The trees got their annual trim

I have a tree service in on an annual basis but I don't have every one of them trimmed each year.  However, this year, I included more of them than usual.  This year's exercise included pruning fourteen trees and four tree-sized shrubs, as well as the removal of two dead shrubs and shearing the tall hedge that backs our lath house.  It took the entire day. 

The house and garden had a lovely peppermint scent that day as all six of the Agonis flexuosa (aka peppermint willows) were trimmed.  I think sending the mass of that debris through the chipper is what perfumed the air.

This one on the south end of the back garden is the largest .  It singularly accounts of much of the shade in my back garden but it'll be sunnier now for a time.

This Agonis sits in the northwest corner of the front garden near the property line.  It's always been more wispy than the tree shown in the prior photo.  I don't have it pruned often.

This one alongside the driveway entrance is also on the wispy side and seldom trimmed

The 2 Agonis located directly behind the front hedge along the street may get trimmed the most frequently.  They're more prone to wind damage it seems.

This one on the south side of the garden has always looked a little wonky

The Arbutus 'Marina' (aka strawberry trees) do get trimmed annually.  A good cleanup of the trees' dense interior canopies is necessary to prevent black mildew from forming.  Pruning temporarily reduces the volume of flowers, beloved by hummingbirds, but it keeps the trees healthy and the canopies quickly flesh out.

These 2 Arbutus sit on the north end of back garden

This Arbutus on the northwest side of the front garden presents the trickiest pruning challenge due to all the succulents planted below it.  The agaves suffered "edema" (damage to their leaves) when they were covered by a tarp 2 years ago but the team avoids using those now.

This Arbutus on the south end of the front garden sits atop a moderate slope, also planted with agaves and other succulents

The other trees that received beauty treatments this year include:

Acer palmatum 'Sango Kaku' almost got lost on the list but I pointed it out before the team left and one of the crew did a neat job of cleaning it up 

Pruning this lime citrus tree (Citrus aurantiifolia) is a last chance try at saving it.  I inherited it with the garden and while it still produces a lot of fruit, they're tiny and we've little use for them.  It's in the cutting garden area and sited next to the former fence.  If the lime tree is eventually removed, that space may provide me an opportunity to install a small greenhouse.  The fence behind it separates our property from our neighbor on the north side.

The Magnolia grandiflora is another tree that receives an annual pruning.  The principal purpose is to clear its canopy from the roof.

The ornamental pear tree, Pyrus calleryana, is a messy thing, dropping both leaves and inedible fruit that even the critters don't seem to care for.  The debris has been substantially reduced (for now). 

We have eight other trees I didn't include, three additional citrus, two western redbuds (Cercis occidentalis), two pineapple guavas (Feijoa sellowiana), a noID guava (maybe Psidium guajava), and two persimmons (Diospyros kaki).  In retrospect, I wish I'd thrown in at least the redbuds and one of the persimmons, as well as the lemon tree at the bottom of the slope.

Some of my tree-sized shrubs have gotten so large that they're hard for me to handle:

This is Callistemon 'Cane's Hybrid'.  It replaced another tall Agonis flexuosa that a former neighbor bullied me into removing based on the claim that it blocked her view of the port years ago.

I used to prune these 2 'Copper Glow' Leptospermums myself, which took hours and hours.  Last year, I decided to hand the chore off to the tree service, which does the job in a fraction of the time it took me.

Leucadendron salignum 'Chief' is another plant that outgrew expectations.  There was one large limb that stretched along the ground and rested its heavy branches on the hedge behind it.  I'm a little concerned that lopping off that limb may kill it but the service did a clean job of removing it at least.  I still have more work to do to cut away the remaining dead foliage. 

The removals (not photographed) included a dead Ceanothus arboreus, also tree-sized, and a large Coprosma repens.  The much-loved Ceanothus 'Clifford Schmidt', which I'd planted from a one-gallon pot, dropped dead in late spring after ten years in the ground.  The tall Coprosma 'Plum Hussey' was poorly placed and was effectively strangled by a rampant honeysuckle vine that crept up from the upper area of the back slope.

The tree service did a great job of cleanup, although leaves and small branches continue to fall as expected.  There was relatively little collateral damage this year, although I lost a branch with Tillandsias wired onto it, which I'd stupidly left on the ground below two of the trees slated for trimming - it must have picked up with the debris and that's entirely my fault as I usually do a better job of clearing work areas before the crew arrives.  However, without an extra charge, the service agreed to send the fence boards my husband recently removed through their chipper, saving him weeks of parsing that out in stages using our recycle bins so that's a win. 

