Buying Myself Flowers
I spend more time buying myself flowers these days than I probably have my whole life. Most often they are not cut flowers, but rather plantable flowers that are part of my gardening diversions. Last month I planted a whole array of flowers ranging from miniature carnations to marigolds to Shasta daisies in an effort to find things that the bunnies would not eat and that would therefore keep the Betty Garden in tact. I must have planted ten different varieties, but all to no avail. It seems our back of garage bunny troupe will pretty much eat any flowers I put in back there including ones that have been sprayed with Neem Oil. Kim even spread out a half dozen carrots in hopes that they would prefer them, but all that has done is probably make for fatter bunnies since they are completely consumed as well. I guess I will just keep trying to find things that they will not eat. It does present a kind of fun organic challenge of a sort that I never figured I would be fiddling with.
Elsewhere on my property I have bought myself lots of other nice flowers, many of them attached to native plants and succulents that are less prone to being eaten by the local fauna. What I particularly like about the climate out here in San Diego is that I never really know when what will be in bloom since everything seems to bloom multiple times per year and at various times throughout the year. Right now on the back hillside, while the northern wildflower garden is recuperating from being cut back and replanted, the downhill wildflower garden is in full orange bloom, predominantly with California poppies, which are lovely. The purple sage is still going strong as are all the yellow ice plants. I have one particular orange flowering native bush down by my Bison Boulder that looks particularly nice this time of year, as do the Periwinckle and Bluebells. It’s all very random, both in terms of placement and in terms of timing, but there is always some sort of pleasing flower in bloom to distract me when I walk my back hillside.
Recently, my focus has been in the front down by the road, where a large thicket of sumac has gradually died out to the point where I had Joventino remove the last of it this week. As it had thinned I had already planted a silk tree and a purple Crepe Myrtle in that area to give some visual blockage to the propane tank that I was required (per the Cal Fire people) to clear out around. That silk tree has lovely feathery pink flowers that generally bloom in the fall, so I will look forward to it coloring up next year around this time. As for the Crepe Myrtle, it is more of a late summer and fall bloomer itself, so the same will apply to that. What I also did was go to Javier’s Nursery and pick out two other trees. I have wanted to add a Jacoranda tree to my property since those are ubiquitous roadside trees in this area and they bloom beautifully with purple flowers all summer long. I am told that they can make a mess of a driveway with the sticky petals, but down by the road there is no one to be bothered by them and they do look nice during the summer. I had wanted to get a large Jacoranda, but could only find a reasonable deal on one that is perhaps ten feet tall and quite vertical in its orientation. I settled for that, but then decided to supplement it with a smaller, squatter Coral tree to make a nice three piece suite where the sumac had once lived. To my way of thinking that might be the perfectly planned trio of colors for that spot since the Coral tree blooms early in the year in a beautiful coral orange color, followed by the purple Jacoranda in the summer and the combined Crepe Myrtle purple and the silk tree pink in the fall.
Near this gathering of new trees I also have a red Crepe Myrtle which I planted several years ago. It has never bloomed as well as I would like so this year I have taken some radical pruning to it in hopes that the surgery will prompt new growth and added flowering. When I got here several years ago, I similarly attacked the pink Bougainville tree down by the entrance and it did wonders for its flowering. It is currently in full pink bloom as it is several other times during the year as well. I note that Bougainville respond well to pruning. My two Hibiscus also seem to respond to pruning as they should, and now we will see if Crepe Myrtle respond accordingly. I already planted extra purple and orange ice plants at the base of the red Crepe Myrtle and the front entrance, so those pop random blooms throughout the year with a strong burst of color usually during the holidays.
I will also note that between the five or six thickets of butterfly lilies spread around the front hillside, we also get nice pops of white and yellow flowers as well as having the Palo Verdes throw off their delicate yellow flowers in the four front spots where they reside and the three back spots where I planted them. Added to that is my side hill tulip tree which is in full bloom right now with its large yellow/orange tulip petals. My patio garden was planted without particular regard to flowering, but I also have a spray of purple lantanas around the Queensland Bottle tree and some red and yellow lantanas nearby. The rest of that patio garden is mostly green succulents and bonsai trees, which have their own non-flowering appeal.
On my car radio on this new Tune-In channel that allows me to listen to a streaming version of MSNBC when I am in the Tesla, I have been hearing this promotional sequence of music that always has a piece of a song that I didn’t recognize. It would blurt out the lyrics “I can buy myself flowers…,” and since it was a woman’s voice I figured it was a bit of a femininity statement of self-sufficiency. Then, this morning I was looking through my Instagram posts from youngest son Thomas, who is with his fair Jenna on their honeymoon in Thailand, and I heard the song again. Given Thomas’ chosen profession as a videographer and photographer, he spends a good amount of time posting very appealing videos of his travels and puts them to music. During their first few days in Bangkok, in addition to all manner of smart modern places and ancient temples that they are visiting, it seems they also visited a local indoor flower market. He felt it was appropriate to use that “I can buy myself flowers” song with those videos and it prompted me to finally look up the song on Google to better understand who I was listening to every day. It seems it is a popular Miley Cyrus song. I’ve never been a fan of the once teen idol, but I must admit that between Tune-In and Thomas, the song and the fact that she sings it is now etched into my brain firmly.
When I met Kim (she was 47 at the time), when I first sent her flowers after our first date, she told me that she had never been sent flowers by anyone other than a gay friend of hers. That shocked and saddened me because I can think of no one that I know that more deserves flowers as often as possible than my sweet Kim. I don’t know if I have bought her enough flowers over our 18 years together, but I would like to think that she knows that all the gardening work that I do now is my way of showing her that she has flowers somewhere on the property from me every day and that while I respect that she can buy herself flowers as she wishes, she will always get them from me as well.
Love this!