Category Archives: my garden

Samwise and the swallowtail.

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Ladybug on sunflower leaf.

When I woke today, a multitude of urgent tasks filled my mind and sent me off in the wrong direction. Eventually I was rescued by the Jesus Prayer, by Jesus Himself. As I calmed down I realized that a few of the tasks were not that urgent, and when I began to consolidate my lists, one task fell off altogether, being a completely unnecessary outing, and large project that would have followed. That was a drive to the apple ranch to get Gravenstein apples, a variety that I usually miss out on because they are so early. But it won’t hurt to miss out on them again — why change tradition?

Volunteer Delta Sunflower

I’d wanted to water the garden early, but it ended up being not-so-early, and what do you know, that was not a disaster. Putting the hose on thirsty plants — or were they plants that merely look dry because it is August? — gave me so much joy, I could hardly bear it. I remember when my current garden went in, ten years ago, with its extensive automatic irrigation, my daughter Pearl was concerned and said, “But Mama, you love watering the garden!” Evidently that is true. It’s a great gift to have such work.

Viburnum coming along after hard pruning.

It seems to me that the irrigation system needs some adjusting; my thought is that as the plants are more in number and greater in size than when we first programmed it, and even since the last changes, I should customize it further. That job is a mental challenge for me, as there are six different valves/lines and three programs, for each of which one has to determine how many days per week and how many minutes of run time. As I have done so often, I will have to study the diagram and how to enter the settings via the dials and buttons, because it never sticks with me. If I just give some areas a little more water by hand, that will relieve my anxiety. It will be easier to tackle the problem if I am confident that nothing is dying of thirst right now.

Path mulch reapplied after 9.5 years.
Salvia clevelandii

As I walked around with the hose, noting how many things are alive and obviously growing, happiness filled me. The thoughts of J.R.R. Tolkien that Eugene Terekhin writes about recently in “Why Gardeners Will Save the World” make me think that my garden is helping me while I am tending it:

Quoting a letter Tolkien wrote to a friend: “I think the simple ‘rustic’ love of Sam and his Rosie (nowhere elaborated) is absolutely essential to the study of his (the chief hero’s) character, and to the theme of the relation of ordinary life (breathing, eating, working, begetting) and quests, sacrifice, causes, and the ‘longing for Elves’, and sheer beauty.”

Terekhin: “Mythically speaking, Sam [the character in Lord of the Rings] was ‘down to earth.’ He was a gardener who loved all things that grow — as all hobbits do.”
….
“The most important thing one can do in wartime is to grow a garden. Because when we grow things, they grow us. It takes a long time to grow something, and as we tend our garden we grow together with it.”

I know for sure that just being out there, soaking up the scents and the colors, watching the bees and butterflies drink from the flowers I tend on their behalf, is to me that most essential, ordinary life such as Tolkien shows us. For quite a while I followed this glorious, common swallowtail in all its glory, a creature that was drinking from just about every zinnia in the planter boxes. He and I were of the same mind about Being, and being down to earth.

Happiness is a butterfly, which, when pursued,
is always just beyond your grasp,
but which, if you sit down quietly,
may alight upon you.

-Nathaniel Hawthorne

Weeks and weeks of homebody bliss.

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I’ve been home from my travels more than two weeks already, and before any more trips loom on the horizon, I have eight more weeks of homebody bliss remaining. It’s still high summer, when the days –or at least, the afternoons — are of the warm sort that energize and call me to the garden. This is the greatest good fortune. Glory to God, that I have a garden. Glory to God!

Stinking Chamomile

Other things besides the garden have helped to fill my days, and are filling my calendar into the near future. When I am home, I can be a host, and have guests! My house is happy when extra people are enjoying its spaces, and feeling the breezes blow through. That’s happened twice already in the last two weeks, and I’m expecting it to happen more.

When guests come in the summertime, they can stroll about the garden and pick a plum, and younger guests can play in the playhouse. The last one who did that made a soup entirely of tarragon and fountain water, and then dumped it into the fountain. Speaking of the fountain, when I am home I can keep it running, and keep it clean. It’s not very cheery to have a fountain turned off.

Lesser Goldfinch – internet photo

The birds are enjoying the summer. I hadn’t noticed the goldfinches much in the last couple of years, but this week they have been frolicking around the fountain; they seem to have plenty of time to play, probably because they’re not burning so many calories to keep warm. Today the house finches came along to drink and bathe as well. And one goldfinch made a side trip to the arbor, to perch on a long wisteria runner that was reaching out horizontally. He made short and quick jumps down toward the tip, which dropped a couple of inches in elevation with each jump, pecking at the buds, or maybe at insects, until he was at some critical point, after which I suppose he’d have found himself upside down if he’d held on — so he flew away.

Spanish Clover

It was a wet spring here, and the early summer was cool, but now everything not in watered gardens is crisping up. I took my friend to one of my favorite parks for an easy hike, but it was so dry that the trail in many places had deep and wide cracks that made walking difficult, even in my boots. I guess I’d never been there at this time of year before? It did smell good out there, I must admit, and amid the crackling grasses we saw lots of wildflowers — first, masses of Yellow Star-Thistle, Centaurea solstitialis, an invasive plant that is in bloom now.

