San Jose California

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Thirty Days in the Garden: Sweet Peas

The first of the sweet peas came up this week. The soft petals and gentle scent fill me with a sense of nostalgia.

Sweet peas are easy to grow. This vine is growing on top of weed cloth and pea gravel

My friend Kelly got me hooked on sweet peas (the flowering vine variety) a few years ago after a chat on our blogs. Up until then, I had grown the vegetable sweet peas, but not the flowering vine. I didn’t know what I was missing?

The petals remind me of butterfly wings

I planted the seeds late that first year, with a so-so crop. The seeds need to go into the ground early. The following year they came up on their own, and I’ve had a beautiful, self-seeded crop ever since.

The white flowers are a soft yellow before they emerge

The vines grow close to the sidewalk on both sides, ensuring a sweetly scented stroll past my house.

Sweet peas emerging on both sides of the sidewalk

I enjoy making small bouquets, mixing in some lush fern cuttings, and whatever else is in bloom at the time. I save empty jars throughout the year so that I have plenty to give away.

It will be a few more weeks before they take off, but we planted several stakes over the weekend so they can happily climb skyward.

Sweet peas and California poppies growing near the curb

I can’t wait.

Looking Forward to Spring
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Looking Forward to Spring

My heart quickens this time of year. Spring is a treat for the heart and soul and a gift to gardeners the world over.

Lots of color in the curb garden

After a year fraught with unpredictability, I find comfort in the familiar. A trip through the garden teases all the wonderful things to come: buds and bulbs emerge, old-growth gives way to the new, and even the emerging weeds portend more time outdoors.

  • Miniature daffodil
  • Deep purple hyacinth and a miniature daffodil
  • Love-in-a-mist bud

In the northern hemisphere, the vernal equinox arrives on March 20, 2021. It signals the beginning of spring, though the changes are subtle in California. While much of this country is buried in snow and killer ice, our risk of a hard frost has safely passed.

Self-seeding sweet peas, cornflowers and poppies line the sidewalk. Soon they’ll be in full bloom

There are fewer opportunities to plant these days. Like most gardeners, a brown patch of soil is quickly filled with something new. I’ve reserved my EarthBox® for a tomato crop, but the garden is otherwise fully occupied. That’s not a bad thing, per se, but I do love adding new color here and there.

Front garden facing house. Within a month this will fill in once again.
Garden patch along driveway
Side yard shared with neighbor (lemon tree, dinosaur topiary, and other assorted plants)
Abundant lemons this year (they really are yellow, though they look orange in this photo)

Birdsong and buzzing bees are the soundtracks of the season. The effervescent Ana’s hummingbirds are ever-present, but their numbers grow. I spotted one gathering fluff for her nest last week, wishing for the thousandth time that I had my camera in tow. I let the anemone flowers go to seed in the fall. They open like a kernel of popcorn in late winter, producing small clouds of soft white down. It’s always a treat to see the birds grab a bit of fluff.

Anemone flowers gone to seed in foreground. Volunteer spider plants along the fence line.
This is a blurry photo from a few years ago, but I’m included it as evidence of this charming visitor

Of course, not all “fluff” is intended for nature but tell that to the squirrels. The original cover of our swing is dismantled every year. The California Grey squirrels shred the cover to get to the batting inside. I repaired this corner a few years ago using an old tea towel and polyester batting. Apparently, the squirrels are not that discerning. They’ve torn through the tea towel to get to the synthetic batting inside. How do they know it’s there? Why do they want that scratchy stuff for their nest? Rhetorical questions, I know.

Swing carnage
Swing cover damage

I treated myself to a pair of new gardening tools this weekend: a pair of clippers and a long-handled weeder. I’m counting myself lucky that I made it out of the store without serious injury. The edge of that tool is sharp. I’m ridiculously excited to use it, though, on a patch of unwanted grassy weeds.

Tessa in the garden

Spring is around the corner, and the vaccine rollout is finally underway Things are looking up! I’m ready.

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Too Busy: A Haiku

Life is too busy
my brown garden parched and sad
summer, hot and long

What a complainer, eh?

I miss my gardening nirvana, that blissful state that comes from weeding, pruning, planting, bug-picking, harvesting, and all things gardening.  Today after work and before an evening engagement, I soaked my sore muscles in a hot bath, then saved all that water for the trees.

