Favorite Rose Bushes

Joe and Keith were here this morning and planted the 3 new rose bushes that I have been looking for ever since I moved to Atwater 4 1/2 years ago. This year for the first time I found them online. The first one was Dainty Bess, an old rose that was introduced in 1925. I started mine from a cutting from my mother-in-law's plant many years ago. I moved in July so wasn't able to take cuttings at that time from my roses in Merced. Here is a picture of Dainty Bess.

I later found two other favorites from Jackson and Perkins online. One is Wildfire, shown here. Such a bright cheerful orange color. Everyone commented on it.

And the other one I found is Fragrant Cloud. Such a strong nice fragrance. I had these roses in Merced for nearly 20 years. Loved them all, but couldn't find them at local stores or even online until this year.
Here is Fragrant Cloud.

Another one I've been trying to find is Taboo. Years ago I started Taboo from cuttings of my plant and gave a start to my sister. Never could find that one again, so this year I took cuttings from her plant. I'm hoping to have that one in my yard once again. It's such a pretty dark red. The buds look black and then open up to a velvety dark red. It's beautiful.

Is it a Hobby?

Isn't this a cute metal sculpture of a Praying Mantis? My daughter Jill gave it to me last Sunday. My yard needs a lot of praying!!
Three of the Iris plants on order should arrive any day now. No sign of them yet. They are coming from Oregon. Six more will arrive by the middle of August from Cathey's Valley.
I always thought Irises needed full sun, but just the other day I read that in the hottest areas, part shade would be best.
Oh. Mine have to have full sun. No other place to plant them. No wonder they go dormant earlier than most other Irises I see. They were all dug up recently and replanted. I sure hope they all survive. It's so hot out there and we are restricted about our watering days. Three days a week.

I had a couple of requests for tombstone photos at the Winton Cemetery, so I went there Wednesday morning. I always find other stones that interest me. This time I noticed Henry Loewen, 1919-1935. I didn't have a clue as to who he was, but was curious.
At home I looked him up on the "Grandma" file from the California Mennonite Historical Society and learned who his parents were and that he died in an accident where he ran into a car. He was just shy of 16 years old. Was he running?
The next step of course is to look for him at Find-A-Grave. There someone posted the newspaper article of the accident and the obituary. He was on his bicycle at a blind corner near the library in Winton on Winton Way. This must have been when the library was in someone's home near Hall Blvd. and Winton Way. Also found out his older sister was Margaret who married Dave Koehn, our beloved Winton School bus driver.
You never know what you will uncover when you are taking pictures at the cemetery.
Everybody has a story.

The Christmas Season

Christmas will soon be here. Seems like we just had Thanksgiving.
I don't do Christmas shopping for anyone, so that takes a lot of pressure off. I send them a small check and they have to do their own shopping. They don't seem to mind, thank goodness. I hate to waste money, so never liked to buy for someone else. It's fun to buy toys for small kids, but after that, ugg. I never know what to get.
I enjoy shopping on Black Friday, but only for myself. It's a good time to get bargains.
Christmas Eve, I'll be going to the candle light service at the Atwater Methodist Church. We were told this morning to bring a friend. Oh Boy. Who to ask? Everybody I know already has a church. Anybody want to volunteer to be my guest?
Next month, I have 7 appointments, before, during and after I have my Cataract removed. I didn't know it took so many appointments to have that done. This Cataract in my right eye has been slowly growing for a long time. My appointment in early December really shocked me!! I couldn't read one single letter on the chart with my right eye. Soooo Blurry!! I don't know how it got so bad so quickly. Maybe high blood sugar has something to do with it? I'll be glad to get this over with.
In January I want to get two new bare root fruit trees. One Stella Cherry to replace the one that died and a standard "O Henry" peach tree. I had no fresh fruit in August last year. The Fantasia Nectarine was ripe in July and the peaches were also gone by August. O Henry ripens in August. So, that's the plan for this year. I'll have to have the "SunCrest" semi-dwarf peach tree removed to make room for O Henry. But that's o.k. Flavorcrest is still my favorite peach.