We received some more rain on Thursday, which may spill over into Friday.  From there, we expect some dry, sunny days to carry us through the Thanksgiving holiday.

Best wishes for a pleasant weekend.

All material © 2012-2025 by Kris Peterson for Late to the Garden Party

The Case of the Missing Bulbs - or All's Well that Ends Well

Before I get into my little garden mystery regarding missing bulbs, I'll start with a few beauty shots of my back garden during what we expect will be a very short reprieve from the rain.  My "water year" to-date rain total (counted from October 1, 2025) is 2.89 inches but that tally may be low as my rooftop rain meter was clogged during the first twenty-four hours of the "atmospheric river's" movement through Southern California.  My total includes the 0.74/inch of rain delivered by October's surprise storm.  Counts quoted by nearby areas have suggested the total could be an inch or more greater than we recorded.  Downtown Los Angeles reported 3.47 inches just from the November rain and Santa Barbara was hit hard by 8.58 inches.  All those totals are many times greater than the norms for the southern part of the state in November, or most any other month here.  And we have a ninety percent chance of more rain starting this Thursday. 

View from the back door yesterday morning looking east

Another view looking south

Our backyard fountain is full to the brim for the first time in recent memory without any help from me

The next rainstorm is expected to roll from Thursday into Friday  My rain tanks are already full and, as the ground is saturated and everything is thoroughly wet, there's not much I can do in the garden at the moment.  I still have thirty Freesia bulbs, a handful of Anemones, and ten lily bulbs to plant but all will have to wait until next week when the garden's dried out a bit.  So on to the case of the missing bulbs!

I've admitted to ordering a large number of bulbs this year - and that's without acknowledging the pre-orders of dahlia tubers that won't ship until spring.  However, my biggest orders were three I placed on top of one another in mid-September, all companies that obtain all or the majority of their stock from Dutch bulb sellers.  The first of these orders from K. van Bourgondien shipped in early October, absent three Hippeastrum 'Razzmatazz' bulbs to be shipped at an unspecified future date.

I received my second order on October 21st from John Scheepers.  It also arrived absent a Hippeastrum, this time a single 'Aphrodite'.

I promptly planted the Dutch Iris but the Allium bulgaricum, Ipheion uniflorum, and Tulip clusiana bulbs are sitting a time out in the fridge to get the equivalent of a "winter chill" first

I subsequently received a UPS notice regarding my order to Van Engelen, my third supplier, referencing a pending shipment.  It was quickly followed by two additional messages from UPS showing changes to the delivery date window.  The last notice referenced delivery by the evening of October 28th.  Meanwhile, I received the delayed shipments of Hippeastrums 'Razzmatazz' and 'Aphrodite' separately from their respective sellers.

When I received nothing from Van Engelen by early November, I checked the UPS tracking notice and found they'd recorded a delivery of that package on October 24th.  We checked our camera and found confirmation that I'd opened the door and picked up a small package at the time indicated by UPS.  But I couldn't remember receiving any package from Van Engelen.  I scoured the garden and everywhere and anywhere I might have placed another box.  My husband asked if I was mixing up my bulb deliveries.  Acquainted with my proclivity for "purging" junk, he also asked if I could've tossed the box by accident.  I contended that any box containing the contents of the Van Engelen order would've been large and heavy as the order included six Hippeastrum and fifteen lily bulbs, which I'd be unlikely to throw out as cardboard trash but, as our trash and recyclables had already been collected, I couldn't verify that.  As I was upset that he appeared to think I'd experienced a "senior moment," he checked our cameras to see if he could track my movements involving boxed bulbs.  The only video we found showed me handling one of the recent Hippeastrum deliveries but the box label wasn't visible.

I finally contacted Van Engelen directly by email asking if my order was still in process.  I provided the order number Van Engelen had assigned me and was told there wasn't a pending shipment.  However, I made the mistake of referencing a UPS delivery on October 24th and the customer service representative simply stated that the company had record of a shipment initiated October 20th and delivered on October 24th.  I threw in the towel at that point and decided the bulbs (and $144) might well be a lost cause - but then I noticed that location information in my incoming email "correspondents" list showed "John Scheepers" even though the contact information shown in the message itself identified her as a Van Engelen representative.  I then recalled that I'd suspected but hadn't confirmed a relationship between the two companies.  Google AI confirmed that Van Engelen owns both entities.  For the record, they send out separate catalogs and accept orders separately under the two names.  They've established different minimum order amounts, their pricing is different, and their bulb offers aren't identical.  Effectively, Scheepers operates as a retail seller while Van Engelen is more of a wholesaler.

On November 5th, the day following my exchange with Van Engelen's customer service representative, I received another notice from UPS regarding a shipment to be delivered by November 11th.

