Tag Archives: Pacific Coast Iris

A belated letter from Lent.

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I’d like to catch up here about a few of the things that happened, and that I did, during the several weeks I was absent from the blogging world. These are the kinds of things you can take pictures of, so they are not many, considering all the hours and days we are talking about. It often happened that I would think to take a picture somewhere, but then I would think, “I’m not blogging, so I don’t really need a picture of that.” And it was nice. Life is full. Here are some of the ways my days were full of life:

Birthdays: I cooked for two of the birthday parties that I attended. One of my accomplishments in this department was a batch of vegan gluten-free chocolate cupcakes, which the party-goers thought wonderful; I ate two of them myself. The picture is from before they went into the oven. You might guess that there were beets in the batter!

Later I drove north for grandson Jamie’s 11th birthday, and took the job of baking the cake he remembers always being the tradition for his day, a “Black Forest Cake” made with a box mix, whipped cream, and canned cherry pie filling. The top layer of my version was so domed, I had to create a lake from the whipped cream to hold the cherries. No one should be surprised to find a lake in the Black Forest, right?

Up there, spring was early, and when we took walks in the woods we encountered dogwood flowers a month before they’d normally be seen. And a trillium. I am rarely in a place to see trilliums when they are newly opened, so that was wonderful.

Other cooking: A bigger project than the birthday baking was for church. I took a whole day to experiment at home in an effort to figure out how to get a consistently good imprint on the tops of our altar bread that we call prosphora.

And I learned a lot, though the huge batch of dough (it used 20+ cups of flour) from which I  made four sizes of breads, overwhelmed my kitchen — or more precisely, my mind, as I scrambled to keep track of timers and squeeze everything into my oven.

It seemed pretty chaotic for a while, but the end result was quite satisfactory, Glory to God! It was on St. Patrick’s Day, and I had been to church that morning so as to start my project off right. Thank you, Saint Patrick!

Reading: You can see from the sidebar that I read several books, but the one I most wanted to read for “lenten reading” I haven’t finished yet. It’s Transfiguring Time by Olivier Clément, and is a beautiful complement to the joy of Pascha, as the author’s own joy at the Christian message shines through every page. Clément was born in 1921 in France, and spent his 20’s exploring the religions of the East, in particular India. He became somewhat of an expert on ancient cosmologies and their concept of time, and when he discovered the Christian faith as elucidated by Vladimir Lossky, he saw the huge contrast. I’m sure I’ll share some quotes from Clément later.

Little breads for church feasts: For the feast of the 40 Martyrs of Sebaste I decided to bake Lark Buns for my church school class.

40 Martyrs Sebaste

The symbolism has to do with larks in springtime, but also the spirits of the martyrs flying up to heaven. You have to bake 40 of them, of course, so quite a few were left over to pass around to a few people at the agape meal. That was fun.

At the very end of Lent, on Palm Sunday, to commemorate Lazarus Saturday which was the day before, the cooks who prepared the agape meal made a batch of Lazarus Buns. They are just as cute!

In the garden: We had a couple of very warm weeks in March, and around the date of the equinox, when weather returned to normal, it was as though summer had ended and spring had arrived. It was easy to be out of doors during that special time. I had organized my seeds…

…and planted several 3″ pots with winter squash: kabocha, butternut and Delicata. Because of there being so much sunshine and high temps, I was able to leave them outdoors much of the time. Just before recent rains I set them out into the garden, and if we don’t get any killing frosts I should end up with a good supply of squash in the fall.

I harvested plenty of greens and they were delicious. The Chinese Broccoli towered over the garden bed and swayed prettily, scattering its flower petals around, but I didn’t get very much in the way of the broccoli part from it, and the larger leaves were bitter.

The Tasmanian Flax is blooming this spring, after readying itself for three years, and I am thrilled. Each flower is exquisite and dainty, and there are hundreds of them, so we can expect a slew of berries in a few months.

Now I must check out what my fellow bloggers have been doing the last two months ❤

We survive neglect.