Time To Prune

Here is one of my fruit trees that John Esau pruned for me last Saturday. This is Fantasia, a delicious yellow-fleshed Nectarine. If we don't have a hail storm like last year, I should get a decent crop this summer of all the fruits.
Still need to fertilize them, hopefully, Monday.
Still have the rose bushes to prune. Usually I do that in January, but I had a cold, so the roses had to wait.
I bought one more rose bush in Merced the other day. I can't believe I'm buying such old varities. "Montezuma" is at least 50 years old. My mother-in-law had that one in Le Grand. It was always a good one though. Guess I forgot to mention I bought a new rose in Turlock, "Drop Dead Red" the picture is very pretty.
So, that's all the room I have for roses. I never found the 4 varities of roses that I was looking for. Those were 4 of my favorites that I had in Merced. I should have taken cuttings of them the winter before "the move." I didn't plan that far ahead. Thought seriously about it in June and the house sold the next day.

Pruned two of the Butterfly Bushes today. It filled up the large green garbage can and most of the other can. I don't know how long I can keep the green can; the park only has a few of them and we have to share. Not many of us have a lot of pruning that we do ourselves. So we seem to get by with the few cans that we have.
Tomorrow afternoon is the Methodist women's annual Winter Tea. I had good intentions to bake the "Three Part Cookie" but decided that was too ambitious. Went to Save Mart and bought some Pepperidge Farm cookies. I hope someone besides me likes them. I hope I'm not the only one that brings something store-bought.

Our Thursday morning Bible Study group is going to read "The Way" by Adam Hamilton. We're almost through with our other book, "Growing Older and Wiser." I think "The Way" will be very interesting. It was written to read during Lent. I guess you don't have to read it then. But it's very appropriate to read before Easter. Following in the Footsteps of Jesus. Six chapters, 6 weeks to Easter.
Our little Thursday morning group is also a social group, so it may take us a little longer.
btw: All Adam Hamilton's books/materials are 40% off, plus free shipping until February 15 from Cokesbury. See the January 19 post for the link to Cokesbury. Don't forget to type in the Code AD13 to get the free shipping.

Fruit Trees are Pruned

Here's my Maggie, going to take a little nap. She is more spoiled than ever.
Today my favorite orchard man came over and pruned my fruit trees. They didn't need a lot of pruning, just kind of shaping them up. I was glad to hear that it's o.k. to plant flowers around the trees. I thought they would use too much of the fertilizer.
So, now I am excited about pruning the roses and deciding what I'm going to plant in the yard. I can't tell yet what will survive the low temperatures we had this winter.
I bought a new container of Round-Up the other day. This one is "extended" Round-Up. The saleman said it would kill the seeds as well as the weeds. I'll have to be careful where I use it. Definitely around the roses. I'm not going to plant anything else around the roses this year so I can get rid of the weeds!!!
Finally finished the January/February newsletter for the Winton Historical Society. They will go out Tuesday. Some of the members will meet late morning to fold them for mailing. Now it's time to start thinking about the next one. I hate to panic at the last minute. I'm hoping the people who said they are going to write a story will come through with it. If everyone sends in their story, it should almost fill the next issue.
Wouldn't that be wonderful. . . .

Fall Colors

The leaves on my little fruit trees turned yellow. They were so pretty, I had to take their picture. Good thing. Because the next day, Joe and Keith were here mowing lawns.

This was going to be the last mowing of the season, so first Keith blew the yellow leaves off the trees before they were picked up by the mower. Most of the leaves on the cherry trees are still green so he left those alone.
I learned something new the other day. I asked John Esau when I should fertilize the little fruit trees. He said after all the leaves fall off. Otherwise the leaves suck up the fertilizer and and then they fall off and there goes your fertilizer.
He uses the "Tree and Vine" fertilizer that he buys in Ballico. I still have a lot of 16-16-16 that I bought in Merced, so I will use that up before buying the "Tree and Vine." John puts a gallon of that fertilizer around his full-grown trees, but he said to put about a pint around my small trees. So, that's the plan. He will come prune my little trees again this January to be sure they get off to a good start. They need to be shaped properly.

