Gardening

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Occupy Lorax

The Lorax by Dr. Seuss

I grew up reading Dr. Seuss books, and for the most part remember them for their nonsense rhymes and abstract illustrations.  I wanted to walk up those endless stairs, slide down the hills and cross the bridges of his fantastic literary world.  In between the original book and The Lorax movie released this month, was the television special by the same name.  I remember it as dark and sad and very scary when I first saw it at age 12.  In many ways Seuss was ahead of his time.  The environmental message was a powerful one, though far too frightening for me.

We joined friends on this cold, March day to see the updated film, loosely based on the book.  We all enjoyed it for what it was, a kid-friendly and amusing tale with a message from the Lorax himself, who “speaks for the trees.”  The New York Times stunningly bashes this film, with a review as spiritless and gray as the 1972 TV special.  I read another review by a mom who suggested the Times lighten up.

What I enjoyed the most is the conversation we had after the movie, and the knowledge that my children are far more aware of deforestation, endangered animals and how important it is to be stewards of the earth.

I wish the incomparable Dr. Seuss could have lived to see the Occupy Movement spread around the globe, for he said it best: “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better.  It’s not.” – The Lorax

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Happy St. Patrick’s Day: Garden Limericks

Pink Clover

I composed a few garden limericks in honor of St. Patrick’s Day.

As a gardener I find much to love,
even weeds at the end of my glove.
I once kept a log,
then I learned how to blog,
hence combining two hobbies thereof.

In my garden I learned how to sow,
tiny seeds laid all in a row.
Then I wait for the pests,
snails and rats never rest,
hoping one day something might grow.

“May the road rise up to meet you, may the wind be ever at your back. May the sun shine warm upon your face and the rain fall softly on your fields.” –Irish Blessing

Weeds, Masquerading as Clover

The Long View

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Raindrops on Petals

My Favorite Raindrop of the Day

It’s nothing to write home about, but we finally got a bit of the wet stuff.  Drizzle. Precipitation. Rain.  According to our local paper we can expect more storms this week. I’m pretty excited.

What fun I had today chasing down raindrops gathering in the recesses of plants. I spotted the first snail of the season, too, but so it goes with gardening.  Nature vs nature.  It’s hard to take sides.

I am sure it is a great mistake always to know enough to go in when it rains.  One may keep snug and dry by such knowledge, but one misses a world of loveliness.  ~Adeline Knapp

Refreshed

Lemon Drops

The Pause that Refreshes

Slipping and Sliding

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Blooming Thursday: Around the Garden

Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary, How Does your Garden Grow?

Today’s garden surprise blooms in the side-yard: periwinkle. I bought a flat last summer and planted most of it in a pot on the deck with some annuals.  I envisioned beautiful trails of purple flowers cascading over the edge of the pot.    I stopped watering the pot when the annuals went to seed, assuming the rain would take over.  So much for assumptions; rain has been sparse all season. Then the squirrels began stashing peanuts in the planting mix, digging and scooping mounds of dirt on the deck. By February the neighbor’s cat was napping in the pot and I threw up my hands in defeat.

On my rounds today I discovered a handful of periwinkle plants survived the winter in the children’s garden.  Four tiny plants in bloom, each sporting one purple flower.  Also blooming today: The pink and white azalea, one of the camellias, and the broccoli now in bloom.  Against the backdrop of cool, gray skies I spotted one lone bee at work.  Perhaps tomorrow news will get back to the hive.

“For so work the honey-bees, creatures that by a rule in nature teach the act of order to a peopled kingdom. “~ William Shakespeare

From Benefits of Honey

Camellia Perfection

Broccoli Blooms

A Welcome Visitor

Periwinkle aka Vinca

Early Azalea

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Monterey Pine: A Shave and a Haircut

If trees could talk...

