First, the camellia blooming in the corner of the yard.

Second, the Bird of Paradise just coming into bloom – I can see it out my kitchen window. This just one of about half a dozen flower spikes it’s putting up.  And yes, it’s as big as it looks – a good eight inches from the curve of the stem to the tip of the bottom part of the flower.

Next for your enjoyment is the absolutely enormous potted jade tree. I never knew they bloomed like this until I moved here!

Then there’s the apple tree.  You may remember this tree from all the apples I turned into apple butter last summer.  Looks like there’s going to be more this summer.

Finally, the acacia trees are coming into bloom. Screaming yellow, anyone?

You see, in the winter it’s milder and wetter, so this is the time of year when many plants put their energy into blossoms. 

It’s also the time of year when gardeners plant without worrying about water or heat stress – for the plants and for themselves!

These are the blooms on the Baja Fairy Duster bush my brother gave me for Christmas this year.

I think you can see why I love it.  And I’m delighted that I was able to get it in the ground before our rainstorms last week.  One after the other rolled through, dumping a lot of water.  It’s surprisingly hard to find rainfall numbers on the Web, but I did finally track down one site that says almost 4 1/2 inches fell in the seven days ending yesterday.  Given that our average annual rainfall is under 10 inches – wow!  (Glub, glub…) 

I’ve spared you the photo of the big branch that broke off the tree in my front yard.  Suffice to say I spent the morning cutting it down, and still have two big pieces that will require getting the chain saw out.

Much of that rain fell as snow in the mountains.  If I can get a photo (meaning, if I remember to take my camera with me when next I go somewhere in the car), I’ll add a snowy-mountain picture here later.  But I won’t be driving up to the mountains until it melts:  right now, to go above 4,000 feet on Palomar Mountain, you need chains.

So you see, we do have seasons – and weather – here!

Jewels-on-wings called hummingbirds, year-round visitors to the feeders outside my windows.  Black-and-white, jauntily crested black-capped phoebes, arial acrobats in search of their buggy breakfast.  Tufted titmice, happy flocks of tiny taupe birds that chatter and insect-munch their way counter-clockwise through my yard.

Gracefully sinuous foot-long tree-climbing lizards in the acacia outside my office window.  Bright yellow Lone Ranger-masked warblers poking curiously at the undersides of leaves.  Orioles grappling with the slippery glass of the hummingbird feeder, trying to get their share of the nectar.  Red-winged blackbirds, always in groups, voracious and skittery at the birdseed feeder.  Brilliant yellow goldfinches, hanging upside-down and squeezing the oil out of thistle seeds.

In the desert, I’ve seen kangaroo rats, tiny little big-eared, fluffy-tailed creatures with oversized hindquarters.  Scorpions, which, thank you, I’ll view from a distance, but fascinating nonetheless.  Kit fox, smaller than your average cat, with ENORMOUS ears, lurking just out of firelight-range, ever the canid opportunists, snapping up scraps of campfire-grilled steak.  Coyote, heard not seen in the desert, wildly yipping songs, and seen not heard at home, dawn-walking as bold as you please down the sidewalks of my development. 

Road runners, alert long-legged birds quick to pounce on a lizardy lunch.  Hawks, red-tailed and red-shouldered, crying wild seagull-like cries overhead and perched on the lamp-posts waiting for a meal to wander by underneath.  Cooper’s hawks, a young one blundering clumsily through my yard, frustrated with the too-flexible acacia-tree branches, thinking the patio shade structure looked nice and solid – till it saw me sitting there.  (I swear I heard it think – “Oh, shit” – before it turned, aerobatically graceful, and flew away.) 

Kite, strange birds of prey, brilliant white, hovering in one place waiting for something to move and become dinner.  Inland and up in the high desert, stellar’s jays, big birds, vivid blue, brightly crested, and with the proper jaylike attitude.  Gray fox crossing the road late at night, glimpsed in my headlights.

Toads and their hundreds of toadpoles – um, tadpoles – in my lily-pond from late December well into summer – tiny little fellows with seriously outsized voices, serenading their lady-loves all night long.  Huge crab spiders, autumn web-spinners, nocturnal and beautiful.