Here is a pretty flower I found at The Greenery in Turlock. It's a Echnacea, commonly known as a Coneflower. This red one is named "Sombrero Salsa Red." It reminds me of a Poinsettia. So much prettier than the more common purple Coneflower. I replanted it in a larger pot. Someday when I get rid of all the Burmuda grass I will plant it in the ground.
Another thing I'll have to do is dig up the flower plants around the fruit trees. Think of how much fertilizer they suck up. I like having flowers around the trees, but I guess they'll have to go.

Fall Time

This is what my Fuyu Persimmon tree looked like in Merced. Every year it was loaded with fruit. I miss that tree. Not to mention the cherry trees and the peach trees and the nectarine. I have the same varieties planted here in Atwater, but the trees are still small.
My sister and I got some persimmons the other day and we were very happy to get them. Carolyn made a Fuyu Bundt Cake today and she said it was really delicious. I'll have to try it too sometime. You can find the recipe here.Carolyn said it's easy to make.
She also made some cookies from the soft (Hachiyas)persimmons.

We enjoyed the fund raiser at the Winton Mennonite School last Saturday. We thought about bidding on items in the auction, but everything went too high for us. We did enjoy our lunch and some candy. It got really cold before the auction was over, so we left a little early. Very interesting afternoon. I did take a few pictures, you can see them at flickr.

Settin' and Thinkin'

After doing some watering and a little weed pulling, I sat on the glidder for a short rest.
As I was sitting there, I thought; if I wanted to spend a lot of money, I could have all this lawn (read grass and weeds) dug up and sterilize the ground; hire a professional landscaper and plant lots of colorful flowers. Wouldn't that be fun? I'd need to have a drip system put in.
I'm sure that would run into a lot of money. More than I'd care to spend. But still, if the weeds could really be kept to a minimum, that would be fun. I know I'd really enjoy that.
I'm borrowing this picture that Sandy took of me deadheading the Gaillardias. That little rolling bench I'm sitting on sure comes in handy. Found it at OSH a couple of years ago. It's hard on the old back to stoop over for any length of time and prune off the dead flowers.
I caught Maggie relaxing on the top level of her cat tree today. That sure has been a good investment. She loves that tree and spends a lot of time on it. It's 5.5 feet tall and she likes the top two levels the most.

Butterfly Bushes

This is one of 6 Butterfly Bushes I planted since I moved here in July 2010. Two are planted around the shed and 4 are in the front yard. Two are still quite small.
I forgot the name of the one pictured. I have it written down somewhere. Just saw it the other day.
The Butterfly Bush by the driveway is Adonis Blue. One of my favorites. I had that one in Merced and when I couldn't find it again locally, I ordered it and it was so tiny when I got it in the mail, but it's about 4 feet now. Another one I had in Merced was "Strawberry Lemonade," with varigated leaves and pink flowers. I wish I had dug it up before putting my house on the market. Haven't been able to find it again. I was able to find a petite Black Knight. It has one flower on it now. They are supposed to bloom all summer and fall.

This next flower is from "Annie's Annuals & Perennials" that I purchased at The Greenery in Turlock. I'm not sure if it's supposed to be an annual or perennial here in Atwater. We had some very cold weather last winter and I don't think it completely disappeared, but it also said it re-seeds itself. Which it has, I started with one plant and now have a few little ones besides the main one.
Oh, the name of the plant is Catananche Caenulea or Cupid's Dart.
The flowers are small.
Blogger has made some changes recently. What I miss the most is the spell-check tool. Why did they take that away?
And when I upload a photo, it doesn't always appear. After finding the picture I want to post, there are two buttons to click on, either "cancel" or ____. The other one is blank and that's the one I need to click. Something's not working right.

