DECEMBER SUNRISE

 The benefit of getting up early on a Sunday morning in almost winter is this...a cherry red sunrise. As they say, "Red sky in morning, sailors take warning." We are expecting a Pacific storm to blow in today or tonight.

 It wasn't until I loaded this photo on the computer that I saw something else...a reminder of a Western sky that we don't ever want to see out our kitchen window! Perhaps a hint of the future and surely a pulse raising reminder of the immediate past...

So I'll choose this photo to ease my mind and remind myself that there can still be beauty in nature to enjoy.

STAR OF THE DECEMBER GARDEN

 The oak leaf hydrangea is giving us a real show this year! Besides the white blossoms that turn to green, then to mauve and last to a pink gold, the big leaves have really become the best of the fall color.

 The leaves have turned from dark green to yellow, to orange, to pink, to fuchsia, to  mauve, and finally to a deep blue grey.

THANKSGIVING

We're not in a festive mood this year due to the hideousness of wildfire in Paradise. So we have to remind ourselves to be thankful for small stuff like this little maple that suddenly turned a beautiful shade of red orange while we weren't looking. Every place I go in Medford we seem to end up talking about Paradise...the young man who bagged my groceries at Traders said he lost his childhood home in Paradise and as did many of his former neighbors. 
So we're thinking of the North State (of California) this year.  

PEOPLE WANT SOMEBODY TO BLAME...

The rules have changed when it comes to wildfires in the West...If you are living in a forested or suburban area with mature trees and next to wildlands, you have to pay attention. The reverse 911 calls only work if folks believe them. Too many think it's still the days of defending your home with a garden hose! THOSE DAYS ARE OVER!!!
Personal responsibility! 

HERE IN THE WEST, WE ARE ALL LIVING WITH A VERY FALSE SENSE OF SECURITY!

It turns out that lots of folks up here in the Rogue Valley have friends and relatives in the Paradise/Chico area. I ran into a couple of them at Trader Joe's. One lady told me that her kids lived in Paradise until last year when they sold their home and moved into Chico because they feared wildfires like what happened in 2008. Another lady said her son, a physician, lived in Chico and was helping with the evacuation, treating people as they escaped the flames but had burns.  
Our kids are safe in Chico, but our daughter in law Susan (who works for the city of Paradise and has lived there most of her life) has been pulling 12 hour shifts at the emergency command center. We did hear that the Town Hall in Paradise was not burned down. Hope that is true!
We are just as much at risk here in the foothills of the Cascades because the same conditions exist...overbuilding and overgrowth of fuels. So many people here don't clean out their underbrush in their yards. We could be next. 

CAUTION...MAD WOMAN WITH A RAKE AHEAD!

 Yeah, it happens every year but I'll not be found with rake in hand  until after this wind storm moves through! Thousands more to come down with our two maples!

 What gravel paths?

By tomorrow, they'll be about 6" deep on the patio...

GREENIES

 It's the end of veggie gardening season and I've been humoring myself by leaving several green heirloom tomatoes on the vine in hopes that the warm daytime temps will convince them to ripen. I don't know if these are Brandywine (pink when ripe) or German (yellow/orange when ripe) as this grafted plant has both varieties. But with much cooler temps forecast for this week, I took down the plants and discovered even more tomatoes!  So it looks like some fried green tomato sandwiches are in our future.

LATE SEASON CATCH-ALL BLOG

My friend Carolyn gave me an old Borden's Creamery wooden box a few years back so I have re-purposed it as a shelf in the greenhouse so I can hold more pots of succulents. Last night we heard a funny "plop" sound but didn't investigate. Today I discovered that one of the succulent pots I brought in from the outdoors and put in the dining room was full of ants and they had actually "kicked out" an entire plant on to the floor. I immediately hauled the offending pot outside, dumped the soil and "quarantined" the plants to make sure that all the ants are gone. 

 The heavenly blue morning glory is so late this year that it is just now blooming! Too bad as cold temps tonite may finish it off for the season. 

Mr. A has been using his time wisely in the shop by painting yet another sign for his cabinets...this time the composition is all things Cord...a car built for only a couple of years in the late 1930's. I like the fall motif he used!

REFURBISHED (WISH I COULD SAY THE SAME!)

After about 15 years of hanging around outside on fences, the sign I painted in the mid 2000's was looking worn so my under-gardener/sign painter took it in hand and redid it in One Shot paint...that's the paint that still has lead in it so it lasts longer. Now it looks so good I don't want to hang it outside until next spring, so I'll store it until then!

ANGEL CREST DRIVE AUTUMN CHORES...

