in garden news

 

The apricot has the sweetest tinniest apricots growing and the D'Anjou pear and the peach tree are full of blossoms.  We are beside-ourselves-happy that we took down the grapefruit and orange trees before spring as the change in perspective has completely given us a new appreciation for our lower garden (because we can see it!).

lavender

We have lovely lavender plants and over the past couple years they have taken over everywhere I've planted them.  They are Jed's favorite smelling plant (mine being any of the salvias) which means that I have free reign to plant them willy nilly wherever I'd like.  I would say that we have about  1/2 as many as I'd like (we have about 7 plants) but I'm super partial to the kind of lavender plants I like and my favorite seller at the farmer's market hasn't been stocked lately.  Any-who, I was sitting in the garden this weekend, admiring how long the flowers had gotten when I remembered something I had seen once about weaving lavender.  A quick google search brought me up to speed and within moments I had made our first lavender wand.  I say our first because Nate quickly claimed this one and I know that I want one for at least every room in our house and it definitely has gifting potential...Watch out May Day, here we come :)

beginnings

We have the beginnings of a garden growing in our house.  I have begun about 100 seedlings and most are growing at a terrific rate.  They have actually exceeded my expectations for how fast they grow and I'm left wondering if I will be able to get them in the ground in time. 

I have yet to put in the irrigation, figure out exactly how many seedlings I need and where they will go and all that deliciousness.  Currently, I'm fretting over the fact that they seem really spindly and leggy and I can't figure out if that's because I used the coconut coir plugs and they need fertilizer, or maybe they need more light? 

Seedling truly are a mystery to me.  A wonderful, amazing, and slightly bewildering mystery.  But we should have lots of food in a few months all this fretting will be forgotten. 

jasmine, how sweet thou art

Ah, it is jasmine season around these parts and oh how amazing that is.  There is so much in our garden that I am grateful for that is ours by inheritance.  Plants and ideas that were passed down from previous owners, small and large things that continue to delight and astound me almost 4 years after we bought this house.  One of those things is the exactly perfect placement of jasmine plants on our western fence that separates our house from the neighbor. 

It's perfect on so many levels but here are a few: when the breeze blows in from the west (generally the only direction that it blows in from) we are gifted the sent of jasmine right into our open dining room window and then into the house, the jasmine seems to be at its headiest bloom right before the oranges bloom so we get to have several months of sweet smelling loveliness coming into our just opened spring windows, and finally, as the plants are on a fence that runs north/south, much of the bloom ends up on our neighbors side, thus making her happy to have a plant that we allow to run extremely wild encroach on her yard (win win!). 

Welcome spring, welcome.

wow.

So, a day of rest turned into a week of rest.  I can't remember being that sick in a long time.  Coughing so much my lungs ached.  Throat so sore I couldn't swallow.  And just so very tired.  But then, yesterday, Monday.  It rained.  And how I love the rain.  And I feel like with it flowed away the last of my sickness and I'm ready to begin again.  But slowly this time, much more slowly.

The weekend afforded me some time just sitting around amidst my plants and I got to see so many things I probably wouldn't have noticed had I been weeding, trimming, or working, rather than resting, absorbing and watching.  Such as the tiniest of bugs collecting pollen from our blooming tidy tips. More pictures to follow as that's about all I was able to do last week :)

rain!

We have had the most wonderful and welcome rain the past few days.  It will pour buckets for a minute or two (it is Southern California after all) and then there will be a break and the apricot tree downstairs glows.  I am so happy to know all the compost I spread is soaking deep into soil and right into hungry tree and vegetable roots.  I am so happy to know I don't have to turn on the water for another month.  I am so happy just to hear the pitter patter on the roof, the sweetest lullaby at night.  Yippee!

preparing the new beds

Jed and I often talk about how little time we spend tending our garden.  We seem to be more of the pick, water, and pray kind of gardeners.  This has been a very conscious decision on my part.  I am a firm believer of putting a lot of work in at the front end so that the majority of our time can be spent admiring and eating from our garden, rather than feeling like we always have chores waiting for us outside.  When we were looking at houses, high on our list was no turf.  We didn't like the idea of having to spend time each week mowing something just for the sake of having something green.  We knew that if we bought grass, we would eventually end up replacing it and that seemed like a lot of work.  When we found this house, we knew we had struck gold in so many respects.  It was at the end of a cul de sac in a quiet part of town, all the neighbors knew each other, we were within biking distance of the library and downtown and, best of all, it had a fully functioning (and irrigated!) garden.   We've slowly added our own plants to the mix- taking out some water-hogs and replacing them with natives, adding new vegetable beds here and there.  But our gardening schedule has remained the same every year- sometime in the fall cut back all of the native sages and butterfly bushes, sometime in the winter mulch and add compost, sometime in the spring plant some seeds or seedlings- repeat this last one every month or so until the fall- and repeat yearly.  All told, I would say we spend about 10-20 days a year doing actual 'gardening.'  The rest are spent enjoying our garden. 

