A Thanksgiving Walk About the Garden

OUR WHITE CHINESE GEESE ARE GETTING MORE NOSEY ( BEAKEY?). WANTING TO ATTACK THE CAMERA THIS MORNING. I TOLD THEM THEY ARE LUCKY THAT THEY ARE NOT TURKEYS.

 On this very mild Thanksgiving day, where the temperatures rose into the 50’s, I took a walk early in the morning around the garden, so see what was happening. Even though we had a foot of snow two weeks ago, the garden is still in the conversion state, between autumn and winter. Many of the trees that had leaves when the snow cam, still are holding their leaves, since they froze on the trees while they were still green, and never properly disengaged.

 Frost occurs during this damp, cold days of autumn, never as nice as it look in the British gardening magazines, since we rarely get the proper marine air combined with freezing temperatures, but on some mornings, when the humidity and dew points are just right, we get some hoar frost forming on the edges on leaves.

 Once the sun came  up, the air warmed up quickly. I worked a little on the boxwood hedges, giving them their final trim for the year ( best time to trim boxwood is June and September), but a late November trim doesn’t hurt them, and it keeps the garden looking tidy for the winter. At least the nicer part of my garden, near the greenhouse. You just don’t want to see the rest of the garden!

 In the greenhouse, much is happening, especially with the South African bulbs plants. Above, the species or wild form of clivia caulescens, blooms under a bench. This relative of the more fanciful Clivia miniata, is a fall-blooming species, with green-tipped blossoms that dangle.

 A large specimen plant of Haemanthus albiflos, another South African bulb plant, blooms in the corner of the greenhouse, with its white and yellow shaving-brush blossoms. This pot is getting too large, and I am thinking about dividing it later this winter, but since one rarely seen a pot this large with this species, I’ve been holding off on dividing it.

SEEDLING DAUBENYA CAPENSIS NOT YET SHOWING THEIR CHARACTERISTIC FOLIAGE, BUT STARTING TO FLOWER.

Since 2008, when I first sowed the seed of this Daubenya , I felt that I may have received the wrong seed, since this genus typically has leaves that are held much lower to the ground, almost like a Massonia, but also like some of my other Massonia seedlings, these Daubenya won’t form the tight, dense foliage until the bulb matures. Now that I can see a tiny hint of the flower, I know that these are in fact, correctly labeled as Daubenya capensis. Hopefully, with careful fertilization and division this winter,  these bulbs will look like this (scroll down on this Pacific Bulb Society page to see what the foliage should look like) by next November.