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T Rees Garden Diary @tamara-trees.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

82F/27C - 091326 - the heat wave has ended. Weather has turned a corner to cooler temps. The lettuce sprouts grew in the heat with moisture touch ups twice a day. Spotted some white flies, so vigilance is needed to remove those. Sunlight today 12 hours and 33 minutes.

Bright green leaflets reach up from dark brown soil. Little Gem lettuce sprouts are growing well.

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T Rees Garden Diary @tamara-trees.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

102F/38.9C, 090826 - Tomorrow predicted to be 102 and the next day. The work day spent with all the blinds closed to block the heat. As sunset begins, unblock the windows; step out onto the garden path; breathe warm air thick with a swirl of evening cool. Disregard the mosquitoes.

Twilight garden path leading to a long swing. A pillow with green leaf pattern leans against the back. Red fairy flowers on long stems float above long grasses and columbine leaves.

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T Rees Garden Diary @tamara-trees.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

89F/29C, 090726. Blue sky, rich cyan with dots of puffy clouds, oh so welcome. Cool temperatures have faded into another heat wave this week, 102 by Weds. Fall crop already planted with fava beans, lettuce and some creeping thyme. The house shadow has lengthened with the shorter days but it’s hot.

Sky blue horizon rising into a rich cyan with small cloud puffs and tree silhouettes.

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T Rees Garden Diary @tamara-trees.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

77F/25C- 083126- Orange sky, CA fire season reaches into the city garden. Not surprising anymore, smoke cools the end of summer. Rusty sunlight filtering through the trees is a reminder to check the Go Bag. Adapting means being prepared to evacuate quickly. The cheerful lettuce sprouts are growing.

Orange smoky sky above a red bottle brush shrub and a distant apple tree.

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T Rees Garden Diary @tamara-trees.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

80F/27C - Aug 13, ‘26. Not so long ago the garden roasted at 105F. Now, a dramatic turn in temperature, wispy clouds, breezy and a hint of Fall. Lettuce seedlings sprouting with a hope of salads. (Daylight today: 13 hours, 44 minutes)

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T Rees Garden Diary @tamara-trees.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

99F/37C - Aug 7. 26 - Slightly cooler today; enough for a pleasant evening and slight breeze as the sun sets. Peace in the garden, disregard the mosquitoes.

Pink flower on a long stem, glows with the background sunset sky.

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T Rees Garden Diary @tamara-trees.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

105F/40C- 080326 - Heat wave routines have set in. Sunny and cool at 6am, deep water trees & veggie plants. Refresh water in bird bath for Blue Jays, their fledgling and the squirrels; even though, those critters, plus possums ate all the fruit from the trees this year, they are loved in the garden.

Hardy, bright orange Black Eyed Susan daisies stand tall beneath a shady tree on a hot day. I planted these ten years ago and they return each year.

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T Rees Garden Diary @tamara-trees.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

101F/39C - Aug 1, ‘26 heat wave has begun. My grandmother’s geraniums, I didn’t like them as a child because picking the blooms made me itchy, but now, I love their toughness. With a little water, they don’t mind scorching summer heat, nor frost. they just keep churning out those neon pink flowers.

Close up of an intense pink fluffy cluster of petals, geraniums I inherited from grandma Alpha’s garden, growing happily for 70+ years.

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T Rees Garden Diary @tamara-trees.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

92F/33C - Spicy hot days with a few bounces to 103F/39C. I’m not seeing the insects of past years. No June Bug buzzing, fuzzy jumping spiders or evening praying mantis. Many crawly pincher bugs for the lizards. Basil has been slow growing, but persistent. There will be homemade pesto eventually.

Genovese basil displays a flash of bright green leaves in a hardware cloth round pen, which discourages cabbage moth damage.

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T Rees Garden Diary @tamara-trees.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

88F/31C - Thunder clouds and mild temperatures resulting in the first salsa of the year 6/27. Handful banana peppers, three large tomatoes, boil 5 min. Blend in juicer with yellow onion, 2 tbsp white vinegar, 2 cloves garlic, 1 tps salt. Hot, but so good on tacos or an omelette.

