Now is the time to load up on holiday goodies on sale, and yes, that means delightful dormant oil, sulfur and anti-fungal sprays, wrapped in a delightful spreader-sticker combo.  If that doesn't start your gardening spirit buzzing, nothing will, at least if you're the gardener I think you are.

As we California gardeners all know, or rather are supposed to remember, the holidays were created with the express idea that we'd be able to spend the day off doing the minimum, thrice-yearly winter fruit tree sprays: Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Day.  Since it is past Thanksgiving, I am sure you have already done the first spray, the least important of the three.  And do not let weather deter you!  Rain high jinks will merely whet your appetite for accomplishing the task in a timely fashion.  Speaking of fashion I hope you remembered to add a Santa hat to your white Tyvek spray suit and protective mask get-up for the holiday look.  We all know the serious weather will not start until directly after your next spray, whenever that occurs.  However you do it, the major pruning will not become apparent until you have put away your winter gardening suit and put your feet up on the couch, coffee table or dog as the case may be.  At this point, just when you are settling in to a good book, a storm will whip up and send your Eureka Lemon branches to a 90 degree angle, lying across your neighbor's prize roses.  You will have to think about where you left your excellent pruning saw, or whether you really care about anything but getting thoroughly into your book.   In fact you are much happier with the performance of the Meyer Lemon, as it does so well without any help, once you figure out how big it would be and provided a good spot for it; so why bother with the Eureka?  After several pages, uncomfortable feelings start, and you go down to the garage to rummage around for something relatively sharp with which to neatly hack off branches.  When you start the task, you realize that the unmentionable branches are fifteen feet along, and will catapult across the yard into something even more precious to your neighbor than the roses…nothing is as straightforward as it seems, in the garden. So eventually you discard the idea of guying the branches as more trouble, remember you have an extended reach branch lopper/saw for the express purpose of pruning high branches, and neatly cut off the branches in two steps.  At this point, you are just getting warmed up and feel like pruning your neighbor’s trees just a tad, where they block your favorite view of the mountains.  The neighbor is away, it would be so easy… but you dimly remember the verb ‘trespassing’ at the last second and try to forget the idea.  You decide once the neighbor is home you can discuss it with him and gain enthusiastic cooperation, whereas no one likes a pruning surprise.  I, you, he, she, it, we, they trespass…. Considering this, you step backward and crush your Euryops pecinatus, also known by almost no one as California Bush Daisy, which never looks good after the second year, and which you were working up the courage to rip out.  Now you happily have a reason to remove them all!  This will open up possibilities for change in the garden and also satisfy the ever-present urge to cut off things.  Nothing is so inspiring as thinking about what might replace the Euryops.  Change is a fun thing in the garden, at least when we initiate it.