Fall Has Sprung!

It looks like our annual second spring is here early. The heat has broken, a good month sooner than normal. We still could get another blast or two, but the longer it stays cool, the less likely that is. The frazzled plants have decided it’s safe to blossom again. One of the fricaseed roses managed to put out a small, tentative flower:

Not bad, considering how fried this poor shrub has been. I’ve had water bills pushing $150 trying to keep the plantings alive…and that’s with no grass!

Don’t know what this thing is, but isn’t it interesting?

It has strappy leaves like a garlic chive, but there’s no scent. I think it’s some kind of bulb that finally decided to come up…I’m always sticking bulbs in the ground and forgetting about them. WhatEVER. Cassie likes it…

Actually, what she’s liking here is pestering the human to throw the ball. Bossy little dog!

Even the cacti are happy with the cooler weather! Look at this amazing thing that appeared in the front yard…

You need to click on the image to get the full effect.

Not to be outdone, the Easter lily cactus in back put out three of these:

The little garden I planted next to the pool, in the dead of summer, survived the brutal heat and is now showing its appreciation for milder temps:

Zinnias and salvias: 99 cents for a pack of six! I thought they were going to die when they were little, especially the salvia. But they managed to make it, mostly by dint of being flooded with hose water once or twice a day. Pretty little things, aren’t they? Not spectacular, but they do the job of allaying one’s general depression.

The pool, which has been very well behaved in the absence of the Devil Pod Tree, is fast getting too cool for swimming. Now that only a few days of swimming time remain, I’ve taken down the privacy screen I jury-rigged out of a couple of old wooden trellises and some shade screen (they really DID look white-trash!), which should increase the amount of light the new hop-bush plants are striving for. You  may remember that all four of these plants were about two feet high when I planted them.

The most robust of the hopseed bushes is now almost up to the top of that six-foot wall. By next summer, they should do  just fine to block the view from the sidewalk and the neighbors’ front windows into my yard.

That orange jubilee in the foreground, contrary to the nurseryman’s opinion, did not appreciate 115-degree days. It barely made it through the summer, again, by dint of my pouring vast quantities of water on the thing. Once established, though, a plant like this can get quite large. It could easily top that ugly shed.

The shed itself is not as obtrusive in real life as it appears in this photo. From most parts of the yard, it’s barely visible, and I think when these plants fill out, it should become even less prominent. Thought about putting up a trellis and training a jasmine or two up there, but that sounds a great deal like more trouble than it’s worth.

Best thing I’ve done for myself in this house was to take out the accursed Devil Pod Tree that occupied that corner. In the absence of the bushels and bushels of strappy leaves and equipment-clogging, plaster-staining pods, the pool has run almost trouble-free all summer long. We have had a few windy, dirty monsoons, but none required me to get out there and haul pounds of debris off the bottom of the pool. Matter of fact, the pool has been virtually trouble-free. Harvey the Hayward Pool Cleaner has easily handled what little stuff has fallen into the drink, and I’ve only had to shock-treat once. That alone represents a large savings.

Part of the savings came from dumping Leslie’s and hiring a local pool company. I’ve had that guy out here once, count it, once, since the heat came up. Oh…except for the time the pump pot lid worked itself loose. What I thought would be a $300 to $600 repair job cost me $60. And he gave me a new lid for free. You can bet that Leslie’s would have taken me to the cleaners over that misadventure.

The Devil Pod Tree is undead, though. It keeps pushing up suckers, trying to rise from the grave:

I’ve found these sprouts fifty feet away from the trunk! The accursed tree had shot its roots under the patio all the way over to the far side of the yard, heaving the concrete in the process. The only thing that will kill these things is straight, undiluted Round-up.

Whatever could have possessed Satan and Proserpine to plant such a thing? Stupidity, I guess…they stuck some other mighty dumb things in the ground, too. They were pretty good with interior remodeling, but landscaping was just not their thing.

There’s another Devil Pod Tree on the west side of the house. It’s now as tall as the forty-year-old palm trees some other hapless homeowner put next to the pool. Since the arborist only charged $300 to take down the Undead One, I’m thinking I may have him take that one out, too. Several trees need some pruning this winter, and so we might as well be rid of the other mess-maker while his crew is here. In addition to dropping large quantities of mess all over the place, this one is dangerously close to the house. Willow acacias are as brittle as eucalyptus, and this one now has big branches that could break off and crash onto my house or my neighbor Terri’s. And of course Satan planted the thing right next to the wall, which the tree is threatening to heave. I’d just as soon get rid of the tree now than have to get someone in here to rebuild that wall in a few years. The emerald paloverde now provides all the shade that’s needed to protect the west side of the house from the broiling afternoon sun.

Darn! It’s already 5:30…have to start to run to get all the stuff done so as to race out the door to get to class by 7:30 a.m. Oh…they’re in the computer commons today. Good: I won’t have to talk to them. The Tuesday-Thursday class, the one that soaks up three of my most productive hours in the middle of the day, is in the library on Thursday, so I’m relieved of having to entertain them this week. Only two days this week to fill with lecture and busywork. This is Week Five. Just eleven weeks left of this impossible routine!

It’s going to be made a lot worse this week and next: I agreed to substitute for a colleague who’s going in for some surgery. So on Tuesdays and Thursdays I won’t get out of class until 4:30 in the afternoon! Then I’ll have to drive home through the rush-hour traffic. Meanwhile three projects for a client are sitting on my desk…how the hell I’m supposed to do those while I’m wrestling with students four days a week, I do not know. Fortunately, he’s just as overworked as I am, and so distracted he doesn’t realize I’m not moving forward on his work at anything more than a stately pace.

Welp…off and running!