Yayyy! It’s wintertime and everything is in bloom.
Well, not everything, but a lot of stuff that prefers cool weather to the blast-furnace effect of a globally warmed Sonoran desert. Roses, for example, are very fond of winter here…
The big lavender plant that would like to shove the Myer lemon tree out of its way has recovered from its fall haircut, it having wearied during the summer. It will stay in bloom all winter, all spring, and through most of the summer.
The bougainvillea doesn’t much care what time of year it is: as long as we avoid a freeze, it blooms all year round. Right now it’s pretty vigorous.
Something—probably burr clover, not dichondra—is struggling back to life between the flagstones in back. Gerardo hollered at me because he thought I wasn’t watering enough. But I don’t think that was the problem. It acts more like pearl mites, a rugged little parasite that devastates lawns in these parts. Right now it’s cool enough to drive them dormant, and so the walk-on-me plants between the stones are coming back to life.
The bush peas I put in a few weeks ago are blossoming, and here’s our first baby pea pod! Yum.
Several other veggies are thriving. Ready now: the Swiss chard: 
No need for Christmas decorations around here. The orange trees come with their own ornaments:
Over the weekend, Cassie and I hung out in the front courtyard, where I read endless pages of copy about medieval and Renaissance history and she took the afternoon air, watched hummingbirds, and barked in harmony with Biker Boob’s yapping pit bull:
So it goes. Like Dilsey, summer or winter, hard times or good, some things endure.