It wasn't all bad - 2021 retrospective

The Daily Show on Comedy Central recently featured a series of segments on 2021 entitled "the least bad year of the last 2 years."  That description generally rings true for me, although a few events, most notably the January 6 attack on the United States Capitol and the persistence of the "Big Lie" despite monumental evidence to the contrary, stand out as among the most shameful I can remember.  But this is a blog about plants and gardening so I'll focus on that.

I spent a lot of 2021 focused on my own garden, which is not to say that I made many dramatic changes.  The biggest issue for me, which won't surprise anyone who's read even a handful of my posts, continues to be the drought.  The 2021 "water year" (measured from October 1, 2020 through September 30, 2021) delivered 4.12 inches of precipitation in my location, which was truly dreadful.  Climate scientists have called it California's "driest year in a century."  Although I capture and store as much rainwater as I can, it's never enough and I rely a lot on irrigation.  How long I'll be able to depend on that resource looms large as an issue.  However, this retrospective will focus on the positives.  I can't claim to have used any particular logic in selecting the following images from posts published this year - the bottom line is that they're simply photos that appealed to me as I skimmed through all those I published this year.

JANUARY

Due to the pandemic, I get up earlier than usual once every 2 weeks to do our household marketing  early in the morning.  The upside of that is I caught more beautiful sunrises like this one.

Camellia williamsii 'Taylor's Perfection' produced this perfect bloom.  There are lots of buds on this shrub now and some are already showing pink tips so I'm looking forward to seeing another flush of bloom in the new year.

Aeonium arboreum and A. haworthii 'Kiwi' created this wonderful edging along the back patio from cuttings I planted there without much thought

A view of the Los Angeles harbor as rain was moving in.  The number of cargo ships in the harbor remained high for the majority of the year.

FEBRUARY

Arctotis 'Pink Sugar' showing off in a back garden border

An arrangement that came together on Valentine's Day due to the unexpected bi-color blooms of Anemone coronaria.  The bulbs weren't what I ordered but they were clearly what I needed.

Two little princesses enjoying the magic of pink trumpet trees (Handroanthus impetiginosus) in the upper meadow at South Coast Botanic Garden

MARCH

Early morning shot from the back garden following rain

Limonium perezii (aka sea lavender), a drought-tolerant plant that requires very little care

The unusual flowers of Salvia africana-lutea (aka beach salvia)

An arrangement featuring the early blooms of Dutch Iris 'Sapphire Beauty' and Leucospermum 'Goldie'

APRIL

An owl butterfly (Caligo species) photographed at the SOAR exhibition of tropical butterflies at South Coast Botanic Garden

Another of my weekly creations for the In a Vase on Monday (IAVOM) meme I routinely participate in.  All these materials were cut from my garden.

The Succulent Garden at Sherman Gardens where I met up with 3 friends for our first post-vaccination outing as a group.  We had lunch at the Farmhouse at Roger's Gardens after our Sherman tour.  I still remember how happy we all were in the belief that the tide had turned.  

Although this photo shows the Wisteria I've been trying to eliminate since we moved in, the way the plant squeezed in between the rain shield that protects our "catio" from getting wet and the screen underneath still amuses me

MAY

Yes, this is yet another IAVOM creation but then I put together one or 2 arrangements a week.  This one included a 'Medallion' rose, one of only a handful of blooms I got from the shrub in 2021.

View of the south side of my front garden, photographed from the driveway

After a LONG wait, the Ginkgo biloba 'Autumn Gold', ordered in February to replace the dying mimosa tree we'd removed the previous October, went into the ground

Bees swarming a Maltilija poppy (Romneya coulteri) spotted on a trip to Seaside Gardens in Santa Barbara County

JUNE

A colorful floral display in my front garden

Jacaranda trees in bloom at South Coast Botanic Garden

A slice of my south-side succulent garden

A noID pink lily I received years ago as a gift with purchase, backed by Mexican feather grass (Nasella tenuissima).  This photo was taken on an impromptu stroll with a neighbor during which he pointed out 10 plants that he particularly liked in my garden.

JULY

An IAVOM creation with a nod to the 4th of July holiday

Agaves 'Blue Glow' and 'Blue Flame' in my south-side succulent border

Aloe labworana after I cut back Echium 'Star of Madiera' to reveal it

The first blooms of Lilium 'Pretty Woman', an Orienpet hybrid I planted the previous fall

The unusual flowers of Melaleuca thymifolia

A vignette in the Tropical Conservatory at Sherman Gardens on another visit, which included a plant sale!

AUGUST

I was lucky to have a female Allen's hummingbird (Selasphorus sasin) hang out for a time right outside my home office window

The dahlias in my cutting garden were very late to bloom this year.  Dahlia 'Akita' was the first and became one of my favorites this year.

I did some minor work revamping my north-side garden.  The reward was a clearer view of the Agave ovatifolia in the background.

Another spin through South Coast Botanic Garden gave me this lovely view of the Banyan Grove

Passiflora 'Oaklandia' rewarded me with half a dozen flowers in 2021 instead of the usual one or 2

SEPTEMBER

I was surprised to get a relative profusion of Plumeria flowers this year from a division one of my neighbors gifted me after collecting several from another neighbor's trash

Closeup of an Agave 'Blue Flame' I'd planted in my street-side succulent bed a year or 2 earlier

House and lesser goldfinches enjoying the backyard fountain

View of a portion of the front garden hidden from the street

OCTOBER

Gaillardia 'Spin Top Copper Sun' picked up during a plant shopping excursion

The last of the 'Gitt's Crazy' Dahlias, another of my favorites, matched with Zinnias and Plectranthus scutellarioides 'Dragon Heart' (aka coleus)

The first rain of the 2022 "water year" deposited raindrops on a recently planted cutting of Agave attenuata 'Raea's Gold'

Dahlia 'Iceberg', planted in a half-barrel in my front garden, was the very last dahlia to bloom.  As its name suggests, the flowers were huge.

NOVEMBER

Arbutus 'Marina' was blooming heavily early in November, before receiving its annual pruning just after Thanksgiving.  Hopefully, the hummingbirds have forgiven me.

The front garden enveloped in fog

Caterpillars of the cloudless sulphur butterflies (Phoebis sennae) made a late apperance as our Santa Ana winds wiped out the remaining flowers on Senna bicapsularis, a host plant

This arrangement, created near the end of November, looked good for more than 3 weeks

Luck was with me when I had my camera, fitted with a telephoto lens, in hand to catch multiple photos of this male Allen's hummingbird 

The hummingbird "owns" this Grevillea 'Superb' 

DECEMBER

After a long hiatus, I refilled the bird feeders.  The finches and the sparrows have flocked to them ever since.

When flowers got scarcer during the short days of December, the colorful flower-like bracts of some Leucadendron stepped up to fill the gap

In the good news category, this week's most recent storm brought our rain total to date for the 2022 "water year" up to 6.69 inches, which is 162% of the pitiful total for 2021.  It's a good start.

That's my personal garden year-in-review.  If there's a lesson to be learned from 2021, it's to temper the hard news of each day with the beauty that surrounds us.  May you find beauty in the new year.

All material © 2012-2021 by Kris Peterson for Late to the Garden Party