Atwater Sand

I grew up in the Winton/Atwater area. Then after I got married I lived in Le Grand for six years, then moved to Merced and lived there for about 46 years. The places we lived in Le Grand had very heavy soil. Mud in the winter and hard dirt in the summer. I didn't like the soil in our yards.
In Merced, we lived in a number of places, some had heavy soil and others not too bad, but nothing to compare to the Atwater sand. I'm still getting used to it again.
Don't get me wrong, I like the sand, but it takes some getting used to. The big thing of course is watering plants often enough. It still surprises me that the ground doesn't stay damp very long at all.
In Merced I could water once a week, or maybe twice if it was really hot. Here you gotta keep your eye on it. Sometimes have to water every day in the heat of summer.
On the plus side: It's much easier to pull out weeds and the annual flowers reseed themselves readily. Wow! You just have to wait and see what's going to come up. No need to go out and buy a bunch of flower plants. Just be patient, they'll be back.

Here are the wild Coreopsis that I used to see along the irrigation ditches. I didn't plant them, they're one of my volunteer flowers. Also the bright pink Oriental Poppies that everyone tells me are Opium Poppies, I didn't plant them either.
It's fun to see what's going to come up next.

It Is What It Is

After that hail storm last month, I was left with one lone cherry on Stella. Couldn't find any on Bing or Rainier. Bing was in bloom earlier than the other two cherry trees. I think the blooms on the other cherry trees were too late to polinate Bing. It was the same thing in Merced; Bing was in bloom before Stella, but it had so many flowers that a lot of the blossoms were pollinized anyway. Stella is self-fruitful. Sure hope I get more cherries next year!!

Here is a picture of 3 of the little peaches on SunCrest. There are only two nectarines on Fantasia a couple of peaches on FlavorCrest and nothing on the apricot tree. The trees are very young. They've been in the ground about 16 months. Can't expect much out of them so soon.

I planted the cherry tomato in the milk can that I inherited when I moved here. The hail cut it down to half its' size but it's back up there again and doing good.
I have a lot of projects going on right now. Worked on the newsletter for the Winton Historical Society today. I need personal stories from local people, or those who used to live in Winton. Stories are hard to come by.
Also need to work on genealogy. Some cousins have sent in their updated information which I need to add to my file. I'm glad they wanted to do this. It's interesting to see how many children, grandchildren they have.
My biggest project though is getting the spare bedroom sorted out before my daughter gets here the first week in June. Sure don't know what I am going to do with a lot of that stuff. Hard to make those decisions.
Last of all I still have lots of weeding to do. Sounds like I have some busy days ahead.

It's Spring Again

The hail storm we had recently left some of my plants looking sad. The rosebush in the foreground lost a lot of leaves, as did the fruit trees and other plants. They will survive though. You can see some of the Iris in bloom again in the background, just beyond my extra parking space. I still have a lot of weeds to get rid of and a few more plants to stick in the ground.

Here's a picture of the flowers at the end of the visitor parking space. The rosebush on the left is "Playboy" one of my favorites and the short red one is "Thrive." The tall poppies look red in the picture, but are actually a bright pink color. My neighbors say I am growing Opium, but I didn't plant them, they've been coming up volunteer. They don't last long, but are very pretty so I'm letting them grow.

Easter Sunday

Happy Easter everyone! Today the sun is shining and it's a nice spring day. Went to church this morning. Had a few more people attend than usual. It was nice. My sister-in-law, her husband and daughter were visitors today along with Aunt Ernestine. She said the hour went fast, so I guess she wasn't bored. LOL. I didn't think she would be. Our pastor is a good speaker. We're talking about the Atwater United Methodist Church here.
The picture on the left was taken in the Fireside Room where we meet after church for coffee and munchies.
I took a few pictures of my flowers today. The lilac bush is doing so much better in the back yard. The spot where it was before has hardpan and lilacs need good drainage.
The name of the lilac is Sensation. It's just beginning to bloom. I'd like to have another lilac bush, but I'm running out of room.
Maybe I have too many Irises.
Not all of them are in bloom yet, just the early ones. Pictured is Purple Pepper.
Hello Darkness has quite a few buds on it; can't wait til they open up so I can get a good picture of it.
I still have the 15 Gerbera daisies to plant. Maybe tomorrow. I've been saying that for quite some time now. One of these days it's really going to happen.
I keep forgetting that I have a flat of flowering strawberries to plant around the mailbox also. There are lots of weeds to pull. (Or dig out with a shovel.) So much to do. Good thing I love being out in the yard. Don't like to work too hard though, just piddle around. Guess that's why it takes so long to get anything done. It's easier on my arthritis that way. My knee doctor said don't overdo; so I'm taking his advice.

