Good to know you been busy. At least the hard part is done so now you have to nurture and take care of what you have planted and see it grow. Great idea to have trees planted for some shade since it gets so hot there.

I hope you got a camera so that you can take pics and post them. Dying to see your roses again and it was such a treat to see such mouth dropping beauties and landscape.

Welcome back !! I was thinking about you, Daisy and Nik the greek...hoping all in great health, enjoying yourself and taking a break from forum. I miss you !!

Melissa - every time I read one of your posts, in addition to enjoying your writing style, I am amaze at your and your husband's energy! You have and are making a garden, or a series of gardens, from scratch, on large acreage. That is so wonderful - I love reading about it, and it energies me a bit to get back out into our garden, which is tiny. I will second Plumeria Girl's request for more pictures.

In my garden, we have just been doing Fall/Winter clean-up, luckily with the help of an astoundingly energetic man who comes only 3 hours once every 2 weeks. He gets more done in 3 hours than I could get done in several days, and actually knows about plants, and asks questions when he does not know.

I have not been making any major plantings or changes for a while, because our town is in the middle of writing a "fire safe" ordinance for gardens, among other places. The issue is of course all of the horrible fires which we have had in Northern CA, it turns out mostly courtesy of our gas and electric utility. Anyway, the first "vision" document the town came up with (which luckily does NOT have the force of law), if taken seriously, would have required us to basically eliminate over 60% of our garden completely (they just photocopied rules which were meant for large acreage lots on wooded hillsides, and applied them to 100% of the town, where most lots are only 1/4 acre). "clearing the land 30 feet from your house" is an example. Luckily, saner heads seem to have prevailed, and there is a committee which is drafting an actual ordinance, so I am going to wait to see what that actually says before I do anything. However, it is nervous making. In one nearby town, they passed a law which was so draconian (the part people most objected to was that you had to pave the area within 5 feet of your house with cement, all along the perimeter. This would have been incredibly expensive, not to mention ugly, and the citizens revolted, We have the "recall" in California (as do most Western states - a "progressive" reform passed in the early 1900s), and elected officials can be recalled from office by the voters if they get annoyed enough, without any reason at all - this is not like an impeachment - no claim whatever has to be made against the official at all. A few years ago California recalled its Governor, much to the astonishment of the rest of the country, who do not have that sort of law. The recall law makes public officials listen more to the citizenry when they are really up in arms about something, and the part of the law about paving all around every house in town was changed to low, well watered plants.

Sorry, did not mean to change the topic, but this has been on my mind. Anyway, I think what you and your husband have and are accomplishing is fantastic, and you write about it so very well. Pictures please!

Jackie

Melissa,
Lovely to hear how things are going in your garden. I have read many of your past posts with great interest. What you are doing to enhance the property and help with cooling shade sounds like A LOT of work, but I can tell it is rewarding for both you and your husband. Trees can really make a huge difference in the local temperature! Also a garden with good bones, ie. large trees/shrubs to give structure, is a wonderful thing. To me the structure and form of a garden is most important. I guess that is why I prefer many roses that are climbers or large free standing shrubs like the Teas, that hold their shape and height throughout the year in a warm climate. Growing roses that do well and thrive in your climate and soil, native and/or amended, is really the key. Not fighting with a plant that doesn’t thrive, but to grow what thrives for you. The changing climate is bringing about changes in gardens and what does well too. We have been getting hotter summers and subsequently more fires in California. Fireproofing property is a big deal in many communities here as Jacqueline points out. I have friends on large property in Ojai and they are required to have all grass mowed by June 1st. Their entire property consists of some large oaks and pines and mowed grass meadows everywhere else. The fire department inspector comes out to every property the first few weeks in June to give feedback and fines if feedback not followed. They are quite strict. I wonder with Italy’s climate being quite similar to California that you don’t have more wild fires. Or maybe you do have them but we don’t hear of them here? I do remember a major fire, in Greece I think, a few years back that killed a few people and thus widely reported. We are finally getting our winter rains and it is so wonderful! I am guessing you are getting some similar weather these days. I was out planting this morning since the soil is damp and soft and everything looks happy. Well except for all the roses with Multiflora genes, which seem to want a lot more nutrients overall that the Teas, Bourbons, Hybrid Perpetuals or grafted David Austins. I gave all my roses a mix of Miracle grow, Magnesium Sulfate and soluble iron this morning. My soil is sandy loam devoid of any organic material and all my roses started pushing new growth as soon as the weather cooled a few weeks ago so they seemed to be asking for nutrients as all old leaves on Multiflora type roses were suddenly getting chlorosis, but were green a month ago. I guess they are pushing nutrients from the old leaves into the new growth areas. So I will see what happens now that they got nutrients.

