View from my office window

I inevitably spend a fair amount of time sitting at my home office computer over the course of a week.  There are two large windows to my right, which means I often find myself staring at the view of a particular section of my garden.  The activity at the three bird feeders frequently draws my attention, and if their chirping doesn't do that, the cat's chattering at the birds from her seat at the window does.  As I write this, the birds are staring at me, seemingly wondering if I'm going to refill their feeders before they're entirely empty.  However, what's repeatedly had me staring out the window this week hasn't been the birds so much as the mix of colors around the feeder.

This is the view in question.  What grabbed my attention on this occasion was the gladiola at the center of this shot.  Its bold color drew my eye but what really stood out was that it's blooming in early February!

Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day falls on Sunday which, if forecasters are to be believed, could be the start of several rainy days for us.  I've already been gathering photos for an early Bloom Day post targeted for Friday but, instead of burying the floral display outside my window within that post, I thought I'd share the details with you in this much shorter one.

This was one of a mix of Gladiolus nanus bulbs I planted in March 2025 for early summer blooms.  I hadn't expected a yellow and coral flower in the mix.  Last year it bloomed in late June.  I believe this is a variety called 'Las Vegas'.  Yesterday, I ordered 10 more bulbs of this specific variety as it's perfect for this bed, especially if it makes a habit of flowering in tandem with the plants around it.

The Arbutus 'Marina', pruned hard in late November, is back in bloom with its coral-pink flowers, beloved by hummingbirds

The hummers also appreciate the flowers of Lantana camara 'Irene'

I haven't yet cut back all the colorful bracts of Leucadendron 'Blush'

and I apparently missed trimming back a few of the stems of Leucadendron 'Jester'

Leucospermum 'Royal Hawaiian Brandi' is just starting her bloom cycle

Lobelia laxiflora, cut back in December, is also mounting its return

There's a good chance of light rain during the wee hours tonight before the larger rain system in the offing for the coming week moves in.  The cloudy gray skies I see out the window lend some real credibility to that claim.  I don't expect it to be much but, as our last rain fell in early January, whatever we get will be welcome.  I'll end this post with a wider shot of the garden beds in view outside my office window before I take my camera out to capture photos of other parts of my garden in preparation for Bloom Day - and fill up the bird feeders of course.

All material © 2012-2026 by Kris Peterson for Late to the Garden Party

Wide Shots - January 2018

Since I put my wide shots posts on a quarterly schedule their timing always seems to catch me by surprise.  I took photos at intervals between December 29th and January 2nd for this post, trying to work around shifting light conditions.  With a few exceptions, there aren't many dramatic changes since my last wide shots post in early October but I'll take you on a full-blown tour anyway.  I'll start as I usually do with the view from the back door and take you clockwise around the house.

I stepped back closer to the house to broaden this month's view from the backyard patio.  For the last week, the view of the harbor has been particularly hazy, worse even than when fires were raging in Southern California in December.  The haze in this photo, taken yesterday morning, was a mix of smog and marine moisture.

View from the northeast corner of the house facing south

View from the south end of the flagstone path looking back toward the mimosa tree (Albizia julibrissin), now bearing only seedpods.  This photo was also taken from a somewhat different vantage point than I usually choose, the dirt path behind the back borders, where the ground starts to slope downward from garden's main level.

Next we turn to the garden on the south side of the house, starting with a view looking west.  To provide perspective, I pulled out a photo my brother took of roughly the same area on December 24th, 2011.

The Eucalyptus in my brother's 2011 photo on the right was cut down in February 2013 at the behest of a neighbor who claimed it interfered with her view.  The tree's removal triggered a broad number of other changes, including removal of the lawn in this area and the eventual development of a bed dominated by succulents. 

The succulent bed in question is shown in the background of this photo.  Most of the orange color you see is provided by succulent foliage.

The photo on the left is my usual view of the south side garden looking east through the arbor.  The photo on the right, taken from a spot a few feet beyond the arbor, provides a clearer view of the succulent bed.

Turning our backs to the arbor and looking north, we see the front garden.

The most significant splashes of color here are provided by Grevillea 'Superb', which blooms year-round, and Leucadendron 'Wilson's Wonder', which produces cones and yellow flower-like bracts during the winter months

This looks remarkably like the October view except that the Hong Kong orchid tree (Bauhinia x blakeana) is in full bloom (and the Christmas wreath was still up when I took the shot)

This is the area on the other side of the driveway, adjacent to the garage.  The succulent bed I planted in September (bottom, left) is doing nicely but hasn't changed much.  However, the bromeliad bed I planted behind it (bottom, right) was bare earth at the time of my last wide shots post.