First Day of Spring

Today is the first day of spring. The sun is shining, but I think we are getting more rain this weekend. I know we need it, so I'm not complaining.
I have one Iris in bloom so far. It's the white one that I don't know the name of. It was always the first one to bloom, until one day Captain Hook bloomed really early.
I found large 6-packs of Gerbera daisies at Lowes recently. Need to get them planted soon.
The Atwater Methodist women are getting ready for an estate sale the last weekend of this month. I go there in the mornings to help, but I know I'm not as helpful as I could be. This is a new experience for me and don't always know what to do.
I felt so lucky to find a hardback book on Merced County history. I quickly snatched that up and an old measuring cup that I'm going to buy. The cup is going to be used to measure out fertilizer for my plants, so it's o.k. that it has a chip in the spout. There are a lot of other interesting things, but I don't have room for more stuff. Gotta get rid of a lot of stuff I already have.

Busy Monday

I love Mondays, or any day with nothing on the calendar. Since today was a free day, I decided to plant the "Early Girl" tomato plants that I bought at Save Mart a few days ago. It was a 6-pack with large nice looking plants, so I didn't want to let them hang around until they looked sad.
First I dug 4 really big holes and filled them with water like the man in the produce section at Save Mart told me to. Then filled the holes with good Miracle Grow garden soil. If the snails don't eat them I should have some nice big tomato plants this summer.
I gave 2 of the plants to my sister. I don't have room for six plants. Saved a little room for a pickling cucumber plant. I need to get a couple more of the tomato cages. Going to put one around the cucumber plant also. I don't have enough room to let them sprawl all over.
In the picture is the SunCrest peach tree in bloom. Wonder how many peaches I will have this year? I had two last year and one nectarine. I hope I get a few more this year. John Esau said I should get a few cherries already this year, so that will be exciting!! The cherries are not blooming yet and neither is the apricot.
I fertilized the fruit trees today finally. You have to hoe it in, so I was tired after fertilizing and watering 8 fruit trees.
I hoed some weeds today around the Iris plants. The ones out by the road had a lot of aphids, so I got this bright idea to get the lint roller and roll the leaves. Got quite a few off that way and then sprayed the plants with water. I'll have to check them again tomorrow.
Tomorrow is the Merced County Retirees luncheon at the Elks Lodge in Merced. We meet quarterly on the second Tuesday. If you're a Merced County retiree and don't usually go, put it on your calendar for June and try to attend. You need to make a reservation.
Now that gasoline is so expensive, I try to do other errands any time I drive to Merced. I need to go to the library and look up a few items in the old newspapers on microfilm. And then I have my shopping list. It's going to be a long day.
Wednesday Carolyn and I have appointments in Turlock for our monthly reflexology treatment. Carolyn can hardly wait the whole month, but I've been doing pretty good.
Of course tonight my muscles are sore from doing yard work but I feel good that I got something done. I did get on my exercise bike for a very short time tonight and I think that helped somewhat.
Good thing!! I have a LOT more weeds to dig out.

November Mandarins

My little Satsuma Mandarin tree has 13 mandarins on it. I ate one the other day, but it wasn't quite sweet enough yet. They are really sweet when fully ripe.
The dwarf Washington Navel has a few oranges on it again this year, but they won't be ripe for quite a long time. I'm just happy to have fruit so soon. They were just planted last year. I'm glad I had the orange trees removed that were not varieties that I like and replaced them. It's worth the short wait for something you like.
You can see in the picture that I seriously need to work in the front yard.
The other day I was very surprised to find a petite "Black Knight" Butterfly Bush at Lowe's. I didn't know the Black Knight was available in a smaller shrub. Six feet by 6 feet is supposed to be the maximum size. I'm going to plant it between the two Mandarins. The Pixie Mandarin that I just planted recently doesn't have any fruit on it this year.
I had some volunteer Zinnias come up by the duplicate Iris plants this summer. I hope they come up again in the spring. I like the bright colors. The other Zinnias were through and had to be pulled up. I enjoy my yard. I've made just a little too much work for myself and there is lots of work to be done. But that's o.k. Gives me something to think about.
Now if I could just get people to send in their memories of Winton for the historical society's newsletter, everything would be great!!

