My birthday was this past week so, like any good pseudo-gardener, I bought myself a garden toy. Of course, there were a few plant purchases and a fairly large internet order I plan to place when the temps drop, but my power-toy purchase was more of a need than a want.
My new hedge trimmer
You see, I love lavender. And that can create a problem. Which it has. Those diminutive 4 inch pots of silvery-blue scented loveliness quickly turned into 6 foot-wide mounds of all-reaching, shin-scratching, path-obliterating messiness. They still smell lovely, though, or their days would be numbered.
The 5-foot wide walkway is nearly covered.
In the only nod to formal organization in the front garden, years ago I lined the path to the side of the house with lavender. Since the plants were tiny and cheap, I actually planted them before the stone path was installed. Originally, they were a good 3 feet apart and some 20 inches from the walkway, but no more.
What walkway?
For the past few years, I've been cutting back the lavender with garden shears, but it is tedious, back-breaking work that I have to do over the course of several days. With the electrical hedge trimmer, though, I was able to get most of the job done in just half an hour.
What a difference!
It still needs to be cleaned up a bit, and I need a longer cord to finish the left side. Plus, next time I will definitely wear a back brace. But, I am very happy with the results and discovered an added benefit: although not exceedingly loud, it scares even the yappiest of dogs into silence.
Two weeks ago, we went apple picking in a tiny village in Segovia where my father-in-law grew up, population: 8. It was a terribly hot, dry day, and I think you get the idea of how hot the sun is here because the photos are all bleached out.
My husband thought he was a teenager again and decided to climb the trees.
I, of course, was excited to come across several of these fantastic coral-red bignonias.
A cousin has promised me cuttings for next year.
My nieces & nephew love getting out of the city to just look at the horizon and breathe...
...and my father-in-law takes a walk around his old stomping grounds.
There has been a baby gecko living in my kitchen. I've seen it several times: under the kitchen table, in the pot drawer, on the pantry floor. I've tried to direct its way to the porch door several times, but it is a fast and clever little gecko. It would have to be, because my Siamese cat is an excellent hunter.
My youngest son was able to capture it in a glass yesterday and took this very curious photo. I'm sure our paths will cross again.
Well, to begin with, there is not much rain in this part of central Spain. Suffice it to say that our annual rainfall is not calculated in inches or in centimeters, but in millimeters.
Every now and then, however, we get one heck of a storm. Hail and pelting rain by the bucketful are often accompanied by wicked winds. We had one such storm just a few weeks ago. The interesting thing is that our village got blasted, while villages a few miles away had not a drop of rain. As the locals would say, "se nos cayó una nube", meaning "a cloud dropped on us". The effect of these singular storms is magnified by the fact that our thick clay soil gets cooked under the summer sun, turning to terracotta and unable to absorb the water fast enough, most of which runs off.
Here is a video of flooding after that cloud came through. You'll see topsoil floating about as well as a watermelon and a melon from neighbors' vegetable gardens that were washed away. If you notice, there is a round grey street sign that is nearly covered. Not all the water is going under the bridge; instead, it is going over.
This past Saturday, another nearby town was also hit hard, causing even greater damage. Yet here, we had not a drop.
Time to clean out the culverts before the next storm hits.
Good and
bad, several unexpected events have occurred this past year: the death of my
father, my change in riding disciplines from hunt seat to dressage (if you know
anything about riding, this is HUGE), pneumonia (twice!), and my eldest son’s
acceptance to a university in Massachusetts to study aerospace engineering (Go,
Danny!! Miss you.).Equally unexpected is my
desire to post a blog entry after so long.However, I’ve found that there is very little online information about
gardening in central Spain (specifically, the continental Mediterranean climate
or Köppen Csa at 2300 ft), and my favorite Spanish go-to blog, El Jardín de
Bemi, has been closed.So, I am hoping
that my meager experience might be of use to someone, somewhere.
I have just
returned to my garden after two months in the US.When returning home after vacation, gardeners
are often anxious to see in what condition they will find their garden.I tend to prepare for the worst (what if the
drip irrigation system has failed?) yet hope for the best (will the wisteria
provide lovely shade on the back patio?).Of course, I
have hours and hours of weeding, dead-heading and pruning ahead of me, but this
year’s garden survived surprisingly well.
The front garden, after a 2-month hiatus
Unexpected,
though, was the growth of the parthenocissus
tricuspidata on the front retaining wall, which has grown more than 10 ft (3 m) in two months.
Parthenocissus tricuspidata will have a date with the shears after turning red.
Likewise
unexpected was the recovery of my young quercus
ilex, which has never done well in 5 years and has had sooty mold (capnodium) this spring.It is now covered with its first diminutive acorns.
Quercus
ilex
I was
shocked to see how this 2-year-old walnut tree has grown 4 ft this summer, doubling in size! Looks like someone found a nice crack through the granitic mass below.
Walnut tree
And the
delicate 6-year-old olive trees that are planted in just a few inches of soil
over granite?One is finally producing
olives!
Olea europaea
My
experiment with a tradescantia pallida
clipping in a full-sun garden box has also done surprisingly well.I’m hoping it will do as well as its mother
plant in semi-shade.
Tradescantia pallida
But, let's be honest: with a view like this, who's looking at the garden anyway?
With temperatures of 90ºF/32ºC, the roses in my garden have an increasingly shorter shelf life. It's time to get them inside, where they will last a few days longer.
Here, I've used The Garland and Pierre de Ronsard in an antique Sure Seal mason jar from my grandmother's house. It's actually my favorite "vase"!
