Tag Archives: lavender

Weeks and weeks of homebody bliss.

feasts, home, my garden, wildflowers, , , , , , , ,

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!

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 ❤

Busy, with mouse.

bees, food and cooking, my garden, , , , , , , , , , , ,

Getting things done. It’s so much fun to check off a few boxes on my “After Greece” list. One of the tasks was to get the fountain leveled. Just before the stonemason was going to come to do that, the pump motor died; I’m glad that happened just before, not after, the leveling. The man who always cleans my fountain when I let it turn green, about once a year, got me a new motor and installed it while I was out one afternoon. That was easy! The stonemason leveled it last night, and gave it a more secure brick-and-mortar base.

I returned from Greece two weeks ago but haven’t got back in the cooking groove. Part of the reason is, I hadn’t made it to the store to buy supplies, and was trying to assemble meals with whatever I could find in the cupboards and freezer. This morning I took my one onion, a can of tomatoes, a small container of mixed sauteed vegetables I’d stored in the freezer, and my home-grown fava beans also stored in the freezer, and made a really nice soup. “Before Greece” I’d roasted all the peeled garlic cloves in the fridge, which was a giant bag — I threw a bunch of those in, too. The soup was good hot, and also cold, as I found out later when the day had warmed up and it didn’t seem necessary to warm up dinner as well.

Recently I decided I wanted to mulch my vegetable plantings with rice straw the way I did ten years ago. So this morning I drove to the feed store where I hadn’t been since then, and was pleased to park next to the shed where baby chicks were peeping. While waiting for the bale to get loaded in the back of my Subaru, I noticed that they had not only rice straw, but rye, wheat and teff as well. The fibers of the teff straw were different from all the others, appearing to be fine and fluffy; I’d like to try that for mulch sometime.

In the past it was a hassle to keep the straw bale dry in the winter and at the same time prevent the rats from bedding down in it and chewing on the tarp that was protecting it, so I thought I’d keep it in the garage this time. Problem was, there was no space for it, unless I would get rid of the plastic storage bins that have been piling up in there as I empty them one by one. So I took them all out and put a notice on our parish email list asking for takers.

My goddaughter Esther came over midafternoon to get some lavender to use in cosmetics. I loaded her bag with rosemary, oregano, and yerba buena herb as well. She said that everything she cooks, if she puts oregano in it, it tastes better. And she’s not even Greek!

I have several types of English lavender growing here; she thought the small, darker purple blooms had the nicest scent, so I made her a couple of bundles of those stems only.

While she was still here, another parishioner stopped by to get some bins. She took almost all of them, and later another person took the remainder.

After the first batch of bins was gone, Esther and I were still standing in the driveway when I saw a field mouse run past. What? At that time of day one doesn’t expect to see such a critter, and I actually haven’t seen a mouse around here in ages, at any time of day, though we are always battling rats that come up from the creek. I could only guess that the mouse had been inside the bale of straw. Uh-oh. Now I am not sure about storing it in the garage.

Son Pathfinder has a new house, with new-to-him plants scattered around it. So he texted me a photo of one of them, wondering if I knew what it was. I had seen an almost identical one on my neighborhood walk the other day, but my Seek app couldn’t identify it correctly. We kept looking up plants and trading ideas back and forth for an hour via text (we’re very slow texters), and finally figured out that it is a yucca: “The flowers are edible and have a peppery flavor. Fruits can be roasted or dried and are sweet and fig-like.”

Here, the bees are finding the teucrium to be full of their favorite sweet food.
And with that I will say good-bye for now.

 

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 ❤