On the Garden

I've not written much on the garden lately. For one thing my arthritic knees have kept me on the couch a lot of the time. For another, it's been cold this year and I don't garden in cold weather. And it's been wet, which makes the clay soil difficult to work. But I get my cortisone on Wednesday (better living through chemistry) and plan to whip the garden into shape before Spring. (For those of you who live in parts of the country with real winter--snow, sleet and the like--Spring now arrives in California at the end of January.)

So the plan is, so far, to prune the roses and then feed them, replant the cape mallow on the driveway side of the yard, put in a bunch of Icelandic poppies, cut back the erigeron which is in danger of taking over the yard, cut back the penstemon and incarvillea to prepare them for new growth, plant something, anything, to cover up the hut-like structure my landlord put up to shade the electric meters, and hope that the red feather grass will come back in April. Oh, and the butterfly bush needs trimming again. And I hope that my sunroses bloom again. I've planted them both here and in Oakland, but never had them make it more than one season until this year.