 Before the leaves start to fall in earnest, I like to get in some "minor" fixes. Our old Newtown Pippin apple tree was close to falling over so we had to prune about one third of the front branches off. It is still leaning but I'm hoping it will hang in there. We harvested lots of apples, most with worms but we cut around those and made a nice pie and some sauce. The deer got the rest. 

 We added yet more lattice to our north garden fence...to hold the vines and ivy and to block out the view of the neighbor's house and dismal, unkempt yard.  

Pumpkins, antiques and fall foliage make a nice combination! We're decked out for the season...my favorite time of year!

SILVER IS THE NEW BLOND!

That's the word around here these days. Right after my last root appointment, in late June, I decided that it was time to quit spending so much time (and money) at the "beauty saloon" as Jack calls it. So I've been growing my silver and my stylist has been cutting off the warm brown tint. I've one more haircut to go in October and all the tint will be gone. Then it's just my "original hair" growing out, which turns out to be more of an ash brown in the back, along with the silver in the front. 
I feel lucky that my stylist, Joy, is so supportive. She says lots of her clients get to this point and can't get through the grow out stage. So they resort to color again. Too bad! I've discovered that having much shorter hair is so nice and easy. Maybe I'll just keep getting frequent cuts and watching the silver take over. 

WINDING DOWN IN THE GARDEN

 Here in the Rogue Valley we are experiencing an early autumn this year, it seems. Night temps in the low 40's mean that most veggies just stop doing much. Usually we have rather hot temps until almost the end of the month but not this year. Probably means we'll have a lot of green tomatoes to ripen indoors. But I'm not complaining because the cooler temps are so nice! 

So I'm madly dumping pots, planting some things into the ground and putting some things in bigger pots. Time to "activate" my pot washing sink (a laundry tray that my under gardener installed mainly for just this purpose)...washing up pots before I store them away for winter. I bring out a bucket of hot, sudsy water and turn it into mud, basically, as I scrub out the insides. It usually takes several times changing out the water to get all the pots cleaned. I let them dry out for a couple of days so that if I want to stack them, they won't freeze together in the winter. 

GOT SUCCULENTS?

 Our weather has taken a decidedly "fallish" feel so I've been gathering up all the succulents that won't survive this winter in our Sunset Zone 7. Turns out that's a lot of 'em! 
But first I had to clean out and paint the interior of my tiny greenhouse. I used Miller Storm in "boxwood" which bears no resemblance to the real color of boxwood! But I like it as it is a sort of a sage green although it looks very blue here.

 I added some small shelves at the back of the counters to raise up plants so I could get to them more easily.  

We even activated the heater (lower left of photo) last night as it got down into the mid 40's. That's a Kalanchoe blooming away on the left. Looks like I'm almost maxed out and I still have a Meyer lemon and a geranium to shoe horn in! How did I get so many succulents anyway? 

SMOKE GETS IN OUR EYES...

I guess we were getting antsy or something, being stuck indoors during the outdoor season. We've had wall to wall smoke for several weeks now (no surprise with 150,000 plus acres burning up around us), with only an occasional few hours when we could actually see the sky. Sometimes there were even clouds and stars...who knew?
So this morning when we could actually open the windows and enjoy a bit of fresh air, we opted for the lumber yard and a mini project.

 With $90 worth of 2"x 12" cedar planks and some treated 2x4's we designed and built a small platform to hold the birdbath and assorted pots. Here I'm "head down, butt up" (thankfully photographed by the under gardener from the kind position) painting the cedar with Miller Storm in "boxwood" which is really a sage green. 

Here you see the alternating pots of daylilies and dwarf boxwood NOT sinking into the gravel and clay soil beneath! Quite an improvement. And now with the help of additional gravel under the platform we may be able to level the birdbath! 
We got it done just in time as the smoke is drifting back into the hills here. 

IN HOCK...

 My volunteer hollyhock is loving its location in the garden. I figure it free seeded from my neighbor's yard. It is over 8' tall and growing in the gravel and un-amended clay soil next to the raised beds but not in one!  
I've never had any luck growing hollyhocks "on purpose." They always die on me. Obviously they thrive in heavy clay soil with little water! 

ROGUE VALLEY CLIMATE CHANGE?

 When I first moved to the Rogue Valley in 1971, I couldn't buy agapanthas (Lily of the Nile) anywhere. I had to "import" them from California where they enjoyed popularity, even on freeway medians. Here the standard answer to my query about them was, "Oh no, they aren't possible in our zone!" (Sunset zone 7). And they didn't survive the cold winters so I stopped planting them back then.  
HOW TIMES HAVE CHANGED!

Today they are widely available at all nurseries and garden centers in the valley. For the past several years we haven't had the extreme low temps that would kill them! Other formerly tender plants have also become available at local nurseries suggesting that our climate has indeed changed! 

IT'S GRAND!