It’s so good to hear an update from you, Melissa! I had the same thoughts that Jackie did. I always enjoy your writing style so much. You are able to paint us pictures with your words, an enviable talent. It’s wonderful that your DH is as devoted to improving the land as you are. It sounds like you two make a great team.

I so clearly remember your struggles with the drought. Thank goodness for your neighbor’s pond during that time! I’m glad you two have continued to plant trees and make shade for yourselves, and I’m astonished at the energy you both still have for it. I’m sure you’re keeping in shape by working so hard outdoors. It helps to keep moving as long as possible, and it’s clear that’s what you’re both doing.

I hope you get a good rainy season this year. We just began to get our first rain about two weeks ago. I was beginning to think it would never come. When it did come, it arrived in abundance. Each of the 3 storms we’ve had dumped several inches in a short amount of time. It’s not as beneficial as slow and steady rainfall, but I’m happy with any rain we get at all. It’s finally put an end to the fire season, which raged on and on this year. My roses are so happy with the rain they received! They endured very high temperatures, 5% humidity and high winds, right up until a few days before the rain came.

Thanks for the update. Yes, we’d all love to see some pictures, if possible. Your descriptions are so vivid, we don’t really need photos, but we’re a greedy lot:) Photos would just be a bonus. Keep up the good work. It sounds wonderful! Lisa

Melissa, what a wonderful post! A photo "journal" could be so much fun to refer back to when your plantings and trees are older. You or hubby could stand next to the trees for scale. I, also, so love your writings.

Lisa, don't get me wrong. i always look forward to Melissa and Carol's style of writing.

After i saw Meliisa's roses, they just blew me away. I admit i got spoiled and want to see more :}

Sheila that is a great idea !

jin

Wow, that’s quite impressive...so many trees! It’s absolutely wonderful to hear your update, Melissa, and to hear that you and your DH are doing well, elbows and knees aside. :-)

I can‘t even begin to imagine how you’ve transformed your property. I love to go back and look at the posts you’ve included photos and to read your descriptions of the place. Keep us posted, and I’m with Sheila; selfishly I’d love to see pictures, but I hope that you have at least photo- documented for yourselves.

Melissa, it's so good to hear from you. What an ambitious project! I hope that your plantings will prosper and you and your family will have an opportunity to enjoy your handiwork.

Jin, Jackie, Stephanie, Lisa, Sheila, Perma, thanks for your responses. California does sound like it's fighting a battle against fire. Jackie, our local council passed the worst tree ordinance in the history of mankind, basically requiring a significant portion of the wood cover of the area to be cut down, at owners' expense. Fortunately they got voted out of office, sheerly by accident (this is Italy), and the new center-left council recognizes that trees actually have their positive side and repealed the ordinance. Also they planted trees around the middle school after the previous council had the ones there all cut down. I wasn't familiar with recall, but thank goodness you have it. Also thank goodness your wonderful garden, inspiring to us all, isn't going to fall entirely victim to the (legitimate) demands of fire safety. Congratulations on your incredibly energetic and hard-working helper! We all need one or two of them in our lives.

Jin, planting's not over. I think we might complete basic planting in five years of so, and since DH will be nearly ninety then, whether we'll finish is very much open to doubt. We do what we can.

Stephanie, agree with your ideas about the importance of structure. Also, trees and large shrubs produce a wider range of conditions in which plants can grow the when there's just meadow: think cyclamen, hellebores, epimediums, forest floor bulbs; all plants for which I struggle to find places to grow. Trees have an ecologically stabilizing effect, I think, helping keep weeds under control. Unfortunately they grow very slowly here, at least, ours always have. Even once we get all the trees we want planted, it's going to take a couple of decades for even the faster-growing species to reach a decent size.

Our clay soil is fertile enough once amended with organic matter, but the amendment is a gigantic task. We've put over a hundred tons of old hay into the garden, and it could absorb another hundred tons without the least difficulty. It's an illustration at least of how effectively soil can sequester carbon when properly managed.

