Lovely! Liked especially the flower containers and the maples. With time, the front garden will be even better.
What’s the red plant on the last photo?
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Thank you @naf! The red bush is a rose glow barberry. Yes, these are all just baby bushes. They will all grow over time. The ferns will also get much bigger.
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I love blue atlas cedar. I have 2 of the weeping and one upright one. I saw a garden that belongs to a Chinese botanist who taught at UCLA way way back. She and er husband had a vineyard. She planted 4 weeping blue atlas cedar that formed a curtain., entrance to their vineyard. Absolutely breathtaking. That was my inspiration to planting mine. I am going to try and download pictures taken sometime in 2005 for insurance purpose. I am not a good photographer. The weeping and upright at the gate were planted 1979. The upright one unfortunately was taken from the back . Yo
u may be able to have a glimpse from the alee of Kwanzan cherry trees that are on each side of the driveway . The other weeping one was planted years later sometime in the 90’s when we started to collect Japanese Maple to our catch basin which was lined with cobblestones. The Blue atlas cedar was the entrance point to the Catch basin. The first picture shows one of the bronze sculpture RAPTURE which has since been moved to its own marble cobblestone granite plaza together with Gaia’s breath, another bronze. The picture was taken from my BR porch, quite a distance away after a downpour. Second picture of the blue atlas cedar shows no more sculpture and beginning of transforming that area to my Japanese Maple collection . They do form a curtain but unfortunately, I developed an allergy to conifers which I love and collect. Excuse the bare ground as it was during construction phase with dredge spoil from the river and cove So, please give enough room for. your plant to grow. The weeping blue atlas is now way over to my neighbor’s front
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Wow! That is gorgeous!
my husband had put up stakes, but we had to keep on trimming back once it was next to the neighbor’s.
It is even fuller now as that was many many eyes ago but it is a curtain the way it droops down
Train it hen it is still young so it will grow the way you want with stakes and some kind of material he used so the branches will grow the wya he wants them to
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For the outdoor vegetables growing, especially tomatoes, strawberries etc.
I tried ficus bonsai once, it died one year later in winter when I didn’t water enough. Need a lot of patient, care and precision that I don’t have right now. In hot summer, it needed to be watered several times a day. I was probably too generous with fertilizer, the leaves grew too big to look like a miniature tree. It’s fascinating to see how guys chopped up some full size plant to them make them into bonsai on Youtube.
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My SIL gave me an azalea bonsai “kit” for my birthday. Something went horribly wrong and I ended up with five. I’ve got them all potted up. They’re spending the middle of the day outside (I have a deer problem at dawn and dusk). As you note, lots of watering. They all look pretty rough but it’s the wrong time of year to start shaping. I’m just focusing on plant health through summer and not worrying about shape.
Just what I need - another hobby.
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@Auspicious, Happy birthday! Gardening in general requires patience and faith, among other virtues, but bonsai seems to take it to a whole new level!
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I think bonsai is much like crossing oceans. “Skipper - what’s our plan?” “Well, it’s Sunday - based on the weather forecast we’ll tack late Tuesday or early Wednesday.” Bonsai is much the same. “Hmm. This needs a trim - perhaps in a couple of months, three at the most.”
I think the closest cooking comes are techniques like smoking or fermenting. Perhaps my two-day chili. grin
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Haha, just told H that please don’t gift me a bonsai… last time I told him the similar thing about orchid, he forgot and got me 1 (I had one before and it died.). I ended up developing a passion for it and have more than 20 now.
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My workplace gave me an orchid a few years ago, and I had no hope, since I am particularly bad with houseplants, and Orchids were not the exception. Turns out it re-bloomed after I abandoned the office it lived in! I might try to keep it alive.
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Most of my orchids, I leave them outdoors in the shade in summer, keep them in the house in winter and early spring. They are happy enough to rebloom each year
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Elephant manure.
The Houston Zoo would back up a dump truck and unload so to speak. It was serve yourself.
I used it as a starter but didn’t touch the pile for a year, it’s some potent stuff that came off the truck with steam coming off it.
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Had to share my husband’s beautiful photo of the old dogwood in our yard.
Golden moments like this one are fleeting.
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Dogwoods always remind me of my mom. I didn’t appreciate it at the time, but she tried so hard to make it work.
Happy mother’s day!
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Oh, I’m glad this thread has popped up. And speaking of dogwoods, ours blooms gorgeous white every May/June. This sunset picture always makes me think of Thomas Kincaid and his cottages and english garden paintings. We made a lot of trips to Carmel historically, and he’s like their mascot. There must be 10 galleries dedicated to his work. I can’t take credit for this tree though. It was here when we bought the house and we haven’t done a thing to or for it.
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Dogwoods are lovely trees. We’re lucky that Flowering Dogwoods (Cornus florida) are native here and the property is filled with them. I like it when the leaves turn red in the fall, along with lots of red berries. The wood is extremely hard.
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We are heading to the Monterey Bay aquarium later this month. Getting tickets was like getting tickets to Hamilton.
@Sasha and @bogman, I know I should remember, but where are you? I think @bogman is in a part of the US south that freezes. I want to be able to remember why I can look forward to gardening somewhere else when I move for retirement,
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Bellingham, WA. For the past dozen years.
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