It's cold and pouring

and I couldn't be happier. Unless I'd already dug in my tulips. Which I haven't. But I will soon.

So nice to know the garden's getting watered, and I'm not doing it. I have a year-old, natives bed that I fretted about every time I watered. One is supposed to water California natives for the first year, and I did that, but it never stopped me from worrying about whether every application of water was rotting their delicate little roots and killing off the precious mycorrhyzae. Now I don't have to worry about it anymore because it will be cool and rainy between now and April. The supplemental watering is done. California natives evolved getting water on cold rainy days. It's when you water on hot summer days that does them in.

By all visual signs, I didn't kill anything this summer. Although I do have two underperforming manzanitas I wonder whether I should have watered differently*--Arctostaphylos densiflora 'Sentinel' and A. densiflora 'Howard McMinn'. Both are said to be very garden tolerant. Not so much in my hands. Well, they have several cold rainy months ahead to get their acts together. And if they can't, they're gone because my yard is too small to tolerate underperformers. Not when I've got Arctostaphylos bakeri 'Louis Edmunds' and A. pajaroensis 'Lester Rountree' on the go. So good luck, Sentinel and Howard. It's do or die time for you.

*I'm actually thinking it's a soil problem, not watering, but this is a post about watering, not soil. For a good soil post, follow that link.