Congratulations on your rain, Lisa and you other Californians! Rain has gotten more capricious here in late years. We had a wet spring and early summer, then dry late summer and early fall. In November it finally began to rain, and rain, and rain, and now the watercourses, ponds, and aquifers are brimming. I hope you'll be able to say the same soon. Part of what I'm interested in in my gardening is capturing that rainfall instead of letting it run off. And preventing topsoil loss. The year 2017 lives in my memory, and not in a good way. My guess is more years like that are going to come. We're doing our best to get our garden and land, and us, in the best shape possible to resist prolonged drought. Shade! we need shade!

I wish you all happy gardening, or, for those in cold climates, a pleasant break from gardening! And happy holidays!

P.S. I think I cross-posted with Kes, to whom: thanks for the good wishes!

Good to hear from you, Melissa. Wow, have you ever been busy! I have been, too-trying to catch up after those years of illness; I wonder if I ever will. Providing more shade has become a priority for me, too. The summers here have just become too much. Forgive me if I'm impertinent, but I just have to ask: how do you feel about Paulownia tomentosa? I gather some people hate it, but I confess I have planted two. They aren't , perhaps, the most classy of trees,but their speed of growth is a very strong point in their favour,and I do hope that mine will mature quickly and begin to flower-in photos, at least, they look great when in flower. Also confess that the idea of all those big leaves providing deep shade in summer, and then dropping off and providing organic matter, are another selling point ...

Bart, it sounds like you've been busy too playing catchup; how are your garden, and, more importantly, you doing? About Paulownia, we intend to plant it here (actually I ought to have thought about it this planting season, but it slipped my mind). Our garden has room for many kinds of plants, elegant and less so. I've never had a chance to observe Paulownia closely through the seasons, but have seen it from a ways away in bloom, and then at least I liked it. Should it turn out to be less attractive at other times of year, I can always look the other way. If it's reasonably well behaved, and not ever actively ugly, it will do.

I know Paulownia has a reputation for fast growth, but my thought is, Ha! you haven't tried to grow on our land yet! So I'll believe the rapid growth when I see it.

We too can NEVER get enough organic material.

It's good to hear from you. I hope you're doing well after recent rough years.

OMG! 100 tons of hay! Now that sounds daunting. I can certainly use more organic material too. But on my postage stamp lot, 55x15ft (~17x5.5meters), I am just happily saving all kitchen scraps in a bag in the freezer, and when full, putting in the blender and pouring under mulch around my roses. Haha, so tiny but still helpful.

I have friends that helped start an NGO in India. They are working to teach the local tribe organic farming methods so they aren’t reliant on loans to buy fertilizer. One of the things they teach is to make holding ponds along the streams during the rainy season to help recharge the ground water. That way the water table rises more and they have more irrigation water during the dry season. Otherwise their wells were going dry. So your captured rainfall could help sustain the deeper rooted trees if the local water table could be raised. Of course you may have a very different subsurface that doesn’t work the same way as in this Indian village, I don’t know enough about groundwater, but seems plausible it could work for you.

Stephanie, I've been surprised, when reading about proposed solutions to terrific problems with drought, aquifer depletion, and flooding in India, not to have heard about proposals for large-scale tree planting and preservation or regeneration of flood plains. I don't know much about groundwater, either, or about biology in general. My understanding is that where there are trees, groundwater levels rise, and when trees are lost, groundwater diminishes, but I don't know the mechanisms. It's an important issue where I live, as our area has both generous annual rainfall and significant periods of drought when everybody depends on those underground reserves. We don't, for example, have year-round snow cover on our mountains.

My approach is the following. I try to avoid bare ground, having as much cover of grass, weeds if necessary, trees and shrubs, and thinly spread hay mulch (too thick and it actually blocks water penetration). These slow down water runoff and make the ground more porous. I'm guessing that the plants through their roots and organic detritus absorb considerable amounts of water. Our ground is too steep and prone to landslides and slumps to make projects that require significant earth-moving feasible or safe, as we've found out the hard way. However I do a certain amount of small-scale terracing, which also slows down runoff and gives it time to be absorbed. I've stopped maintaining our two drainage canals, which may or may not be a smart move. Perhaps it's just lazy. We've planted shrubs and trees along them, and they're turning into streams. That's good, but there's the risk of excessive erosion, and loss of topsoil. All gardening is an experiment, and that's certainly true in my garden.