I used a one-gallon jug to bail the water, then carried it outdoors with a lightweight trash bin to catch the drips. It is so blazing hot that I raced back inside for gallon after gallon, knowing our trees are in a bad way. I bailed about ten gallons that would otherwise go down the drain, and delivered guilt-free water to the tree’s roots. They’re in a lot of distress.

bailing water

Bailing water to water trees

The city-imposed water restrictions allow for two days of watering a week, regardless of the circumstances. On a cool, cloudy day evaporation is less of a problem. With the start of another heat wave however, (high 90’s F or 34 C) my garden droops.

On the plus side, yesterday’s water bill shows decent conservation: We’ve reduced our water usage from 403 gallons a day (for a household of four) to 318 gallons. In 2013 we were using 515 gallons a day.

July, 2013  515 gallons per day

July, 2014 403 gallons per day

July, 2015 318 gallons per day

The discouraging part: we’re still over our allotment, thought not by much. We’re allocated 10.012 ccf for this period, and we used 10.229. So close!

Additionally, the Santa Clara Valley Water District is raising rates by 6.44% effective July 1st. So our usage is down, and our rates are up.
Here’s the latest from the Santa Clara Valley Water District:

For the first time in state history, the Governor directed the State Water Resources Control Board to implement mandatory water reductions in cities and towns across California to reduce water usage by 25%.  Please remember that most areas in the county have a restriction on irrigating ornamental landscape with potable water to two days a week.

The rainfall year that ended on June 30th was another below-average year in the county.  The California Department of Water Resources found no snow during its April 1, 2015, manual survey at 6,800 feet in the Sierra Nevada.  This was the first time in 75 years of early April measurements at the Phillips snow course that no snow was found there.

The District will continue to conduct limited groundwater recharge using available surface water.  However, total groundwater storage is predicted to fall in the Severe Stage at the end of 2015 if water use reduction for the rest of the year is similar to that in the first five months of the year, highlighting the need for continued water use reduction at the 30% level or above.

And so it goes. What’s the weather up to in your neck of the woods? I think it’s off kilter all over the globe.

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Boomdeeadda, Boomdeeadda

Welcome Boomdee and Mr. B.

A Fairy Garden Welcome for Boomdee and Mr. B.

I once marveled at friendships forged by letter-writing, the back and forth exchange of lives via the written word. What fun it would be to share the minutia of life with a kindred soul.

I’ve found that kindred spirit here on WordPress at Boomdeeadda!  Instead of forging a paper friendship, we’ve connected through our blogs. It started simply enough, with an exchange of comments. Before I knew it, I was following Boomdee and checking in every day. We connected on Facebook, Pinterest and finally Skype.

It’s been an extraordinary journey, one of affection and discovery, leading the Boomster to my doorstep this week. The odds that we would ever meet seemed improbable: she lives in Alberta, Canada; I’m in San Jose, California. But connect we did and due to this amazing blogging community, we found ourselves together in a cozy tea shop swapping stories and sharing our mutual admiration of our fellow bloggers.

Boomdee is warm and kind, generous to a fault, clever, creative and fun. I wish you could hear her laugh or collect one of her spontaneous hugs. Like a couple of school girls, we found something to laugh about around every corner.

Beautiful Boomdee Near the Fairy Garden

Beautiful Boomdee Near the Fairy Garden

Alyster dropped by for a visit.

Alyster came with!  What a nice surprise.

Lisa's Tea Treasures with Boomdee and Sharon

We donned wigs and false eyelashes, then went out for tea.

I’ve been teasing all week that I would like her to move here, but in reality, well… I would like her to move here.  Sure, it’s impractical with jobs and family and lives, but the alternative meant saying goodbye at the curb. Alas, with heavy hearts, we did.

Safe travels my friend. You’ve filled me with joyful memories…until we meet again.

Boomdeeadda is…

No need to take my word for it.  You can go see for yourself. 🙂

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San Jose: Green in all the Right Places

Though San José is known globally as part of Silicon Valley, we have greener reasons to be proud.  According to Bright Green San Jose, our city recycles 71 percent of the waste we generate. Wow!  Further:

San Jose’s collective recycling helped the Recycle Plus program win the 2012 Green City Award from the national magazine Waste and Recycling News.  The award honored San José for having the most effective residential program for a large city in the United States.

