What's Growing: January 2025
signs of life in winter; wanted: rain
I’m not sure if it’s midlife, or the fact that I’ve moved back to natural landscapes of my childhood, but I notice trees and plants far more than I used to. Each month here on Home Again I share a photo roundup of what’s growing around my home, neighborhood, and city. Glad you’re here!
This time of year I get very antsy if there’s no rain in the 10-day forecast. Our rainy season is short, and this year we’re behind. So as I look at this past month’s photos of the natural spaces that surround me, I’m appreciative of anything with roots and blossoms, spines and petals, buds and berries, doing its best to thrive when conditions aren’t ideal. As are we all, amen.
Here’s what’s growing around my home and neighborhood in January. I so hope to share with you photos of soggy puddles and moody skies next month!
1. Prickly Pear / Nopal (opuntia literalis)
We have one coastal prickly pear on our property, but it’s tucked away such that I don’t usually get up close to it. These gorgeous ones line the edge of a neighbor’s property and they’re huge. I’ve even seen a sign asking passersby not to take cuttings of the nopales (the pads of the cactus), which makes me think that’s been a problem in the past. (You can eat them raw - here’s how to prepare them.)
2. Next Year’s Oranges
I am still harvesting and juicing the mature citrus from the tree I wrote about last month, but I noticed recently that a number of the young fruit on the same tree is split open like this:
It looks like the fruit grew too much, too fast for the enclosing skin, so we’ll see how they continue to ripen this year.
3. Aspirational Blackberries
My husband planted a blackberry vine in the coolest, shadiest corner of his raised vegetable beds last year. We maybe got a total of a dozen berries during the summer, and we’re not really in the right climate for blackberries to begin with, but I appreciate his effort - and the effort the vine continues to make at its next season’s offering!
4. Evergreen Pear Blossoms
We have two evergreen pear trees, and they turn beautifully white in the winter, something I learned a couple of years ago and wrote about here. In January we spot the first blossoms, and over the next several weeks we’ll see a snowy, showy total transformation.
5. Forward-Facing Agave
I have always admired this artichoke agave family on my neighborhood walks. I wonder if the forward-facing babies were planted into the stone wall that way, or if they’re spontaneous volunteers. The whole array is looking parched right now (did I mention we need rain?), but it does make me want to stick some succulent cuttings perpendicularly into a retaining wall and see what happens.
6. Spanish Lavender
I’m loving the fact that in writing these monthly posts I’m forced to actually just Google the things I’ve passively wondered about for years so that I can pass along my freshly Googled knowledge to you.
I knew we had Spanish lavender in our yard, but I always thought French lavender was the more common alternative - the kind that smells lovely and you can buy dried in bundles. But it appears that that one is English lavender, and that Spanish and French are more closely related.
Anyway, our Spanish Lavender is starting to bloom now and the bees love it. The bright purple tips are a fun pop of color in our yard, but it has no fragrance at all and it doesn’t dry in pretty bundles. Leave that to the French and the English, I suppose.
7. Fresh Out Of Fig Leaves
The fruit trees are all bare branches now, and the fig looks particularly silly in its nakedness to me. What a jauntily disorganized display of future fig-bearing branches!
I guess technically this should be filed under What’s Not Growing: January, unless you look very, very closely:
That’s it for this month! I’d love to know what’s growing - or isn’t - where you live. You can leave a comment or simply hit reply if you’re reading this by email.
More in the What’s Growing series:
Here in southwestern Wisconsin, we have zero snow but are entering an arctic cold snap of temps well below zero. Absolutely nothing is growing outside here, and we won’t see anything start sprouting until April. I love seeing your warm weather and plants!
Beautiful pics! It’s so fun to see a landscape so different than my own. As I look out the window, the ground is completely covered in snow. The trees are bare. I planted new tulip bulbs in the fall, and I’m reminded they are still out there, covered by the snow, and that the cold is necessary for them to bloom this spring.