These photos offer more historical perspective on the evolution of the garden.  The current photo on the left shows roughly the same area as my brother captured in a photo of the front garden in December 2011.  We removed the front lawn in the fall of 2014.

This photo shows the garden from the other direction, looking back to the north

Walking through the opening between the northwest end of the house (just past the chimney) and the garage brings us to what is now my cutting garden.

In October, there were still dahlias and zinnias in bloom here.  The dahlia tubers were pulled and stored away in early November.  I supplemented the soil in the raised planters and planted foxglove plugs, ranunculus tubers, and sweet pea and snapdragon seeds.  I dealt with problems with birds and squirrels for a time by covering seedlings with empty plastic flats.  While they helped keep birds and critters away, they also diminished the light the seedlings needed to develop.  Our long spell of especially dry weather probably didn't help either but everything's looking a bit better now, although in the absence of any rain I'm watering the beds regularly.  Surprisingly, the dry weather hasn't kept the Camellias from blooming.  'Taylor's Perfection', planted alongside the garage, has been blooming since before Christmas and the Camellia sansanquas (outside the range of this photo on the left) have been blooming since late October.  And, as you can see, the citrus trees are bearing well.

Passing through the gate behind the spot I stood in to take the previous photo has us facing the garden on the northeast side of the house.

Nothing much has changed here except that the Alliums I planted have started to grow.  Flax seeds, which I'd sowed intending to provide temporary floral color in the bare area, haven't germinated but that may be attributable to December's long dry spell.

The gravel path in the photo above takes us to the back slope, which is otherwise largely hidden from view.

The back slope looks much the same.  The photo on the left shows the area looking downward from the top of the cement block stairway.  The middle photo shows the Pittosporum 'Silver Magic' planted at the property line.  The photo on the right shows the area looking back up toward the main level of the garden.

So, once again we missed a couple of areas.  Backtracking to the driveway at the front of the house, we walk along a narrow path behind the hedge facing the street.

This is the succulent bed I planted in November 2016 on the moderate west-facing slope after removing a dead Ceanothus hedge

The dirt and moss covered path shown above leads to my new lath (shade) house, featured in my anniversary post on December 29th.

This structure was my husband's handiwork, designed to allow me to keep plants that need more shade than the topography provides

The only other view we've missed is that of the succulent bed that sits between the area occupied by the lath house and the street on the southwest side.

This succulent bed could use a bit of a refresh but, overall, it's stood up well.  The Xylosma congestum shrubs planted behind the succulents 19 months ago to extend the front hedge are still growing very slowly.

Are you winded from the walk?  I hope not!  Thanks for hanging in through the end.  If you've viewed the post on the lath house build-out, you may have noticed that I've done some work embellishing the area around the structure.  I'll cover those changes and the shade plants I've added inside in a later post.


All material © 2012-2018 by Kris Peterson for Late to the Garden Party

Wide Shots - October 2017

How quickly 3 months can fly by!  My last wide shots post was published in July, at which time I bemoaned the condition of my summer garden.  At the time, I harbored the delusion that the weather would be much cooler by October and that my garden would have slipped into its refreshed autumn mode.  In actuality, we're not there yet - my garden looks sorrier than it did in July and, while I've pulled out most of summer's casualties, I've yet to fill the holes left behind.  The nights are reliably cooler but the heatwaves have continued off and on.  Daytime temperatures are comfortable at the moment and I've been hard at work getting bulbs in the ground but the forecasters say that yet another warm-up is in the offing for the weekend.  Still, as long as Santa Ana winds and brushfires stay away, I'll stop complaining.  At least the morning marine layer has begun making a regular appearance again.

This was the view looking out toward the Los Angeles Harbor from the backyard on Saturday morning.  While the sun was shining at our elevation, some 800+ feet above sea level, clouds and fog blanketed the harbor and the city of San Pedro below us.

I'll start the tour of my garden as I usually do, in the back garden.

Most of the plant losses are hidden in this view.  You'll have to take my word that they're there.  In addition, large segments of the creeping thyme surrounding the flagstone path are dead, while other areas are still thick and lush.  That's one of the downsides of an automated irrigation system - water delivery is never even.

This is the view of the back garden from the north end looking south.  My home office is on the other side of that roof overhang on the right.

This is the view from the south end of the back garden looking north.  The mimosa (Albizia julibrissin) tree's pink flowers are gone, although dried brown fuzz continues to drop, along with the tree's leaves and seedpods.

Rounding the house, the next stop is the garden on the south side.

