We have 7 hydrangea plants, but the hydrangea shown in this picture is growing better than the others and has the most flowers. It’s growing under our yellow peach tree and only gets a little filtered sun for a few hours a day in that spot. One of our older hydrangeas is getting sun all day. That plant often looks wilted and the leaves tend to get sunburned. We have added aluminum sulfate around the roots of the hydrangea in this picture for the past few years. Aluminum sulfate is supposed to turn hydrangea flowers blue. Its flowers used to be light pink and now they are more purple, but they are still no where near being blue.

The white star jasmine that is growing up one of our backyard fences is in bloom now. Its flowers have a wonderful summertime fragrance. We often open the bedroom windows next to the jasmine to let the fragrance come into the house.

This picture shows one of our pink roses. It was at its peak bloom about a month ago when this picture was taken. I love this particular rose, because its flowers last so long. The flowers just started to fade a few weeks ago. Many roses open and drop their petals in about a week or less. But these flowers hold their petals for weeks without dropping them. In fact, the flower petals stay on for so long that they start to turn brown on the plant before they fall off. I don’t know what variety of rose it is, because it was planted by the previous owners and there’s no tag on it.

We have owned the two orchid plants in this picture for about 2-3 years now, and we have managed to get them to re-bloom again and again. Our current method involves filling a large plastic tub with about 7-8 inches of water, and then adding bloom and growth orchid fertilizers to it (1 TSP each). We soak all of our orchids in the bath for about 15-30 minutes every two weeks. We no longer water them in the kitchen sink because we have 4 orchids now, and they don’t fit in the sink.

They seem to love this watering and fertilizing technique. As soon as we cut back the old flower stems, they start growing new ones. The 2 larger plants never seem to be without flower stems. The purple orchid in this picture has two flower stems, and the white orchid in this picture has several smaller flower stems branching off of one larger stem.

Although one of our smaller orchids has not bloomed in about a year. I suspect that’s because it’s growing in moss which seems to be perpetually moist. Our larger orchids are growing in bark, which dries out much faster. We probably need to transplant this orchid into a larger pot with bark.

This is a photo of our Blaze climbing rose. I planted it as a bare root rose about 7 years ago. It’s so heavy with flowers and new growth right now that it’s about to fall over. I forgot to prune it last winter, which really needs to be done to reduce it’s new growth in the spring. Now I’ll either have to cut off many of it’s flowers and buds to keep it upright or add a new support to it.

This is a photo of one of the many California poppies growing in our yard this year. I planted a California poppy transplant I bought from a nursery several years ago. A few new seedlings sprouted from that plant, but each year we had less and less of them. Last year, a few of the seedling grew and bloomed more than in the past. Those few plants must have spread their seeds widely, because this spring, poppies are growing all over our backyard. Our yard is covered with bright orange flowers, and they look amazing.

This is a photo of some lavender blue bearded irises that we’ve had in our yard for a long time. They bloomed for the first time last year, and they have even more flowers this spring. I attribute that success to the fertilizer my partner has been putting around the hydrangea that is growing behind these irises.

This is a photo of a Sensation lilac bush that is blooming in our yard. I bought this bush last year from a nursery, because I was enthralled by the look of the flowers, which each have a deep lavender center and a white border. This is a French hybrid lilac which is supposed to bloom best after a cold winter. Although last winter seemed chilly to me, I didn’t know until about a month ago when the buds started coming out if our climate was cold enough to stimulate this lilac to bloom. Last spring, our lilacs had very few flowers. We fertilized them with an all-purpose fertilizer 2-3 times last spring and summer to try to get them to bloom more. This spring all of our lilacs except one are covered with flowers.

Red camelia bush.

Lavender alyogyne bushes with blue lithodora and white alyssum underneath.

Dark purple tulips.

Blue Skies

Lavender Lady

Lavender Lady flowers after a rain

Our lilac bushes have been full of flowers the past few weeks. Lilacs are among my favorite garden flowers, because they produce many large clusters of very fragrant flowers that last for weeks. They are one of the few common garden flowers that have a great flowery scent. Unfortunately, lilacs only bloom once a year.

My partner and I planted descanso hybrid lilacs that were developed for mild winter climates. We have three of the Lavender Lady variety, one of the Blue Skies variety, and one of the California Rose variety, which are all lavender in color. This year our Lavender Lady and Blue Skies bushes are coming into bloom with many more flowers than in previous years. I think they are blooming so much this year, because we took the time to fertilize them two or three times last summer. Although, our California Rose lilac has only two small clusters of flower buds on it. But that could be because it is growing in a dry spot next to our house where it doesn’t get much sunlight.

Our oldest Lavender Lady lilac has produced offshoots that are rooting near the base of the plant. My partner dug up one, and it was full of roots so he transplanted it to grow into a new bush. It seems to have taken to the transplant well so far. We plan on digging up more of the offshoots to get even more lilacs. My mom transplanted an offshoot from her white lilac a few years ago, and it has already grown into a medium size bush that is full of flowers. I am not sure if the lilacs we planted were grafted, but they don’t look like they were grafted. Obviously, if they were grafted onto the rootstock of different variety, then the offshoots won’t be genetically the same as Lavender Lady.

We also planted one Sensation lilac, which has a deep purple color fringed with white. Our Sensation lilac is full of buds that haven’t opened yet, even though Sensation is not a Descanso hybrid and is supposed to require a more pronounced winter chill to stimulate bloom.

The vernal equinox occurred this morning at 10:32 am PDT, but spring flowers have been blooming in our yard for several weeks now. The first picture shows some of the many white calla lilies that are blooming in our backyard this month. After planting them all over our backyard for years, I started to remove many of them last year, because they are a favorite hiding place for snails. Despite my attempts to reduce their numbers, the remaining calla bulbs have multiplied and are as numerous as ever. Callas seem to thrive on lots of water, and the plentiful rainfall we received this winter has caused them to grow and flower prolifically in the past few weeks.

The second picture shows three pink camelia bushes that are blooming in our backyard. These camelia bushes, which are very established and probably decades old, produce an abundance of flowers every winter and spring without requiring much care. They are among my favorite of the plants in our backyard. However, they do make a big mess when they drop their numerous flowers on the ground.

The third picture shows our O’Henry peach tree in bloom. We have four peach and nectarine trees, and all of them produce pink flowers. Our peaches and nectarines (and almond tree) are the only fruit trees we are growing that have pink flowers. The rest of our fruit trees (apricot, plum, cherry, apple, orange, and pear) have white blossoms. The O’Henry blossoms are particularly long lasting. This tree has been covered with blossoms for over two weeks now.

In the fall of 2008, we planted hyacinth bulbs in our yard. Many of those bulbs are blooming for the second time this week. I was surprised to see them bloom a second time with only slightly less vigor than last year, because I have read that we don’t get enough winter chill in our climate to stimulate hyacinths to re-bloom year after year. The hyacinth bulbs I have planted in prior years have tended to come back with less and less vigor each year until they die completely.

Although our hyacinths have been low maintenance flowers otherwise. We get enough rain in the winter months when they are in bloom that we do not need to provide them with supplemental watering. Also, I have not fertilized them.

The blue/purple hyacinth flowers are the most stunning to look at, and this color has re-bloomed the best out of all the hyacinth colors we planted. Although the white hyacinth flowers have by far the best fragrance. We planted more blue/purple and white hyacinth bulbs last fall in different locations (below picture). Those bulbs are a few weeks behind the 2008-09 crop in their bloom cycle.