Dolphins at dawn, especially on New Year’s morning.  Pelicans flying in stately formation, riding the air currents just above the crest of a wave.  Plovers and sandpipers, diggers in the sand; the longer-legged plovers wade, the sandpipers run hysterically up and down the beach.  Gulls of all sizes and colours, brassy and bold as gulls will ever be.

Yard-long snakes (no exaggeration) basking in spring sunlight on the sandy trails along the San Luis Rey River drainage embankments.  Lizards of all sizes and colours squirting through tiny cracks in the rock.  Gophers and ground-squirrels – please, not in my yard! – but fun to watch elsewhere.  Bats pouring out of the trees above the river drainage paths.  Crows flying east in the early morning, enough to blacken the sky overhead, and returning westwards to bed in the evening, raucous and bold in either direction. 

Two weeks ago, a bobcat, nonchalant, abbreviated tail-tip twitching, seen at midday on an easy mountain trail with a visiting New York friend.  Not so shabby.  (Said New Yorker was lamenting the lack of cell phone reception at the top of Palomar Mountain.  He subsequently got beaned on the head by an acorn from a California live-oak tree.  I think the mountain was trying to make a point.)

This afternoon, a discovery.  Mice had been visiting, chewing their way through the bags holding my soap-making supplies.   And then, going through the kitchen, I looked sideways – and there was a four-inch greenish-gray and gold lizard sitting in the middle of the room.  I’ve seen thousands of them outside; this was the first in eleven years that had actually entered the house.  Getting him out again was interesting, and a pleasant diversion from cleaning up mouse-mess.

People who say that generally live in places where they have to shovel snow. 

The funny thing is, there are plenty of places in Southern California where you – yes! – have to shovel snow, at least occasionally.

But it’s true.  Here along the coast, snow doesn’t happen.  Frost and ice sometimes do – I remember a few winters ago when we had sub-freezing temperatures overnight for several days.  I lost a few plants, and I distinctly remember my surprise when I was out running early in the morning.  There was ice on the sidewalk - something I hadn’t had to deal with since I moved here in 1998!

But we have distinct seasons, even though we don’t get slapped in the face with them quite the way those of you who live in areas where you have SEASONS – and have to shovel snow – do.

Right now, for instance, is Fire Season.  Two years ago, the entire county of San Diego was on fire.  Then, I had packed my car and was ready to catch the cats and leave.  The smoke outside was thick as a New England pea-souper fog.

This year, I spent a day up on Palomar Mountain a few weekends ago.  The firestorms had roared through Palomar, and it was fascinating to see the burn patterns still there two years later.  Some areas were untouched.  In some places, living trees had six-foot-high burn marks on one side.  And in other places, the trees had literally burned from the inside out, like chimneys.  The outside surface of the trees appeared untouched, but the insides were hollow, charred shells.

I’m glad to say that the 400-year-old incense cedar, and some other venerable trees, were untouched.

In any event, Fire Season is just one aspect of this time of year.

We’re coming up on what should be our rainy season.  (Hold that in your hearts, folks.  We’re praying for an El Nino year this year – rain would be a most excellent thing.)

This is our planting season.  And it’s also the time of year when many plants are setting buds.

The acacias are all putting out their wispy flower stems, which will burst into explosions of brilliant yellow in a few months.  The jade trees in pots on my patio are setting their buds.  The camellia buds are swelling. 

And the ridiculous tree in my front yard, which is essentially a weed and I’ve no idea what it is, is also setting its buds.  The bees will go bonkers over those blossoms in a few months – and then there will be gazillions of peppercorn-sized seeds, which will drop down my neck when I mow the lawn next spring.  (No, it’s not a pepper tree.)

On the other side of the world, it actually is spring.  Here, it’s fall; the days are getting darker, and I’m thinking about soups and stews instead of salads and grilling.  But though my garden is in fall mode in some ways – the fruit trees are dropping their leaves – in other ways, for this transplanted Easterner, it almost feels like spring.

We do have seasons.  You just have to pay attention.

