Tag Archives: clary sage

Monday rain and flowers.

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So many little tasks need doing before setting off on a journey. Of course there is the packing of supplies to use while I’m away, but there is also the making ready of Home. It needs quite a bit of tidying up, just to show the homemaker that she does love this place. Being extra nice to the garden by deadheading and cleaning up also does a lot to ease my sore heart, because it dreads saying good-bye once again.

And I’m in the middle of my biggest garden project ever, that is, the biggest I’ve ever taken on by myself. Ten areas of the garden will have been changed in different ways, when I’m finished. That sounds like it is almost everything, but it’s not. I won’t be finished for a few more weeks, mostly because October and November are better months for planting perennials around here, but also because I plain ran out of time this month.

Last fall I planted three clary sage plants, which are biennials and will bloom next June. I hope I can remember to start a few every fall so that I can keep them coming. Below you can see one of the older ones in the foreground, next to the pincushion flower I planted last week, and in the background two of the younger clary sages I was able to get from a local nursery recently.

As three big conifers to the south of me, including my own Canary Island Pine, keep growing taller, the amount of “full sun” in the back garden has been shrinking. It was a case of bit by bit, and then all at once. All at once I realized why the purple coneflower barely blooms, and even the recently planted Mexican Evening Primrose is not happy.

apple mint

Also there is the problem of the unpleasing design, or lack of design, from the last landscaper, of the area near my front door. I’m unwilling to live with it, so it’s taken hours and hours of thinking and thinking and reading on the Pacific Horticulture site, researching and shopping for plants, imagining how they will look if I put them here or there. I’m moving several plants installed last year to better places.

When I get new gallons or 4″ pots on site, I arrange them still in the pots where I think they work, and then I think better of it, and carry them elsewhere. To the front yard — No, the back yard — how will it look alongside this other plant that can take part shade? Weird? Probably… Oh well, they will have to get along. It can be exhausting being so unsystematic.

Naked Buckwheat

I’m excited to have my very own Naked Buckwheats — this is a California native that I often see in the mountains. My daughter Pippin has them growing wild around her place. And now me!

I decided to grow annual vegetables in the front garden near the perennial asparagus, because they will be sure to get enough sun there; but I need to add more soil first. I should have waited to buy the kalettes and Chinese Broccoli until that bed was ready, but I didn’t, and they were in little six packs, so I spent an hour transferring them to larger pots so they won’t get rootbound while they’re waiting.

I have cut down the asparagus a few times, first because of the aphids, and then so that I could rake away all the mulch and add more soil, and new mulch. But spears keep coming up, and looking ferny lovely:

When I cut them, I throw away the fronds or chop them up for the worms, but there are always several that haven’t become fronds yet, and that are the right size for eating. I accumulated enough to roast a panful this afternoon.

And I made a batch of Jammy Eggs to have for snacks on the journey.

It’s to Wisconsin I am going, because my granddaughter Miss Maggie is getting married! It was barely over a year ago that her brother’s wedding took me to that state, and now back I go. It will be a very happy time, and I will be over my leavinghomesickness before you know it.

One of the asparagus beds.

It started raining this afternoon. Early autumn rains are just the best. I can leave the windows and doors open and breathe the rain, and hear it pitter patter. The drops began to fall when I was still in the middle of planting my Bouteloua gracilis, or blue grama grass (“Blonde Ambition”), and after I cleaned up my tools I still had to put out all the trash cans, plus an extra green bin a neighbor is letting me use. Four neighbors, two on either side of me, are always letting me use extra space in their green waste bins for my overflow.

Blue Grama Grass

Do you find that when you are getting ready for a trip, not only do you have the packing for the actual trip, and the everyday housework and cooking that has nothing to do with the trip, but also extra, surprise things that come up that take some of your precious time? I realized last week that I needed to lay in some firewood, and that took a whole day to deal with. I got a half cord and stacked it almost entirely by myself. In the course of that my neighbor Eric lent me his wheelbarrow and offered to repair my wheelbarrow. He noticed in going through my gate that it didn’t latch behind him, so I spent an hour figuring out how to adjust that latch. I don’t want the gate to fail to close when I’m away, if he should come for the wheelbarrow.

And what do you know, I also got inconvenient visitors this week — ants! They have been mostly crawling around on my computer table and keyboard — and my hands — so I am going to cut this shorter than it might have been, stopping at long instead of longer, and I’ll hope to check in from Wisconsin soon. But I still don’t have a tablet or anything larger than my little phone to work on, so I don’t know…

Happy Autumn Days to you all.

