Tag Archives: dodonaea

Bees and good-byes.

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Bee on yerba buena.

Good-byes not to you, Dear Readers, but to the beautiful friends that are the trees and flowers, bees and blooms of my garden, as I prepare to set out on my travels. Most of the days of the year I am home and can tend to their needs, even if it is often less than optimal care and attention I give. Now, in May, the most flowery and gorgeous of my local botanical world, to leave it all…

I keep reminding myself that it will be okay. There is an automatic irrigation system, there are friends and neighbors and landscapers and possibly even a daughter, to caretake in my absence. Yesterday morning it must have been God Who woke me up at 4:00 a.m. so that I found myself in the garden before the sun rose, and witnessed a leaky irrigation hose spraying against the pine tree instead of giving drink to the plants on down the line. I turned off the system and later on Trusty Alejandro was able to come and repair that, and another leak that he discovered by testing the whole system. If I hadn’t quite unusually been out to witness that (and to bathe in the heavenly and oh-so-earthly atmosphere at that time of day), it likely would have wasted that precious water several times a week, and many plants would have suffered before I got back. For anyone who is not aware of the fact, our summer season in California is typically rainless.

In my pre-trip melancholy I keep going out to peruse the little kingdom that God has made me a steward and a lover of, and I see new and amazing things every time. I also find more little weeds to pull, or yellowed leaves to pinch off. There will probably be dirty dishes in the sink when I depart, but I hope no spent irises or Iceland poppy stems standing tall and naked.

I was surprised by the blossoms on the yerba buena ground cover under the pine tree, though I know I’ve seen it in bloom before. The bees are crazy about those tiny flowers. I know the one photo of the bumblebee is blurry, but it was cute the way he was hugging the cup of nectar while drinking…

…or losing his head entirely in his delight:

Two sides of my garden have tall dodonaea or hopbushes providing a backdrop of ever-changing colors for the other plants, and a sort of screen that makes the garden more cozy. Right now a couple of the bushes have changed into their pink outfits.

Today the new Landscaper Dan is coming very belatedly to make a plan for things he might finish up while I’m gone. It gives me extra comfort to know that a person who appreciates the garden needs even more than I do will be paying attention. The area by the front door that we planted together in November makes me feel that I am in the middle of the prairie. Those droopy-petaled pink flowers are echinacea pallida. I’d tried growing them from seed several times without success, but Dan got three plants which have been very happy, and happy to bloom.

My arborist friend A. came and pruned the pineapple guava (feijoa) a few weeks ago. It is so big now, in its tenth year in the garden, and covered with those blooms that are so delicious to eat in themselves. I wish you could come over and have a taste.

I can’t stop swooning over the penstemon — that color!

Soon I plan to be back with stories while exploring in Greece,
but for now, God bless and keep you, Dear Garden!

More figs and flowers.

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It is a joy to have sunny days in which to work in the garden that is heading into its quieter winter months. This is the season for harvesting and cleaning up, often at the same time.

I don’t know if there is any good solution to the overcrowding of the Fig Tree Corner of my garden. There are no plants that I am willing to remove, so I guess I’ll have to just try cutting them back a little harder this winter.

Only the pomegranate bush is a little prickly, when I try to push in next to it to reach a fig. The salvia on the left I just push aside, when I stoop down to enter under the tree’s canopy and then stand up again as straight as I can to reach the fruit up high in the center… or not reach it, which is often the case. The hopbushes (dodonaea) between the tree and the fence don’t actually have a lot of width to trim back. There is the olive in a pot, lavenders, yarrow, and lithodora almost completely hidden under the tree for most of the year.

Birds have been eating many of the figs this summer. They take a big hunk out of one the moment it is beginning to be ripe, and then the wasps come along and gorge on the sweet flesh for a few days, before it is left abandoned in shreds, still hanging.

I was introduced by a mutual friend to a fellow gardener who lives on three acres not too far from me. Rosemary had more figs than she could use this year, so I went to her house and we picked side by side for a half hour; I brought home slightly more fruit than she kept to share with friends that very morning. Her figs were a more standard variety than my dwarf Black Jack type, maybe a Mission or Brown Turkey. They were awfully sweet and tasty, with more concentrated figgyness than mine typically have. I dehydrated most of them.

Yesterday I stood on the edges of my planter boxes to harvest the Painted Lady runner beans and cut down the thick vines that have hardened to sticks. It’s tricky to pull the long stems back over the fence from behind my neighbor’s woodpile, where I know he won’t be making use of the attached bean pods.

While I was standing up there, I got a fresh view down under the zinnias, and saw that I had three beets ready to pick. I didn’t even remember that any were growing there, next to the eggplant where the pumpkin vine had been encroaching. But when I harvested the  pumpkins, the beets were exposed. Also an eggplant that had been partly eaten… but when I cut off that part, half of it was intact and lovely.

Four little pumpkins got ripe, and there is one more that might possibly. These are the ones I grew from seed collected from a decorative pumpkin last year, because it turned out to be the sweetest of all I  had roasted. I’ll let you know if these prove anything like that tasty.

I’ve been trying to get calendulas to thrive in my garden again, the way they seemed so effortlessly to do in ages past. I think back then they received more water and sunshine; this year they are finally, happily blooming in the planter boxes, after taller (shading) plants have been removed, and I got the watering schedule corrected: those boxes were getting less than half the amount of drip irrigation they needed.