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T Rees Garden Diary @tamara-trees.bsky.social · 28/05/2026

72F / 22C- May 26, or February? It’s been two days of drenching thunderstorms, thunder, lightning and garden tasks undone. Good time for a last pot of minestrone soup before temps increase 20 degrees in two more days. El Niño takes hold.

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T Rees Garden Diary @tamara-trees.bsky.social · 22/05/2026

93F/34C - May 21, the first small tomatoes have appeared this month, surviving a wind storm that shriveled leaves and twisted branches. In past years I would have just planted.

Apricot zebra tomato plant with a small green striped fruit.

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T Rees Garden Diary @tamara-trees.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

65F/18C - May 3, thunderstorms continue to roll through. Extreme heat in Pacific Ocean, El Niño, forecasted to linger into winter. Night temps solid 50F(10C)+. Tomato plants have strong growth, green tomatoes. First 90F(32C) expected in 5 days. Meanwhile in the garden, pottery lizard found a friend.

Lovely Southern alligator lizard, speckled black and white stripes, giving me a “you don’t see me” stern look, while enjoying a warm rock near dusk.

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T Rees Garden Diary @tamara-trees.bsky.social · 25/04/2026

72F/22C - Lovely time in the garden, sit in the swing and watch the bumblebees patrolling. Yellow fairy blooms swaying as the black bees zoom by or bounce off petals. Disregard any mosquitoes, there is peace in the garden.

Walk a garden path through yellow columbine flowers and take a rest in the swing.

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T Rees Garden Diary @tamara-trees.bsky.social · 23/04/2026

64F/ 18C - April 22, thunderstorms and a wide temperature flux this month. My tomato plants have some hail damage. When the brilliant sunshine breaks out, run into the garden and cherish the flowers, before the clouds close up again.

Stubby antenna, long thin abdomen crossed with white stripes, a white-bowed smooth wing, Scaeva Affinis, was visiting a garden daisy flower that survived the winter.

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T Rees Garden Diary @tamara-trees.bsky.social · 18/03/2026

85F/29C- March 17, 2026, heat wave season has begun. High humidity and 90’s expected. Citrus trees seem happy, heavy with flowers. I see honey bees and some butterflies about. No sign yet of the black carpenter bees or yellow columbine blooms. It’s hard to believe, 20 yrs ago, there could be snow.

Young lime tree showing white blossoms against dark green leaves topped with sparkling dew drops.

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T Rees Garden Diary @tamara-trees.bsky.social · 01/03/2026

69F/20.6C - Mar 1, 2026 - Budburst throughout the region today, with the bloom of trees and western redbud joining leaves of vibrant green. Now is a time of action, walk, breathe, spring has come again.

A gray branch adorned with pink redbud blooms and a tuft of new leaves.

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T Rees Garden Diary @tamara-trees.bsky.social · 27/02/2026

70F/ 21C, February 26 - California freezing monsoon rain, January through today, seems to have ended, bringing clouds of mosquitos and the first 70 degrees of 2026. The fruit trees and this fringe bush are blooming. No new leaves yet.

Red leaves of a fringe bush surround magenta frilly blooms.

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T Rees Garden Diary @tamara-trees.bsky.social · 15/02/2026

62F / 17C- Feb 15, nights are bouncing from 37F to 40’s - Daffodils and Catch Weed showing in the garden. A bit of delightful yellow versus horrid spiral smother weeds, the garden reflecting the current year.

Yellow Daffodil budding and a round spiral leaf Catch Weed looming up from below.

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T Rees Garden Diary @tamara-trees.bsky.social · 28/01/2026

54F/12C - Rain expected, finding a quiet spot in the garden, a slight sent of paper white flowers.

A found statue, cat like and paper white blooms against feathers of dark green.

