I did a fair amount of looking around online before posting and couldn't quite figure out if my bloom browning/rotting had a similar pattern or not -- there is so much emphasis on the "netted" pattern of the browning of the petals, which mine don't seem to have, just brown mushiness in the very center, although maybe the disease just hadn't progressed far enough yet. Given how new it was (and the fact that it was a freebie, long story), I finally decided to just get rid of it rather than spending $$ on fungicides that might or might not help, and risking the 2 healthy established camellias I do have. I scooped up every dropped bloom, petal, leaf, and bud, as well as the leaf mulch beneath the bush and the top 1" or so of soil, and put it all -- and the plant -- in the trash can. I hope I've managed to stop the spores from becoming established in my garden.... Thanks for your help!

To an extent the meyer leaves do yellow (lighten up) and shed in winter here in CA. But I'll take your word the tree isn't doing well. Although good advice above, and I would certainly do the same if I were concerned about an ailing tree, using the gritty mix in a container with proper drainage holes should be fine. Unless somehow the mix compacted (relatively speaking) or was not 1:1:1 or not screened, the generous air spaces should be adequate to not have the roots rotting away. Once the turface and bark are saturated (via both internal porosity and the external adhesion), gravity should be pulling excess water down and out through the drainage hole. That was one of the major benefits of using gritty vs. normal peat bagged mixes. None of my peat based containers are dry enough in winter to appear to need water -- thus no re-oxygenation of the roots, a double whammy. Again, sheltering the tree is good advice esp if the tree is frail and desiccating, as the remaining leaves are likely weak and further pelting rain may cause more loss. But from what I understand and what I'm witnessing in my own little container orchard, the gritty mix has removed all my fears of rain causing soil saturation, in other words, Too much rain Over-watering. ;-)

If you can, plant fruit trees including peach on berms. Your tree will establish faster and is less likely to be affect by flood. Most fruit trees do not tolerate wet feet/standing water. When I had 10 straight days of rain, my peach trees dropped many perfectly green healthy leaves. The trees were stressed. Fortunately, my soil absorbed water quickly. Squirrels prefer ripe or ripening fruit to green ones.

Tomorrow we start what promises to be the biggest storm in decades. Three to four inches in the Los Angeles basin from mid morning till Saturday afternoon. Should be plenty of flash floods and landslides to go around plus some strong winds will bring soggy trees down. I worked the last big one in February 1979 and got sixty hours of overtime starting on a Thursday night through the middle of the next week. We just cut them so we could move them off the road and a tractor would come later to pick them up.