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.

Trimming the palm

This weekend we decided to do some things around the house we’ve been avoiding, using the summer heat as an excuse. One of the big things was trimming the trees out front – mainly the big palm in the center. It should be done in the spring, but a lot of birds have taken to building nests in it, and if I trim the lower leaves I disturb them too much. Last time I trimmed I ended up dropping two mockingbird nests that had eggs, and I don’t think they came back. Mostly it’s the sparrows and finches, but sometimes I do see the mocking birds up there.


This is dangerous to trim – not because it’s so high but because of the palm fronds. The tree has probably been in for forty years, since the house was built, and the lowest fronds grow at about ten feet above the ground. New fronds come from the center top, forcing the lower ones to rotate from vertical down to horizontal. The fronds are about four meters long, and the ends droop down to touch the ground, getting in the way of cars in the driveway. I usually trim the lowest row every year, but skipped last year so there was a lot to take off. No before photos, but you can see the reach of the tree.

Down at the base of each frond the individual leaves change, ending up as eight inch long hard spikes. I use an electric saw to trim each, and usually the end hits the ground and the frond pivots down toward me. Yesterday I took a spike to the forehead, not very pleasant. You can see the bird nests scattered at the base of each frond.


But it’s all down now, this morning was spend cutting them up and bundling the end pieces, into things the trash men are willing to take.

Birds

I found out why, within two hours of putting a pound of seeds in my bird feeder, the thing is empty:



Birds come by and eat all the seeds!!! Imagine that.

Not hot yet

The weather has been very unusual for Vegas this Spring. It’s been cold (which is different) and windy (which is normal) and we’ve had some cloudy days. By cloudy I mean that you can see white patches up in the sky instead of plain dull blue, not that the sun is hidden. Tomorrow it’s only supposed to get up to 77f when our ‘normal’ expected high should be around 94f (33c). Doesn’t look like it will warm up until next week, and some people say they like this transition season – not me, I’m ready for it to get nice and hot.

Around the valley our Palo Verde trees are filled with yellow blossoms, and the red yuccas have flower shoots arching up. In the corner of our front yard we have both. The yuccas are the lower plants in the foreground, ours are only a few years old and so have just a few flower spikes each, as they get older and larger they will put out more spikes. The low wall protects the base from the wind, and it looks like yellow snow under the tree as blossoms fall.


Up close the flowers of each are rather pleasant.

Random Spring notes

After a few cold windy days (highs only around 22c – 72f) we are warming up again, back into the 90’s later this week (35c+) where it should be. Most of our plants have finished blooming, and our first tomatoes are up to about an inch in diameter. We put in three tomato plants this year, two Hawaiian Tropic and one cherry, so we should start filling up on them in a month or so. A few peppers, and lots of sunflowers for B. The wisteria finished up blooming a few weeks ago


We visited the Springs Preserve for their annual plant sale a few weeks ago.


We picked up several flowering plants to put out in the yard, all low water requirement desert blooms. The trees we put in when we converted from grass to desert yard seven years ago are all getting fairly large now. We’ve had to replace some, but a few have really taken off. The larger shrubs, such as the sage, were up over six feet and had major trimming this winter. We periodically get smaller flowers to scatter around, and replace ones that aren’t doing well. That is a nice thing about having a desert landscape instead of grass; we can stick plants all over and not just have an unbroken field of green.

Around town, this is the last week for Santana at the Hard Rock. We went and saw his show several months ago, and were very impressed. Elton John has announced his return to the MGM, to fill in Celine Dion’s time off. Haven’t heard how often he will be there, but for the next few years it will probably be for two weeks every two or three months as he did before. Other names are being thrown around to also alternate, we’ll see who comes. I hear Celine’s new show is very good – and Elton is supposed to be something majestic as well.

