The Pineapple Sage in a large pot outside my bedroom window has bloomed straight through the Winter. It's looking straggly but, I think I will cut it back one stem at a time for cuttings.






Ceanothus 'Dark Star' just starting...











Prostanthera ovalifolia just starting also......

Freesias finally managing to bloom nicely!


Euphorbia obesa (female) and Euphorbia anoplia (male) in bloom:

Close-up of E. obesa:

Close-up of E. anoplia:


Brunnera macrophylla continues on its cool blue tiny blooms:

Sherry, I'm amazed that some of your plants, like pineapple sage, have bloomed through the winter. You've mentioned a few plants that I have, but mine all had their foliage frozen away. I wonder if you get less frost than we do, maybe due to proximity to the ocean & resulting fog??

We are banana belt....hahaha.....not quite! We did get down to around 28 degrees and we had a lot of hard frost this Winter. I had put the Pineapple Sage up next to the house on the East side where it might be warmer.....guess so, out of the horrific winds anyway. My neighbor several houses away has 3 BIG wooden planters in front of her place, maybe 3' tall and 3-4' square that she has big Pineapple Sages in, surrounded with other stuff....and I see that her Pineapples had / have been cut back, but she may do that routinely. I have things that not only were not affected by the frost, but just really did thrive through Winter with more rain than they ever got in their lives down in Fallbrook.

I picked up a Tiger Eye abutilon last fall, lucky to find one at Fred Meyers...big combo store with a small nursery.....and was fooled since my 95 year old friend, Marge, in Brookings has one about 7' tall by her front door. Brookings is more banana than we are and it's in a very protected spot....so I didn't give much thought to my small one in its one gallon pot and it's been sitting by the Pineapple Sage and it looks quite dead and I couldn't figure out what it was, then saw a pic of the abutilon and it reminded me that I have one and that's it, looking pretty dead....yes, they're tender...sigh...however, there's some green to a couple of the stems / branches so I'm in hopes that it may revive. I had read that they will root in water, so stuck several cuttings in a glass...one is left...and it's bizarre, it has not rooted, but stayed living in that glass of water for some months now...so i will stick it in some soil, see if it will still live and root.

I have several rooted pieces of akebia on their way to me....yes, I've been warned by Zu, so will treat it accordingly...you know we never can be convinced when it's something we want. I've also been digging / potting nassella tenuissima seedlings...LOL...LOTS of them, but I do want them and will use them and when no longer need more, will just weed them along with regular weeds...

Oh, you have been moving things, so they're protected - that explains it... My pineapple sages are not in pots. But I am keeping some things in pots, like tibouchina, because Zuzu & Sue have talked about lack of flowers due to the plants freezing before they bloom. I've never had any luck rooting abutilon, though I have had some volunteers pop up, which I dug.

The tibouchina have been flowering here for quite a while, there are a couple within a block from me that I pass regularly......

...abutilon will volunteer, huh?

The abutilon volunteer was right next to a big one, so I assumed it came from a seed... but the flower color was different from the mother plant?

I was already assuming that it would probably be a hybrid and not 'come true'...still, that's how we find interesting 'new' stuff, huh? I had a lot of Pride of Madeiras in FB...all seed grown and multi-colored from pinksh through purples. Those are the colors that I prefer anyway, but it's interesting. I've found only one P of M here in town and a friend in Oregon gave me cutting grown plants from her P of M which have turned out to be a bright blue.....the one color of them that I don't really care for...and since she had no others...and there seem to be no others around here, even though she's 46 miles away, she's isolated from any others....it's the first time I've ever had any that I'm pretty sure will 'come true' from the seed. This will be the only year as I have seeds from the purple here in town that i will be sowing andf then there will be x's.

My front flower bed is finally starting to look decent
Roses are blooming , African daisys, One Daff, and Bougainvilla are blooming with Raphiolepsis behind them, and Digiplexis has buds opening (behind the front rose).


I think this Tahiti...usually the last Daff to bloom, so I guess the others are toast.

Now, if we could just get some rain....

Sometimes there is that miracle of rain in April.....

Maybe up there, but 1/4 " here , if it happens, will still leave us waaay behind. Our so called season total is 13" . So far we have 2".

All I can say is we've had oodles of rain and it's still coming.....though I think we're promised several clear days later on...maybe August.....................

Lovely blooms Carol! My bougainvillea is just starting to wake up, just leafing stage right now..it will be a long wait for me!

Mine is at peak, but starting to get out of hand. I hate to go after it with the hedge trimmer when it's blooming, but I think it's due about Fri. ...before it starts shedding, and when the dumpsters get emptied two days in a row. I have to cut mine back every three or four months if I want my mail. If I had a large property, I would let it have it's way, but...

I have kept my bougainvillea in a small container, so it is easy to move around. For awhile I was afraid it may not come back, but thankful now I see the new leaves again whew!

I have a questions for all of you, enablers, who got me started with digiplexis. Do you prune it regularly or just wait until it gets too leggy? I bought several last spring, with CASue & Zuzu, & grew them in pots last summer. I planted them last fall & some look great, one is clearly alive, but went into shock when I transplanted it & the foliage never recovered, and a couple have some limbs which are growing sideways on the dirt, (maybe, I should try to root those in the dirt?). Thanks!

Mine were huge.....really big when I got them even and I did not have the heart to prune them in any way, was planning on doing that because after two years they were starting to look ratty, then they got hit by our hard frosts and look dead...will cut them to the ground soon and see if anything at all comes back.

It's the turn of some Pelargoniums to bloom:
Pel. crispum 'Prince Rupert'



Pel. hortorum 'Pink Happy Thought'


Its leaves turned into a mix of some going variegated, then reverse, then no variegation on some:

Liz, The Digiplexis I planted in a pot is looking really bad, so I'm going to chuck it. The two I planted in the ground are spreading all over the place so I did cut off a couple of branches that were encroaching on other plants and they are getting new growth where the stems are exposed. They seem to be too heavy to grow upright, but the ends of the branches turn up, so the blooms stand tall.

I had the same thought with a few heavy branches that were on the ground, that I should layer them...but then just didn't get around to it....