rain delay

It’s almost never too rainy to gar­den, and of course it’s never too wet to blog. But some out­door projects have had to be put on hold temporarily.

Yes­ter­day, when it was still dry, we started to con­struct a shade panel to begin to replace a patio cover we tore down last fall. Many of the plants on the patio are shade plants, and we still have some shade plants hang­ing in the shade of the green­house. As the weather warms and the sun begins to burn hot­ter in the sky many of the plants are start­ing to need some cover.

We got this far on the panel project yes­ter­day. It’s a ten-by-four foot frame of alu­minum, with an inset of per­fo­rated alu­minum mesh. The diag­o­nal cross pieces are for both struc­tural sup­port and what I hope will be a level of coolness.

And then it began to rain: Light mist now and then yes­ter­day, and occa­sional rain­squalls this morn­ing. Not safe weather for oper­at­ing elec­tric devices out­side, but noth­ing to stop me from pulling some weeds and then stop­ping by my favorite local nurs­ery, Wal­ter Ander­sen Nurs­ery. There was a bald spot out front and I needed a plant to fill it. One plant.

But the nurs­ery was ooz­ing green life force that proved irre­sistible and I came home with three instead: white flow­er­ing cur­rant (Ribes indeco­rum), Route 66 Cal­i­for­nia fuch­sia (Zauschne­ria cal­i­for­nia ‘Route 66′) a sec­ond plant of Cean­othus ‘Tuxedo’ to go with one I pur­chased last year. I’ve resolved to plant at least fifty per-cent Cal­i­for­nia native plants, and I think I suc­ceeded. The first two qual­ify, and the last gets par­tial credit. (I have a post in the works describ­ing why.)

Of course for me rainy days turn into oppor­tu­ni­ties to col­lect more rain­wa­ter for the prima donna bog plants that detest the water that comes from the tap. At this point I prob­a­bly have sev­eral months’ sup­ply in buck­ets and bar­rels. And the ground will hold its mois­ture and require min­i­mal water­ing for sev­eral weeks. I wouldn’t want to force our county’s golf courses go with­out water, would I? (Well, yes, actu­ally, I would. Yet another blog post…)

February 20 2010 | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: • • | 8 Comments »

still no rain

Weather map

I find weather and cli­mate to be amaz­ingly fas­ci­nat­ing things. The media must not believe that the rest of the pub­lic thinks the same way, judg­ing by how they always seem to need to sex up the topic.

“Flood­ing! Mud­slides!” was how Weath­er­bug pack­aged the recent early win­ter storm head­ing for California.

Water buckets

Think­ing that dry lit­tle San Diego stood a chance of get­ting some real rain out of the storm, I put out a cou­ple trays of pot­ted car­niv­o­rous plants in hopes of giv­ing them a taste of real water from the sky. And along the eaves of the house I placed some buck­ets to catch rain­wa­ter that I could use later.

Empty bucket

Unfor­tu­nately I was duped by all the buildup. Imag­ine my dis­ap­point­ment when I came home last night and found the buck­ets as empty as a bin of free hundred-dollar bills and as dry as the Bap­tist potlucks of my early teen years. We are talk­ing dry.

Often by the end of Sep­tem­ber we have the first of the autumn rains. But not this year.

Still, the days are cool­ing. The skies are home to more and more clouds that look like they could deliver some pre­cip­i­ta­tion. The rains didn’t come this week, but they’ll come.

October 15 2009 | Categories: my garden | Tags: • • | 4 Comments »