Tag Archives: Iceland poppies

Chocolates and swans in the garden.

my garden, writing, , , , , , , ,

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 ❤

June flowers make me feel at home.

home, my garden, , , , , , , ,

My front garden had turned into a jungle by the time I returned after nearly three weeks away; I expected that, but didn’t anticipate all of the species that would get tangled together. Some of them, like the nigella and poppies, were way past their prime and I could simply pull them out.

Black Medick

There was a certain weed that had flourished under the asparagus fronds and was climbing by means of its yard-long stems up behind and over the germander, which is just starting to bloom. It also was growing in the cracks in the walkway. I knew I had seen it before somewhere, but never in this quantity, so I looked it up: Black Medick. I pulled at least most of it out, and added that to the green bin.

I bought cosmos and some shorter flowers to replace all the things that I removed; and a few basil, summer squash and zinnia plants to put in the planter boxes. Because spring was cool here, the Iceland poppies are still blooming, and welcomed me home.

The Showy Milkweed is blooming and the bees are on it.

In Greece, in addition to the live, rustic and thorny version of acanthus I’d seen on Paros, I saw plenty of carved acanthus leaf designs in the ancient Byzantine architecture in Thessaloniki. I came home to see my own plants looking more majestic than ever.

The lavender has come out, and the Mock Orange, and the little campanula that hides under the Mock Orange. The Golden Marguerite that I’d pulled out of the front garden last year — it returned, and was  aggressively invading my new landscape, so I cut it back, and stuck the clippings in a vase. After all that, and a few days recovery from jet lag, I’m beginning to feel myself again ❤

In the fourth week of Lent…

church, friends, Lent, , , , , , , , ,
Lithodora

…in the fourth week of Lent I was busy:

1) I cooked seedy crackers, vegan tapioca pudding, and pans and pans of roasted vegetables, including my own asparagus. I boiled a few quarts of ginger tea and tried out another vegan lemon cake recipe that I probably won’t make again. I’m done with cakes for a while. It makes sense to make cakes when one can use eggs and butter.

2) I baked communion bread at church. For a year we haven’t been using the little prosphora loaves that get sent into the altar along with our prayer requests, but we are starting that tradition again; four of us made 200 prosphora. What we call lambs, the larger loaves that we didn’t bake this week, are cut up and consecrated along with wine for Holy Communion. This photo is from the past.

3) I worked in the garden and the greenhouse. Most days now, when the sun shines, I open the door and vent of the greenhouse so that the seedlings don’t swelter. Then I close them up at night to shut out the cold marine breeze. Soon I’ll need to put a shade cloth on one side of the roof as well. The first butternut squash seed took an entire month to sprout; the next several were even later. Nothing like the pumpkins which were the first of all to emerge. I’ve moved most of the plants to larger pots so they can spread their roots in the next few weeks.

4) I shopped at a farmers market with Bella. We ate breakfast there and bought a few vegetables. How long had it been since I’d been to one of those? The sun shone and everyone was cheery. Then we went across town to her community garden plot, because she had a few potatoes that really needed to get into the dirt. I wandered around dreamily while she dug. Besides us, only a very quiet father and little daughter were working their plot, in which they had strawberries in process.

Bella sent me home with some horsetail which she told me to make tea out of, but it is still waiting in the refrigerator.

5) I went to church several times, and did a little housework, and got my taxes paid. I prepared for my church school class by reading more of The Screwtape Letters, and for the women’s book group by reading some of First Fruits of Prayer, which we discussed on ZOOM this afternoon. I ended up not enjoying that book very much. The Canon was not “itself,” plucked out of its normal context of Compline, extracted as a text to read, with explanatory notes but without the usual accompanying music, prostrations, and other tactile and sensory aspects, not to mention the fellow worshipers in the services in which we pray it, divided into four parts for the first week of Lent. This week we will do the whole Canon again, all in one morning.

6) I attended a doubly belated birthday party with my friends with whom I have celebrated for 36 years now, ever since we learned that we were born in the same week of the same year. At that time we lived on the same block of our “village.” Last spring we couldn’t manage it, so this was our 35th luncheon. We ate on the patio at S.’s house and the sun was just warm enough to make it easy to sit and chat for several hours.

7) I found these eggs that my daughter-in-law Joy knitted for me a few years ago, but which were stashed away in a box during the remodel. I posed them among the flowers but then brought them in to brighten up the living room.

This will be another full week. It’s such a blessing to have many different things to do, but — can you tell how worn out I am? It’s a great gift that God gives us rest, too. It’s the 5th Week of Lent – Pascha is coming!

Rain on my plum trees.

my garden, nature, , , ,

Last week I made a little trip to visit my horticulturalist/vintner/adventurer friend CJ, whom I hadn’t seen in a year. Her Christmas letter had gone to an old email address and I didn’t see it until that very day; when I read that she had started keeping chickens, I wrote and invited myself to meet them as soon as she would let me. She said, “Come today!”

It’s a good thing I didn’t have my phone on me as we sat in one room of the chicken house by the creek, where she has a lawn table and chairs for hanging out with her flock, or I would have made a fool of myself taking pictures of the beautiful girls, hens of all my favorite breeds: Silver Laced Wyandottes, Buff Orpingtons, Black Australorps and Red Leghorns. She sent me home with eggs and I had to explain why I am showing their picture.

This week we have wet and glorious rain. We, speaking of all God’s trees, grasses, shrubs, vines and flowers — and the humans, too — have been thirsty. Between showers, everything in the garden glows, but I don’t know how to capture that in my pictures. The Iceland poppies in the front garden are big and lush. Only two colors of the mixed 6-pack are blooming, and they look a little odd together, coral and orange, but that seems to be what they like.

In the back garden, I have another several poppy plants that have not grown above the ground level all these months. Maybe they are sulking in too much shade. But the stock and the plum trees are coming through with plenty of good cheer.