One of the programs San José offers is composting workshops and bin sales.  I just started composting yard waste and kitchen scraps this year.  Our yard is small, and packed with plants and flowers with limited space for growing veggies.  I assumed composting required a lot of space and full sun. I purchased a Tumbling Composter earlier this year, which allowed me to compost kitchen scraps in a small space, diverting them from our landfill.

Tumbling Composter

Tumbling Composter

The tumbler filled quickly, so I started a second bin using an old Rubbermaid storage box. Now that’s full, too.  You can’t rush compost, so while I wait for nature to rot its course, I’m pondering my next move.

You know what’s funny?  I used to toss kitchen scraps or put them down the garbage disposal.  Now that I’m composting, throwing out the food waste feels wrong.

I’ve decided to attend one of San José’s free Backyard Composting Workshops to pick up some additional tips. The first workshop is March 27th, 2013.  They also sell Wriggly Ranch worm bins and Soil Saver compost bins at a steep discount.

In the meantime, any tips on composting in small spaces are welcome.  My counter top bin is filling rapidly, and those coffee grounds and pepper cores need a place to call home.

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Gardens of Santana Row

Cyclamens at the RowA decade ago, a sleepy San Jose shopping center called Town and Country Village morphed into a mixed-use, upscale complex known as Santana Row. In this era of indoor malls, it’s a treat to walk “The Row” where European-influenced architecture compliments the beautiful greens.  Gorgeous pots brimming with blooms line the sidewalks year round.  Several outdoor restaurants sit under graceful trees.  Even the sidewalk strips brim with life.  Santana Row earned two major design awards including:

“the CELSOC Engineering Excellence Award in 2004, and Builder Magazine’s Project of the Year in 2003.

Judges from Builder Magazine noted the street’s European atmosphere that was achieved by employing a variety of architectural designs for the structures as well as sophisticated landscaping details. These details focused on the use of mature oak and palm trees, shaded grassy plazas, courtyards, and fountains, intimate public seating areas, extra-wide sidewalks and street medians, and mixed-use destinations such as Park Valencia, which hosts live music, a farmer’s market, and other public gatherings.” (Sources: Wikipedia and Builder Magazine)

I lunched with my sister today at Santana Row’s The Left Bank. The grounds were newly planted for the holidays.  I love the liberal use of whites and purples throughout, along with the more traditional reds. I’m dying to go back to see more. Here’s what’s in bloom at The Row.

Red and white pots
Paper White Narcissus
Succulents and Annuals
Planters full of PurpleRed and Green pots

Christmas at Santana Row

Tree branches painted red look like birds nest ornaments

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SummerWinds Nursery Rebuilds

SummerWinds Acer

SummerWinds Acer survived the fire

It was a sad day for the community when SummerWinds Almaden Nursery burned to the ground in late August.  They’d done business in that neighborhood for 40 years.  The outpouring of support following the loss was amazing.

A few weeks after the fire, the nursery sold what remained of the undamaged plants and pottery at a three-day fire sale, with 10% of the proceeds benefiting the San Jose Firefighters Foundation.  Shoppers turned out in droves, contributing to the $14,000 raised for two of the foundation’s programs.

I learned this week that rebuilding plans are already under way.  The remains of the building are now in a heap.  The lot should be cleared in short order.  As the new building is under construction, the nursery will open an “Enhanced Christmas Tree Lot” on Tuesday, November 20th.  In addition to fresh-cut trees, they’ll be selling poinsettias, fresh wreaths and garland along with seasonal bedding plants.   They’ll have other holiday goodies for sale as well.
Summer Winds Demo

Enhanced Christmas Tree Lot

If you live in the community, please consider stopping by.

SummerWinds Nursery
4606 Almaden Expressway, San Jose
Corner of Almaden Expressway and Branham Lane

Opening Tuesday, November 20, 2012

For regular updates, visit their website at SummerWinds Nursery San Jose  or follow SummerWinds Almaden on Facebook.

SummerWinds Alyssum and Begonia

Alyssum and Begonias surrounding the nursery sign

Morning Glory Vine

Morning Glory Vine growing along the fence in front of the nursery

Halloween Countdown

Spooky Pumpkin

Spooky Pumpkin

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Summer Winds Nursery Fire

Summer Winds, a local nursery in the Almaden area of San Jose, burned to the ground late last night. I’m stunned.  The cause is under investigation, but they think it was an accident.  Summer Winds, formerly Woolworth Garden Center, has been there for 40 years.