After taking a good, hard look on this area in the process of gathering my wide shots, I've decided I'm not very happy with it.  The Echium candicans 'Star of Madiera' doesn't fit here and, as I have another in the front garden, I may replace it with more succulents.  The pots that mark the transition from the back to the side garden need to go too.  And both the Helichrysum petiolare and the Agonis flexuosa 'Nana' are overgrown.

Sitting at the patio table behind the hedge of Agonis, you can no longer see the garden or the harbor

View of the south side garden looking through the arbor toward the harbor

The front area is in better shape overall than the rest of the garden.

View of the front garden from the south end looking north.  I got carried away cutting back the Centaurea 'Silver Feather' (to the left of the path) and it's not springing back so I may have to start over in that area unless the winter rains work some magic.

Front view from the driveway's edge looking directly at the house.  I pulled out a dead Coleonema pulchellum 'Sunset Gold' in the bed to the left of the front path but haven't decided what I should replace it with.

View of the front garden from the north end looking south

Most of my work in the garden over the past 2 months has focused on the area in front of our garage.

The area in the foreground here has proven to be sunnier than I thought when I planted it early last year.  Many of my original plant choices didn't handle the summer's intense sun well so I've been swapping them out; however, the detail isn't readily visible here.

Most of my time went into renovating the succulent bed on the north side of area.  You can find the post detailing that effort here.

The vegetable turned cutting garden is currently the most colorful area of the entire garden.

While some of the dahlias are still producing flowers, their foliage looks awful and I've pulled out all the sunflowers and about a third of the zinnias thus far.  The happiest plants in this area are the Salvia elegans and Euphorbia 'Sticks on Fire'.

Moving through the garden gate brings us to what I've generally referred to in the past as my dry garden.  However, with the exception of the cutting garden, most of the garden is now comprised of drought tolerant plants so I'm just going to refer to this area as the northeast garden from now on.

I dug out the ratty germander (Teucrium chamaedrys) and weedy Geranium incanum in the area to the right of the gravel path here, added topsoil and cactus mix to raise the soil level and improve drainage, and have started to replant.  So far, I've added Vitex agnus-castus, Melinus nerviglumis, and Grevillea lanigera 'Jade Mound'.  Three Grevillea 'Scarlet Sprite', a slow-growing Echium, and a Salvia clevelandii sit to the right of the new plants outside the frame.

The slope looks pretty awful.  I still dream of bringing in help to transform the space but thus far I've managed to divert myself with less expensive projects.  In the near term, though, this area needs a good clean-up.

There was a large orb weaver spider sitting in the middle of a huge web just beyond this point so I didn't venture down the stairway to capture a better photo.  The area to the left of the metal fence belongs to my neighbor.  On my side of the fence, you can see that the last heatwave stripped most of the leaves off the fig tree.

Two days later, when the spider still hadn't moved on, I sent her packing and snapped this shot from the bottom of the slope.  The lemon tree on the left, the Agave attentuata in the foreground, and the Pittosporum 'Silver Magic' outside the frame behind the lemon tree are the best looking elements of this space.  Cleaning up the Euphorbia, Ribes, and Centranthus will improve the appearance of the area below the stairway but the steep area above it's still a messy mass of ivy, honeysuckle, and weeds.  

If you've reached this point, the tour is almost over.  There are just 2 areas we've missed.

This is the succulent bed bordering the street on the southwest side of the property.  It hasn't changed much, although the 5 Xylosma congestum shrubs we planted a year and a half ago to close the gap in the hedge are growing, albeit slowly.

This is the nicest view I snapped of the area behind the street-side succulent bed, showing a portion of the west-facing slope.  The area outside the frame, between the stacked stone wall and the street-side bed, is the future location of my lath house if/when it gets built.

Maybe things will look better in January when I publish my next wide shots post!  Hopefully, by then, we'll have received some real rain and I'll have filled in the majority of the holes summer left me with.  And, if I'm really lucky, my husband will have started construction of my lath/shade house.



All material © 2012-2017 by Kris Peterson for Late to the Garden Party

Wide Shots - July 2017

When I established a quarterly schedule for my wide shot posts, I don't know why I thought that publishing photos of my garden in July was a good idea.  My garden is decidedly not at its best in summer.  While we haven't been torched by summer's heat (yet) as we were last summer, the garden is dry and some plants were singed by the heatwave that struck last week while I was out of town.  However, as I've already complained, the biggest issue at present is the mess created by the mimosa tree (Albizia julibrissin) that dominates the back garden.  When I left for Washington DC last week, the tree had just begun to bloom.  What a different a week makes!

The photo on the left was taken just before I left for DC looking north in the direction of the mimosa tree.  The photo on the right was taken less than 2 weeks later on July 1st.