Most of my garden is pretty dry, with minimal irrigation, so anytime I have a plant that needs more than that I put it in the boxes. Right now most of the space is given to zinnias, the last sturdy stars of summer.

What’s blowin’ in the wind.

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Rain, rain, rain! My biggest dodonaea or hopbush was blown over in the last storm. Alejandro came Saturday and Sunday to re-stake three of these bushes, just before this current storm arrived. I was so thankful to get them shored up before the next gale.

I stayed home all day today and did housework. Isn’t it fun, the way housework incorporates everything from book-mending to picture-hanging, laundry to cooking? I did all those things today, and more.

When I wanted to read a certain fairy tale to the grandchildren last week, I opened the anthology I grew up with, and the cover fell off – again. A decade or two ago I had duct-taped it together, and today I put everything back again with clear tape. Afterward I had to browse a few pages, of course, and wonder about how much of my philosophy of life and my ideas about various things might have been shaped by the words and pictures on those pages.

I’ve already written about “The Little Match Girl,” (eight years ago this month, I see!) but other fairy stories, poems and nursery rhymes had a big effect on me. The words generally impressed more than the pictures, as I developed the habit of devouring them greedily, not wanting to take time for the images. “Hickety, Pickety, My Black Hen” was the sole reason I kept black chickens when I was a grown-up lady, but I always envisioned straight black, not laced, feathers. I evidently ignored this drawing.

But – when I think of “Hansel and Gretel,” which I also loved, this is how those forsaken children look in my mind.

Some rhymes were so much fun they seemed to insinuate themselves into my consciousness without any effort:goops IMG_3158

 

In our family we were not coddled. I had little sympathy for the princess who was so thin-skinned and tender, but whose story I liked to read again and again, and to stare at the illustration, so simple and absurd:

Ah, “Over in the Meadow” —  This one, I’m not sure if I loved it as a child or only after singing it with my own children over the years. All the mothers and children in that rhythmic counting song make me feel cozy.

When I was leafing through these pages this morning I didn’t gravitate to the poems about rain and wind that are more in keeping with the season. We haven’t seen the sun for a couple of days, and are predicted to get six inches of rain before this three-day storm has passed! Right now the wind is howling and the rain clattering; this month has been an average of ten degrees colder than usual, too. I made a big pot of vegetable soup, and roasted another of my butternut squashes, and was grateful.

That’s the theme of the last page I am posting here, which was the first one I saw. It’s not one of the more familiar ones to me, looking at it, but I was pleasantly surprised to find it in the book, and it started me on my musings. Father in Heaven, we thank Thee!

Candles and flowers for Pascha.

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Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death,
and upon those in the tombs bestowing Life!

The last several days have been kind of a blur. We Orthodox were “in Jerusalem,” our rector kept reminding us, following Christ step by step from the day He was acclaimed and lauded with hosannas, on through His last meal with those men closest to him, His prayer in Gethsemane, betrayal by Judas, a farce of a trial… and on to the cross on which He offered Himself for our sakes. Every day of Holy Week we had at least two holy and liturgically rich services, sometimes three.

This year I was able to participate in these beautiful and moving services more than ever before, and to feel the continuity of them, at the same time seeing afresh how each is unique. This was the first time I thought, after Vespers on Holy Friday, “Oh, I must try to come tonight again, for Matins of Holy Saturday, because there will be the reading from Ezekiel about the dry bones, which in the whole year I can only hear tonight.” And stronger still was the need to be with family whose Beloved was suffering; how could I think of resting at that point?

But we did all occasionally have to go home for sleep or to eat a bite and many people of course must work or attend school. So between my car and my front door I would take a picture, and when I went out in back between rain showers to get some more firewood I took some more. I am in love with the new fig leaves and miniature knobs of fruits.

Saturday we gathered at 11:30, under clear skies; at midnight we streamed slowly out of the church with singing, and came back to the porch to hear, “He is risen! Why seek ye the living among the dead? Christ is a stranger to corruption!” I took some pictures that are blurry, but I guess that’s appropriate. I was so sleepy, my mind was a bit foggy, too, in a happy daze.

Children slept in a jumble of blankets on the floor, or played with the melting beeswax of their candles. Adults like me are often seen playing with their candles, too! Before the service started I sat on a bench along the wall and kept putting my unlit candle to my nose to drink the heady honey scent.

I had an extra friend from church stay here for a few days to reduce her driving time. She brought me pale pink tulips, so lovely. And Trader Joe’s had stock in other perfectly Paschal-Spring colors, from which I made my first stock bouquet ever. In the garden are dozens of calla lilies that I will bring in tomorrow.

We returned for Paschal Vespers on Sunday afternoon (So strange to sleep, and then eat breakfast on a Sunday morning!) and then a BBQ and picnic. And this morning the radiant Bright Monday service, processing with decorated Artos bread. The weather has been perfect for the last two or three days, but more rain is coming. What a blessing all that rain is; and I’m glad I don’t live where it snows at this time. But even there, it would be springtime in our hearts.

By Thy Cross, Thou didst destroy the curse of the tree.
By Thy burial Thou didst slay the dominion of death.
By Thy uprising, Thou didst enlighten the race of man.
O Benefactor, Christ our God, glory to Thee!