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Orange Jubilee |
The plant at right is usually covered with lush, green foliage and, about now, starts showing orange blooms that the hummingbirds love. It is neither orange nor jubilant this year. Tohono Chul Park warned everyone to be patient. Trimming the dead parts back prematurely, before the possibility of a freeze was past, was more likely to do damage than help the plant.
I spent about two hours yesterday trimming the two in my front yard back to the ground. They're not dead. Green leaves are growing from the bottom of the plant. It grows fast, so I'm sure that by the end of the summer, as long as I keep the drip irrigation on, it will have flowers once again.
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Lemon Tree |
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Globe Mallow |
Some plants are a lot more cold hardy. The Globe Mallow regularly grows at higher elevations and wasn't fazed at all by the cold winter we had. Buds are about to burst into bloom.
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Texas Ranger |
The Texas Rangers in my front yard bounced back quickly. They may not flower until later this year, but they're happily putting out green leaves.
And remember that poor lemon tree? Well, right next to it, yay, sprouting happily up through the gravel, is a bumper crop of weeds.
I would like it explained how a freeze that managed to kill so many plants also allowed the weeds, the nasty plants that I fight every year in a battle for the back yard, to thrive.
There's a lot of work to be done to get my yard back into presentable shape before the HOA starts leaving me nasty-grams, but I'm not complaining. There's something soothing about working in a garden. Pruning and lopping and sweeping up clears my mind, stretches my muscles, and eases the tensions of the work week. I feel renewed when I'm done, pleased with my progress. I think it must be the English blood in me. The English do love their gardens... as do I, different as a Tucson garden might be from what my ancestors worked in.
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