You write so beautifully Melissa. What a pleasure to read.

In California we are looking at a pretty severe drought year. We are on well water, but will still need to be very conservative this year.

With pruning done early February, and most but not all of the gardens mulched over the past few weekends, this weekend was the second and final for fertilizing. This is my first year fertilizing my roses, while in prior years I relied solely on composted horse manure from the barn. I thought I'd see how much of a difference I noted with the 12-6-10 Vigoro I purchased. I'm a harried sort and rebellious about following directions, so just spread a heaping handful or so around each bush. Too many bushes to scratch into the surface, so letting the little slow release granules scurry about where they may when the spray of the water spray hit. Probably somewhat wasteful but still felt constructive.

Then, out came the miracle grow sprayer for the trees and non-rose and non-acid loving perennials in the garden. That went pretty quickly.

Two camellias planted last year, and two new this year are bringing incredible joy. Marie Bracey, an unknown white (I wasn't going to get familiar enough with camellias to learn their names until...), then Tom Knudsen and Magnoliaeflora - they definitely give me patience with their exquisite blooms to wait for the roses to bloom.

Cl. Chocolate Sundae purchased last year looks like she will be the first to bloom with a bud near ready. I'm very excited about her despite her lack of fragrance. Also excited to see my first two romantica's - Bolero and Lunar Mist planted last fall begin their display. They were the only two I sprayed this year in my basically no spray garden, as they were both purchased with some PM. A little neem oil seemed to do the trick, and they are looking healthy and ready to tango.

All the bareroots are bursting except Royal Highness who absolutely refuses to come out of dormancy despite having bright green with canes with nice healthy tan pith. So I guess she'll just decide when she's ready, and I'll try to stop crawling on my knees and pulling off my glasses daily (so I can see near) to try to see if there is any activity yet. I probably look like I'm grazing when I do that.

Finally, awaiting my last bareroot shipment from DA with great anticipation and excitement in adding 4 new DAs to my one Mary Rose.

What a wonderful time of year. Wish it was raining here though...

hmmm, epimediums. These are very addictive. I have managed to remain sane, having just 4 or 5 but my son has succumbed completely. Geums are also another potential plant opiate - yah know, you get a couple but you are still in charge. Then you get a couple more and start to take notice of different cultivars. Pretty soon. you are scouring the web, out of control. You start to hide them under ferns and plot secret stashes in distant corners of the garden.....oh yes, it starts out so innocuously. Epimediums are gorgeously fascinating and beautiful but astoundingly tough, useful and rewarding. However, if you have even a tiny bit of the plant obsessive gene, then epimediums can easily rival a rose mania.
Heucheras and heucherellas are, fortunately, a bit duff in my sandy soil but regardless, one must have them.
The star of my garden at the moment (apart from my lovely new hellebore) is a chaenomeles superba - it is a true scarlet with none of that rather nasty coral tone so common to flowering quince. It lives up to its common name (japonica) by looking truly enigmatic and oriental, next to the black timber of my Zephirine Drouhin arbour. My first foray into ferns has been most thrilling - not that I have anything of any rarity, but the asplenium, dryopteris wallichianum and holly leaf (cyrtomium fortunei) all look splendid with milium effusum and a variety of anemones. One of the nicest was bought simply because the name was such a mouthful - polystichum setiferum plumosomultilobum! The hakenochloa has a battle to survive as both dogs and cat make a beeline for its succulent (to them) leaves - I actually had to spray it with summat I got from the vet to stop my collie from chewing her foot where she had a tumour removed (bitter spray). Sadistically, I rather enjoyed watching the dismayed scowling of the beasties after tucking in to large bites of alum flavoured grass.
Planted my first lettuces, just before rain fell on the parched soil of East Anglia. Magic! Peppers have germinated and are ready for potting on and I have been sorting and swapping veg seeds. There is a new variety of squash, especially for the UK climate which I am looking forward to - Autumn Crown, a hybrid between Crown Prince and butternut. CP is tasty but enormous while butternut never ripens here unless it has been an extraordinary summer so I have high hopes. As usual, I always have too many squashed because they are just so beautiful - there is nothing to match going to the plot on a foggy autumn morning to find numerous golden, orange, pale blue, deep green, dappled, speckled and luminous squashes, resting on the dark fen soil. So voluptuous.
After the tomato years (up to 20 varieties and far too many plants) I limit myself to a mere handful of varieties and only 50 plants. A couple are reliable faves (Sungold, Alicante, Matina) I grow every year and try 1 new one as well. Same with the potatoes (Kestrel, a fantastic potato in every way).
The only thing I spray against is horrid peach leaf curl - the trick is the timing and I hope I managed it OK this year - a blast of copper just before bud break. The little nectarines are tiny and deep crimson with white flesh and utterly luscious. This year, I am hoping for filberts, plums and maybe even almonds, along with Meyer lemons, from young trees planted over the last 4/5 years although there will be another year to wait for the new raspberries (the old ones were badly virused and had to go, along with many blackcurrants with Big bud mite - gah.
As always, March is a taunting month - we may like to think it is spring but we cannot escape the freezing winds, sleet and misery of late winter. Still, there are primroses and early tulips. A long slow burn until April comes flying in.

