To anyone who has not been in San Francisco in the winter it will be hard to believe these are winter photos, taken in the past couple of years in The San Francisco Botanical Garden during the month of January. I know; it’s a delight. San Francisco is a very mild, summer-dry, winter-wet climate, where it [...]
Have you noticed ? The days are getting longer. It is too soon to actually see the difference now, but a few days ago, exactly at the winter solstice, I took advantage of the sun being at its lowest point to make a series of photographs of shadows against a north facing hill. I hike this [...]
The deciduous magnolia trees have started their bloom here in California. The calendar says it is winter, so I suppose we must call them winter flowering trees, but for those of us who garden in California, the season most of the world calls winter, we call spring. This is a summer-dry climate which means winter-wet, and [...]
All winter, the headlines have been dominated by the harsh winter weather throughout the East. In New England snowfall has been measured by feet instead of inches, the nations’ capitol was shut down, freezing weather made its way into the deep South. Easterners longed for the sunny, dry, unseasonably warm weather in California, which is [...]
Even in California, frost causes problems. And when it comes in early December it causes big problems. Almost every gardener I know here in the Northern part of the state pushes the limits of their garden. It’s California ! – it is our birthright to grow tropicals and tender succulents, plants that are barely hardy [...]