Yellow Star-Thistle

Star-Thistle is one of the many invasives that one can learn about on the website of the California Invasive Plants Council website, which I only just discovered. I think I’ll like to return there. The website of Yosemite National Park also features articles about such plants locally, and one of them tells about the great lengths different agencies go to, to control what is in California considered a weed. A Wikipedia article is unclear about whether the star-thistle is considered noxious in six or in 23 of the U.S. states where it is present. Are you my U.S. readers familiar with it? Evidently the purple star thistle is essentially the same thing, except for the color.

Star Thistle

The pennyroyal that amazed me at Tomales Bay also grew along the path in less spectacular displays; and Spanish Clover, and Stinking Chamomile (Anthemis cotula), photo above. That chamomile was new to me; Gwen sniffed it and said that indeed it did not smell good.

Domesticated and not-stinky chamomile is growing in my planter box, just one specimen that sprouted from the old seeds I threw in there before I went to Greece. I should plant it every year, it is so cheery.

Last week we celebrated the Procession of the Cross, and the festal cross stayed in the middle of the temple until the Forefeast of Transfiguration. Now we will celebrate Transfiguration for about a week until the Leavetaking of Transfiguration which is the day before we celebrate Dormition (Assumption) of the Theotokos in the middle of the month. I love the way the calendar anchors me to the church, and reveals the abundance of saints and events who fill the year with the glory of God.

Before the service, before all the fruit had arrived.

As usual we brought baskets of fruit, and after Liturgy processed through the vineyard singing. It wasn’t as prickly as the trail I walked on last week, but it required careful stepping around grape prunings and blackberry brambles.

I pruned the lavender this week, and set it aside to take to a friend so she can add it to the straw in her chicken coop, to sweeten up the atmosphere:

A different friend came for lunch, and we were able to eat outside on the patio, after a leisurely tour of the garden. It was just warm enough to thoroughly relax, but not to wilt. I added snips of my parsley and tarragon to the salad we made together. I could have put a few calendula petals in as well, but I didn’t think of that.

This has been a pretty unfocused ramble, I’m afraid, so rambling that I don’t know how to sign off. So, let’s just pretend we were talking together next to my planter boxes, and looking at the zinnias, and then I went into the house and didn’t come back.

But I will return eventually!

Good-bye, Margarita.

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It’s a sad day here in the garden, as my dear manzanita bush is no more. Here is what she (I named her “Margarita” a few years ago) looked like when she first came into the garden in 2003:

And this afternoon just before Alejandro cut off the branches:

She’s gotten leggy lately because I could not figure out how and where to prune, in the midst of her demise. And you can see the lack of green leaves in the main branch. But for most of her life, she has looked quite lovely through all seasons.

I have a new plant that will go in soon. I think it is a different variety. The leaves don’t look the same as the old plant, and I don’t know if I have the name of the previous one anywhere in my stacks of papers. This one is a boy, I guess, “Howard McMinn,” and it is famous for being the most adaptable type for growing “in captivity,” as one might say. It puts up with clay soils, and with more summer water — a typical garden condition — than would be tolerated by many species of Arctostaphylos.

I might name it “McMinn.”

Chocolates and swans in the garden.

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I noticed recently that I am always writing the same words about my garden. Things have changed a bit in the last year, though. I’m not sure the net result is positive, but maybe it will all lead to me saying something new eventually.

Echinacea with teucrium in background.

The new landscaper is soon going to be the former landscaper. He just doesn’t have a vision of garden beauty that matches mine, and I haven’t been won over. Unfortunately, I had to actually see his ideas “leafed out” before I could know how wrong they are; now I need to fix some design problems by moving plants in the fall, and buying a couple of new ones. I’d hoped to have all this done by last fall and to be enjoying the refurbished areas by now.

Chocolate Cosmos with an Iceland Poppy behind.

Oh, well, a garden is always a process, and I suppose it’s like with so many projects: everything takes longer than expected. And it is a joy to work out there, or to wander. I took a walk in a more upscale neighborhood near mine, and noticed that some front yards are tidy and boring, and some are a bit messy or hodgepodge-y. The latter are obviously houses where the owner(s) like gardening and are trying out different things, and don’t have the time or know-how to do the successive plantings or the upkeep to keep it looking interesting and orderly at the same time. So I won’t worry too much if mine is not perfect, either… It’s just that I thought the area right by the front door should look more put together than it does.

Lavender and fig tree

Depending on the viewing angle and size of frame you are focusing on, there are still some very nice scenes, front and back. Those are the ones I’m sharing in this post. My own hodgepodge I will ignore for now.

The Chocolate Cosmos is new to me and to the garden. There are three shades of color, and the plants I bought are medium-dark chocolate. They are perennials with a tuberous root, and reports conflict about whether they will even like winters here. I had to take out some very happy Iceland poppies to make a place for them; it must be that the poppies are getting enough shade there to keep blooming, and I’m glad I didn’t have to take them all out yet.

One thing I like is that the landscaper divided the White Swan echinacea so that I have more of it now; likewise a favorite violet salvia. I’m working on getting even more of those White Swans to plant in a couple of months before they go dormant.

Today I cleaned up around some plants, like the acanthus above, taking away dead leaves and pulling out little grass sprouts that are remnants of big ornamental grasses that I removed last year. The grass shoots were growing out of the Yerba Buena ground cover, too, so as I knelt on it or moved the long stems aside, its most delicious scents were released into the atmosphere.

It was only recently that I learned, or remembered, that these white echinaceas are called Swans. It really is the perfect name for them, and makes me love them more. My garden is overflowing with gifts ❤