My garden is still basically asleep but I sure have enjoyed reading about all of yours!

The only things with actual blooms on them are a handful of yellow crocus. The tulips, daffs, and hyacinth are all up about two inches. I can see one tiny red point of a peony sticking out of the ground maybe a quarter inch. A lot of things never totally died off this crazy winter. I've had some green leaves at the bases of my heucheras, aquilegea and mums all winter. And the leaves at the base of the Autumn Snow clem I got a piece of from a neighbor last fall have stayed green too. Five primroses have green leaves and what looks like it might be the start of some flower buds coming. The hydrangeas have leaf buds fattening nicely which is scary. I just know they'll freeze. They're so tender. That will reduce my bloom this year. The iris have some small new leaves starting and my poppies have greened up. Gee, I guess there's more coming awake out there than I thought!

The roses have looked green all winter and there are some that definitely have new leaves starting but it's much too soon to uncover them let alone prune them. The forsythia is greening up though so it won't be too long now!

Harmony, I like camelias too: they were all over the place in north Florida where I grew up, and common in western Washington where I later lived as well. The flowers are so beautiful, and I have a big weakness for glossy evergreen foliage. Have you discovered the Williamsii hybrids yet? 'Donation' is one of the best known, and it is SO lovely! And one of my favorites in recent years is my Sasanqua camelia. The Sasanquas have smaller and less formally elegant flowers than the Japonicas, though profuse, but the Sasanquas bloom in late fall to early winter, right when the days are wettest and darkest and all the summer growth in the garden has turned to black-brown slime. They are inspiring plants. I can't grow acidophile plants in my garden, but I've found that camelias do fine as small plants in manageably sized clay pots. They can live happily this way for years, blooming abundantly in their season.
We just had a good rain but, like you, are way below normal levels for water and have a good chance of drought this summer. I hope you, and we, get plenty of rain soon!

Suzy, yes, I do have a considerable element of the collector in my gardener makeup. It's somewhat controlled by my natural tightfistedness, so that when I discover a new plant I tend to buy all the cheap forms of it, which are often the classics anyway, then observe them for a few years while I continue on with other things. Also my plant lust is held in bounds by my need to insert new discoveries in the garden in some aesthically (and ecologically) functional way. I give a lot of attention to garden design.
I have moments of envy of people who have serious food gardens. I've never developed the habits or skills necessary for growing fruits and vegetables, but we just don't have the conditions here for them, at least, not for vegetables. Very little flat ground close to the house, and what there is is used for propagation, and only water from the public source, and that's a limited supply with a lot of people depending on it. I have occasional daydreams of a quarter acre of well-maintained former grainfield, fairly level and fenceable (on account of the wild boars) and a well. There would also be the habits and skills to develop, of course. We may get somewhere with fruit one day. I do plant a few tomatoes every year for salads, and there's always parsley, and most of the common herbs, which I grow as ornamentals in the garden close to the house. I bet your family eats very well. I agree that produce is lovely.
I haven't gotten to ferns yet...let me fool around with my heucheras and epimediums for a while. I've been discovering the past few years just how many handsome low-growing plants like clay soil on a slope in a woodland environment. Also I was browsing through the Esveld site yesterday and discovering shrubs I've never even heard of, like Leycesteria formosa and Xanthorhiza simplicissima. We Italian residents do live in a horticultural backwater.
The fact is, I'll be a beginner gardener for the rest of my life. Ars lunga, vita brevis. But the garden gets more beautiful and more interesting every year.

