Gertrude's Flower Garden Weekly Diary
12/3/99 - I think that I can safely say that most of the leaves are now raked from the lawns and garden. I still have to clear leaves from the shrubbery, especially the azaleas where they love to cling, the window wells, and the rain gutters. Otherwise, the garden is ready for its winter sleep.
Now my gardening work moves inside. First, there is the glass-room about which I write below, and also the sun-window, which is a shelved window that extends out from the house. It was our winter garden before we had the glass-room built. I have put potted baby Wings begonias on the three shelves and a few house plants that stay there all year.
Things are progressing in my basement "nursery." The tiny begonia plants continue to thrive, and, as usual, I worry about how I am ever going to disentangle and transplant these tiny fellows. Of course, I won't be able to transplant all of them--I don't have enough time or trays--but I haven't yet found a way to plant their dust-like seeds any more thinly. A few days ago, I planted a box each of the white and yellow/gold (I don't try to separate these two colors) Star zinnias, and already they are showing green shoots. When I first began to plant these zinnias, I meticulously separated the seeds from the hulls, but in recent years I have found that I can plant the mixture of seeds and hulls and get the same results. This saves a great deal of time, and is the way the seeds fall to the ground naturally.
This week's picture is of the "glass-room," which we had built on half of our terrace. It is completely glass enclosed, so that it gets plenty of light all winter. I eat all of my meals there; when the sun is shining in the morning, this is a wonderful place to begin a cold winter's day. The ledge that you see on the right hand side of the picture runs around three-quarters of the room. In the right-hand corner, you can see my Meyer lemon tree, which has five fat lemons on it. In the left-hand corner is a dwarf orange tree, which so far has produced two oranges that aren't ready to pick. On the shelf are also about six cacti (Cactaceae), commonly known as Christmas cacti since they bloom around the holidays. These are now blooming or in bud. Between them I have placed small pots of Wings begonias, which I gathered in the garden where they had self-seeded--they were not blooming when I potted them, but most are now in bloom. Also in the glass-room, on the wall you can't see, are the two pots of geraniums that hang by the front door in warm weather. The Manderville (?) plant given me by a friend is also invisible in this picture--it is recovering from a severe pruning which I gave it because it was being attack by mealy bugs.
12/10/99 - Gertrude's Flower Garden Weekly Diary
11/26/99 - Gertrude's Flower Garden Weekly Diary
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