Spring flowers

Spring is finally here. It’s starting to get light in the morning when I come in to work and the weather is warming up. Supposed to hit 99f (37c) today and be up above 90 from now on. I love Vegas spring and fall. Don’t like the cold of winter, and the heat of summer is OK as long as the pool is available and the air conditioners work, but spring is nice, with the forecast of warmth and flowers blooming.

We don’t have very many native plants that have impressive blooms. The yucca is about the only one, with towers of white flowers at the tips. But people plant a lot of things, and as long as they get water we get flowers. It’s pleasant driving around with the windows open driving through drifts of fragrance coming from the plantings. As long as plants are regularly watered most do well in the heat, but we have lost some plants due to excessive cold in the winter.

These are what’s blooming around our yard this week:

Orange mallow, we also have yellow and red, these have been in a few years, and grow as a low bush, under one foot tall and about a yard wide, spreading out over the driveway.


Mexican primrose are weeds that do have some nice pink flowers in the spring and summer, but the seeds blow everywhere.


Our two olive trees have been in for over fifty years, and are quite large. Blooming olives can no longer be planted in Las Vegas due to the tremendous amount of pollen then produce – our front patio turns yellow from all of the drop.


Pyracantha does well, with very fragrant blooms now and red berries all winter. These are only a few years old, but we expect mounds about a yard high and wide as they grow.


The red yucca does well, as does a very similar one with yellow blooms. These are under a foot high, but put out spikes over a yard tall which will open shortly.


Don’t know what these are, but the flowers are numerous and pretty. It’s very low growing, not more than six inches high but spreading out.


We put out some sweet peas, among some summer snap peas and sunflowers.


Over the front patio we put in a wisteria that we brought up from San Diego. It’s finally filling in and starting to bloom.


That's about it, tomatoes in the raised beds are doing well with a lot of blooms and some starting to set fruit. That all has to set before the high heat comes, when things ripen but a lot of the plants don't put out blooms to get new ones until the fall when it starts cooling off again. Our cherry tomatoes usually produce a lot all year long.

Winter sunshine

It was a very pleasant Saturday here in Vegas, temps were right around 20c (68f) all afternoon with bright sunshine. We usually get a few weeks of nice weather at the end of January, then it cools off a bit. We usually spend this time cleaning up the yard and trimming the trees and bushes. This year B decided to do quite a bit of cutting back, as our sagebrush (now about seven years old) are over six feet high. They are really nice several times a year, when they are covered in purple blooms, but are a bit too large now. I know, there are varieties that stay small, but not when we bought these. The results of the pruning?


Piles and piles of branches waiting for bagging and disposal. You can see the results behind, we left them about a meter high. Beneath one side we found some paperwhites blooming already.


And the sunset sky was nice and clear, just a little mist and the aircraft vapor trails leaving LA.

Spring flowers 2010

I thought I’d show you some of the flowers that have been blooming around our yard this past week. First are some we planted in the front courtyard that aren’t natives.

We have a wisteria that we brought from San Diego, and are now training up the new cover we have out front.


B really liked these Angel Trumpet plants, but it does not do well here, they do not like the soil so we leave it in a pot, having to bring it inside I the winter because of the cold, and having it lose most of it’s leaves in the summer heat. But right now the flowers are about 8” long and very nice.


One of the past owners left these iris plants, which have been coming up every year.


We also found a Banks rose along the pool, doing nowhere as well as the ones we had in southern California.


From a few seeds planted in the bed a few years ago, the California poppies have spread around most of the yard.



In the same area, Buster realized it has warmed up, and he is back dozing in the sunshine. He will be out here frequently for most of the summer.


One of the natives we have that isn’t blooming yellow right now is the desert mallow. This bush is about a meter tall and two wide, been in for five years.


Along the pool some Mexican primrose have taken over one side, they do quite well here and have spread to spots around the yard.


We put in some other small natives, in scattered spots around.



And along the pool as well.


That’s our Spring yard, mostly yellow, lots of flowers coming out after a wet winter and before the heat of summer. It was cool today, but due to get up into the mid 90’s by mid week. (35c)

Oh - just noticed, Blogger says this is my one thousandth post. Didn't think I'd hang around this long.

Summer purple

Last week it was purple time here in the valley. Springtime in Vegas is primarily yellow, most of the desert trees and shrubs bloom with bright yellow flowers, and lots of yellow pollen. It is a nice prelude to the bright sunshiny summer to come, but my nose can do without all of the pollen floating around - the area by our front door just collects it, and it’s almost like walking through yellow snow (no, not that kind Zappa fans) to get to the door.

