Weather: Another hurricane stayed west of the Rockies, giving us only mist. This year, they ones from the Pacific that sometimes come up the valley either have been kept south to go into Texas or stayed beyond the mountains. Since Tuesday, winds have come up every day around noon and continued late in the day.
Last useful rain: 10/2. Week’s low: 33 degrees F. Week’s high: 84 degrees F in the shade.
What’s blooming in the area: Hybrid roses, silver lace vine, Russian sage, datura, sweet peas, Maximilian sunflowers, chrysanthemums, zinnias
What’s blooming in my yard: Calamintha, chocolate flowers, blanket flowers, white cosmos, African marigolds
What’s blooming outside the walls and fences: Bindweed, silver leaf nightshade, greenleaf five eyes, chamisa, broom snakeweed, senecio, áñil del muerto, pigweed, Russian thistles; purple, heath, and golden hairy asters peaked. Seeds from tahoka daisies have become a nuisance; the tridents stick in my pant legs.
What’s red or turning red and orange: Sand cherries, spirea, Virginia creeper leaves; prostrate knotweed stems
What’s yellow or turning yellow and orange: Sweet cherry, choke cherry, peach, apricot, catalpa, skunk bush, caryopteris, grape leaves
What has fruit: Apples have been dropping for some time. Pyracantha berries are bright orange in the area. My purple grapes are turning into raisins, uneaten this year by the ground squirrel. The privet berries finally turned black and glossy. The Woodsi roses are the only ones with hips in my yard.
Bedding plants: Petunias and dwarf marigolds locally
Tasks: It’s too late to clean beds; plants are dropping leaves to cover themselves this winter. I can get out the pruners and go back to removing winterfat that’s grown in places I don’t want. I stopped earlier this year because I couldn’t burn the debris in the drought.
Animal sightings: Rabbit, small brown birds, geckos, hornets, sidewalk ants
Weekly update: Usually when the heat passes in summer, some annuals come into bloom. This year, only one neighbor has zinnias. Mine have peaked and never got more than six inches high.
Sensation cosmos usually are blooming now, but I haven’t seen any yet. The white ones always have done better in my yard, and the Purity have been blooming since mid-August, even if they remained short. The rose-colored Dazzlers I planted in early June put one their first flower this week. The yellow, which are a different species, came up, produced one flower per plant, then quit.
I’ve only seen a few of the mixed morning glories. My neighbor’s came up and covered part of his inside fence, but produced no visible color. My Heavenly Blues finally began blooming this week.
My bedding plants have all but given up. The sweet alyssum that came up from seed has replaced them. The past two summers the French marigolds died in August, but the gazanias stayed in bloom until frost. This year I planted only gazanias, but had to accept a different variety. Like the old marigolds, the plants shrank all summer. While a few have bloomed since, most never did.
The other thing that usually happens this time of year is perennial buds from early summer that didn’t open begin to flourish. A few neighbors have some nice roses, but not many. Betty Prior has had only one cluster open at a time. Some other roses that didn’t appear in the spring are like the yellow cosmos: they put out one late flower.
I have some red hot pokers blooming, as does my next door neighbor. Two weeping yuccas in the village are blooming, as are the Arizona yuccas.
Otherwise, one branch on the Rumanian sage is back in bloom, and a few Jupiter’s beards have put out flowers.
Notes on photographs: All were taken 4 August 2018.
1. Red hot poker (Kniphofia uvaria) that self-seeded.
2. Heavenly Blue morning glories (Ipomoea tricolor) growing through wire mesh put down to keep the rabbit from eating the seedlings. Purity cosmos are blooming with them.
3. Purity cosmos (Cosmos bipinnatus).
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