Frosty with ceanothus.

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The sun shone in a blue sky, so I braved the chill to walk the creek path this morning. It wasn’t too cold at all. But when I got back, I saw that the fountain was still iced over. Behind it you can see the newly pruned pomegranate and plum.

January is progressing pretty much as usual in the garden, with the typically surprising, commonplace glories. Most of my landscaping does not go into dormancy, so every day reveals something showing its aliveness by a changed feature. A few asparagus had sprung up in the last week, so I cut them to put into soup for breakfast, along with a portion of those greens I harvested last week.

Dan the Landscaper added to the collection of new plants that arrived in nursery pots in November, and quite a few went into the ground last week, including the first-ever ceanothus that has lived on this property. It came with buds, and they are starting to open. Ceanothus is a genus of 50-60 species, sometimes called California Lilac, and I never remember their names, but we had a large one on our former property in another town, “long ago.”

ceanothus
Yarrow flowers of this morning.

When I type that common name it reminds me of my first encounter with this plant. My late husband and I had only been married a year when he returned from a backpacking trip with a friend, bringing me a flowering branch of white ceanothus that his hiking buddy had told him was California Lilac. The fragrance of those blooms imprinted itself on my mind. I think most of the blue or purple varieties are not that aromatic.

One plant I am most excited about having in my garden is Clary Sage — and I have three of them just planted. These are the white ones, which I haven’t had before, but I expect to love them as much as the purple I’ve had in the past. Clary sage is a biennial, so I have to remember to have new ones going in every year, if I want to have it blooming regularly in June. This picture below is from the back garden, in ’23. My little starts only have about ten leaves each at this point, and can’t be expected to bloom until spring of next year.

Clary Sage in 2023

While I wait for the new landscaping to get installed and to grow up, I put in various bulbs and annuals, so that when I go in and out the front door I can be cheered by their colors. I see the leaves of muscari and anemones poking up, but right now it is the wholesome faces of the common pansies that greet me every day. This one is saying hello to you right now.

Summer evening layers.

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At my Airbnb.

Soon after returning from Pippin’s forest dwelling in the northern reaches of California, I drove southward to the Santa Cruz mountains, where I hadn’t visited for six years. My Airbnb was quite close to Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park, and also to the cousins whom I was visiting.

This area is where our extended family used to have a cabin, at Mount Hermon, just up the hill from Santa Cruz, under the redwoods. Under the redwoods is the theme of this whole area, which I had apparently forgotten, because when I came into town and found my lodging, and found again my cousins’ place, I was astounded by the height of the forest and its unique scents. I know, I was just remarking similarly about Pippin’s trees, but of course these are a unique experience, in a different climate zone. The forest here is mainly redwoods, madrones, and oaks. Fog is abundant, and redwoods thrive in it.

The cousins’ driveway.

My first encounter with dogwoods was in the understory of these towering  trees, many decades ago. Little towns have nestled on the slopes and along the creeks since the 19th century, and humans have planted their own shrubs and flowers that thrive, and add to the good smells that rise up when the morning fog dissipates and the sun draws out their essences.

The climate this far south and close to the ocean is very mild. Sometimes the winter passes without a frost; this June is cooler than usual here as it has been farther north.

But summer has officially arrived! My cousins and I ate seafood on the wharf at Santa Cruz, with views of the boardwalk and the beach. We drove as far south as Capitola, and north to Boulder Creek; the sun came out every day, eventually, and flowers bloomed everywhere. We were nourished by all the beauty (and great food), but primarily by our memories, and our affection for one another.

Now I have returned home, and see that my garden has filled out a lot just from the beginning of the week to the end. The layers of blooms and textures are different, now that the ixia has faded and the succulents and lavender are coming into prominence. In the last few years it seemed that the yarrow was dying out, but now I think maybe it just needed extra water, because after the wet winter it is doing great.

Everything looks pretty when the sun shines through in the evening. The acanthus is so tall, and the heuchera, whose flowers change tone week by week as they dry up; they started as greenish white, and now are ever darkening orangey brown…

Clary Sage

I’ll be traveling again in just two weeks, to visit Kate and her family in D.C. In the meantime I plan to take advantage of the energizing warmth of summer, and enjoy every moment, in the garden and all over the place. Summer is the best!