Plants to share

I went out to count types of flowers blooming as February begins and what I noticed is how many plants I have to share.  If anyone local is reading this blog and wants new plants for the garden, I have some now, and seemingly always do.  What I noticed just now:
hellebore
nigella
ixia (I think,  I get ixia and sparaxis mixed up)
Japanese anenome 'Honorine Jobert'
a tall lavender aster that spreads
crocosmia, an orange one and 'lucifer'
poppies, maybe-they are taprooted and have to be moved at a pretty small stage
dahlia 'Bishop's Children', a deep orangey red with black foliage- I hope, the tubers have heaved out of the ground and hopefully did not freeze. 
ground covers gallium and ajuga
geranium 'biokovo'
oxalis, pink blooms, dies away in summer completely
violets
columbine
I am sure there are more, hmmm...always alysum, forget me nots, stuff like that..... a red annual coreopsis

Plus, I have a viburnum I want to take out.  Not sure the variety, it is not what was labeled on the body bag from WalMart, but it might be Mariesii.  Two years old in my garden from bare root twig, has not yet bloomed. 

Luxury gardening

Some days in the garden are priceless.  Today Jerry finished pruning the fruit trees and moved the grapevine so it will grow up the dead cherry tree.  I watched, mostly from inside where I was making a lemon curd tart.  Nice  : ) 

I did cut some orchids for the kitchen counter, and spread some more manure, and whacked back 'little tree', as we call the purple potato vine standard Jerry gave me one year for my birthday.   

Manure

I got some amazing manure at Lowes the other day.  I intended to get chicken manure, checked the price at OSH and went on to Lowes.  Lowes only had steer, and at 97 cents a bag, steer manure is a real deal, so I went with that.  Well, what a great surprise.  This is so well composted it is finer than oatmeal and has no odor at all.  I used a bag for the asparagus, and another for the new roses, mixing it with the soil for a conditioner.  I think I will go get enough to do put down in all the beds. 
For several years I have been making a compost mix of leaves, alfalfa, manure and my own compost but I find I am getting new varieties of weeds.  I suspect the alfalfa.  I think this year I will use the leaves for brown stuff in the compost bin, and use straight manure for dressing the beds.  This stuff is too good to pass up. 

Roses

Two new bare root roses came last evening.  Today I put them to soak and will plant them tomorrow.  I got more David Austin roses.  I like the Austins for their relaxed attitude, their scent and their color.  I now have six of them, Crown Princess Margaretta, Jude the Obscure, and Evelyn, which are all apricot tones, Pat Austin, which is a sunrise orange, and the two new ones, Richard Marlowe which should be orangey with red and salmon tones, and Lady Emma Hamilton which should be yellows, oranges and reds.  I hope.  At least these have a fruity fragrance and not the nasty myrrh scent, which to me smells like old lady hand lotion and was enough to cause me to give away Tamora and Ambridge Rose.  For a long time it was my dream to have enough Austins to make a huge bouquet such as the David Austin catalog shows.  So finally I got enough and spent a good hour cutting and fighting and being mangled by rose bushes and trying to jam all those those prickly dozens into a vase.  It was not worth it  : (   But the roses are lovely none the less and I enjoy them in ones and twos and threes. 

OUR asparagus bed : )

The new asparagus bed is in.  I put one in a few years ago in front of the orange tree and it did not do well, maybe due to the sandy soil there, plus we did not like the way it looked, blocking the orange tree as it did.  So we decided to move it in front of the fence.  Whew!  What a job!  I could not dig out the old roots, which threatened to break my garden fork.  With much jumping on the shovel and related effort Jerry finally got them out and we decided that is another job we will never do again.  I dug part of the new ditch and Jerry finished up for me.  My doctor swears gardening is not good enough exercise but goodness, maybe he should come help sometime!  So that was yesterday, and today I put down manure and planted both the old roots and some new ones I bought, covering them at the bottom of the trench.  As they grow I will fill in the rest of the dirt, so they have the best opportunity to develop roots.  I think the $9 investment will give us several hundred dollars worth of asparagus over the next 10-12 years.  Of course there will be none this year, because the little roots need to get established, but we can look forward to the future.  Yum!  My dad used to make fun of me for saying I could see the stalks growing, but they really do grow inches in a day.  Here is a photo of the old asparagus, it is the gray green cloud to the left. 

Water

Behold, our source of water!

The Sierra snowpack and rivers, with their associated dams and ditches, and consequent ground water, supply our water needs here.  What a blessing to live where we have locally available water, in spite of the limited amount of rainfall. 

Winter Annuals and Rain

Rain in the Night by Amelia Josephine Burr

Raining, raining, all night long;
Sometimes loud, sometimes soft, just like a song.

There'll be rivers in the gutters and lakes along the street.
It will make our lazy kitty wash his little dirty feet.

The roses will wear diamonds like kings and queens at court;
but the pansies all get muddy because they are so short.

I'll sail my boat tomorrow in wonderful new places,
But first I'll take my watering pot and wash the pansies faces.