Well, it is officially 'sometime in winter' as I spent a fantastic (truly!) day spreading many hundreds of pounds of compost over our new beds as well as old beds and fruit trees.  It was tough work.  And it felt fantastic. I love a garden right after the compost has been laid.  There is so much potential.  It's perfectly clean- a blank slate for the greens and grays of new growth to peek out of.  This year I had some fantastic helpers who enjoyed giving each other tips on how best to rake the compost, got the biggest kick out of the fact that they were pushing around horse poop, and did a darn good job of keeping (most) of the compost in its designated area. 

Our next big job is chipping the trees we cut down and hauling that down to cover the new beds.  Actually, even before that, I'll have to lay down my new irrigation.  Oh, and maybe the seeds?  Haven't really thought through this next phase but I'm sure it'll all come to me.  Winter really is my favorite season, especially when it looks and acts more like spring :)

california spring

I was able to snap some photos of our new blooms before the rains this week.  Not sure how many will hang on through the rain.  It seems to be an early spring, even by California standards.  For the first time since we've moved in, I've had to turn on the water to the lower trees during winter.  Not a good sign.  But, the early blossoms are looking (and smelling) amazing.  We have bunches and bunches of tightly closed jasmine hanging onto our fence, I walk by them every day hoping to catch an early bud and get a whiff of its sweet fragrance. 

 

    

in bloom

Alright, enough doom and gloom.  There are other things happening in the garden lately, namely blooms!  After a couple (oh how we could use more!) small rain showers, the natives in the garden are beginning to come out of their dormancy.  The first to bloom each year is our ceanothus- or California Lilac.  Our plant has tripled in size since we got it and each year the blooms are more and more beautiful.

Not a true lilac, but in the buckthorn family, it's still quite stunning to see when you're driving through some of the native spaces of California this time of year.  I remember my grandma would point it out to us when we were driving to get strawberries in Vista on Sunday mornings.  It's nice to have a reminder in my own backyard that perhaps it's time for a little lilac spotting road trip in the near future! 

embracing it all

 

I went outside today with the express intent to take a picture of the beautiful camellias we have blooming outside our sliding door.  Part of my reasoning is that the flowers are just amazing to look at and the other part is so  I would have a reminder on these pages of why I should keep that green bush that's totally out of scale and drives me crazy the other 11 months of the year.  By the time I got outside, though, most of the flowers were in shadows and only the 'not so good' ones were in full light.  Shrugging my shoulders I lifted my camera and took a few shots anyway. 

At the time I thought I might not post them or I might do a little photo editing/cropping to only show the good parts. But once I sat down to write this post I realized that I really wanted to post the pictures in their honest form.  Because this is really what my garden looks like right now.  I bit  sunburned by the intense January heat, a bit brown around the edges from lack of rain and yet it continues to grow, thrive and give me pleasure, no matter how little time I spend tending it. 

I'm not going to add some cliche about life here, though  you may certainly extrapolate that way if you'd like.  I think I'm really taking a pro-honesty stance these days and this is my honest picture of the day.  And, goodness, I still find it a sight to behold. 

outside my window

One of the pear and the persimmon tree have almost done with their change into fall leaves, the persimmon has lost most of hers.  But they just continue to shine in their autumn glory every morning and afternoon that I look out my window.  There are times when I'm sweeping up the living room and I catch a shimmer of gold downstairs and I am reminded of those beautiful trees.  The cold nights are here at last and are slowly but surely transforming my garden into a winter garden.  I've left most of my native blooms on the plants for bird seed but I noticed the birds aren't gathering under the bushes so much anymore...almost time to prune I suppose.  The tangerines are in.  Just barely, a little sour for some but just right for many.  Can barely pick them fast enough before they're gobbled up.  We have so very much on this little plot of land.  So very many blessings. 

a reminder to really look

I want these images to remind me to look.  To actually open my eyes to the world when I step outside my house, and even when I am within.  So many days I find myself rushing out the door, my mind on the various places I'm off to, the people I may be seeing, the things I may be doing.  And at the same time, the gardener in me is doing a quick survey of the front yard: the bermuda sneaking in, hiding among my natives, the pineapple sage has lost its last bloom, the white sage giving off its sweet scent in the morning dew.  But it's just that- a quick survey.