Seil, I'm glad you enjoyed reading all these notices. It makes my toes curl just thinking about a garden in which nothing is in bloom yet, and I hope you get flowers soon! Spring is on the way!

Melissa

um, leycesteria formosa - not really as bad as japanese knotweed but a rampant suckering thing - we call it by its common name of pheasant berry.
I have never grown xanthorhiza (yellowroot) but I came across it on a natural dyeing course I went on once - have a feeling that this is also something of a rampant grower but it does have those nice anemone-like leaves.
Ah camellias - what to say apart from the fact that I loathe them - the shiny, shiny leaves, the geometrically perfect petal formation but mostly, the way they sit, looking nastily plastic on the bushes. There is just one that I might consider - Cornish Snow. Needless to say, it does not really look anything like a 'normal' camellia.
Do you find that there are some plants which are just a bit meh? While others are either loved or detested, black or white - no shades of grey at all. Well, Camellias are one such plant for me. Mind, I used to feel much the same about kniphophias (knifophias? Kniphofias? Red hot pokers). I would confidently state that I would NEVER consider them, even as a giveaway....but lo, what do I see in my late summer borders but a great clump of the ex-offenders so camellias, well, never say never.

Oh Melissa - your words are worth repeating. Enough said.

"...I'll be a beginner gardener for the rest of my life. Ars lunga, vita brevis. But the garden gets more beautiful and more interesting every year..."

Thanks, Harmony. That Latin tag does say it all, doesn't it?

Suzy, that's exactly what I'm talking about:
(Gardener in Italy) Wow, look at all these interesting plants I ran across on that site that I never heard of before!!
(Gardener in England) Oh, those.

With my heavy, heavy clay, lack of summer water, and general difficulty in getting shrubs to grow, "rampant suckering thing" doesn't strike the fear into my heart that it does into more privileged gardeners'; quite the opposite in fact. And the flowers look nifty.
Another Latin tag: De gustibus non disputandum. You think camelia leaves look like plastic; I love their rich heavy glossy green, and the formally beautiful flowers are fine. To each his own tastes. I like forsythia too, which I noticed somewhere you said you hated: there's nothing like that early spring blast of yellow after a long dark winter. I don't care whether plants are common or rare, and I have plenty of room in my garden for a good scattering of shrubs that look anonymous outside their season of bloom. There seem to be a lot of members of the family Oleaceae that do well here. I like Kniphofias as well--though not the common yellow and orange red hot poker--and am planning to buy more this year. I have just one now, with good foliage like tall grass, and flowers of a lovely luminous orange.

Melissa

I am also preparing for spring, but being a wimp, I am only working in the garden on nice days.
That means I am late with a lot of things which should have been done by now.
To-day is sunny and warm, but there is a Gaddafi blowing.
That is what we call a southerly wind.
It blows over from Libya, North Africa and it is strong, destructive and full of ****.
However two days ago, was THE most gorgeous spring day.
I wrote about it on the Mediterranean Gardening Society's forum.
This is what I said...

To-day has been the most perfect spring day. Everything seems to be bouncing out of the ground.
The black plum tree, the golden gage tree and both of the apricot trees are in full blossom.
The amount of bees working them is astounding.
I have been belatedly sowing some annual flower seeds and all the time I am working, the air is filled with the sound of the bees.
The poem, The Lake Isle of Innisfree by W.B. Yeats keeps running through my head as I work.

I will arise now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made,
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings,
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnets wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore,
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart's core

{{gwi:238424}}

My apricot blossom.
Daisy