Warming up

Last week was a little cold, but it’s finally warming up again. Our normal high for this time of year is around 24c (76f) but last week it was significantly lower, by the weekend it’s supposed to be 28c (82f), with our normal full sunshine. We were out working in the garden this past weekend, getting in some more tomatoes and a dozen more sunflowers. B wants to fill one of the garden beds with dozens of sunflowers, she liked the way the few we had last year looked.

The Springs Preserve had their annual plant sale last Saturday and this year we were able to get up early enough to get there when some plants were left. They carry a few dozen pots each of hard to find desert plants, and even thought the total amount is probably around a thousand plants they still sell out by 10am (opening at 8). We snagged a half dozen gallon pots of some pretty yellow desert daisies and pestemons and some other pretty pink flowering thing. Those were laid out and will get into the ground this week.

The Springs Preserve is a large complex with a big desert botanical garden, playground, exhibits and other activities. If you come to Vegas a lot it’s worth stopping by. The outdoor gardens are free to walk around, and granddaughter E likes to climb on the big snake and play with the train, so we go periodically. Wolfgang Puck runs the café, where we grab a lunch salad and coffee.

Around town we are back in the ‘yellow’ season, where most of the plants in bloom have yellow blossoms. We have about a half dozen different things around our yard blooming right now. This one is a succulent, which only has one big bloom per year:


After the flowers dry up the plant carries the feathery seed pods for a while, until the wind takes them away.

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.

Small things

Lots of interesting things going on around town. Last weekend was a big memorabilia auction, with stuff from Michael Jackson, Marilyn Monroe and others. Most things brought ten times the estimated prices, or more. There was one of Michael’s sparkly gloves, an x-ray of Marilyn’s chest, and enough stuff to keep the auction going for three full days.

Our temps have leveled out to our summer normals, high today will be 107f (41c) with nighttime lows of 80f (27c), and sunshine sunshine sunshine. The water temperature in our pool is up to the 93f that we like, so it is very pleasant to float around in the evening and watch the sun set and the bats come out. I guess we are adapted, as last Friday we went to our local Sonic drive in, just a few blocks from our house, rolled the windows down, and enjoyed the sunset and the carhops skating by. Oh, temp, yes, it was 99f and we were enjoying the cool weather as we ate burgers and ice cream shakes.


Nevada continues to add to its first place standings, we are now number one in unemployment rate in addition to being number one in home foreclosures. And new number show we are number one in high school graduation rate, that is number one in number of dropouts, as it seems that less than 42% of students entering high school end up graduating. The next lowest state was New Mexico, with a rate of 55% - big difference. Part of the reason is probably our transient rate (number of students changing schools) which also is number one in the nation, around 40% of students moving between schools each academic year. Iowa, New Jersey and Wisconsin graduation rates are over 80%. This probably relates to having tourism as our major industry, as most jobs in hotels and casinos do not require much education. A new boutique hotel recently opened, and of the 150 advertised positions none of them specified an education level, being maids, cleaners and manual laborers. It must be hard for a student to be motivated if there are few examples of why an education is important.

Our legislature seems to be following along with the lack of education stuff, recent discussions are leading to a new law requiring repair shops, smog stations and oil change locations to check tire pressure when vehicles come in. I know that having properly inflated tires is important, but how many restrictive laws are required to save us from ourselves? Do they have so much time that they can ignore the huge budget shortfalls, high unemployment and schooling rates that they can talk for hours about tire pressure? Reminds me of congressional sessions investigating drug use in athletes while ignoring all our national problems.

Outside our kitchen window the sage is blooming again. In the background are white and red olianders.

warm

Out in our front yard the two Palo Verde trees we planted are blooming. They present big masses of yellow flowers, and are looking pretty good.

Yesterday we set a record for June 6, and hit 110f (43c), a temperature we usually don’t see until July 1, then we get an additional ten days of over 110f over the next month or so. After a chilly and unusual spring it seems we will be having a warmer than usual summer. But not to worry, a cold front is coming through and Friday we are only expecting a high of 83f (28c). It is sunny, and windy (gusts 25 to 30 mph) and humidity currently at 9%. It still feels hot when you go outside into the sunshine. It was 100 at 10am, so the heat is still here for a while.