As borrowed landscaping goes, you can’t beat the majesty and grace of a native Monterey Pine. This beauty lives at the fence line of our neighbor’s yard but we share the bounty year round. I’m humbled when I look at a tree this old and grateful that it continues to thrive in our urban setting.  The invasive pitch canker disease threatens to destroy 85% of the native Monterey pine forests by 2015.  According to this article by Linda Boston Franke:

In the last decade, this hearty pine tree species, which adorns west coast beaches, populates coastal mountain sides, accents both urban and rural neighborhoods, and flourishes in Christmas tree farms, has been threatened by a disease known as pitch canker, leaving beloved backyard monuments and entire forests alike scarred with scraggly decaying branches, gaping bare spots, and in many cases with the complete demise of the tree itself.

I’m so happy that “our” tree is still standing.

We’ve used the professional services of Ian Geddes Professional Arboriculture for 15 years.  They come out periodically to check on the health of our trees, pruning when necessary.  We were happy to learn last summer that the tree remains in good health.  Geddes team came out today to give the pine a “shave and a haircut” while the temperatures remain cool.  They thinned the inner branches to increase circulation, removed dead branches and tucked back some of the limbs to a safer distance from our homes.

PG&E sends out a crew every two years to trim the tree near the power lines, leaving it looking lopsided with a c-curve carved on one side.  Today’s prune was more aesthetic in nature, not to mention an amazing thing to watch.  Three men, tethered to one of the tallest limbs, scaled the tree and removed dead and crossing branches.  They were sure-footed and agile as they went about their work.  I heard singing from one of the branches, a clear sign in my book that at least one of the men tethered to the tree is doing something he loves.

As for our towering pine, I hope I’m still writing about the squirrel escapades as they circle the trunk, or the wonderful smell of the tree after a rainstorm in the years to come.  We’ve planted our own roots in this neighborhood, and this tree is part of what makes our house a home.

Ian Geddes Tree Crew

More Air Flow to the Tree

Before and After the Trim

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Magnolia Liliiflora, You Make my Heart Sing

Our Beloved Tree

We have two Magnolias in our yard, equally magnificent but unique. The more traditional tree, a grandiflora st. mary  towers over the house and provides shade and shelter for neighborhood birds. It’s also an evergreen so we tend to take if for granted since it’s covered in shiny green leaves year round. It produces huge white blooms, and lemon-sized seed pods.

The smaller, more compact Magnolia is only about six feet tall.  It started out in the back yard, where it suffered from a fungus every spring. We transplanted the tree to our front yard where it now happily thrives.  The Tulip Magnolia (magnolia liliiflora) is deciduous.  It starts to wake up in early March with a show of pink and fuchsia, tulip-shaped blooms.

Ah, spring.  All kinds of goodies in store.

Magnolia Bloom

Magnolia Liliiflora

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Maple Musings

Close Up

Rain is in the forecast again this week, but I’m trying not to get my hopes up. As we come to the end of this La Niña year, experts predict one of the lowest rainfall seasons recorded for San Jose. Other than a few cold days here and there, it’s been a surprisingly mild winter as well. All this adds up to confusion in the garden.

Our beautiful maple tree generally starts dropping leaves in the fall, and after a few good storms, the branches remain bare till spring. Around March, the maple’s internal clock knows to send out buds and shoots and little fruit known as winged samara. In a matter of days the tree dresses in rich, red leaves.

This year, only a few leaves dropped. They turned brown on schedule, but without the rain or wind, the leaves remained. A friend asked if the tree was dead and who could blame her: such odd behavior for a deciduous tree.

It’s been a rough season for allergy sufferers as well. Early blooms from over-stressed trees wreak havoc on sinuses. In my California backyard, one lone maple provides color and shade, but states like Vermont have cause for concern. Trees need cold nights followed by warm days to produce maple syrup.  According to Tim Perkins, director of the University of Vermont Proctor Maple Research Center:

“Sap flows best on warm, sunny days followed by nights that dip below freezing. The fluctuations are key: Cold nights contract air bubbles within the tree, producing suction that draws sap from the ground into the tree, where it mixes with sugar and freezes; warm days thaw the sap and expand the air bubbles, creating pressure that makes the sap flow into buckets or tubing, said Tim Perkins, director of the University of Vermont Proctor Maple Research Center, who has studied climate change’s impact on the maple industry.

Perkins predicts that climate change over roughly the next hundred years will result in the loss of maple trees across much of New England, according to congressional testimony he offered in 2007.”

