Adventures in Gardening Part 3

I have posted before that I don't have much of a green thumb.  So, I'm always excited when I see my plants and flowers growing like crazy.  We've been having a really mild winter (except for today!).  The weather has been really nice and I think my plants are being fooled into blooming a bit early.  I did a little bit of yard work and took some pictures yesterday.

I have a pretty Salvia bush - the purple flowers are amazing.  It typically blooms in the fall.

You can see how full the bush is.  Well, it's been all dead and dried up for about a month.  I finally took the time yesterday to prune it back and this is what it looks like now. 

It looks waaaaay better than before I trimmed all the dead stuff off.  It was a hot mess, I tell ya!  I was just surprised out how much has grown in already!  I even saw a few purple flowers growing in already.

Last year, I planted hydrangeas.  See those pretty pink ones below?  I had dug up an ugly bottle brush tree and replaced it with the hydrangeas.  

I was very lazy and took forever to prune it after the flowers died.   Plus, I don't think I pruned it correctly.  I thought I killed it.  And then a few months ago, it looked like this.

Not too bad!  See those fresh green leaves that came in?  (just pretend you don't see those brown ones, umkay?)  But, do you see what I mean when I say I don't think I pruned them correctly?  I think I cut them too low.  Hmmmm...
This is what it looks like as of yesterday.

Poor thing.  It's really trying!  I don't think its going to make it though.  We'll see.

Last year, I also discovered I had green onions growing.  And in a very inconvenient spot - right next the concrete walkway.  Makes them very hard to get them out of the ground.  Last year I pulled them all and poured weed killer because I didn't want them growing in that area.  Well, afterwards, I found them growing in a different spot which was also next to the concrete walkway.  Yesterday, I found them making a reappearance.  I'm going to let them grow a bit more and pull them.  Onions anyone?

Now, these...I just love.  Calla lilies.

I had this house for almost two years before they started growing in!  I didn't even know they were there.  The above picture is what they looked like early last year.
And here is what they look like as of yesterday.

It's like a jungle!  They have grown like crazy.  I need to get under there and prune back the dead leaves, but when I looked yesterday, there wasn't much.  I was so happy to see some new flowers growing in.  Love these guys! (in the top picture, you can barely even see the hydrangeas on the upper right.  It's just a tiny blip in the picture. Oh, poor thing!).

As you can see in the above three pictures, it was sunny out yesterday while I was doing my yard work.  Because of the wind, there weren't any clouds - just blue skies.  But here is what we got tonight.

That's my front & back yards.  Mind you, I live in Southern California.  I get snow maybe a few times a year because my town is at a bit of a higher elevation.  But, it was pretty warm this past weekend.  We've been having crazy weather lately - one minute it's cold and the next it's hot.  Rain was in the forecast for today and this is what we got.  So cool!

I hope everyone had a great weekend and had fun watching the Oscars.  Have a good week!