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A Gardener's Notebook: The latest incarnation of my column detailing the trails and tribulations of my garden. Join the list and ask your own questions about gardening Subscribe

As regular readers may have already heard, a week from today I am off for my first trip to Europe. I will be visiting London, Paris, Rome as well as Catania and Taormina, Sicily. There will be no regular AGN columns during my trip, but I am hoping to file an occasional report using the cyber cafes in various cities. During my last week at home I am concentrating on "tucking in" my garden so that it can weather the 3 weeks of the trip without too much attention.

Set and forget

It has been my goal to make the garden as self-maintaining as possible. We will have a housesitter who will watch over our 3 cats and also water the plants, but beyond that there will be no other care. I have installed timers on the 3 soaker hoses, 2 drip systems and one Rainbird sprinkler. Our garden sitter, Renee, will be able to turn on all of these at once and basically forget them. These systems handle all the roses (50+), the front yard flower bed, the backyard wildflower planting (still getting started) and the newly renamed Iris bed outside the back door.

Beyond these systems, there are 2 that are manually operated. A set of bubblers along the southern property line waters the hibiscus, trumpet vine, dietes (fortnight lily), amaryllis and gardenias found there. A re-purposed set of lawn sprinklers waters the geometrically shaped azalea, juniper and rhaphiolepsis beds in the front garden. I can only run one section of these systems at any one time due to the amount of water pressure they require. Luckily, I don’t have to run these systems very often as all the plants are well established.

Shave and a haircut

I am getting a haircut this week to last me the entire trip and I need to do the same for the front yard beds. The azaleas have finished blooming and are growing out of control. This is the only semi-formal area of the garden and it needs a regular trimming to stay looking nice.

It only takes me a few hours with the hedge clippers to straighten up the edges and re-discover the geometric designs. It is tough work, though, with a lot of bending and stooping that usually leaves me a bit sore from using all those muscles that I ignore when sitting at the computer writing. Maybe this work is one way of making sure I can sleep on the 11 hour flight from Los Angeles to London!

So, I continue to clean up and "tuck in" my garden even though I know it won’t be sleeping while I am gone. The roses will continue to bloom, the weeds will continue to grow and the temperatures are sure to rise into the 90’s, if not the 100’s. Even with that, I am sure that everything will be fine while we are gone. Water is one of the few elements the garden can’t provide for itself during our dry summers, so as long as that is given, it will survive and even thrive.

I hope to gather some new ideas for my garden while I am gone. While England and France don’t offer quite the same environment I have here in Los Angeles, Rome and Sicily are quite similar. Who knows what I might turn up? If I am unable to post reports from the road I will be sure to fill you in on everything once I return.

Keep digging! -- Douglas