The box was bigger and heavier than any of my prior bulb deliveries.  Although the cardboard box here was photographed showing Van Engelen's name, another side of the same box says John Scheepers.  The smaller boxes received with the Scheepers bulbs only had labels identifying Scheepers.

All my Hippeastrums have been potted up (including some purchased from a 4th company).  I hope to give some away as Christmas presents assuming they don't rot in their pots after all this rain.  I intend to put them under cover before the next storm arrives.

So, the mystery is solved and all's well!  I haven't been certified as demented yet but I clearly need to pay closer attention to the companies I'm purchasing from.  I've learned that UPS labels provide tracking numbers but those bear no direct relationship to company order numbers and one has to be careful in framing queries to customer service representatives.  I also learned that I probably shouldn't delete any UPS shipping notices based on "updated schedules" until the deliveries in question are in hand.  As I've just bounced around trying to track an Amazon order that's been shoved off to a patchwork quilt of delivery companies, sending me from a transportation company in Los Angeles to a logistics company in Alabama (which has promised to email the appropriate contact back in Los Angeles), I'm wondering if the old school method of conducting purchases locally may be easiest after all.

All material © 2012-2025 by Kris Peterson for Late to the Garden Party

In a Vase on Monday: Sodden flowers

An atmospheric river has been moving through Southern California since late Thursday night.  It's delivered a lot of rain, albeit not as much as I was led to believe it would at the outset.  It's come down in torrents at times and, while the showers paused Sunday afternoon, the rain is expected to pick up again Monday morning with heavier showers in the afternoon.  My flowers have suffered in the process and even my beautiful blue bush violets (Barleria obtusa) are looking sad; however, I hope they'll bounce back once the rain has passed.

I'd targeted my Camellia sasanquas to fill a vase this week.  Camellia flowers are prone to shattering and they were taking a beating on Saturday so I cut several of the longest, prettiest stems I could find that afternoon and put them aside, planning to put my vase together Sunday morning.  Unfortunately, the bulk of the flowers dropped their petals overnight.  I made another pass at cutting the flowers on Sunday between morning showers but the stems weren't as impressive as the first ones I'd cut.

The result turned into yet another of my "everything but the kitchen sink" arrangements

Back view: The Amarine wasn't bothered by the rain at all and neither were the Australian fuchsias (Correa)

Overhead view

Clockwise from the upper left: Coleus 'Florida Sun Rose', noID Dianthus, Correa pulchella 'Pink Eyre', Amarine 'Belladiva Emanuelle', 2 Camellia sasanqua (possibly 'Early Wonder' and 'October Magic Rose', and white Eustoma grandiflorum

I wasn't going to bother with a second vase but I'd cut some snapdragons and a late-blooming zinnia mid-week for my kitchen island.  That arrangement needed a refresh so I pulled a couple of the faded flowers and filled in with blooms of Grevillea 'Superb', a plant that is utterly unfazed by rain.

The arrangement of an orange Antirrhinum majus, Grevillea 'Superb', Zinnia 'Benary's Giant Coral', and a single stem of Agonis flexuosa 'Nana' is very matchy-matchy in terms of color but at least it's a cheerful mix

I also rehabbed both of the vases I created last week and placed them elsewhere.

I cut last week's vase containing Protea 'Claire' down by half, as shown on the left.  Other than removing the spent Cosmos flowers, the Chrysanthemum arrangement on the right remains the same.

For more IAVOM creations, check in with Cathy at Rambling in the Garden.

All material © 2012-2025 by Kris Peterson for Late to the Garden Party

Bloom Day - November 2025 (Early Edition)

I got an early start on my November Bloom Day selections.  My post is in keeping with my Monday-Wednesday-Friday posting schedule but I also had my annual appointment with the tree service on the calendar for Thursday so I couldn't do any work in my garden.  On the heels of that, an atmospheric river (i.e., a monumental rainstorm) was slated to roll in late Thursday night and continue through the weekend so an early post made sense on multiple levels.  (We could get nearly four inches of rain, which is incredible by our standards!)

Coastal Southern California doesn't get as cold as many parts of the Northern Hemisphere.  Frosts are virtually unknown and we never get snow.  So, while my garden isn't at its most floriferous, I expect it still looks heavier on flowers than many others are used to at this time of year.  I'll start with this month's stars.

Blue flowers are welcome any time but especially at this time of year.  These are Barleria obtusa, commonly called bush violets.

I have several clumps of the bush violets both in the back and front garden areas.  My original plant came from a fall sale at my local botanic garden, which no longer offers the fall and spring sales of plants propagated from species grown there.  I've never seen the plants in local garden centers, which is a shame as they grow well here.