The other desert color we see is purple, which comes from all of the sage brush. We’ve got a couple of dozen sage planted in our yard, a few different kinds that bloom in shades varying from pink to deep purple. Haven’t figured out the bloom cycle, supposedly they are driven by the humidity, but whatever it is last week was purple time in the Las Vegas valley. The first ones to bloom in our yard was a variety called Texas Ranger.


We weren’t sure that our plants would have any flowers on them. Things started blooming out around the area and ours were still just green. We have a row right outside the kitchen window, and we would see these little bitty sparrows bouncing around inside the bushes, and it took a while to see that they weren’t eating bugs but eating the flower buds before they had a chance to open; I guess the flowers taste good to them. I’d stand at the sink looking out and see a dozen or more of these grey brown birds, about the size of canaries, hopping inside the bushes and just chirping at each other and pecking and eating away. We thought they might have chomped down on all the buds, but then last week the purple did appear.

Most of the sages planted by businesses have been trimmed into round balls or other unusual shapes; when these bloom you end up with a big purple ball with most of the green leaves covered up by the flowers. We let ours grow however they want to, and this past winter we followed some local advice and just cut off a few older branches down at the base. As a result some of our plants look rather unusual. After five years in the ground most of the sage bushes are about four or five feet high and the same across, with one or two strange branches sticking out. The plant behind this one was a big yellow mass a few months ago.


Out front we planted a row just behind the wall along the street. The ones right under the big palm are not very large, stunted either by the shade or the lack of water from the palm sucking it all up. Our last grass out front was the semi-circle under the palm, but we covered that up last winter, pulled the sprinklers out and put in a soaker hose for the palm under a layer of crushed rock. Our neighbor across the street liked the green surrounded by his circular driveway so rather than convert to rock he got some artificial turf that stays green all the time. Doesn’t take much water, and it does provide a nice lead in to his purple sage.


Here is that row from the other end.


The tall palms across the street were just trimmed the weekend before, and look kind of empty. I need to have ours out by the pool trimmed back. That big palm in front of our house doesn’t get skinned like those, I cut off the bottom row of fronds when they drop down and touch the ground. You can see that we don’t have curbs and sidewalks in this area, or street lights. The lots are all half acre minimum, with horses and other animals permitted. We liked this section of town because of that, it seemed more rural while still being close to things. The guy right next door used to have chickens, and raised some turkeys for last Thanksgiving. One of the houses behind those across from us does have a corral and several horses, as do others around. We see them riding past the house some mornings, but it seems to me that there isn’t really enough room here to go for nice rides, but just a few minutes trailering up to Red Rock there are lots of horse trails up into the mountains.

Around the side of our house is the strip of bushes under our kitchen window. These are the ones that are always full of birds. You can also see a pile of lumber to the left: that was my Father’s Day work.


Here is that row from the other side, from where our outside dining table is. The sage blossoms have a very slight sweet smell, B really likes it. The rest of the year the plants have the typical sage smell, especially when you brush up against them.


Driving home from work on Tuesday I noticed something:


(you will notice I did wait until I stopped at our house before taking the picture) It seems summer has finally arrived. June was rather cool, I think this is the first time it has gotten up to triple digits in June, even though it got up to 103 in May. Yes, I did have the windows up and the air conditioning on, though again this was the first time I did that. I like it when it’s hot, and when driving alone usually just roll down the windows, but when B is in the car windows are up and air is on. The forecast in today’s paper showed 102 followed by triple digit days for the upcoming week. Hopefully we don’t go over 110 until mid July, but who knows?

The sage blossoms don’t last for very long, the Texas Rangers have all dropped their blossoms and some lighter pinks of a different variety are blooming out front now. As a result we end up with this view of the flowers


And under the mesquite tree that was a big yellow ball a few months ago we have the remainders of it’s blooming.


Most of the desert plants have fine leaves, and the flowers are very small, so you can’t rake up what falls, especially with the bare dirt and rocks underneath, it just has to stay and be blown away by the wind. We do get some tremendous winds here, but depending on the direction and the layout of your yard you might end up with more stuff deposited than blown away.

Oh, and that pile of lumber before? B finished painting it, and I had the pleasure of installing out front on top of that metal framework I installed in December.


So now our front patio looks like this.


