Ours have gotten bigger than expected and have to be cut back too.

I found that everything planted in Fallbrook grew to be at least 2-3 times what was expected...

We learned to take literally what it says for size in 'Sunset'. And the mesquite that was a tree from which we took seeds in Arizona, will grow into a tree in our yard too. It is behind the rose bush and pride of Barbados. DH is always cutting it back so I can get the car out of the garage. It has thorns and is fierce to deal with. If we took it out, the area would just grow weeds. It shades a small but steep slope.

The toyon (not in the picture) have gotten tree-like too. What we see in the wild is more like a shrub so we thought ours would be that way too. For the most part, the large size is o.k. but we think one of them might be blocking the neighbors' view some. We're on a hill and there is a view.

Our citrus trees have gotten bigger than espected, too. They hang out over the sidewalk in the back yard. I've never seen another house like this, but our backyard is ringed by a sidewalk.

The sidewalk sounds like someone wanted to give their kiddies a place to ride their trikes.

Could be. I was told they and a neighbor girl used to roller skate there. There were two families with kids here at separate times. We are the fourth household to own this house. It was a foreclosure. The third guy lived by himself and apparently couldn't keep up with the payments. We paid almost $100,000 less for the house than he did. This was in the economic slump of the mid 90s. We could never afford to buy the house now.

ctcarol said:Love the pink and orange combo!

We went through this purple and orange phase when we first moved in. At the time, I was crazy about orange and DH likes purple.

Texas ebony is a tree. It's on a steep slope so I can't get close enough to it to see if it is fragrant. Bees like it.



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Pretty tree! I've never heard of it before.

It's beautiful! Love that type of 'bottle-brush' sort of bloom...if I were still in FB, I would try it there....

We grew it from seed that I got from a friend in Tucson. Sunset doesn't recommend it for this zone but it is plugging away nicely. Semiarid stuff does well in our yard.

I'm not surprised....

What sunset zone was Fallbrook? I'm zone 19. (We have a Fallbrook Avenue.)

Fallbrook is 23......yep, you also have Fallbrook mall up there also, no?

Yes, that is near where I live.

En route to Cambria for me.....always just passing through...

The Fallbrook Mall used to be a regular indoor mall but they changed it and there is no indoor hallways anymore. Everything has an outside door now. It's like a giant strip mall. I don't have an opinion one way or the other about that. The stores I go to are still there, so I have no problem with it.


Echinopsis 'Los Angeles' is blooming again.



Echinopsis NOID is blooming again.



Amaryllis NOID is blooming again.




There is a woman who came out to CA from Iowa with her husband during the Gold Rush and eventually they went back to Iowa. She wrote about her experiences and said that she would always remember CA as the land of sunshine and flowers.

I'm from California and I spent a couple of different Winters in Iowa, so I do know what she was talking about....it was unusual for me, but since I'd always longed for snow, I enjoyed the Winters. The MOST unusual thing for me was the lack of fences between houses in the city......one of the prettiest things was cardinals and rows and rows of lilacs...oddly enough, if my best friend there were still living, I think I could gl back there....

Kelli, your Echinopsis are lovely! I especially like Los Angeles. I can't recall ever seeing a lavender flower on a cactus of any kind before.

I want the amaryllis and I usually don't get excited about them....lol..

wcgypsy said:I'm from California and I spent a couple of different Winters in Iowa, so I do know what she was talking about....it was unusual for me, but since I'd always longed for snow, I enjoyed the Winters. The MOST unusual thing for me was the lack of fences between houses in the city......one of the prettiest things was cardinals and rows and rows of lilacs...oddly enough, if my best friend there were still living, I think I could gl back there....

Sounds a lot like PA. I wasn't really keen on the winters, but I wish we had cardinals out here. Back in the days of yore, someone tried to get them established out here, but in my lifetime, there were only some at Whittier Narrows and those might have all died out by now. We went looking about 20 years ago and didn't see any.