Intergeneric orchid Stefan Isler

Really lovely. There are 4 spikes. Im proud of myself, getting this to bloom. These are the first flowers to open - I expect many.

The season begins. Peaches and plums in bloom.

This is garden gold peach. There are traces of leaf curl on the new leaves. Leaf curl usually starts small then dominates. I'll be watching. If it's bad, that means no way to gtrow genetic dwarf peaches in my area without bagging them in plastic for the winter or heavy sprays. I did spray belated with micro-cop but might have been too little too late. Depends on how bad it is. I might cut these down and replace with "resistant" varieties next spring, if they don't produce.

Shiro plum. The most blooms so far. I did the "bee" thing and went back and forth between Shiro, Hollywood, and Trilite Peach-Plum.

The front border. Tri-lite peach-plum is in bloom with pink flowers. Quite lovely.

Hollywood plum. This tree is so lovely, it doesn't have to fruit to be worth having. But I hope it does. The plums are tasty and beautiful.

Bonanza miniature peach. Or is it Pondorosa - I get those mixed up. Tiny tree but lots of flowers.

Back on line. What's blooming?

Desktop computer died. Camera seemed to be taking fuzzy pics. Got new camera. For some reason, laptop started displaying all instructions in Chinese - not helpful at all. Rebuild laptop from scratch. Whew! Almost back in business. Need better program to crop and edit pics. Here are the 1st ones from new camera.

Charlei got a haircut. He's my #1 buddy, always.The earliest narcissus are blooming. I think these are "jetfire".

Hollywood plum is blooming. This is the first plum to bloom. Bonanza peach and Trilite peach-plum are almost open as well. We had frost yesterday am, but it looked like it didn't frost the buds.

As things start working again, I hope to have more posted. Front bed renovations are 80% completed.

New Composter. New Strawberries. Tree Peony Buds.

Tree peony buds promise of spring.

Got some more bare root strawberry starts. These are TriStar. Popular day-neutral. Cheap, $9.99 for 25 plants. Now several of the planters contain strawberry plants. They looked brown and depressing in the bundles but once planted and watered some had green leaves. Not sure if I ever bough bare root strawberries before. Seems pretty easy.

Ning and I put together his new composting barrel. It took about an hour. We should have done a YouTube, it was rather simple yet complicated at the same time. Turns nicely. Kitchen scraps will go into this one. We also added some starter compost as inoculum. Now a turn a day keeps the compost cooking.

Fruit and Rose Bed Renovation

Front border "Fruit & Rose Bed". Actually, as many lilacs as roses. They are starting to come into their own, closest to the curb. As the roses reach their life span, the lilacs will fill in. Weeds pulled, although I know there are still grass roots under the surface. Still, looking a lot better. Compost is added around the lilacs and roses. Over the next week or two, I'm planning to add bark nuggets to the currently bare areas.

Side view, showing the completed, mulched areas as well. Getting closer... That hardy Windmill Palm is 8 years old. I trimmed the lower leaves, to make it look more "palm-like". It's a good, low maintenance, low water demand tree for this area.