DryStoneGarden

This warm weather and lack of rain has me a little unsettled. I remember some winters like this when I was growing up, but that was before my gardening days and I don’t remember how it affected the plants. I guess I’ll be finding out. In the meantime, I’ve stopped at Tilden several times this winter to check out how the manzanitas are responding to this lack of a winter. I thought I could look at past photos to see if the different varieties are acting any different this year, but I couldn’t figure out anything conclusive. I think I’ve seen bigger bloom clusters in other years and I think they started blooming a couple of weeks late this year, but I couldn’t say for sure. In any case, they’re looking good right now in the heart of manzanita season.

The one in the photo below, Arctostaphylos montana-regis, has one of the best tree trunks I’ve ever seen. This little cluster of trees is probably my favorite spot in my favorite garden.

The next thing to keep an eye on is when everything deciduous wakes up. A few things in the garden had buds, but nothing had broken into leaf yet.

Manzanita

…post a manzanita photo. I’m still in the mountains, so I don’t know what’s going on down in my garden, but whatever is happening, I’m sure that the trunk of this manzanita is appropriate. Manzanita trunks are great for winter interest, and I’ve decided they’re great for remote-blogging interest, too. This is one of my favorite individual specimens, a manzanita at Tilden. Across the path from it is another great one with peeling bark. Four of them form an arbor. The ones on the right are Arctostaphylos montana-regis and the one on the left is Arctostaphylos pallida, the arcto native to the Oakland-Berkeley hills. So nice.

Manzanita bark

And here’s a video about the discovery of the Bay Area manzanita that was thought to be extinct, the Franciscan Manzanita.