Time to winterize the garden....

I love to garden though I don't have the time or energy for it anymore. In southern California, this is the time to cut things back in preparation for what we call winter.

Cut back the butterfly bushes, Eucalyptus trees, Trumpet Flower and Passion Vine. The Lantana plus the passion flowers will feed my butterfly garden next spring. The lantana is cut back to 1 foot and allowed to hibernate. The Trumpet still has huge white flowers and blooms with it's own schedule. It blooms on new wood so it will get whacked way back. Same for the Cannas. But there is still time to catch a few blooms before the trimming begins. I got the last of my friend Christie's Zinnias before she mows them all down.

The Eucalyptus are in bloom. I had a tree-trimmer here last year and he took out 3 of my Eucs that were diseased with the borer beetle. I was concerned with my shaggy looking Euc with the pink feather-duster flowers. It seemed to be listing to one side. But the trimmer said it was fine. I think that his "fine" really meant "I don't want to try to steady a ladder over those boulders and trim your Euc". Our house sits next to a horse trail and there are piles of granite boulders that mark the edge of our property. The Euc is leaning toward those boulders. I have watched it grow this past year and lean even farther over. We have some much-needed rain coming so I decided to prune as much as we can reach of that Euc.Well, I decided to nag my husband enough to get him to trim part of the tree. The weight of rain on those blooms might be enough to tear it out of the ground. His trim job is not terribly neat but it'll do. I had to capture some of the blooms for the kitchen.

We were also treated to a beautiful sunset. Am I the only one who thinks that Terry looks drunk?