RE: If winter comes....

Still no frost here, couple of cold nights but nothing to speak of. We
are just about 2 weeks past average frost date. I have barely even
needed to wear a sweater in the mornings. It is overcast this morning
but I doubt we will get any moisture out of it, a few minutes of drizzle
perhaps. Mostly it's been sunny, dry, and sporadically windy. Oh wait -
that describes the entire year.
Our Raywood ash trees have turned bronze and are thinking about dropping
their leaves. The sycamores are interesting, usually they just turn
brown, but I think I am seeing more yellow in them this year. The desert
willow and silk trees don't do anything interesting and the pines of
course never change much.
While we drove around the neighborhood during our water rationing week I
noticed some nice effects in a few gardens. There are some big
chrysanthemums out there blooming their hearts out. One person planted a
row of the native rabbitbrush and interspersed it with a blue aster, so
they had alternating clumps of yellow and blue. The foliage and shapes
looked, umm, a little odd together but the color was very striking.
Other than that I didn't see any xeric gardens like mine, kind of
disappointing. Seems like either traditional lawn/rosebushes or mostly
bare dirt with a few hardy things like junipers and sometimes cactus.

Cyndi


-----Original Message-----
From: owner-gardenchat@hort.net [o*@hort.net] On
Behalf Of Aplfgcnys@aol.com
Sent: Friday, November 09, 2007 6:37 AM
To: gardenchat@hort.net
Subject: Re: [CHAT] If winter comes....

We had the first hard frost here two nights ago - really late for
that.  Yesterday the leaves all came down from the Gingko biloba
tree.  That always happens the day after the first frost..  This
morning I saw the first Juncos of the season.  The Goldfinches
all lost their brilliant color weeks ago.
Fall color has been better than I had expected with the drought.
On the days when the sun shines, it is pretty brilliant, but too
many days have been dank and gloomy without any rain.  I
don't quite understand why there has been so much variation
in the coloration - there are still quite a lot of maples and some
other trees that are still quite green, while others have turned
and the leaves fallen.  The dogwoods began turning back in
August, but some still have leaves. I shouldn't complain about
the lengthy season, but I do wish it would rain.  Hurricane Noel
brought us less than two inches and there has been nothing
since.  I hate going into the winter with the ground so dry.
Auralie



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