However, I’m glad to report that my July water bill showed a definite improvement – probably due to cutting back on the sprinkler cycles.  It’s also nice to see that although my lawn is looking rather sick, especially in the back where the sprinklers are very badly placed for adequate coverage, the rest of my yard remains in pretty good shape.  I’m especially pleased with the dry planting on the outside of my fence (see the previous Water Challenge post for photos), which I’ve supplemented with a few more low- to no-water-use plants. 

Now, I’m certainly not asking the city to raise rates on water (they already have! please, no more!), but I will say that after all this work, and having used 2,240 gallons less this month, I was a tad startled to see that my bill was only $7.44 lower.

Hmm!

In any event, as I said, I’m done obsessing with water; three months has been more than enough.  I’ll certainly remain aware of what I’m using, and I plan eventually to do some things like installing a recirculating pump to solve the it-takes-forever-for-hot-water-to-get-to-the-shower problem, but … enough is enough!

Well, I’m here to report that … I was billed for MORE water, not less, in June.  1,496 gallons more, to be precise.

Baffled?  Frustrated?  Me?  well, yes, a little.  Even though that’s still 2,244 gallons less than I used in June of last year.

After expressing my frustration in a few hours of pouting, sulking, and some strong language, I’m forging onward anyway.  And I’m attributing the results to two potential causes.

First:  In May, I was away every weekend at the Renaissance Faire.  That’s fewer showers (a huge water slurper) and less dishwashing, even though it’s also a little more laundry.

Second:  For at least a couple of weeks in June, I didn’t know it, but I had a broken sprinkler in the front lawn that was gushing instead of sprinkling.  That really sucks up water like mad.

So I’ve fixed the sprinkler head, and installed drip systems into the front flower-beds instead of bubblers.  And I’ve set all my sprinkler zones to adhere to the new watering restrictions that started on July 1st.  I’ve cut way back on some of the zones, because now that the plantings are established, they really don’t need that much water.  In fact, I suspect that the dead bush I took out over the weekend was a victim of too much water.  (I hasten to add that I wasn’t watering that area prolifically – but it was a bush that requires almost no water once established.)

I also made the startling discovery that I had already completely turned off the sprinklers on the stretch outside my fence that’s my VERY-low-water-use garden.  I thought I had it running once a week for just a few minutes, but nope.  Well, that would explain why several of the plants there were looking a tad peaked, but WOW.  The others – including a lovely mass of scented geraniums about six feet across - hadn’t had any water in months!

It’s a little hard to see at this size, but that’s yarrow on the right.

The palo verde is obviously having a blast – just look at those blooms! – and it never gets watered.  (It’s about three feet tall by now – I planted it a few years ago as just a tiny little seedling.)

Just for fun, here’s the whole length of what I call the “dry garden.”  The rock retaining wall, dubbed by a friend of mine “the great wall of Oceanside,” took me about five months to build a few years ago, and includes something like five tons of rock – all transported in my van, by me, and unloaded and stacked by me.  It was fun, and I didn’t even break any bones!  From end to end, it’s roughly 90 feet long; the height at the far end in this photo is maybe 12 inches, on up to two or two and a half feet at the near end.

That’s gilt-edged silverberry hanging over the fence – a bush that thinks it’s a vine, so I end up wrestling it out of the trees.  It redeems itself with its vivid foliage and the most amazingly-scented late-summer blooms.

The plant overhanging the rock wall underneath the silverberry is ceanothus, or California Lilac.  It’s just about done blooming, but it was in full blue glory a few weeks ago.  It has a reputation for being difficult to grow, but the answer is easy:  just don’t water it!

The things you can’t see are gaura (whirlybirds – very fun bloomer), rosemary, jade tree, and two white sage seedlings.  I am watering those by hand, once every week or two, since I just planted them.  Yes, that’s incense sage!  I’m looking forward to making my own sage smudge bundles when they grow up a little bit.

I’m hand-watering just a couple of things in that garden aside from the sage.  And I’ll run the drip system here for just a few minutes once a month.   (There’s no drip on the palo verde!)  We haven’t had rain since sometime in March, I think.  Pretty amazing, huh?

