The pleasure of our winter gardens, El Niño edition

Our calla lilies are the stars of our winter gardens.

One of the simple pleasures of homeownership in northern California is being able to maintain a garden year-round, including wintertime.

Occasionally, daytime temperatures climb into the low-to-mid 60s, mixing cloudy with sunny skies. With apologies to my dear friends back east and in the Midwest, who've put up with more than their share of sub-freezing temperatures and snowy blizzards, we do get spoiled this time of year by our moderate climate.

Here, however, we've been waiting what seems like an eternity for a good El Niño season to arrive. Having endured a long drought the past couple of years -- last January we had zilch for rain -- since the beginning of 2016, we've received several quality inches of much-needed precipitation. Maybe, it's been too much of a good thing.

The green grass covering our modest-sized yard has grown so tall that it's beginning to resemble the rough of a British links golf course. Not exactly pristine. Hopefully, one of these days, once it dries out, I'll have a chance to mow and edge the lawn and pull some weeds. The upside to all of our much-needed rain -- yes, there is an upside -- is our winter flowers are having quite the season to remember.

In taking stock of what all of January's rain has meant to our garden, consider this: our camellia bush, which has consistently bloomed since November, still has many pink and white camellias; ditto for our azaleas, which have enjoyed a tremendous rebirth. Our fuchsias are experiencing consistent growth thanks to the abundance of this month's rain, and a few of our rose bushes are still producing blooms.

Finally, the first of our calla lilies, which grow on the usually shady east side of our house, have arrived on schedule. One of them has begun to open its spathe (the part of the lily that is white and shaped like the bell of a trumpet) while a couple of others are about a week or so away from blooming. By spring, we should have a couple dozen fully-bloomed calla lilies.

Each of our plants and flowers has its own growth cycle during the year. Luckily, nature is our ally and there's always something in bloom.

Photos: By Michael Dickens ©2016.

Welcoming the return of the winter season to our garden

Flowers always make people better, happier, and more helpful;

they are sunshine, food and medicine for the soul.

~ Luther Burbank

Calla lily / A welcome sight to our garden each winter.

It's only the second full week of the New Year, but there's a characteristic pattern that's become noticeable each winter day here. Our Bay Area mornings are chilly, and the afternoons are crisp but sunny. The days are mostly dry. It's a welcoming time.

The past couple of Saturday mornings following breakfast have been reserved for spending time in our garden, battling the sprouting oxalis that have been overtaking our iris beds inch by inch as well as the grassy area that surrounds our house and our rose beds, too. Fighting the colorful oxalis happens every year after it's been raining -- and the month between our recent Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays here in Oakland was a very wet one, indeed.

While most of our rose bushes have been dormant -- we usually trim back the branches near the end of the year -- a few have already become active, such as our All That Jazz and our Pristine rose bushes. 

One thing I've enjoyed about winter gardening is welcoming the return of our calla lilies. Right now, there are about six of them in various stages of blooming. By spring, that number should multiply to about two dozen, bringing much joy to the usually quiet east side of our house.

As the beauty of the sun glistens over our backyard garden, it's a delight -- more than ever -- to photograph our winter flowers.

Photograph by Michael Dickens © 2014.

Welcoming the return of summer to our garden

What a lovely thing a rose is! -- Arthur Conan Doyle

All That Jazz / It's summer in our backyard garden and our
All That Jazz roses are blooming brightly.

It's the first week of summer -- sunshine and all -- and a welcoming time indeed.

Last Saturday, the sun arrived at its northernmost point in the sky. With it, we heralded a season of change on Earth as summer officially began in the Northern Hemisphere. As for our neighbors in the Southern Hemisphere, it's their time for winter. No worries, though. Your time for summer will come again, soon.

Now, as the beauty of the morning sun glistens over our backyard garden, it's a delight -- more than ever -- to photograph our summer roses.

Photograph by Michael Dickens, © 2014.

The many lovely faces of our calla lilies

We are blessed to have beautiful flowers growing in our garden, including roses, fuchsia, rhododendrons and camellias. Every year at this time, thanks to the Bay Area's moderate winter climate, our lovely calla lilies come alive, too.

Quietly, these majestic perennial flowers go about their business of blooming on the quiet, east side of our house. As February reached its midway point last week on Valentine's Day, we had four calla lilies in bloom. By spring, that figure will quadruple. Our thriving calla lilies will be with us until the start of summer.

What we commonly know as a calla lily ~ its more formal name is zantedeschia aethiopica ~ is a species in the family Araceae, which is native to southern Africa in Lesotho, South Africa and Swaziland. In the language of Afrikaans, a calla lily is known as "varkoor" meaning pig's ear.

The calla lily is the national flower of the island nation of Saint Helena, and its showy pure white spathe and yellow spadix have been cultivated for the Easter floral trade over the past century. In Britain and Ireland, it is known as the "Easter lily" and, since the Easter uprising of 1916, it became an important symbol of Irish Republicanism.

Over the years, I have enjoyed photographing our calla lilies; each flower seems to have its own individual shape and personality. Because calla lilies can represent both happy and sad occasions, I've used my photographs of them to represent not only the purity of a wedding but also as a condolence to a friend who just lost a parent. The beauty and attractiveness of calla lilies enable them to be used both in wedding bouquets and in funeral arrangements.

The American artist Georgia O'Keeffe brought the calla lily to life through her close-up paintings of single calla lily flowers in the 1920s and 1930s that were both sensual and geometric. Well known as the "lady of the lilies," she once remarked, "What is my experience of the flower if not color?"

Indeed, the calla lilies are in bloom, again.

All photographs by Michael Dickens, copyright 2013. All rights reserved.