Monday, March 17, 2008

Garden News

There is not a lot one can say about the garden during the winter. There might be hints of color in California but not here. My back yard has been a symphony of taupe, tan, and gray for months. In the past two days that has begun to change. We have the beginning of blossoms on some fruit trees!

My apologies that this one is not in focus, but at least you can get some of the color on the peach blossoms. The Red Haven peach has swollen pink buds and will follow very soon. The Red Haven is the one that bore two peaches last year, and they were incredibly delicious.

This is the one that bloomed yesterday.

And you can see that though only a few have opened the Santa Rosa is covered with blossoms.

My concern, of course, is that with blooms this early and the likelihood of another frost (or full-on freeze) in the next month and a half being pretty high, I have no idea whether fruit will set, or if it does, how much. Still, flowering trees for Easter seems pretty exciting.

The cherries have buds but still have a ways to go and the yellow delicious apple is much further behind.
--the BB

7 comments:

Kirstin said...

Glorious!

June Butler said...

The flowers are lovely. I hope that they're not too early.

We hardly know about waiting for flowers here, because we have something blooming nearly all year round. Now it's the azaleas and the petunias. A little while back, it was camellias. Sometimes I think that I don't properly appreciate what flowers we have, because we always have them.

I hope your trees bear tasty fruit.

Paul said...

Thanks for the wishes, Grandmère. We shall see. It is a huge gamble but it is for the long run, not just one year. I have 7 trees in my yard; they are semi-dwarf and once they begin to take off I shall prune them severely to keep plucking within easy reach (not more than a small step ladder at most).

Having lived most of my life in either the Los Angeles area of the Berkeley area, I am accustomed to things in bloom year round also. There are times when some of the trees are bare, but with evergreens in the north and palms in the south, one still sees a lot of year-round greenery. I remember the hibiscus on my college campus, and camellias in January, etc. In the East Bay we had spring by the end of January (and very cold, foggy days in July and August).

Gardening, like life, is an adventure.

susankay said...

Paul -- I guess one can not grasp and guarantee fruitfulness. Or much else for that matter.

We head down to Albuquerque tomorrow and I cannot tell you how I yearn for spring (slthough it holds no guarantees). We just got 5 inches of snow today. It is lovely but it is hard to stay appreciating the now rather than yearn for a green and blooming tomorrow.

Diane M. Roth said...

oh, it's so great to see these!

Fran said...

Lovely! Yesterday I took a photo of a teeny tiny green bud on a tree here.

No crocus yet, but soon I hope.

I am used to my downstate gardening and things would already be in bloom there, at least crocus wise!

Thanks for these images and words and for how they thaw my heart.

Is Susankay in NM too?

Paul said...

Susankay and her husband live in Colorado and have a house in ABQ also. We had dinner together on their last trip into town (our own mini blog meet-up).