It doesn't look bad from a distance, does it?  The tree probably presented less of a problem when it was planted by some prior owner of our property in a back garden that was mostly lawn.  The mess undoubtedly would have been easier to clean up then than it is now.

The fuzzy pink flowers stick to everything.  As they dry, they turn brown but they generally remain stuck wherever they landed.  The leaf litter is also copious but at least it disintegrates as it dries.

Before I took this month's wide shots, I thought I should clean things up a bit.  The gardener with his blower didn't make a dent in the mess when he sped through the garden last week.  So I got out the big guns.

This is a Black & Decker Leaf Hog, which I think we purchased our very first summer in our current house

Frankly, I didn't make much of a dent in the mess either.  The leaf vacuum works well enough on hard surfaces but it's only partially effective when used on ornamental plants, and you can forget about using it on any fuzzy plants.  I hand-picked flowers off the kangaroo paws (Anigozanthos) and the succulents.  Half an hour later, you wouldn't know that I'd bothered.  The wide shot photos you're about to see are about as free of pink fuzz as you're likely to see for two or more months.

As usual, I'll start in the back garden.

View from the back door looking toward the Los Angeles Harbor, still partially covered by marine layer clouds late Saturday afternoon (Note: Many, although not all, of the photos in this post were taken with my old point-and-click camera as it was the closest I could grab when I realized the marine layer was lifting)

View of the back garden from the patio looking south.  I'm in the process of cutting back the Santolina virens in the foreground on the left but I'm not sure I wouldn't be better off starting new plants from scratch as it's lost its nice rounded mound shape.

Long view from the north end of the house looking south

Next up is the south side.

South side garden looking west toward the street

View from the small side garden patio looking toward the property line.  The toyon (Heteromeles arbutifolia) also burst into bloom while I was gone.

View of the south side garden looking east back toward the harbor.  The Clematis I cut back severely in late winter is making a nice comeback climbing up the arbor's right side but I haven't been able to get the Solanum planted on the other side to to much of anything.

Here's the view from the front of the house:

That's the mimosa tree poking its head above the rooftop

View looking across the front garden from the north side of the house to the south

View of the area between the driveway and the street.  This was the last area we cleared of lawn.  It's been slower to fill in than I'd like but I'm pleased to see that at least the woolly thyme planted under the ornamental pear tree on the right is finally taking hold.

Moving between the house and the garage brings us to the vegetable-turned-cutting garden.

There are still a few herbs in all 3 raised planters but the remaining contents are flowers.  The Digitalis purpurea I added to the first planter last winter is still blooming.  This spring, I planted dahlia tubers and zinnia and sunflower seeds in all 3 planters to provide summer flowers.  The zinnias are off to a good start but the dahlias and sunflowers have been slow to get going.

Stepping through the gate on the north side of the cutting garden brings us to the dry garden.

The guava trees have flowered and the persimmon tree has fruit (still immature).  The grape vine, obscured here, has been discovered by the raccoons, squirrels and birds.  One day I need to make a serious effort to remove the Geranium incanum that's a weed here.

A walk down the path through the dry garden takes us to the concrete stairs that lead down the steep back slope.

The photo on the left is from the top of the stairway looking down past the fig tree on the left to the lemon and peach trees in the flatter area near the bottom.  The peach tree, inherited with the garden, is more of a shrub than a tree and severely impacted by leaf curl and, as we don't get cold enough to grow stone fruit well, it should probably come out.  The area beyond the trees is obscured.  The photo on the right if taken from next to the lemon tree looking back up.

If we go back our to the driveway and walk along the street, we pick up the last two main sections of the garden.

This is the street-side succulent garden on the southwest side of the property.  The 5 Xylosma congestum shrubs we added a year ago this spring are finally fleshing out a bit behind the succulents but it's still going to be long time before they fill the gap between the existing Xylosma hedge on the left and the Aurunticarpa rhombifolia shrubs on the right.

This is the area directly behind the succulent bed.  The Dymondia margaretae I planted as a ground cover this past winter didn't get watered well enough after the rains ended so most of the area below the stacked stone wall is still bare dirt.

This last photo follows the path from the area I just showed back to the driveway.  The succulent bed I planted last November is filling in well.

That's it for this quarter's wide shots.  I'll post an updated set in October, by which time I hope both the heat and the pink fuzz will be gone.  In the meantime, I plan to dig through my photos from the 2017 Garden Bloggers' Fling and get to posting the best of what I saw during the 3+ days I spent in DC, Maryland and Virginia.


All material © 2012-2017 by Kris Peterson for Late to the Garden Party