[ Lost in the Landscape ]

october bloom day

This san­tolina sums up the state of the gar­den pretty well. Peak flow­er­ing was in the past or hasn’t started up yet, but I’m enjoy­ing where it’s at right now. This par­tic­u­lar plant bloomed four months ago, but I liked the dead flower heads so much that I’ve left them on the plant.

Cal­i­for­nia fuch­sia, Epi­lo­bium ‘Route 66′ peaked about 6 weeks ago.

We actu­ally had some sig­nif­i­cant rain–0.4 inches–last week. It was appre­ci­ated, but it also knocked off some of the plant’s flowers.

But it still looks pretty good. Here it is giv­ing a lit­tle shade and color con­trast to a chalk dudleya.

Blad­der­pod (Iso­meris arborea) is a reli­able bloomer for the times of year when most of the other natives have stopped bloom­ing. It’s never cov­ered with flow­ers, but there always seem to be a few on each of the ends on its branches.

Not peak mon­keyflower sea­son, either. This is all that’s bloom­ing right now. One flower.

Corethrog­yne filagini­fo­lia is another reli­able plant for this dif­fi­cult time of year.

And you can always count on the grasses. This is pur­ple three-awn, Aris­tida pur­purea.

Among the non-natives this stapelia (S. gigan­tea) pretty much owns the gar­den with its big floppy flow­ers that smell of dead meat. Charm­ing, dis­gust­ing and weird. I don’t apol­o­gize for it anymore.

You know things are slow when you show pic­tures of rose­mary bloom­ing. I’ll apol­o­gize for that, however.

But there’s a lti­tle bit more…

 

And there are a few other things:
Yel­low waterlilies
A red aloe I’m for­get­ting the name of…
Red epi­den­drum
Gail­lar­dia pul­chella
A big magenta bougainvil­lea
A some­what pam­pered orchid: Vanda roe­blin­giana

Hope­fully autumn is bring­ing great things to all your gar­dens. Ongo­ing thanks to Carol of May Dreams Gar­dens for host­ing Gar­den Blog­gers Bloom Day. Take a look at who’s got what bloom­ing all around the world: [ link ]

October 14 2011 | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: flowers • Garden Bloggers Bloom Day • gbbd • October | 25 Comments »

unusual october

Octo­ber usu­ally throws some ridicu­lously warm and dry weather at us. This was the month that in 2003 and 2007 saw mon­ster wild­fires rac­ing through the county, includ­ing the largest fire to hit Cal­i­for­nia in recorded his­tory (in 2003).

We’ve a few of those warmer days, but what’s been sur­pris­ing has the the cool, wet fore­taste of win­ter. Here’s a lit­tle exam­ple: This is my park­ing pass for work, where I usu­ally go in to the office Mon­days through Thurs­days. Each big dark X cor­re­sponds to a day when it was too wet to ride my scooter in to work. Add to that another morn­ing when I got a bad weather report and arrived pretty drenched.

Over the last two weeks it seems like half the morn­ings looked a lit­tle like this, with mist–or out­right rain–turning the pave­ment wet.

Finally, the line of repur­posed cat lit­ter buck­ets that had looked so for­lorn all sum­mer at the drip edges of the roof were begin­ning to fill with water. In fact my two rain big bar­rels are now full, ready to have their con­tents shared back into the garden.

In response to the cool­ing trend plants are leaf­ing out; seedlings are ger­mi­nat­ing. Read­ers not in mediter­ranean cli­mates might think they’re read­ing a gar­den blog from the south­ern hemi­sphere. But no, this is Cal­i­for­nia, which shares this wet-winter/dry-summer cli­mate with less than 5% of the earth’s sur­face. To make up for being so spe­cial we’re treated with almost 20% of all the world’s plant species. More than a fair trade for long sum­mer months with close to no water.

I was out in the front yard over the week­end, tidy­ing up growth that had hit its expi­ra­tion date. Mixed in with branches that had truly died were plenty belong­ing to drought-deciduous plants that were com­ing back to life. On the left is our local chap­ar­ral cur­rant, Ribes indeco­rum, turn­ing from brown twigs to leafy twigs. On the right is Ver­bena lilacina, a plant that can stay look­ing fairly green over the sum­mer if you give it more water than I do.

Every­where I stepped I had to avoid mash­ing tiny lit­tle buck­wheat seedlings, or these guys, itty bitty lit­tle chia plants (Salvia colum­bariae). Early this sum­mer when I took out the dead plants of this annual I made a point of shak­ing the seed heads over the dirt. Still I was wor­ried that I wouldn’t have enough ger­mi­na­tion to repeat the amaz­ing show of last spring. Looks like I didn’t need to be so concerned.