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Helianthemum Henfield Brilliant

I use “we” in the title to show solidarity with my beloved garden. Several times a year, a complaint is lodged against Gardener Gretchen for failing to live up to her vision. I guess it’s just the reality of Life Right Now. Tomorrow will be a big gardening day, a day of improvement, but today is when I had a few minutes to stroll about taking stock, taking pictures. All the plants are calling me to come out and admire them, and to notice how they thrive; they don’t want me to feel bad about how much I ignore them.

Lithodora with nigella and weeds.

Lithodora is one of my favorites. This week I’m going to pull out all the Love-in-a-Mist sprouts that are growing through and around it and under the fruit trees. In the front I already did as Gardener Dan advised me: I “edited” (thinned) the nigella, which he says will help them produce larger blooms. I think I reduced the number of plants in that bed from roughly 1,000 to 100.

Let me get the rather sad picture below out of the way now, the planter boxes where I typically grow squash and tomatoes. I’m at a loss as to what to do there, as my travels will take me away at just the wrong time for summer vegetables. Maybe the earth will have to lie fallow until August, when I can plant winter greens.

The native Pacific Coast Iris is now blooming in my very own garden (below). I am completely thrilled. This plant is so popular on the West Coast — not just near the ocean but up into the mountains — that it has its own fan club, the Society for Pacific Coast Native Iris.

In native plant nurseries one can find many colors and species of this type, Iris subsect. Californicae, which is in the same family as the Siberian irises. The Flora of North America site says, “Series Californicae presents some of the most complex taxonomic problems in all of our American irises.” In the wild a specimen can be difficult to identify as to which of the three main groups it is in because of “their willingness to cross pollinate whenever their ranges overlap.”

Pacific Coast Iris

When I was offered a choice by Dan, I knew I wanted the white. But maybe I will find a place to plant other colors in the future. One plant site explained, “If the tall bearded iris is the queen of the garden, the natives are the pixies.” My queens are nearby, in the front garden, rising up tall and elegant, with the pale yellow California poppies (and lots of weeds) for contrast.

Back by the lemon tree, I had a sort of iris dumping ground for a few years, where I planted whatever extra corms came my way, usually gifted by iris sellers who threw a few odd ones into the shipment. The colors or the quantities didn’t fit in with the others, so I saved them in that corner, where they never did well. Last fall I put them in a double row behind a plum tree, where they are surprisingly starting to bloom. Yes, I saw that milk thistle — I just need gloves before I will tackle it!

This spring, I bought exactly one plant on my own, without any idea of where I might install it. I will wander tomorrow and find a setting for a foxglove plant.

For a few years, back when my garden was newly landscaped, I had three native currant bushes (ribes) with their showy flowers and intoxicating scented leaves.

Ribes, March 2017

They grew so large that they engulfed the bench in front of them, making it impossible to sit there:

Ribes, May 2019

After I pruned them, they bloomed again …. and then one by one they died. No one could figure out why. Now we are trying some new ones, which don’t look like the same plant exactly, but they are blooming very prettily right now:

Last fall I made it to the hardware store after most of the bulbs were already bought up. All they had of muscari were these “special” ones below. I bought a big bag, and then regretted it, thinking they might turn out to be just weird. So instead of planting them near the front door, I put them in various places in the back garden, where they are blooming late… and I do think they are odd.

Revived survivors from last year.

The heuchera are covered with their bells already, and you can see my little cyclamen plantation behind. The soil is very shallow because of tree roots, but they come back year after year; recently I added two more to their family.

I will close with a cheery calendula group. They are brighter than ever because of all the rain they got, and will never look this good again until next winter or spring, if they get a good winter watering. It’s just too dry in my garden for them to thrive, but they are like many of us that way, right? Rarely are all the conditions optimal for our looking and feeling our best. The calendulas are surrounded by tall, pushy, more drought-tolerant “tares” that don’t seem to bother them at all. I hope to follow their example and cultivate more hardiness, and cheeriness too. Or — merriment.

Because this morning I was reading a Psalm not in my usual translation, and it went like this:

And let the righteous be glad;
Let them greatly rejoice before God;
Let them be glad with merriment.