The wisteria on the ironwork is green, there were a lot of blooms on that this spring, and it will be trained up over the boards to provide summer shade and let us enjoy the spring flowers hanging down. We have a solid covering out back; B wanted a little sunlight here out front. It went up just in time for the full heat, now I just have to get up some misters and replace the front window with some big French doors. The front of our house faces east; if those trees weren’t there you’d be looking down on the Strip in the above shot. We can’t see much because of the houses, but the guy across the street with the two story house has a balcony out back off his bedroom that has marvelous views. He gets to see all of the Strip fireworks shows on the fourth of July and New Year’s Day. Our back patio is on the west side, so on summer evenings when the sun is down a little and shining onto the patio around the cover we plan on coming out here where it will be shady. Yes, it will probably be 110f but hopefully with the shade and misters we can enjoy our margaritas and suck on the ice and just chill out; as much as you can chill out when it’s 110. (That’s about 44c for you guys that think metric).

What's blooming now?

It’s getting into warmer weather here, up in the high 90’s every day this week, with our first triple digit prediction of 105f (41c) forecast for Sunday. With the higher temps many of the flowering plants around are either putting out their blooms before drying up or have just finished flowering. On my walk to work from where I park are some highly scented flowers that always remind me of Spring. Along the lot where our new convention center will eventually go is a strip between the fence and the sidewalk. This is filled with prostrate Rosemary and some white flowering plant that is very sweet in the mornings. Don’t know what it is called, but it is really nice walking in and having this scent come up on the breeze. Jammie thinks that flower is a sweet olive; looking at web sites it seems to match, I’ll have to check the next time we’re at the nursery. Thanks J! If you walk close to the plants then you can get a whiff of the rosemary.


The scent from those is most noticeable in the morning, when it is cooler and there is less of a breeze to disburse the fragrance, and brightens the start of my day. Instead of walking from my car just thinking about things I am struck by how sweet they are and look at the plants and the things going on around me. I was talking with B about how scents can trigger memories, often producing flashbacks that are more realistic than just trying to remember a past time. Our daughter was just back in San Francisco to relive a bit of her past and go to a Grateful Dead concert once again, and she said that what she noticed most about the bay area was the smell of the eucalyptus (which doesn’t grow up in Portland where she is now) along with car exhaust. B said her most vivid memory was when she visited her grandmother and heard some doves outside the bathroom window, and remembered all the times she brushed her hair there listening to the cooing. I guess there are memory triggers inside all of us, just waiting for the right thing to set them off.

Another non-native that does well here with sufficient watering is the white jasmine. It is a rambling vine, often used as a ground cover or trained up a fence. These flowers are also sweet smelling. Here they are along the wall of the big RHC next door; mixed with some tall flower and I think the only magnolia trees in Vegas (not doing well at all, probably too dry for them). These I notice most on my lunchtime walks, it seems that the heat of midday brings out the scents in these.


A few years ago we converted our front yard (and most of the back) from grass and high water requirement plants to desert landscape with low water trees and bushes. We planted about twenty trees, some of them flowering and all of them adapted to our hot weather. We have a corner lot, and out on the corner we put in a sweet acacia that becomes a big yellow ball. It’s five years old and about fifteen feet high.


And if the wind doesn’t blow all the dry blooms away we have a nice faded yellow carpet underneath.


There is a very light scent to the flowers, but it’s more the yellow that stands out.

Spring blooms 2009

It’s Springtime again, and the flowers are starting to bloom. When I walk around the yard I can smell an assortment of sweet scents, as plants take advantage of this break between the cold and the upcoming heat. Here are some of the ones we have been planting over the years, most are annuals and keep coming back without much effort on our part.

This first one is blooming along the fence by a parking lot at work, I don’t know what it is but the flowers are pretty and very fragrant.


All these others are in my yard. A while back we planted California poppy seeds in our raised beds. These produced a very nice crop, and the seeds from there blew around the yard. Since then we have been getting a strip of poppies along the low area where water drains off the roof when it rains (yes, it rains here once in a while, last year we did have a total of almost three inches of rain (75mm)). These keep reseeding themselves every year and fill in the gravel area where we pulled out grass as part of our water conservation effort. Along the left side are our rosemary plants which are also full of little blue flowers and lots of bees.


Along the pool we put in Mexican poppies. These are low growing flowers like the California ones but in a pale purple instead of the bright butter yellow. B also put in several Mexican bird of paradise, which grow five or six feet tall and have bright yellow flower clusters. We also have a few that have red tinged yellow flowers as well. The low poppies cover the gravel around the edge and the taller birds cover some of the plain block wall. B has painted the wall so it isn’t just the plain concrete color.


There also are some low growing ground cover plants among the Mexican poppies that are covered with yellow flowers. This one here is about two inches high and the top is covered with buds, in a few days it will be just a bright yellow ball.


Here are some more of these yellow ones, on a bush that has been in for a few years and is a little bigger.


