HOME FROM THE HILLS

After 6 weeks away you can imagine I was a little nervous about how my garden would look. The summer monsoon had not materialized and temperatures had been unseasonably hot. Tales from the DBG in Phoenix told us of the saguaro suffocating in the unusually high night-time temperatures. We are a little higher in Oro Valley (3000') which makes us cooler by about 8° More than my fingers were crossed when we pulled into the driveway. But I had to wait until morning because it was already dark too late to walk around. We had arrived home to a strong thunderstorm and temperatures in the 70s so next morning I was delighted to find the front garden looking very good.

The bougainvillea on the front walkway had a few blooms. Just enough to brighten the wall. 

 It looks as though a bird has been busy making a nest. For now it is just a platform of twigs and may even have been abandoned. Possibly a thrasher or cactus wren. Our comings and goings may be too much for it.

 

The chocolate daisy, Berlandiera lyrata, opens up with new flowers every morning, so I was happy to see it was still putting on a show. It is getting a little lanky and could do with a prune but is now the right time? Like most I am not happy to cut off a good bloom.

And the blanket flower, Gaillardia pulchella, still going strong. It was blooming when we left six weeks ago.

Other native plants likes the skullcap, Scutellaria potosina ssp platyphylla add a splash of purple in front of the young Whale's tongue agave, Agave ovatifolia. Despite all the structural plants I am not happy to do without a little color.

Along with the bright white of the blackfoot daisy, Melampodium leucanthum. 

So many of these plants are a reminder of my Austin garden, although there the barrel cactus were in pots. I regret now that I didn't bring the larger ones. I think I could have pulled them out of their pots and brought them bare root.

There are only a few large agave remaining. This one is on the corner beneath the palo verde. But wherever we took out the Agave weberi new pups are springing up. I am potting some of them up to plant out behind the house. There is good value to be had out of these large structural agave and I find I miss them. For the first time ever I have started to protect them from the weevil by using the systemic Imidacloprid around the base.

 Another very spiny agave guards the edge of the driveway and is forever in risk of being run over. It is a slow grower but it puzzles me why they would have planted it so close to the edge. It has produced only one pup which I relocated.

I am really quite fond of the brittle bush, Encelia farinosa, which blooms in the spring with masses of yellow flowers. It reseeds around the garden and I leave some of them to grow into small bushes.

One of the plants I was most concerned about was the Meyer lemon tree. It had lived in a large pot for 12 years, providing us with tens of lemons every year. We brought it with us and last year planted it in the ground. It looked good during the winter and produced many blooms but it wasn't happy and by May almost all its leaves had turned yellow and dropped off. I full expected it to be dead and was already planning to put in a new one this winter. Amazingly extra watering and some summer showers had brought it back to life and there is new growth.I will always give any sign of life in a plant a chance so it remains to be seen whether I will be replacing this after all.

Also down the side of the house the grapefruit tree is looking great and the 6 grapefruit are getting bigger. They have about 4-5 months to grow to full size and ripen.

It is my potted plants that suffered the most and many died. The lime tree had fallen over along with the plumerias. I must try to get the lime in the ground although the Mexican lime is one of the least hardy of the citrus. I may just have to give up in the plumeria. A large jade plant had completely rotted away. I don't know if it was the heat or lack of water but there was no9thing left of it. Of my herb and vegetable raised planters only the basil, sage, chive and peppers survived. David had put in a new water line to water them from beneath but I think they were getting too much water being on every day. This was really due to there being mixed water need plants on the same circuit. There is a lesson to be learnt here, although I think I have had the same lesson many times before. A constant presence in the garden is the only answer.

 Another storm blew through and was the trigger for all the Mammillaria grahamii to bloom. They have certainly put on a big show-a show always worth waiting for. 

One of the benefits of living in an arboreal desert.

A STUNNING DISPLAY OF YELLOW LUPINS

Sixteen miles north of Ketchum, Idaho, we turned onto Baker Rd. The road is a dirt road which travels about 10 miles up the valley, climbing 1000' to the trail heads for Baker Lake and Osberg Ridgeline Trail. We have hiked Baker many times but this time we were to take the Osberg Trail.

 The hillsides here were changed dramatically 10 years ago when a major forest fire swept though here burning much of the forest. It is hard to imagine a great trail climbing up through the burnt out trees but we were in for a surprise. 

It was a chance meeting with a couple who were summer volunteers at the Sawtooth Visitor Center. We had met them in Organpipe NM in February and as they told us they would be volunteering there this summer we were camping close by we popped in to see them. They told us about the fabulous stands of fireweed, Chamaenerion angustifolium, growing along the hillside. Fireweed is known as a pioneer plant, quickly colonizing areas of burnt or disturbed land. We couldn't miss out on the opportunity to see them.

The trail first dropped down to cross the creek where monkey flowers, Mimulus, lewisii, and Mountain shooting star, Dodecatheon, find their perfect niche.

 

 Elegant camas, Anticlea elegans

We then began a steady climb up through the forest. As usual I was stopping frequently to take photos. 

 Sticky geranium, Geranium viscosissimum, and Streambank wild hollyhock

Mountain dandelion, Agosteris

Lots of fireweed but only the odd one blooming. They are a few weeks away from blooming, their flowers only yet in tight bud, which surprised me. I had imagined a huge display of pink would greet us. Maybe further along.

 

It's hard to keep a good hiking pace going when you constantly stop to take a photo. It is not often I spot Monkshood, a plant with which I was so familiar in England. and along the edges of the trail penstemons. Some pale in color some bright purple.

 I will forever call them bluebonnets after living in Texas. Here I must call them lupins as they are much paler in color, sometimes verging on white with tinges of pink and yellow. 

White yarrow against a burnt tree stump. 

 

 All these wildflowers are familiar characters in the Sawtooth Mountains. 

 

Lewis's blue flax, Linum lewisii above.

 and phlox, Leptosiphone nuttallii.

 

 And the gorgeous white Mariposa lily, Calochortus eurycarpus. But the best display was yet to come as we spotted large swathes of yellow on the bare hillsides above.

 The lupins had kindly left open a narrow trail through which we could walk without disturbing their beauty.

Even David, and this is rare, took out his phone and began taking photos.

And here a white lupin alone among the yellow.

We were absolutely besotted with the spectacle before our eyes. How fortunate we were to have caught the display at its peak and on a perfect cloudy day. All the way down I was trying to come up with adjectives that would best describe the scene we had witnessed. Magnificent, spectacular, mind blowing, stunning? and then I remembered a little bit of British slang, I thought gobsmacking might just fit the bill. 

So it wasn't fireweed but lupins that were putting on a show. But there is no doubt that fireweed will have its turn in the coming weeks.