I’m monitoring the other areas of my garden to see what happens; some of them may need a little more than they’re getting.  The lawn doesn’t count. I’d be overjoyed, frankly, if it all died, though since it’s Bermuda grass, a.k.a. the unkillable snakelike grass from hell, I’m not hopeful.  What I would really love to do is plant a dry garden in the whole front yard, replacing all the grass!

And that’s the water update for the June billing cycle.  I can truthfully say that I am actually looking forward to receiving the July bill, because I’m very curious as to what it will be!

For more information about great low-water Mediterranean-style gardening, see Nan Sterman’s website Plant Soup..

(about twelve pounds of apples)

into this…

and ultimately this…

(ten pints of apple butter)

A few pounds became this:

The cats helped.

The apple tree laughed and kept ripening fruit.

I also turned a large dead bush in my back yard into this…

…and this…

(those bundles are three to four feet long and stack about two feet high, three feet across)

However, I did not turn myself into this…

My kitchen floor is sticky.

Martha photo taken from the cover of her book Martha Stewart’s Cooking School.

You knew that, of course.   It’s in all the news reports, even if you don’t live in California.

So they’ve been talking about the 20-gallon challenge: reduce your water usage by 20 gallons per day.  The only thing is, I’ve already been doing everything they suggest for years.  Like, my entire life.

Do only full dishwasher and laundry loads.  Fix leaks.  Don’t run the water whilst you brush your teeth. 

I’m sorry, but if you’re not already doing these things … well.

So then I added a bucket to my shower, so I could save the cold water that runs before it gets hot.  And I used it to flush the master-bath toilet.  (Most people who do that use the water in their garden, but I’d have to carry the bucket through the master bedroom, down the hall, through the kitchen, through the back room, and then out the door.  Water sloshes.  I wasn’t real confident about how much would actually arrive in the garden.)

Okay.  Many years ago, I started getting very, very careful about paper.  Every scrap gets recycled, and I use as little as possible. 

What would happen, I wondered, if I did this with water?  What would happen if I acted as if every drop had to be carried, instead of just turning on the faucet? 

I’m a camper.  I’m familiar with carrying every drop of water I use in my campsite.  With that familiarity, and my general “green” approach to life, I thought I was being careful with water.

Holy wow. 

I put a dishpan in the kitchen sink.  I’m astonished by how much water I use just to rinse my hands, wash veggies, or rinse the dishcloth to wipe the counter.  Gallons.  And I’m careful about water use.

I put a bowl in the bathroom sink.  Holy wow, again.  Just washing my hands after cleaning the cats’ litterbox!  So now I wet hands, turn water off, soap, turn water on.  What a difference!

I have to say I draw the line at turning the shower off whilst soaping up, though I have a friend who does that. 

But I’m saving all that other water.  I’ve got a dishpan in the kitchen sink to catch whatever’s not totally gross (I draw another line at cat-food detritus and meat or grease particles), and bowls in the bathroom sinks to catch handwashing water.  I’m watering the potted plants on the patio, and flushing the toilets with it. 

I’m very, very curious to see what happens to my water bill this month.  But that’s not why I’m doing this.  I’m doing this because water IS precious.  There are millions of people in the world who don’t have access to clean water.  I don’t want to take the water we do have for granted any more.

I’ve replaced swaths of grass in my yard since moving here eleven years ago, replacing it with drought-tolerant plants.  Eventually I plan to kill all of it, and put in more lovely Mediterranean-climate plants.  But for now … I’m just pretending that every drop is as precious as it actually is. 

That doesn’t mean I’m going crazy.  I doubt I’ll be turning the water off in my shower anytime soon, especially in winter (brr!). 

And I washed my car this morning.  Hey, after seven weekends of RenFaire dust and dirt, it was about ready to be declared a superfund cleanup site.   And if you don’t believe that (and I don’t blame you), what about the fact that I couldn’t see out the windows?  Hazardous conditions, for sure.

But I think I can save a LOT of water just by being aware, and catching the water that’s still perfectly usable before it runs down the drain.

What about you? 

California is in a drought.  But water is precious everywhere.  My wacko friend who turns her shower off whilst soaping up is in Oregon, which has one of the highest annual rainfall rates in the country.

What about you?  Are you game to join my water challenge?