Nurseries, I fear, are a dying breed.  Many of the big box stores have garden centers, but it’s not the same as a nursery dedicated to all things plants.  The Summer Winds gift shop was also a lot of fun.  I especially enjoyed browsing there around the holidays.  The nursery sold a wide selection of decorative pots, along with annuals, vegetables and garden fountains.  In May of this year, I was shopping at Summer Winds when a hummingbird darted into the store.  Oblivious to me and a handful of employees, she landed on a decorative arbor.  She was busy building a nest right in the middle of the store!  I couldn’t get my camera phone out fast enough to capture her flight, but I did take a picture of the nest.

Hummingbird Nest at Summer Winds Nursery

Hummingbird Nest at Summer Winds Nursery, May 15, 2012

Summer is at an end, so I’m taking comfort in the fact that the nest would be empty by now.  She may have reconsidered the location in the first place.  With all that activity she probably decided to nest elsewhere.

The after-hours fire started around midnight with no reported injuries.  Although the fire department was quickly on the scene, they took the unusual step of letting the fire burn itself out.  Knowing the store was full of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, they wanted to avoid ground water contamination of nearby Guadalupe River.

It’s a sad day for gardeners in the Valley.  I hope they rebuild.
Details of the fire in the Mercury News.

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Sarah Winchester’s Garden

 

We toured the perplexing and historic Winchester Mystery House last week, in the heart of Silicon Valley.  I wrote about our experience here.

Before the tour, I strolled the well-groomed gardens.  Mrs. Winchester planted trees and shrubs from around the world, beautifully maintained for over a century.

I hope to go back one day and follow along with the self guided tour, listening to the recorded messages along the way.  Here is a small sample of the grounds.

Winchester Mystery House Garden Entrance

Winchester Mystery House Garden
Winchester Mystery House Hibiscus

Winchester Mystery House Garden
Winchester Mystery House

If you make it to Silicon Valley, be sure to put this on your list. If you live nearby and you’ve never gone, you are in for a treat.

 

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Winchester Mystery House

Winchester Mystery House is one of the most unusual landmarks in my city.  The sprawling mansion covers four acres and stands three stories tall.  Sarah Winchester, mired in grief, was convinced that the spirits of innocent people, killed by the Winchester rifles were responsible for the death of her husband and infant daughter.  Under the advice of a physic, she continuously built on to her home to confuse and appease the spirits. We took a tour there today with friends and had an interesting time.

I arrived early to take photos of the gardens on the spacious estate, before embarking on the house tour.  Sarah Winchester, born in 1884, was ahead of her time.  She built an amazing room for watering her house plants, while at the same time conserving water.  The second story room has a non-oxidizing metal floor covered with removal wood planks.   The floor has a gentle slope, a faucet and a working sink.  After removing the planks, plants are set out on the floor and watered in place.  The excess water followed the slope of the floor and then drained outdoors to water the garden.

Here is a bit about the house from the official website:

Winchester Mystery House™ is an extravagant maze of Victorian craftsmanship – marvelous, baffling, and eerily eccentric, to say the least.

Some of the architectural oddities may have practical explanations. For example, the Switchback Staircase, which has seven flights with forty-four steps, rises only about nine feet, since each step is just two inches high. Mrs. Winchester arthritis was quite severe in her later years, and the stairway may have been designed to accommodate her disability.

The miles of twisting hallways are made even more intriguing by secret passageways in the walls. Mrs. Winchester traveled through her house in a roundabout fashion, supposedly to confuse any mischievous ghosts that might be following her.

This wild and fanciful description of Mrs. Winchester’s nightly prowl to the Séance Room appeared in The American Weekly in 1928, six years after her death:

“When Mrs. Winchester set out for her Séance Room, it might well have discouraged the ghost of the Indian or even of a bloodhound, to follow her. After traversing an interminable labyrinth of rooms and hallways, suddenly she would push a button, a panel would fly back and she would step quickly from one apartment into another, and unless the pursuing ghost was watchful and quick, he would lose her. Then she opened a window in that apartment and climbed out, not into the open air, but on to the top of a flight of steps that took her down one story only to meet another flight that brought her right back up to the same level again, all inside the house. This was supposed to be very discomforting to evil spirits who are said to be naturally suspicious of traps.” – Read more on the Winchester Mystery House® website

Winchester Mystery House Spider Web windows

Spider webs figured prominently in many of the homes architectural features. An actual  spider made a home in the garden just below these windows.  I think Sarah would be proud.