Caturday!

ICHC

The garden calls!

The Shasta daisies shriveled up and went south thanks to the exceptionally long spell of hot, dry weather we've had. It's fire season now, and in a month's time, hot dry Santa Ana winds will be blowing. The garden's mostly weeded but the last week's two days of wet weather has caused annoying weed sproutage, and we must repair to its recondite depths to pull those suckers out before THEY get dry and provide kindling to the oily eucalypts on neighbouring slopes. The idiot neighbour has planted their lower garden with Spanish broom. Or is it Scotch broom? Right next to an extensive wooden fence.



The big bougainvillea has lost most of its vivid magenta flowers. The small one has put forth a couple of hopeful-looking buds, though we suspect they won't last long in the heat. The naked ladies (Amaryllis belladonna with their perfumey scent) are nearly done blooming, their pure pink trumpets beginning to dry and droop a little. Big blue lily turf (Liriope muscarii) didn't flower this year, and hasn't spread very far either.

The yellow cosmos made a good showing. And magenta-flowering ice plant is creeping back (must be eliminated!) The California lilac (Ceanothus, which isn't a lilac at all but a supposedly-fragrant native) has gotten very woody and leggy in spots and must be pruned hard, though getting down to that part of the hill is as much as a human life is worth. Very tricky, and interspersed with thorny climbing roses and nettles. The bloody deer did not bother to prune my fucking roses for me this year because the lousy buggers have been too busy eating the fucking tomatoes, wouldn't you know? Venison carpaccio is how they're ending up, the little fuckers.



No gaillardia blossoms, although the echium and the buddleia were profuse, for a change. But the buddleia is deadwood, mostly, now, and the echium's long floret-laden spikes are brown with seed to set. Luckily, the plumbago lining the hill is lifting sky-blue heads to the sun, and red-and-yellow lantana and lavender continues to feed the bees and visiting birds. And, of course, the Brazilian princess flower, Tibouchina urvillea, has a few buds left. Oh, and white oleander is flowering all over the hill. Needs a hard cutting back, or it'll get too spready and leggy and collapse all over itself. Rather as we've been known to do around the seventh glass of alcoholic beverage.

Fuck it! It's Caturday, the sun is shining, there's a terrific pasta sauce with homemade tomatoes awaiting our hungry maws, and we're off to the garden, felines in tow. Let's hope Madu has left no new dead and partly disassembled rats on our favourite resting spots. It's hard enough to weed the garden with feet splayed and one hand clinging to the nearest rock or branch, without having to worry about avoiding rat guts as well.

Ai neva duz dis. Ai eetz dem all up.

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