties, but we mostly don’t have ac.) They’re promis­ing us rain and a cool­ing trend for tomorrow.

  9. Colleen Miko on 12 Jul 2010 at 9:36 am #

    Jim,
    Not to worry about your sar­race­nia! When I lived in Geor­gia I got into the amaz­ing pitcher­plant bogs they had at the UGA and Atlanta Botan­i­cal gar­dens. Both those areas are rou­tinely sub­jected to win­ter freeze, includ­ing an occa­sional snow. Also hav­ing grown cer­tain cul­ti­vars in W Wash­ing­ton with a decent amount of suc­cess, I’m more wor­ried about how you’ll fare. Can you say “Hot house flower”? :)

  10. lostlandscape on 12 Jul 2010 at 6:13 pm #

    Chris­tine, so Anchor­age is also hav­ing a “colder than Alaska” sea­son? Hope­fully you get some warmth to go with your man­i­cally long days this time of year. Recharge your bat­ter­ies for the dark and cold ahead!

    Swin­Ray, since nas­tur­tiums are edi­bles, I won­der what toasted nas­tur­tiums would taste like? Prob­a­bly not great on a salad… Stay cool.

    Susan, I’m one of those peo­ple who has to pet the sage plants. The cleve­land and white sage in the front yard, the black and pur­ple in the back–they all get my fin­gers run over them to sam­ple how great they smell. I’ll have to admit that when I cut the bou­quet Sat­ur­day night I almost had to take the thing out­side because the sage scented up most of the house. Too much of a good thing for me…

    Wendy, I missed a spot on the three salvia plants, the side fac­ing south. Of all the sides, it was the only one with red and white flow­ers in any abun­dance. So there might some­thing to be said for warmth and coloration.

    Jean, we don’t have A/C either, and nei­ther do many of our neigh­bors. Most years we get less than a week of weather where A/C would make life more bear­able, so it’s not worth the time or space or expense. And one neigh­bor with an air con­di­tioner has never run theirs. I think we just get used to a cer­tain tem­per­a­ture range, and any­thing out­side it for long starts to wear. I’m glad to report things have warmed up now that I’ve whined about it. I’m glad the weather gods read my blog.

    Colleen, yah, I guess I’m a lit­tle spoiled most of the time! I’m not sure why but there seems to a big con­cen­tra­tion of car­niv­o­rous plant ven­dors in the more coastal Pacific North­west. The longer days must off­set the shorter grow­ing sea­son some­how, even if the temps almost never get close to Florida or Geor­gia. And even Wash­ing­ton is a mild cli­mate for the north­ern sub­species of S. pur­purea, so I don’t doubt their abil­ity to with­stand cold. It’s just the depri­va­tion of warm sum­mers that I worry about–both for the plants and me.

  11. Country Mouse on 15 Jul 2010 at 8:03 am #

    We are only too glad to be hav­ing cool foggy morn­ings with lots of fog drip to keep the fire dan­ger low. I also observer extended bloom peri­ods this year. Today though — July 15 — sunny and warm. It is a nice change I do admit!

  12. Alistair on 26 Jul 2010 at 12:41 am #

    I think your blog is fan­tas­tic, I will be a reg­u­lar visitor.Probably Sum­mer here in Aberdeen Scot­land is cooler than it is in your part of the world, but I love it. Aver­age tem­per­a­ture here in July/August is in the region of 17c how­ever we do often get in excess of 22c which feels fan­tas­tic. After read­ing your blog, I am con­sid­er­ing a change in my style.

  13. lostlandscape on 26 Jul 2010 at 7:17 pm #

    CM, it’s good the fire dan­ger is down. I appre­ci­ate that here too. And it’s nice that I don’t have to water as much. Since I wrote this we actu­ally had two days of full-on sum­mer. Peo­ple were wilt­ing. But now we’re back to the cool days. We’ll get sum­mer even­tu­ally, even if it takes until fall to get here…

    Alis­tair, thanks for stop­ping by from so far away and for the nice com­ments! I have two cousins who just returned from a vaca­tion in Scot­land and had a great time there. One of them is a gar­dener who came back with lots of won­der­ful plant and gar­den pho­tos. Your cool­ness gives you some stun­ning plant options that wouldn’t do well here.

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