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T Rees Garden Diary @tamara-trees.bsky.social · 18/01/2026

Evening 41F/5C - Dense fog is rolling in tonight. It is the middle of the doldrums: biting cold, freedom strained. I set up some indoor shelving, a grow light and stir my garden seed packets. Keep the hope of spring. Winter has been here before.

Dusk, and fog rolls over: dark silhouette of a tree, branch stub, pruning gone wrong.

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T Rees Garden Diary @tamara-trees.bsky.social · 21/11/2025

64F/23C - Nov 21/32 days until winter solstice. Weather has begun to turn chilly. Leaves are falling and overnight showers leave a shimmer of rain drops on garden branches. Find beauty in small things.

Morning after a rain there is a shimmer of rain drops on garden branches. Tiny globes sparkle in the dawn.

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T Rees Garden Diary @tamara-trees.bsky.social · 03/11/2025

80F/27C, Nov 2; 25 yrs ago, knit hats, scarves and coats would appear by now. Another harvest of banana peppers with more budding. This batch will make chili sauce for tonights pozole soup because of a craving for Falls past. The fruit trees are just beginning to drop their leaves others not a leaf.

Blue pattern bowl with yellow banana peppers rimmed with marigolds.

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T Rees Garden Diary @tamara-trees.bsky.social · 09/10/2025

75F/ 24C - (Oct 9, long covid hanging on) Bright Fall days, chatty Blue Jays and not too hot. Bees are collecting for the last honey stores. The bottle brush blooms again. The garden persists.

Brilliant red bloom on the bottle brush tree. A honey bee hovers, preparing for nectar collection.

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T Rees Garden Diary @tamara-trees.bsky.social · 17/08/2025

86F/30C - August 16, the days are getting shorter, heat bounces up and down by 5 degrees each week and my fall tomato harvest is dismal. 4 plants/ 4 green tomatoes. Will they turn red - who knows? But there is always 2026 to try again. The garden persists.

Two green heirloom tomatos surrounded by spiky flower leaflets and sparkly plant hairs.

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T Rees Garden Diary @tamara-trees.bsky.social · 23/07/2025

80F/27C - It has been unusually cool mid-July. So many thunderstorms have passed overhead; not dropping rain but having a cooling effect. When I first moved to the valley in 1986, there would not be a single cloud from June to Sept.

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T Rees Garden Diary @tamara-trees.bsky.social · 10/07/2025

86F/ 30C, July 9 / 102F expected tomorrow - Adapting to hot days and summer Covid. Wandered into the garden and found a Baja Fairy Duster flower- first bloom since planted in the fall 2024. I remember those cool hopeful days.

Calliandra californica flower spreads a fan of brilliant red. Hot weather loving, I tried to train another plant into a tree, but the stems refused to thicken into a trunk. It remains a favorite, hardy but a delicate shrub.

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T Rees Garden Diary @tamara-trees.bsky.social · 01/07/2025

94F/34C - Dead again, sigh. I’ve lost another tree. I’m not sure when it began dying. 107F? I pruned in March, careful to avoid hot weather and a water column break. It bloomed, put out leaves and died. My 4th Redbud tree death on the West side of the house. It’s just too hot there, time to adapt.

Water and care wasn’t enough. Another Ca Western Redbud has died. Thick branches reach up to the hot sun, topped with red dry crinkled leaves.

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T Rees Garden Diary @tamara-trees.bsky.social · 29/06/2025

96F/36C Overnight 63F/17C Lots of pollinator activity around the squash flowers. One very frustrated carpenter bee is having trouble reaching the nectar. A face full of pollen was the reward for persistence, but she won’t give up.

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T Rees Garden Diary @tamara-trees.bsky.social · 28/06/2025

93F/34C day/overnight temps are high 58F/14C. Backyard gardeners greet the day, “Hello, my pretty”, nose pointed near spiky tomato flowers, hanging from twisted fuzzy stems. Are there tomato buds today?

Spiky green sepals surround the yellow flower petals. Tomato plant hairs splay across the stems in a sparkling defense against aphid attack.