I am not a rose person- never have been.  When we first moved into this house, we inherited about 10 rose bushes.  9 of them are in the front, right next to the driveway.  I had big plans for that section- there was no irrigation going to it (meaning I would have to hand water those rose plants all summer long) so it was the perfect space to begin my foray into natives.  As I said, I had big plans.  That first summer turned into fall, turned into winter, turned into spring, turned into summer and the seasons kept changing and I started to prune the roses, and I figured out how to set up a drip line that I could attach a hose to once or twice a week, Jed started dumping coffee grounds at their bases, and the roses flourished.  And the thing is, I am still not a rose person, but I am definitely a fan of anything beautiful.  And I finally had to admit, these roses were stinkin' beautiful.  No two were alike, they had clearly been chosen for their delicacy and scent.  These were no grocery store roses- these were the real thing. 

And the best part is that they are right there on the side of my driveway, releasing their scent into my car as I drive away and greeting me with that same sweet fragrance upon returning home.  And because they are not store quality roses, the blooms rarely last more than a day.  They go from tight bud to full bloom within a couple days and to bring them inside is to embrace their fleeting beauty, as petals can be found within a day or two surrounding their vase. 

And so I've decided to literally stop and smell the roses more often.  They may not be 'my kind of flower' but what is really?  They are surely beautiful, fragrant and put up with my neglectful style of gardening.  And they are right there.  I pass by them every day.  They are my visual cue to slow down, return to this actual moment, right here in the world and be present.  They are my reminder to really look: at where I am, who I am, and to be genuinely present and at peace with that reality. 

So, I will listen to that inner voice that we won't be late if I go inside to get my camera to spend an extra 2 minutes really looking at a flower, that it's not too cold to capture that tree in just the right evening light, that I'm not too tired to really get down into the dirt with my hands and plant those winter greens.  I have time.  There is always time. 

garden love

I really thought I might get some writing in today but it seems it was not meant to be.  One more flurry of pictures.  Oh how I love amazing botanic gardens. 

it's the most wonderful time

I love, love, love fall.  It is so very clearly the very best season of them all.  You still get some warm (even hot) days yet an extra blanket is a good idea for sleep.  It doesn't seem silly to wear a light scarf in the morning or evening and my toes are happy to be wrapped up in some hand knitted socks from last winter.  I no longer feel silly with my knitting needles out- and, instead, begin to feel frantic when I don't have them as that's one less moment I can work on a gift before Christmas.  While the season officially starts on the 23rd, today felt like it was the first true day of fall here at my house, so I'm claiming that it has begun.  In all honesty it actually began a few weeks ago- I noticed that the apricot tree was beginning to look bare, my tomatoes were finally ripening, watermelon were starting to grow, the pears were almost through and our persimmon tree was beginning to topple with ripening fruit.  It was officially fall this afternoon, however, when I took my first bite of an apple off our tree.  There is much written about the extravagant sweetness and the taste of summer in a freshly picked summer peach- even I have gone down that literary path.  But to taste fall in the crisp, clean, sweet-tartness that is a tree ripened apple.  That is goodness.

Welcome fall, it is so very good to have you back.  

remember to look in the mirror

  The other day we were getting together with friends and plans had to be changed.  It wasn't a big deal, errands were shifted around and it was great to hang out with them, albeit at a different time than was arranged.  I bring this up, though, because of the conversation I had on the phone with my friend as plans were shifting.  She apologized because 'she knew how much I didn't like last minute changes to plans.'  And she's right.  I really do have a hard time with changes in plans.  But it's something I've slowly and consciously have been working on the past year.  Letting go of those things outside my control and figuring out how to use the new information to make things better. 

A large reason that I decided to work on shifting my focus was because I saw how it was manifesting in my son's life.  Nathaniel hates changes: to schedules, routines, plans, you name it.  We've had complete meltdowns when something is mentioned in passing but then fails to manifest itself.  Those around him have learned it's best to not let him know that there is a possibility of something fun until the possibility becomes a reality.  But I've realized that this type of inflexible thinking was serving either of us.  It left us frustrated, upset, and emotionally worn out.  As my incredible yoga teacher likes to quote from Hellen Keller at the end of practice: When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but we often look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.

So, I've been working on modeling flexibility. Letting Nate see first hand that plans may change and it's truly not a big deal- sometimes it can lead to even better things.  And, slowly oh so slowly, I've begun to see a difference in the way he deals with change.  It seems much easier for him to take things that would have been quite dramatic in stride nowadays.  Of course, I know a lot of that is developmental and the fact that he's just getting older, but I also know that he's watching me and learning something everytime he watches.

My child is a watcher.  I see myself mirrored in so many of the things he says and does these days.  And while I can find this terrifying some days, on others, I can take this mirroring in stride and see it as a challenge to my own personal growth.  It's not every day that we have a mirror following us around through life, I suppose I best embrace it and see what I can learn.