Gardens Home & Garden

My blackberries are all thornless. My raspberry is "almost thornless" - it has just a few very small insignificant spines that don't get in the way of picking the fruits.

The only thorny plant I have is the bougainvillea. I took a cutting of the neighbor's plant and it rooted. I have it in a planter with attached trellis so the thorns shouldn't create a problem and I can easily be rid of the plant if they do.

I love the look of vines, but worry about putting them against my fences or house. I'd just hate for it to pull down my fence or erode the mortar. The five I have are set in the middle of the yards with arbors (the bougainvillea in the planter).

Well so far my container planting is successful. We haven't had any long heat waves so the plants haven't been subject to any torture as of yet.

A couple of my California fuchsias are likely dead. It seems that the variety is a very important factor as to successful container gardening. My ruby kangaroo paw got eaten and is not coming back. The sea holly is alive but isn't growing and is just exhausted (the leaves are just laying over the sides of the pot). I just up-potted it in hopes a bigger pot will revive it, but it's not looking good. Everything else seems to be doing well.

I up-potted the butterfly bush, mexican orange and bbq rosemary into their extra large (12+ gallon) pots. And I up-potted the renzels into its 7 gallon pot.

I'm waiting a bit longer to put the cane's hybrid and flowering quince into their extra large pots.

My abutilons and fountain plants are all doing better than I had hoped. The abutilons just won't stop blooming. As soon as this batch of flowers die, a new batch come forth. I don't even have to deadhead. And the fountains are all happy. One of the yellow ones has a good number of blooms. The others have only a few blooms each but should do more next year.

Everything in the ground is doing great. The California fuchsias are starting to bloom - they'll keep blooming for the rest of the year.

I need to go out with the real camera and get some photos, but I've been in a lazy mood.

Meanwhile, Tornado-dog has learned moderation with the hose. He will actually leave me to water most of the container plants and fill the birdbaths in peace. He does get in the way of my watering the cane's hybrid but I think it's mostly because that's the last plant I water as I collapse the expandable hose. I think he sees it as "if I don't do it now, I won't get to do it at all" - he IS a smart boy.

I have a flowering quince. It has been in the same pot for 15 years. I don't think you can kill them. The only problem is that they have spines, so it has to sit in a corner and hardly gets noticed.

I just double checked - my quince is thornless. It's supposed to grow to about 5 feet tall and wide so it definitely will need a bigger pot than the 10 inch one it is currently in.

I got it last fall in October. It had some nice leaves on it but within a week the leaves were gone and it was just a stick in the dirt. I really thought I killed it. But it's one of those plants that goes dormant even in this climate. It even had a bloom this spring.

@CaroleC I had a quince in my garden that the birds must seeded it had lovely peachy coloured flowers in it and I didn’t know what it was, found this plant had big thorns in it and then found these tiny apples after. Anyway had to dig it up as I was having a new fence as the old one blew down. I could not get rid of this bush as it kept growing back and creeping along the garden, had to keep spraying it as it was going into next doors garden. It’s a nightmare once you plant it in the garden.

I love that story!
Mine is in a square pot - I think it's about 8x8 at the base, but flares to about 14 inches at the top. I never feed it - there is a stray Oregano in the pot too but I do thin that out. It has salmon pink flowers followed with really bushy bright green leaves. I just mulch it with as many grass clippings as I can manage to sprinkle through the spikes. I think it likes the rugged life.

Mine hasn't shown anywhere near that ruggedness. It is a double take peach flowering quince.

Here it is inbetween my hummingbird sages with its one bloom.

It still is more two branches than bush.

I know there are lawn purists. Some even insist on pure grass species to provide the perfect texture or ruggedness. My 'lawn' is a mongrel - haphazard growth, in places bolstered by the insertion of random pieces of reclaimed turf. If I come across a nice clump of grass or clover when I'm weeding, I cut a notch in a thin patch and graft the new bit in.