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T Rees Garden Diary @tamara-trees.bsky.social · 22/06/2025

86F/30C - NNW 14mph. Wind hot and dry brings wild fire risk. Warnings to check defensible space for dry leaves. 3 hawks whirl overhead. Marigolds for those lost. Determined but small jumping spider holds fast.

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T Rees Garden Diary @tamara-trees.bsky.social · 19/06/2025

90F/32C - Hold fast and grow. The garden persists.

Closeup of a Easter egg gord vine tendral wrapping around a steal wire support. Appears like the green hand of a garden fairy clasping firmly.

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T Rees Garden Diary @tamara-trees.bsky.social · 16/06/2025

Cool on a plate; discard liquid: blend 1 tomato, skin, pulp with all peppers; set aside for heat control; blend other items; add hot pepper mix 1 tablespoon at a time; taste for chili level. Salsa keeps 1 week in fridge. Freeze extra pepper mix in ice cube trays. - Gracious Mama Coco y Tia Lilia.

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T Rees Garden Diary @tamara-trees.bsky.social · 16/06/2025

90F/32C - Salsa day! 5 banana peppers 5 cups tomatoes of various sizes from store or garden 1/2 large yellow onion 1/3 cup large chopped fresh cilantro (optional) tablespoon white vinegar 4 large cloves chopped garlic 1/2 teaspoon salt How to: boil peppers and tomatoes until the skin splits;

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T Rees Garden Diary @tamara-trees.bsky.social · 13/06/2025

87F/31C - June 12 - 2nd Pepper harvest. No these are not too hot. Kings they are not.

Yellow banana peppers arranged in a blue loop pattern bowl on a cover of cilantro flowers.

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T Rees Garden Diary @tamara-trees.bsky.social · 05/06/2025

94F/34C - June 4, pepper harvest has begun and the cooking possibilities are stirring.

Cheerful blue bowl holds seven yellow banana peppers, the leafy plant of origin in the background.

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T Rees Garden Diary @tamara-trees.bsky.social · 01/06/2025

86F/30C - A bit cooler today. Brilliant orange CA poppies bloom on, visited by a tiny sweat bee weighted down by her pollen harvest. Find beauty in small things. The garden persists.

Sweat bee, Halictus tripartitus, harvesting pollen from an orange CA poppy, and bagging the sticky golden globs to legs and abdomen.

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T Rees Garden Diary @tamara-trees.bsky.social · 30/05/2025

103F/39C May 30 - First day of triple digit heat, 2025. The columbine flowers have moved from electric yellow to beige. Petals curling into fuzzy ripples around ebony seeds, the hope of new life.

Plump ebony seeds bunch together towards the center of five dry columbine flower petals, small reminders of hope.

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T Rees Garden Diary @tamara-trees.bsky.social · 26/05/2025

83F/28C - Tiny white pepper bells are now so welcome. The large banana pepper plant (3yrs old) will again provide well. Nearby another (2yrs) has half as many flowers. The other shorties have only green growth. Now if only the tomatoes could grow faster. I’m dreaming of summers first fresh salsa.

Banana pepper plant white bell flower with a green chevron pattern decorating the pointed petals.

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T Rees Garden Diary @tamara-trees.bsky.social · 25/05/2025

81F/27C May 25 - It’s done. My vegetable garden is planted; however, after plucking crowded sprouts, replanting, and label sticks falling out, there is a mystery. Is this a beet plant or chard? Time will tell. I’ve never had beet greens. My eclectic style of gardening continues to persist.

Possibly beet plant or chard, this plant seedling has yellow green leaves with red veins. Google AI might tell, but what fun is there in that?

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T Rees Garden Diary @tamara-trees.bsky.social · 21/05/2025

83F/30C - May 20, I just planted my tomatoes seedlings after keeping them sheltered from the spring winds. Is it too late for a good summer harvest? Will the squirrels toss the fuzzy leaf babies in a heap? - Just keep swimming through sparkling red bottle brush flowers honey bees.