Even though the Palo Verde trees are blooming yellow it is starting to turn from yellow season to purple season as it warms up. Our sage bushes are starting to bloom and will soon be big balls of purple.




The purple lantana is also starting to fill up with flowers.


As are the cast bushes around the valley (I think that’s the name for them, no tags left on ours). These are big bushes that can get up to three meters tall and across, ours are only a meter high, but growing.

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.

Birds in the rain

What do birds do when it rains for three days straight in Las Vegas? Well, they give up on sitting in the trees and look for whatever little roof they can find. Our roof extends out over the walls by about two feet, so it's dry right under that. We noticed them when we looked out our front window into the courtyard. Over on the right wall we have an iron sun sculpture.


To the left of that is our front gate.


And to the left of that is a bedroom window.


These are all the little house sparrows that eat at our feeder (when I fill it up) and come drink from the fountains front and rear all the time. They are used to coming into the courtyard regularly for a drink, and at times like this (very rare) they keep coming back. So that’s five on the sun, four on the wall, four on the gate and seven on the window frame. They are also around the brick edging on the rear patio, but our house isn’t laid out where we can see them from inside and they fly away when I try to sneak up outside.

We are hiding inside out of the rain as well. More rain scheduled for tomorrow, then clearing but cold by Sunday. So far this week we have had almost as much rain as the total last year (big deal, a whole 1.5 inches : 35mm)

Summer bugs

Well, it’s August here in the desert and for a few days we have cold weather. That’s cold by our standards - a storm front is moving in and the winds are blowing, up to 59mph gusts today, and a high of only 94f (34c), about the same for the next two days. We are now into the bug days of the year. These have been buzzing around for a few weeks, B calls them June bugs, even though they used to come around in July down in Phoenix, she remembers tying strings to them and pinning one to her shoulder, so it would fly around her head. They are pretty, but keep bumping into everything. From the top they are just dull green


But on the bottom it’s a loverly iridescent blue green, that really sparkles in the sunshine.


And we have dozens of these all over our patio


They grow up in the grass, but at night for some reason they migrate down onto the concrete. They used to get into the house, but a few years ago B signed up with a bug man a friend uses; now all we see are dead ones every morning. No, I didn’t sweep these together, they are all over the outside each morning. If we walk out into the grass when it’s dark it’s almost like a carpet of bugs, and our compost bin has almost a solid layer of them in the dark, but all disappear when the sun comes up. I guess the birds eat them so they hide during the day.

I put up a third feeder, moved the backyard one over to right in front of the kitchen window and put the new one back by the table.


This morning I was sitting out there reading the paper and drinking coffee watching these guys - there are about a half dozen regulars out back, but two are the boss. I can recognize a few of them, they are just dull grey, some have bright green heads, and some of them have different buzzing sounds when they fly, one is really loud. These two each sit near one of the feeders and chase everyone else away. It’s amusing watching them squeaking and zipping past, and seeing somebody slide in to get a quick drink before the boss comes back and chases them away. There is another similar group out front. Each feeder takes a cup of sugar water, and I have to refill all three twice a week, so someone is keeping their energy levels up.

Out in our front courtyard we have a small fountain, and the birds come sit on the iron fencing on top of the lower wall checking if it’s safe before dropping down for their drink. I am pretty sure that this is the area where they usually sit.


It’s all small sparrows and finches, no big birds have been seen here. We have another fountain in the back that is also used quite a bit for drinks and baths, but back there we just have trees out in the gravel, so the evidence is not this striking.

We’ve been using the pool most evenings, water temp is a nice 90f, really pleasant to float around in, watch the sunset and see the birds going off to bed and the bats replacing them, bouncing around over our heads chasing insects. I don’t know what they catch, as we don’t have to use screens because there are really no flying bugs around (just those crawling ones above, and the pretty green beetles) , no flies or mosquitoes around our place.

Hope you all are enjoying summer.

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).