It is a joy to see the fairly close clover that this has given me - especially at night when the white clover flowers really stand out. The only downside is having to remind Tally to, 'Watch the bees!', to avoid getting her feet stung on sunny days.

ps. I took a much better photo than this one on my phone - you could even see the veins on the clover leaves. It must be too high definition to load on here. I can't understand why my phone pics will load on some days but not on others. I'm not tech skilled enough to have altered the def on the phone!

Your grass looks lovely @CaroleC and how I miss mine being.
Mine did look like that many moons ago when I just had the one dog, now I have this one, it’s just clumps, holes and cracks all over it with ruts where he runs and jumps over my wall to get up the garden, I’ve even tried to fill them in and he just goes and does another somewhere else, ‘sigh’ I just gave up now, the winter doesn’t help as it gets so wet, it’s like a bog as I get my neighbours water running down my way as I live halfway down a hill.

That is a nice lawn. I gave up on a lawn years ago. In the summer heat it is impossible to keep green and the crabgrass and other weeds start taking over. And my allergies were so bad I had to have someone mow for me (and I admit I HATED mowing). In the summer it was a brown dry patch. In winter it got green but with weeds not grass.

The backyard never did have grass. And like yours, @Tone, it turned into a muddy mess. I ended up removing the topsoil and putting down bark. That hasn't worked well in the backyard as the bark ends up getting shoveled up with the crabgrass every spring. So now it is back to mostly dirt. But I did lay pavers in a wobbly looking pathway through the dirt.

My concrete walkway in the back floods every winter - a good 3-5 inches at the low spot. I ended up laying pavers on it to raise it up. Now the low spot only floods to about 1-2 inches. All those pavers let me move around without getting in the mud. Cat-dog ignores it all and just does her thing, but I see Tornado-dog walking on the pavers to avoid getting his feet wet.

Yeah, like you @Toedtoes the bits of grass I have left is twitch and it goes on forever, I pull it and the dogs eat it when I’ve pulled it out. I do like mowing the lawn ( well did) as I like to try and do lines in it, past tense again. It does grow green at the top of the garden but the rest is as patchy as a quilt and dead patches where the dogs have peed on it.

My back corner that gets flooded in winter actually has concrete a couple inches below the soil. I ended up putting a raised wood planter - just sides no bottom- and filling it with top soil pulled from elsewhere. I planted my blackberries and raspberry plants in it. Works well. The flooding doesn't bother them and they can't take over the yard - although one cane did try to root in a nearby planter - I just tucked the cane back into the bramble.

The other part of that section, I planted four small trees/shrubs - slim bottlebrush, western redbud, honey granite myrtle and serpentine coffeeberry. They seem to be fine with the flooding last winter - although it wasn't a big rainy winter. I'll prune them all into trees as they grow so the underneath stays open enough for the dogs to do their business there.

With the rest, I'm trying to strategically plant medium to large shrubs to fill in the open space more. Leaving less bog/mud for traipsing through.

This jasmine tobacco seems to be taking over the garden, but it smells so nice f you go out in the garden at night or first thing in the morning as it has a really sweet smell to it before it closes up for the day ready for the evening again.

Yes it is lovely. I might look out for one myself. I went for a pink jasmine to climb round the garage door. It's a pretty flower but there's no scent, and it has gone very leggy over the years. I have to use the tall steps to prune it. It would sit on the roof of the garage if I didn't.

I do have a climbing hydrangea on the front of my house that has been there for years and boy does that grow the flowers are white and they have a nice smell to them too, but you certainly have to keep on top of it and prune it back as it will over take in the summer with new growth creeping, I don’t mind it as it’s nothing like climbers, as it sticks to anything apart from plastic but it just pulls off the brickwork without any damage to the bricks and mortar. Sometimes I’m savage with it but it carries on coming back so it’s very hardy, and the birds love nesting in it as the cats can’t get at them.

That is one thing I've really worried about with my brick house and vines - damage to the mortar. I already have several areas where the mortar has disintegrated and I have to repair. I don't need more.

I have one brick next to my front door that is completely loose. The other day, I pulled it out to look because Tornado-dog and the cats were quite interested. Yep, there was a sharp little nose and whiskers sticking out...