11-11-11

I have an Iris blooming now. "Autumn Circus." True to its name, it blooms in the fall as well as in April and May. It was just divided in July and replanted so I didn't expect it to bloom so soon.
Today is a special day. 11-11-11. My sister was expecting a new grandbaby today, but I don't think it happened yet. Too bad. Today is 100 years since the baby's great-grandfather was born. The first baby born in Winton on 11-11-1911.
Today I had an appointment with my eye doctor. Last year he wanted to remove the cataract in my eye. But I was scheduled for knee replacement surgery later that month, so he said to call him when I was ready to have it done. I never got around to making the appointment even though it's been getting hard to read the newspaper. I keep the magnifying glass handy. So, today I was prepared to make the appointment to have the cataract removed.
To my surprise -- my eye has improved. The cataract is better than last year. The doctor said last year my right eye was at 20/70 and today it's 20/50. I asked what would make it improve? He said something about the lens changes or something like that. Anyway I got to thinking -- it must be because of reflexology. Because of Miguel Gallegos working on my feet and sometimes my ears and finger tips, I went from horrible double vision (a plus 5 prism in each lens) to no double vision. So, if reflexology can do that, why not improve the cataract in the eye?
It's no wonder I keep going to Turlock once a month for reflexology treatments. There are other reasons of course. Pain or soreness in my back, hips, legs, stiff neck. You name it. I always feel better after a treatment.
I am so happy that I don't need to have a cataract removed, but just ordered new glasses instead. This was indeed a lucky day.

Garbarge Can Bouquet

Where Have All the Flowers Gone? I feel bad pulling them up when there are a few flowers left still trying to look cheerful. But, the lower parts of the plants were really looking bad. So, now to plant something else in their place.

My sister had her knee replacement surgery on October 5. She is doing very well, lots of physical therapy at Anberry. She will have the staples out this Thursday. Then see what the doctor says about her left knee. Might have to go through it all over again for the other knee.

Yesterday, I finally got the Winton Historical Society's newsletter printed and with the help of 3 other people at CLEO, we got them folded, taped; slapped on the labels and stamps and in the mail they went. I hope no one gave up on them. They were so very late. The next newsletter, the November/December issue will probably not go out until just before Thanksgiving. After that, I'll try to get back on schedule.
Sure would like to get more stories written by other people about their memories of living in Winton in the "good old days." Their memories of Thanksgiving or Christmas in Winton would be a timely topic. You can email them to me at WintonCA@aol.com Thanks.

Roses and Things

Little by little changes are taking place in my yard. All the rose bushes were so old that I had Joe dig them out, all except the two tree roses. The picture shows two rose bushes that were later dug out today. I purchased 10 new bare root roses so far, but the stores have not received their orders from Jackson & Perkins yet. Those are usually the best ones with a good selection of the newer varieties. I hope there will be enough room for the others on my list.
Joe weeded the yard today. That was a job that I thought I would do myself, but that won't happen for quite a while. I'm still taking pain pills for my knee.
It won't be long before the special order fruit trees will arrive at The Greenery.
I'm anxious to have them planted, but also nervous that I may have hard-pan and then what? Will Joe be able to break through that hard dirt? I sure hope the trees do well.
Here's a picture of Joe; he just finished weeding the Iris garden and is now pulling weeds from the narrow flower bed in back of my mobile. The flower bed will be made wider this spring and I will plant tomatoes here. The Irises planted here will probably be given away because they are duplicates.
I still haven't found a place for everything I wanted to keep and I am sure the papers in boxes on the porch are deteriorating. What to do - what to do.