Senna bicapsularis, planted in 2011, also puts on a show at this time of year.  It's the host plant for cloudless sulphur butterflies.

I inherited 3 well-established Camellia sasanquas with the garden.  I wasn't provided with the names for either of the 2 cultivars but, after a deep dive down a botanic rabbit hole last year, I decided this one might be 'October Magic Rose'.

The 2 shorter Camellia sasanqua shrubs might be 'Early Wonder'.  Their color is similar to the taller variety but the form of the flowers is different.

On a whim, I bought a Chrysanthemum 'Fairbanks Purple Spoon' at my local garden center a few weeks ago to fill a container that needed refreshing.  It was prettier than the usual runty varieties we see here in the lead up to our Thanksgiving holiday.

Protea 'Claire' has bloomed for the second year in a row.  Her cousin, 'Pink Ice', has yet to produce a single bud.

Just one of my Yucca 'Bright Star' produced a bloom stalk this year

Some plants bloom off and on throughout the year.  Those that have recently mounted a return include the following:

Both the Argyranthemum 'Everest' and Osteospermums ('4D Silver' and 'Violet Ice', shown on the right) are short-lived perennials here

Felicia aethiopica have sprung back since a hard pruning 

Leptospermum scoparium 'Pink Pearl' prefers the garden's cooler season.  It usually produces a light flush of flowers in the fall, saving its heavier flush for spring.

In another category, there are what I refer to as my "old dependables" that bloom either all year or for a significant portion of it:

Correa 'Ivory Bells' peaked this month while Correa 'Pink Eyre' is just getting started

Cuphea 'Starfire Pink' is going strong, while orange flowered 'Vermillionaire' (not shown) is just getting around to bouncing back after a pruning

Grevilleas 'Peaches & Cream' (left) and 'Superb' (right) are 2 of my year-round bloomers, although 'Superb' is the more prolific of the 2

Lavandula multifida is in full bloom except for a short time after I chop it back twice a year

The colorful bracts of many Leucadendrons resemble flowers.  From left to right are 'Blush', 'Summer Red', and 'Safari Sunset'.

The ivy geraniums, Pelargonium peltatum, are a joy.  Clockwise from the upper left are 'Dark Burgundy', 'Lavender Blizzard', and a buoyant unnamed red variety

As usual, several plants took me by surprise:

Aloe lukeana is blooming for the second time this year

I planted 5 Amarine 'Belladiva Emanuelle' bulbs in 2021.  Only one has made a showing this year (so far).  It's a cross of a Nerine and an Amaryllis belladonna.

This Dahlia made a late appearance this month and is currently sporting 2 more buds.  The tuber was purchased as 'Caproz Pizzazz', which it is not.  My guess is it could be 'Ferncliff Illusion'. 

Hemerocallis 'For Pete's Sake' decided to offer another bloom stalk.  At least one other daylily is also sporting a fall bloom stalk (but no open flowers yet).

I cleared my cutting garden in October and prepped it for cool-season bulbs and annuals.  There isn't much to see there yet, although the Anemone coronaria corms are already producing foliage.  There are also plugs of various annuals in place.

I've planted nearly 2 dozen snapdragon plugs (Antirrhinum majus), only 3 of which are a named variety ('Double Azalea Bronze')

I also installed half a dozen stock plugs (Matthiola incana)

Photos of the best of the rest of the flowers have been assembled into color-coded collages:

Clockwise from the upper left: Duranta repens 'Sapphire Skies', Rotheca myricoides 'Ugandense', Tulbaghia violacea, Evolvulus 'Beach Bum Blue', Hebe 'Grace Kelly', Polygala myrtifolia, and Vitex trifolia

From the upper left: noID Dianthus, Dietes grandiflora, Eustoma grandiflorum, Fuchsia 'Windchimes White', and Gazania 'White Flame'

From the upper left: Cosmos bipinnatus, Hebe 'Wiri Blush', Pentas lanceolata, noID Dianthus, noID Gazania, Zinnia elegans 'Benary's Giant Coral', and Lantana 'Irene'

From the upper left: Argyranthemum 'Yellow Beauty', Chrysocephalum 'Desert Flame', Euryops 'Sonnenschein', Gaillardia 'Spintop Copper Sun', Faucaria tuberculosa, Rudbeckia 'Juliana', Tagetes lemmonii, and Lantana 'Lucky Yellow' 

For more Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day posts, check in with Carol at May Dreams Gardens on November 15th.

All material © 2012-2025 by Kris Peterson for Late to the Garden Party