In the back yard seedlings of baby blue eyes were push­ing their way through the mulch. The mulch really does help keep down the weeds, but this species for­tu­nately doesn’t seem overly daunted by my attempt to save myself a few dozen hours of weed­ing. Var­i­ous crea­tures do find these seedlings extra-tasty–including the cat, which seems to think these are almost as good as cat­nip. Once they’re larger the cat doesn’t seem to pay them any atten­tion. I’m hop­ing for a nice half dozen or so survivors.

And there were even more seedlings. These are a few days away from show­ing their first true leaves, but I’m hop­ing that they’re the begin­nings of clarkias that sur­rounded this patch of bare dirt. If not clarkias, they’re likely seedlings of this really nox­ious weed that shared the space with the clarkias. We’ll soon find out…

Yes, it’s been an unusual Octo­ber. But I’ll take plants leaf­ing out and seedlings push­ing their way out of the ground any day over another round of brushfires!

October 26 2010 | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: fall • Mediterranean climate • October • rain • seedlings | 5 Comments »

garden-deficit disorder

It’s get­ting to be that sea­son. My morn­ings are now see­ing me at work around sun­rise and home at a time when it’s almost dark by when I’ve fin­ished prepar­ing and eat­ing din­ner. And for the next two months it’s only going to be get­ting worse as we head towards the dark­en­ing maw of win­ter. At least I only do these long days four times a week. Still, I’m get­ting a seri­ous case of with­drawal from the garden.

This is the time of year when I really start to feel envi­ous about John’s posi­tion, work­ing out of the house. In between doing what he does on the phone and com­puter he gets a chance to keep up with the hap­pen­ings on the street. The neigh­bors across the street just had a new baby, John reported, and he’s really cute. John also reported that the mother of one of our neigh­bors just died, and the neigh­bor two houses down is now in a nurs­ing home, com­pletely inco­her­ent, after being ambu­lanced away from the house not much more than a week ago.

Look­ing at the implaca­ble facades of the houses on the street, it’s hard to tell that any­thing is hap­pen­ing. But being home, around the neigh­bors, John is able to keep up with dramas.

John is also able to keep up with things hap­pen­ing in the gar­den. A story from the past week was of look­ing out the win­dow to see the cat din­ing on the ten­der new leaves of the mil­let seedlings that I’d set in the ground not many days before.

“You didn’t stop her?” I protested.

“It was soooo cute,” he said.

Well, this was the cat over last week­end. How can you dis­ci­pline basic instinc­tual behav­ior in such a sweet cat? Okay, okay, I calmed down a bit.

But I was still wor­ried about the mil­let plants.

Left: Orna­men­tal mil­let, Pen­nise­tum glau­cum ‘Pur­ple Majesty’ [ source ]

Orna­men­tal red mil­let hit the gar­den world in a big way with the intro­duc­tion of the Pur­ple Majesty F1 strain in 2003. This slen­der four– to five-footer was awarded the All-America Selec­tions Gold Medal, which basi­cally assured that the plant would end up in gar­den cen­ters and seed cat­a­logs all over. That strain spawned oth­ers, includ­ing the shorter ‘Jester,’ which I’ve been start­ing to see a lot of–even at the Home Depot gar­den center.

Even though pur­ple mil­let is now so déclassé, now that it’s hit Home Depot, I decided I wanted to try it. A seed order a few weeks back brought me a hefty packet of the orig­i­nal Pur­ple Majesty. Some of the seeds went into pots and they sprouted in less than a week. And then the lit­tle fel­las were ready for the gar­den, when they were adjust­ing and start­ing to increase in size. And then the lawn­mower cat attacked.

Well, I’m glad to say, I could hardly see any cat dam­age to the seedlings–a chewed blade here and there, but noth­ing major. Here’s a lit­tle clump of them as they stand today. The largest is push­ing eight inches tall, and the red col­oration is start­ing to develop now that they’re bask­ing in full sun half of the day. It might be too late in the year for them to develop the dra­matic seed heads, but I’ll have some nice pur­ple, ver­ti­cal plants in the gar­den in no time. Since these are hardy to zone 8, they’ll make it through win­ter just fine and be bloom­ing away before you know it.

Any­way, now that I’ve have a cou­ple hours in the gar­den this morn­ing I’m feel­ing reju­ve­nated, espe­cially now that I know that the plants I’ve been slav­ing over lately have come through unscathed. And of course it’s been nice to have some gar­den time to spend with the cat. To pro­tect the mil­let, I’ve been point­ing out to her the lit­tle grass seedlings that are real weeds. So far the feline lawn­mower seems con­tent with the other options.

October 17 2008 | Categories: gardening • my garden • plant profiles • rambles | Tags: cats • October • Pennisetum glaucum 'Purple Majesty' • purple • purple millet • the neighborhood | 2 Comments »