As I muse on our lone maple tree within our suburban setting, I’m intrigued at the parallels on a grander scale, and what it means for us all. I’m worried.

The Old and the New

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Scrapbooking Retreat: A Page from the Garden

Storybook Creator Garden Page

Twice a year I attend a weekend retreat not far from Apple headquarters, where I pursue my love of scrap-booking. Tucked into a cozy conference room with 16 like-minded, creative, and uniquely wonderful women, I pursue my craft. Pam and Staci, the Creative Memories consultants who put together this retreat, take care of all our basic needs: meals, snacks and caffeinated beverages. This is the first year I’ve left my clever tools and colorful papers at home so I could dedicate my energies to learning Storybook Creator 4.0, the latest in digital scrap-booking from CM.

I wish I could say it was all smooth sailing, but like most endeavors involving a computer, I did my share of hand wringing along the way. Of course the weekend isn’t just about crafting. Like a modern-day quilting bee, the women in Meeting Room “A” laugh and share stories of love and courage, strength and loss and the inevitable changes of life. I’ve learned Pixels2Pages and the spirit of camaraderie, the intricacies of 4.0 and the importance of a softly closed door. I marvel at the stereotype of the “weaker sex” as I’ve shared meals and space with this powerhouse group of “croppers,” a sharing, caring group of women who’ve got my back.

What does all this have to do with gardening? Just this: on the darkest of days, my life blooms with sisterhood. With gratitude to the female posse that helps me grow.

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A (Laundry) Room with a View

Lindy-Lu Enjoys the View

For most of my adult life I lived in rented apartments. Dingy laundry rooms and laundromats were the norm. I once spent an hour with a police officer outside a Santa Rosa laundromat trying to reason with the woman who stole an entire dryer-full of my clothes. I managed to get everything back.

In 1996, my husband and I bought a house together with a washer and dryer hook-up in the garage. I figured life couldn’t get better than that.  Sure, we had rats and cockroaches out there, and it got pretty hot mid-July, but I didn’t have to leave home to make clothes clean. Life was good.

When we remodeled our house seven years ago, the architect suggested an indoor laundry room as part of the expansion and my heart did a little dance. It would be a laundry room with a view! Our small-lot house is a mere five feet from the neighbor’s fence, but oh the possibilities. The windowed door looks out on three glorious vines, Hardenbergia and two Star Jasmine. Cyclamen grow along the side of the house and Baby Tears have infiltrated the walkway, their tiny leaves tucked in close to the stone.  The greenery keeps me company as I wash, dry and fold for my family of four, an earthy reminder of the bounty of life’s gifts.

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The Gardener: “I’ve tried to remember everything you taught me about beauty…”

The Gardener: by Sarah Stewart, Illustrated by David Small

We treasured books in the home I grew up in, and that tradition lives on in my home today.  One of the greatest joys when my boys were young was the time we spent snuggling and reading.  We punctuated our weeks with trips to the library, weekly storytelling at our local Barnes and Noble and the occasional author reading at the eclectic, one-of-a-kind Hicklebee’s children’s book store in Willow Glen.  I can say without exaggeration that I’ve read thousands of pages of kid lit: the good, the great and the regrettable.

From those piles of books, emerged one of  my all-time favorites: The Gardener by Sarah Stewart.

I remember the day I pulled it off the shelf, delighted to find a beautifully illustrated book that wasn’t about trains or bunnies.  I stood skimming it, then sat down on the floor so I could give it my full attention. I knew I was holding something special.  My little one was enjoying his own book selection, so I was free to savor every page. What I found was an incredibly moving, poignant, and hopeful book with joy on every page.  The illustrations, by award-winning artist David Small are lovingly rendered with charming details tucked into the corners of each page.  This review sums it up beautifully:

“A moving, wonderfully rich illustrated story. It is that rarity, a pictorial delight that in 20 double pages gives more and more of itself each time it’s read, and whose silent complexities reveal themselves with continuing pleasure.” —The New York Times Book Review

You needn’t be a child or a gardener to appreciate this gem.  Go flop down on some cushions somewhere and give it a read. You’ll be glad you did.