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T Rees Garden Diary @tamara-trees.bsky.social · 18/05/2025

85F/28C - It has been blustery and unsettled this week. Unusual fast thunderstorms then gone. Red squirrels are enjoying the green nectarines but the tree is large enough that plenty will be left on the outer branches. The discarded fruit will need to be cleaned up before it rots.

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T Rees Garden Diary @tamara-trees.bsky.social · 10/05/2025

May 10; 94F/ 33C - Hatchling poults hiding in a curb sprout of grasses pop out at the hen turkeys call. I try to be bird friendly, clean bird bath, acorns, insects, shade for some shelter from the heat, but no commercial corn feed to bring too many species together, since bird flu is in the area.

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T Rees Garden Diary @tamara-trees.bsky.social · 03/05/2025

74F/23C - The tomato plant has been grown by people for 9000 years or about 300 lifetimes. Each person carefully sheltering the seed from the cold of winter, or disasters of history, waiting for the warming spring to plant. A small dry circle, given soil, water and light, grows and persists.

The ten year old cherry tomato seed has become a fuzzy, green seedling plant with secondary leaves.

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T Rees Garden Diary @tamara-trees.bsky.social · 01/05/2025

84F/31C - Sleek streamlined fellow, racing stripes and elegant long antenna, seems cool, until he begins eating holes in so many leaves and leaving a path of destruction throughout the garden. I miss the fuzzy black jumping spiders that used to pop up everywhere.

Mediterranean Katydid nymph, tan with dark brown stripes circling leggs, body and extra long antenna, sitting on a yellow columbine flower along side a green aphid. The neighbors pest control spray doesn’t bother these two insects, only spiders.

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T Rees Garden Diary @tamara-trees.bsky.social · 27/04/2025

47F / 8C, Late afternoon I found a tiny mining bee, shiny black, yellow tufts of hair, aqua oval eyes, clear black veined wings folded, thin legs holding steadfast to a flower petal. By sunset, she had moved down the petal to sleep in the flower center. Life in the garden persists.

From the family Andrenidae, which digs a solitary ground nest in sandy soil. This tiny bee often goes unnoticed. Sleeping on a yellow columbine flower petal, the mining bee is shiny black with yellow tufts of hair, aqua oval eyes, clear black veined wings folded.

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T Rees Garden Diary @tamara-trees.bsky.social · 26/04/2025

58F / 15C, cloudy, rain expected. It feels colder. The columbine flowers are overrun, weighted down with Aphids, but then I found some encouraging individuals. First a ladybug larvae.

Clinging underneath the bud of a yellow columbine flower, a ladybug beetle larvae curls its thick alligator tail, topped with orange spiky stripes. Tiny pale aphid nymphs scuttle out of its way.

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T Rees Garden Diary @tamara-trees.bsky.social · 22/04/2025

It’s on! Bumblebee guard zips around at high speed to defend the blossoms. When he crosses paths with the Carpenter Bee, there is a tussle, bouncing off leaves, flowers sway, a breeze of wings. They grapple in air then tumble through columbine leaf cover to the ground, bouncing up to begin again.

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T Rees Garden Diary @tamara-trees.bsky.social · 22/04/2025

April 21, 82F / 28C. As the late afternoon began to cool, I stepped outside to find, the bumblebees are back! A shiny black Carpenter Bee was stealing nectar from the back of the columbine flowers, but the bumblebee guarding the flowers wasn’t having it. A fight was brewing.

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T Rees Garden Diary @tamara-trees.bsky.social · 17/04/2025

58F/17C cloudy - I haven’t seen any bumble or honey bees in the garden, but one skinny white-bowed smooth wing, Scaeva Affinis, was visiting the yellow columbine flowers. Half the size of a honey bee, the busy pollinator has a stubby antenna and a long thin abdomen crossed with white stripes.

White-bowed smooth wing, Scaeva Affinis, with stubby antenna and a long thin abdomen crossed with white stripes, sips nectar from a bright yellow columbine flower.

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