Also along the pool is a Banks rose bush that was here when we moved in , and has been doing a lot better since I put in a drip system to water them automatically.


Out front in our desert landscaping we have a varied assortment of low water requirement plants. I think this is called a marsh mallow, starting out with a few orange red flowers which will continue to progress over the next few weeks. These bushes are now about a meter high and wide.


There are also some desert marigolds, which are covered in white flowers, which open in the morning and then close up at night. These are low growing and will stay under a foot tall.


And finally our wisteria; we brought this plant from San Diego and put it in the front courtyard. B trimmed it severely last fall, so there are not many flowers on it, but after we finish getting that cover over the patio we will be training this to grow on top, and in a few years will have a slatted roof with lots of clusters hanging down.


Around town we have been having an assortment of performers come through. The Hard Rock hotel has rebuilt its concert venue, The Joint, which just reopened last week. The big grand opening ceremony was held with the Killers performing, and the next day Paul McCartney was the headliner. Tonight is Elton John’s final show ending his five years alternating at Caesar’s Palace, and Cher announced that she is cutting her three year contract there down and will finish performing in December. Bette Midler is the third in the rotation that has replaced Celine Dion, and has not said anything about leaving.

Over the next month we’ll have Bon Jovi, Boz Scaggs, Dave Matthews, Jason Mraz, Billy Ray Cyrus (also known as Hannah Montana’s dad) and BB King in town. This summer we will have Led Zeppelin come through, as well as Carlos Santana, who has signed up with the Hard Rock to perform several times over the next two years, Kenny Chesney, Johnny Mathis, Paul Anka, John Mayer, Cyndi Lauper, The Police (yea Sting!), Tom Jones, Chicago, Air Supply, Peter Paul and Mary, the Smothers Brothers, Gwen Stefani, Tall Out Boys, Herman’s Hermits and lots of others. Music for all tastes.

Spring flowers and Buster's eye

It’s warming up here, due to be in the mid 80’s the rest of the week (28c), but predictions have a storm front moving in over the weekend with temps dropping to 70 (21c) and rain on Sunday. The normal high for this time of year is supposed to be 69, so it is nice to have a little warmer time. I am ready for summer, I love the heat, and would much rather have it over 100 than under freezing. Trees that bloom are starting to flower around town, there is one with red leaves and pink flowers that is used a lot in new developments that really looks pretty. There are several areas on my drive home that have rows of these, and at the right angle of the sun they really shimmer a gorgeous pink. We hit the nursery last weekend and found the fruit trees starting to put out blooms


It looks like our big peach tree will not be blooming too much this year, the bloom cycle seems to vary and even though we had a few pink blossoms earlier the tree has now started putting out leaves and turning green. It’s the first tree in our yard to go green, providing some shade already. Out back some daffodils that B and E planted have come up


Also at our place one of our dogs is having problems. Buster - you remember Buster don’t you? He’s the brown guy


He weights about nine pounds and is fairly friendly. We got both Buster and Max from the animal shelter down in San Diego about fifteen years ago, and figure that he’s about 18 or 19 years old. He has been walking slower these days, his hearing is starting to go as well as his vision. At a recent teeth cleaning they pulled nine of his teeth, including all the front ones. It looks like he has a cataract in his right eye, instead of the nice deep brown it used to be it’s kind of milky now, and his night vision is way down. Well, a few weeks ago he scratched his eye somehow (he will not tell us how) and it became infected. Several trips to the vet, pills and liquid and shots did not clear it up. On Thursday the vet tried to clean it out, but it became worse and on Friday they had to take his eye out. (that sounds bad) Unfortunately it was his better eye that was removed, so now we have an almost deaf almost blind dog wandering the house. When not sleeping he’s wandering around in a narcotic haze, we have to be careful not to step on him because he follows the shadowy movement and sneaks up behind us. He has a cone around his head to keep him from scratching at the stitches, which means he can’t make it out the doggy door, so if we don’t see him headed that way it’s more to clean up. We can hear him wandering as the plastic cone scrapes against the walls or bangs into chair legs, at least it protects him from hitting that eye against anything for a while. Fortunately the nice weather has let us keep the doors open, and since we’ve been here almost six years he knows his way around and can make it outside. But at night he can’t see anything in the yard so he does not wander far (we have a big yard).


Yup, doesn’t look too good, does he? With that eye shaved and sewn shut and no teeth up front and a milky eye. When E was told about his operation she said ‘oh, he’s a Cyclops now’, remembering Mike from Monsters Inc.


So it doesn’t bother her too much, and when she gets back down he should be healed up and look a lot better, except his eye won’t be in the middle of his head.