Late Summer Blooms

Some surprises at the last gasp of summer.

I spy a bud or two on my desert rose (adenium). I didn’t know it was ramping up to bless me with more flowers this late in the game but I’m happy it’s trying. I can’t remember if I’m supposed to withhold water to force a bloom or put it in a dark place. This plant was recently in the garage dungeon for a few days during Hurricane Hilary to guard it against tropical storm winds and a year’s worth of rain. Maybe that is why it’s trying to bloom again now.

I’ve mentioned my crepe myrtle tree I got free from Tree For All about this time last year. The power company had information on their website to register for a free shade tree and then come and get it. I could choose from three tree varieties and we chose this one together.

When I got it, this tree was a stick. It continued to do nothing at all while I faithfully watered it. My husband wanted to get rid of it and I wasn’t ready to plant it. I’ve got grand ideas of a pergola one day and I want this tree around it to provide additional shade for the foliage I intend to plant all around the pergola as a little oasis in my yard. Plus our HOA won’t let us plant anything without permission from our neighbors, a detailed plan in triplicate, a permit, and what have you. So in the pot it stayed and it sprouted a few leaves. It blew over a few times and each time I righted it, I wondered if it would survive.

I found out crepe myrtles can actually do okay in a pot. Now the crepe myrtle is doing much better after my husband repotted it and it’s getting buckets of water.

And I mean literal buckets of water. Our air conditioning condensation drains out into the side yard and the water goes… nowhere. My husband had the great idea to place a bucket underneath and use the water in our garden. It’s heavy and fills quickly. These days there is more than a bucket full waiting for me each morning to disperse.

It’s really important to get rid of standing water because mosquitos will lay eggs there. The Mosquito Vector place here in the Coachella Valley has done a great job educating everyone not to let even a teaspoonful of water sit because the mosquitos will find it and breed. The vector control place will come out and rid the mosquitos for you, evaluate your yard, and spray in affected areas. Mosquitos are dangerous here, as West Nile Virus and other diseases have been detected very close to home. So I use the buckets of water any chance I can get to try and mitigate our risk for these pests. Plus it’s great for doing our part in a drought.

Lastly, I just wrote about the basil and lo and behold it is for sure blooming.

I’m not sure what to expect from this and I’m waiting to see what happens. I have plenty of basil and I don’t like the way this one tastes. Apparently this is called bolting. You can buy slow bolt seeds, like I did with my cilantro, that won’t do this in the hot weather. I just searched for seeds in the desert when I first started my garden and came across Native Seeds S.E.A.R.C.H based out of Tucson, Arizona. Now, a lot of these seeds are great for the high desert and I’m in the low desert. But there aren’t a lot of seed places directly in my area and I just love their website and nonprofit. This is the link to the herbs sold at Native Seeds , and as I’m writing this the Slo-Bolt Cilantro is already sold out. Good thing I saved my own seeds!

Native Seeds is actually a link I’m posting on my blog, which I normally don’t do. I started to notice ads on here now, yuck. I don’t get paid for the ads and have no say on which ads are on here. Some of the ads look pretty terrible and for sure have nothing to do with me or with gardening. I have no sponsors and don’t plan on that kind of thing. I would advise not clicking on any ads on my blog. They could be scams or bogus websites, and they’re not anything I’ve said is okay. The blog company wants me to pay to get rid of them and I’m just not in the position to do that right now. So in the meantime, don’t click on anything that looks unsafe.

By the way, does anyone say clicking anymore or is the correct term tapping now? I imagine my kids are going to ask me why I say clicking. My son and I recently found ourselves bored while waiting at the doctor’s office and I had to explain to him what a computer mouse was. We don’t do a whole lot of screens, tablets, and video games at our house yet but I don’t want my children growing up in a cave so little by little we explore the role of screens in our lives. Pretty soon it’s going to be the other way around, with my kids explaining technology to me!