Oh those rats. I tried to be nice. But they started burrowing under the swimming pool. So I bought some poison that is safe for secondary contact (ie, if another animal eats the dead rodent it won't harm that animal). I poured some pellets through several access points for under the house where they have set up home. My yard guy and I found two dead rats in the yard within a couple days and disposed of them. There may be more who died elsewhere. But there are at least two left - one big male and a much smaller one.

I've caught the big male hanging on Panther's bird feeder (the one at the day room window) and scared him off by tapping on the window. But he's starting to cotton on that I can't hurt him from there. So I just opened the gate to the side yard - when he comes back for another meal, I'm letting Tornado-dog loose on him. He's used to having that gate between him and the dogs. He's in for a big surprise!!

My impolite squirrel came round earlier to eat from the backdoor feeder. I hadn't filled it for a while because the camera wasn't working and I couldn't be sure the rats weren't eating from it. I got a new camera and set it up last night and filled the feeder. Impolite squirrel was the first arrival this morning.

And yes, I know I'm being a bit hypocritical feeding the squirrels but not the rats. But the squirrels aren't digging tunnels all over my yard and under my pool. And they aren't bringing in all their relatives to live on my dime. And Polite Squirrel is a very nice squirrel and never eats too much (Impolite Squirrel is a bit of a pig).

Well, that was short work!!

Big boy rat came back. I let the dogs out. Tornado-dog ran straight for the fence where the rats move between yards. Rat was on the feeder in the side yard and froze. Stupid rat - if he had run then, hewould have made it. But he didn't.

Tornado-dog ran into the side yard and checked behind the plum tree (a favorite spot of the rats). I wentout and pointed at the feeder. Tornado-dog saw his prey up there but then decided to check the trail. Rat decided it was time to make his move and made a flying leap off the feeder. Tornado-dog was right there! In seconds, Rat was dead.

Tornado-dog made certain Rat was dead, then I was able to scoop it up with a shovel and toss it in the trash.

Then Tornado-dog got to play in the hose for a bit to wash out his mouth nice and good. It will be a while before I let him give me kisses again...

He did prove his russell terrier heritage with his efficient kill.

I don't want to encourage this behavior, but I'm really tired of these rats and this one just wasn't falling for the bait.

This doesn’t eat the cement it just has like sticky roots and it pulls off really easy, if after cutting it back I’d of found the cement disintegrating then I would of got rid of it but I haven’t found any damage to it.
I’ve not seen any rats around here for awhile now, I know I have field mice as the dogs spot them now and again but they have been eating my pinks, as there was flower petals scattered about, I have got wild strawberries growing in the garden too, but I leave them for the birds and I see the mice have been eating them aswell so hopefully they will leave my strawberries that I have growing in a tall box alone. My tomatoes are in a box on legs aswell as I found the mice will pinch them off the plant given half the chance, they’ve done it before and stripped off the skins chewed the tomato and left it when they was full from eating it.
But I was always told that if you have mice then there is no rats about as they can’t live in the same area. But one of my neighbours has told me she’s had them in her garden and put a rat box down, she said they were under her summer house, but I haven’t seen any.

Glad you got it, they will be there looking for more after that, lol extra treat for him now then, I know buddy would have a good go trying to get them

He's been following their scents all over for a while. And has found a few but never caught them. This time, he was right on it and that rat didn't have a chance. The dogs next door have caught a couple in the past but there are 3 or 4 dogs out there at a time and they will join together so it's easier. Cat-dog is not a killer and has no interest in chasing rats around.

So far, Tornado-dog hasn't tried to hurt any of the stray cats, but I don't want to encourage the rat killing because little kittens look a lot like rats.

And those stray cats have been useless. They've been stalking my yard for ages and have never managed to catch one of those rats. Instead, they've gone after the birds and I have to chase the cats away.

I don't think that's true about mice and rats not being in the same places. I think it's less likely to have both simply because they will compete for rodent housing and food. But if there is enough space and food, then they could live in the same area and not bother each other much.