Yes, just looking at my little grand niece Tessa makes my milk drop! Isn't she a sweetie. And my sister-in-law is reveling in being a grandma for the first time and getting to spend lots of time with her in Texas.   

BIG BOX ARRIVES AS PROMISED!

 My sonny Chris and my delightful daughter-in-law Susan warned during their birthday call to me that a "big box" would show up on our doorstep sometime in late June...IT DID!

 It is a huge resin planter, self watering with a BASKET WEAVE look, on legs. 

My under-gardener wants to put in a special word of "thanks," as he got the job of moving it around in the yard several times before I settled on the right spot. 
"OH COME ON, IT'S NOT THAT HEAVY!" I said. 
I picked a spot where I've struggled to make anything look good... the slope to the southwest, almost to the very end of my garden. Nothing seemed to work there. It's under the shade of the big silver maple tree so I had a few pots of ferns propped up on rocks. 
Now the legs of the planter elevate the foliage so the eye looks up, not down at the slope. In other words, it disguises the slope nicely! 
"PERFECT!" I said. Don't you just love instant gratification!
We did have to use a board at the back to shore it up so the legs wouldn't sink into the gravel.
So here it is kitted out with ferns in my own special "fern grotto." For now I'm using pots but I'll probably plant the ferns in it this fall. 
A GREAT BIRTHDAY GIFT!

OLD CROW FACELIFT

No folks, not me! Too bad it it isn't as easy as this! 
My under-gardener and head sign painter took pity on the old crow in the garden (again, not me) and repainted it with One Shot sign painter's paint. Yes, that's the paint that still has lead in it, so he needs lots of ventilation! I usually place this sign between the tomato plants but they are already growing past their cages and filling the entire bed so we put it at the end where it can be seen...for now!   
   

BIRTHDAY SURPRISE!

 My Honey and resident sign painter said that I just needed this sign. I've been so upset since this BS immigration policy business that I've become depressed. Not a good thing! So he cheered me up by creating this sign. It reminds me that I can't let the current horseshit get me down. Soon we'll be rid of the ASSHOLE government in DC...one way or another! 

A NIGHT OUT WITH THE EAGLES!

 Big theatre goers that we are (so not), we splurged and went to our local live theatre venue, THE CAMELOT THEATRE in downtown Talent, Oregon! It was as they say in reviews, "a night not to be missed" as we were treated to a spectacular show featuring all the Eagles hits, along with the history. The local band EAST MAIN BAND  was fabulous. The only thing missing was Miss Linda R's voice on Desperado.  

For us, as dancers, it's VERY FRUSTRATING not to be able to dance to this group. Most of the great local groups play at wineries, as does this one. Wineries don't have a clue about providing a dance venue. To them, dancing is just wiggling your butt to music, not moving around a floor to music. So in past that means to enjoy great groups we've had to SACRIFICE OUR BODIES  by dancing on concrete with dangerous expansion grooves, rough wood decks and flimsy plywood with little support underneath or slippery tile. NOT COOL! But we did it because we were desperate. 
Looking back on the "Eagles era" of the 1970's, I was busy raising babies and keeping the train on the tracks with my first husband. It was a full time job to say the least, but the Eagles provided lots of background music that made the job a bit easier and kept me at least partially sane. 
The audience for this concert was just about totally gray-haired. It made me realize that it really was just about 50 years ago I first heard them. Oye! 

IT'S A SIGN...

 Did I mention that my under-gardener is also an erstwhile sign painter? So he gifted me with an early birthday present since I happened to walk into his workshop whilst he was painting it. It was meant to be a surprise for later in the month. 
The play on words is thanks to long time garden columnist Dulcy Mahar's husband Ted, who had a sign made to put on her much larger potting shed (which was really a nice hideaway at the back of her garden, complete with a sofa for napping and artwork!)  

Mine...not so fancy and A LOT smaller! That means that I can't do as much POUTING AS I'D LIKE! Since I've grown up though, I don't pout as much as I did when I was a teenager and my mom accused me of being a Ubangi! Those are the folks in Africa with the enlarged lower lips thanks to bones placed in them...what we all learned from the National Geographic back in the day! Well, pouting aside, the sign adds a nice touch, don't you think?

Notice too that my potting, er pouting shed is almost empty of plants. Even with shade cloth draped over the roof, it gets up into the 100's quickly on warm days. Who needs a crockpot?...I could just do a pot roast in a casserole dish in there and I'm sure it would be cooked to perfection by dinner time! 

FIRST FLOWERS OF MAY FRESH FROM THE GARDEN

 I usually have to force myself to pick the first flowers that bloom.  We're promised 3 days of rain and thunderstorms so I told myself that I might as well enjoy these early blooms while I could...indoors! 

This vase contains roses, clematis, a peony and some geraniums.