The rain and the wind woke me during the night, pounding on my window. Serious winter rain is here. All the leaks in the gutters are apparent. I had to rescue two agaves that were directly under a leaking gutter and that became waterlogged. The potted agave that I planted in the garden, however, drains well.
The plants in the garden are grateful for the steady soaking rain and are responding with greener leaves and even blooms. An honorable mention goes to the purple alyssum in the triangle garden that struggled to survive this summer and is now blooming.
I watered all of the indoor plants today and the container camellia under the porch roof. The waterlogged soil from the agaves supplemented the soil around the camellia and the plumbago. I inherited two cactuses from Judy and they appear to be Christmas cactuses, just now coming into bloom One has the traditional red flower; the second has an usual pale pink flower. I buried plant food spikes in the cactus containers and in the pot with Martha’s palm tree. That tree has not faded or died, but it has not responded to new and deeper soil enriched with transplant food. Perhaps it is just slow growing.
I took advantage of a break in the weather this afternoon to begin trimming the branches off the willow that came down on Thanksgiving day. The fallen willow was half a tree and Mike is not certain that the second half will be able to stay standing on the edge of the pond. I found a photograph of the lower house and pond from the fall of 1995, and the bank was bare. Willows can grow above twenty feet in a little over twenty years.
In an hour and a half I made progress trimming off branches with the loppers and a hand saw, getting down to the larger branches that can be cut with a chain saw for usable firewood. Just after I hauled a truckload of branches to Mike’s burn pile the rain came back again.
A Year at the Snake 