Home and Garden

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Blueberries: The Third Year it Leaps!

It was heartening to read on one of my favorite blogs yesterday, that my blueberries may start producing this year. We didn’t have any production the first year, and only 4 berries (four!!!) last year.

Blueberry Bush

According to What’s Green with Betsy?!?:

“This will probably be the year it produces. According to my arborist husband, “the first year it sleeps, the second year it creeps, the third year it leaps”. Your plant has been working on root development for the first two years. There is a lot going on beneath the soil that we can’t see.”

I’ll keep you posted.

In the meantime, check out What’s Green with Betsy for some great, earth-friendly gardening tips.

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Blooming Thursday: The Color of the Day is Pink

A Natural Bouquet

The color pink can “stimulate energy and can increase the blood pressure, respiration, heartbeat, and pulse rate,” according to All About the Color Pink.  Conversely, prison walls are painted  lighter shades of pink to calm aggression and anxiety.

When choosing flowering plants for my garden, pink is my top choice.  Pinks contrast beautifully with green, and they are softer and cooler than reds. I’ve planted pink clover, Impatiens, cyclamen and geraniums in the past along with carpet roses and azaleas.  Interestingly, the star jasmine starts out with pink buds, morphing into white when fully in bloom.  The flowering blossoms on many of the fruit trees are also a lovely shade of pink.  Our now-deceased almond tree served as the focal point of our garden for years.  We were  sad to see it go.  We’ve since replaced it with a four-in-one fruit cocktail tree with equally magnificent flowers, but it will be a few years before it grows to the same magnificent size.

What’s your favorite pink bloom?

Four-in-one Fruit Tree

Flowering Bulbs

Jasmine and Mousy

Yes, I am pretty darn cute

Okay, just one more cute kitty picture. Look at those pink ears and that adorable pink nose.

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A Case of Mistaken Identity

Well I’m embarrassed! Yesterday I posted a photo thinking it was a carrot about to bloom. Imagine my surprise today to find this beautiful California poppy flowering away in the sun.

Yep! That's a Poppy

For starters, I’ve never planted poppies. It’s our state flower and we’re not supposed to pick them. I worried that if I planted poppies I would be tempted to snip a few blooms to bring indoors. I’m no law-breaker!

Closing Up Shop for the Night

We planted carrot seeds last summer. That they never grew is irrelevant. If I’ve learned anything, it’s that nature has her own schedule. When the foliage first appeared at the soil line, I dug down with a finger and discovered an orange-colored root. I was sure it was a carrot. I looked up “carrot foliage” today and it does resemble our fair flower.

Buds and Greens

It’s not that I’m disappointed to have our beautiful state flower in bloom, but that I was so convinced it was otherwise.   I snapped a few photos late in the day, but the skies were clouding over so the lovely bloom was already closing up shop.

Never a dull moment in the garden.

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Vernal Equinox in my own Backyard

Happy spring!  Here’s what’s happening in my own little slice of garden paradise.

To Bee, or Not To Bee?

Raspberry Vines

No winter lasts forever; no spring skips its turn. ~Hal Borland

Flowering Bulbs and Budding Fuchsia

I love spring anywhere, but if I could choose I would always greet it in a garden. ~Ruth Stout

Pittosporum Greens

In the spring I have counted one hundred and thirty-six different kinds of weather inside of four and twenty hours. ~Mark Twain

Flowering Carrot

Spring is sooner recognized by plants than by men. ~Chinese Proverb

The Bees Arrive on Schedule

All things lavender:

Cowichan Valley Lavender Farm: Beautiful drawings and additional links

Lavender Crafts: How to make lavender wands.

Learn more about the relaxing properties of lavender at The Hub

Provencal Lavender Field Maps (for that fantasy vacation to France)

Lavender in art: Watercolor on Etsy.com

 

For additional garden quotes, visit the Quote Garden.

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Spring it On!

Patio Garden

Hooray for spring which officially arrives on our coast around 1 am tomorrow.   Spring Equinox symbolizes the re-emergence of plants and trees awakening from winter’s slumber.  It also means longer lines at the garden center.

When I was single and working full-time I used to use some of my paid time off  each spring to start my garden.  It didn’t matter where I was living, I always found a way to break ground even if it meant settling for a patio garden.  When I rented a room in a house in Willow Glen, I planted in the three narrow strips lining the driveway.  My production was minimal in that miniscule plot, but the corn got plenty of sun, and I had the immense pleasure of gardening.

When the Willow Glen owner sold the house and gave us the boot, I moved to an apartment in nearby Campbell.  I managed to cram about 20 houseplants into my 400 square foot apartment, valuing greenery over any superfluous furniture.  As I set down emotional roots, so too did my garden expand.  I spent my weekends at local nurseries and assorted home and garden centers planning for my little patio.  One pot became three and eventually I lined both sides of the narrow walkway with potted flowers and plants.  I added vines along the fence, and even planted some zucchini behind my apartment, though I really didn’t have enough sun.  I planted flowers along the path to  my door, to the delight of my neighbors who shared the view.  The owners of our four-plex preferred simple cement.  It was nice to have a bit of green along the walkway, welcoming me home each day.

I married my husband in 1995 and settled in a quiet neighborhood, known for excellent schools.  It was important to both of us that we raise our boys in one place, having bounced around so much in our own youth.   I’ve enjoyed it immensely.  It took awhile to realize I could turn plants loose from their pots and allow them to put down roots.  I love the stability that allows me to plan a garden from year to year, not worrying about evictions or troubles from the city. My Campbell four-plex, as it turned out, was illegal.  It has since been torn down and replaced with a single-family dwelling.

Life is impermanent and change is inevitable.  But year after year, spring arrives, and along with it feelings of hope.    In the end, it’s not about yields but about the joy of the practice, the nuanced discoveries and the dirt under your nails.

What are you planting this spring?

Plants and Cats

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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