Category Archives: Flowers

Once I knew what the seed pods from the Italian Cypress trees were, I found a bunch of them on the ground and I’ll be trying to see if I can get them to dry out & open up so I can try to germinate the seeds.

I also looked in the trees, and found plenty more, but there all 20-30 feet up and trying to retrieve any sounds like a really good way to break every bone in my body, so I’ll pass.

My bouncing baby days are well behind me, thanks!

There are houses we looked at this weekend who had large lots (up to 2.22 acres) and were 99% dirt (zoned for raising horses usually) and those with more reasonably sized lots (about 1/2 acre). Some of the smaller lots were also “desert landscaping” (i.e. dirt & rock & cactus) but most had lots of landscaping (or astroturf – water’s rationed and expensive in the desert) and almost all had lots of roses.

This is a good thing! But no matter how much you grow roses, it doesn’t take much wind to start scattering petals, and there’s a LOT of wind up there in the desert. So there will be a lot of this going on. And probably no gardener to take care of them, so there’s another challenge and learning curve for me!

Do they have “Raising Roses 101” classes at the community college?

The roses next to the driveway have started to explode into color and life. This is a glorious thing.

Compared to some of the neighbors, ours is a small and simple crop.

But so, so many of the houses I’m looking at on Zillow (in a completely different part of SoCal) have none at all in the pictures.

If/when we get one of those houses and move, finding a stretch of the front yard to put in roses will be a priority.

Plenty of time to unpack later.

Seeing this every spring and all summer when you go out or when you come home is more important.

It’s one of those key little things that will change a new house into our forever home.

Roses, and hummingbird feeders. Even if we don’t see hummingbirds on Day One. They’ll find us.