Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day – April 2013

I’m usually not organized enough to participate in Garden Blogger’s Bloom Day with May Dreams Gardens but this month I have a bunch of blooms and I’m ready!

Most of my true annual volunteers are still looking pretty good.

All the plants in the foreground of the above shot are volunteers. Oh how I love free plants!

Zaluzianskya capensis bloomed all winter but the warmer it gets the more abundantly it blooms and the more fragrant it is. I’ve seen others criticize it for not being very exciting but I think the shrubby little plants are quite attractive and when the blooms open in the afternoon it is gorgeous.

Linaria reticulata ‘Flamenco’ is still blooming like crazy. A few at the front (where they receive less water) are starting to peter out.  I’m wondering if I will get any new seedlings and bloom for the season or if I am going to have to fill this big area of the garden with a few summer bloomers.

Urinia anthemoides were a huge success this year and many are still in full bloom.

Geranium maderense has survived the wind storms and has been putting on a show for the past month.

Clianthus puniceus from New Zealand deserves better placement in the garden than I gave it.  It has long stems that get weighted down by the large flowers so they end up hanging down pretty close to the ground.  Closer to the front of a raised bed or large container is my suggestion for anyone growing this neat plant.

Sutherlandia frutescens from South Africa is a similar pea flowered plant but a little more delicate. This one bloomed in just one year from seed despite some rough handling. First it got swamped by some Lotus growing nearby, then it got tromped on and snapped in half by construction workers, I dug it up just in time before they could do more damage and it surprised me with new growth and new blooms in the gallon pot it calls home now.

Echium gentianoides ‘Tajinaste’ is basically a smaller and more airy and delicate Echium candicans.

Most of my succulents are living in containers in the backyard. Awaiting some future garden. My Aloe dorotheae surprised me with a beautiful organe and green inflorescence.

I’m very glad I kept two Craspedia globosa in my mediterranean garden.

Hymenolepis parviflora has become a nice little shrub. It bounced back quickly after an attack by caterpillars last month.

I have tons of ladybugs which is a good thing because I also have tons of aphids.

A few Coreopsis gigantea flowers remain.

I snapped this photo of a Dudleya pulverulenta inflorescence just in time. A few days later my neighbors large dog escaped confinement and went on a rampage through my garden.  She snapped stems and small plants left and right. My future garden will have a fence to keep out neighbors dogs as well as marauding deer.

Euphorbia mauritanica in bloom looks pretty sticky and a bit sinister up close.

I am sure that there are some people who would consider Chrysanthemum paludosum a potentially noxious weed. A six pack of plants last year became thousands this year. But they are very easy to edit out and much more charming and longer blooming than perennial Chrysanthemum hosmariense that I also grow. They have become one of my “must have” plants.

I’ve posted about Thymus juniperifolius a few times.  In full bloom you can’t even see the foliage that gives it its Latin name.

Convolvulus sabatius is a tough and reliable plant for California gardens.

I had no luck with Penstemons last year. I planted many and they all withered and died. I’m trying again this year with various P. heterophyllus cultivars.  This is ‘Margarita BOP’.

Lavandula stoechas ‘Boysenberry Ruffles’ is pretty spectacular despite the fufu name.

Up close the bicolor blooms are pretty intense.

I like the overall form of this Lavandula stoechas ‘Blue Star’ (even though it is a bit floppy).

But up close the flowers are a bit stunted compared to other L. stoechas cultivars. The jury is still out on this one for me.

I’ll have to check my notes but it seems like this Mentzelia lindleyi has been blooming for about two months. Very rewarding since it is a California native and it was also a free volunteer. This winds have battered it a bit but it is still going strong.

I posted this little vignette last week but this week the Euphorbia ‘Blue Haze’ is in full bloom.

The first blooms of Berlandiera lyrata are opening up. It is well worth getting down on the ground to get a whiff of the amazing hot cocoa smell of these flowers.

Last year I was quite disappointed with Eccremocarpus scaber ‘Cherry Red’. It just sort of sat there looking sad all summer.  Since everything in California seems to grow like crazy I forgot that some perennials need a year or two to get established.  Now it is doing just what I wanted it to do. Covering the ugly chain link fence.  And the hummingbirds go crazy for it.

I think that is enough for now! Do go check out the links at May Dreams Gardens to see what is blooming in other garden bloggers parts of the world.

Two Years!

WordPress just sent me a little note that my blog has just had its two-year anniversary!  Kind of crazy how fast time goes by. Here is a little retrospective.

I had just moved out of my apartment in Santa Monica where I had gardened on a small balcony with a view of the Pacific ocean.

Santa Monica had some really nice gardens but I got bored there and foolishly moved to West Hollywood.

I ended up hating West Hollywood and my balcony there sucked for gardening so I blogged quite a bit about my mesemb seedlings.

I also reminisced about my Clematis collection in my old garden…

And various trips to England…

Where I saw the queen…

and visited Clivedon and many other historic gardens.

I started designing gardens for my friends at Gardens by Gabriel.

And took road trips to Annie’s Annuals where I had to get creative to fit as many plants as I could into my VW Golf!

I went on a trip to Hawaii…

and fell in love with Leucospermum reflexum.

I moved to the Central Coast of California…

and was inspired by the South African Garden at Seaside Gardens in Carpinteria.

I thought about the things I enjoyed about southern California like the California Poppy Preserve…

and Coreopsis gigantea growing in Malibu.

But I was happy to be living in the Central Coast where I designed some new gardens…

Including my own!

Which has come a long way in a year!

Despite some recent drama!

And in case you were wondering Geranium maderense did just fine during the wind storm last night.

So thanks for coming along on my horticultural journey the past two years. Hopefully the next two years will be full of even more beautiful gardens.

I’m Back!

I had a really lovely time visiting family in NYC (and an overnight trip to Toronto) for Persian New Year.  But as any serious gardener knows leaving your garden for over a week is a bit nerve-wracking. Who knows what you are going to find when you come home? I’ve gone on trips shorter than 11 days and come home to disaster.  And while I was gone I kept checking the weather and it didn’t rain in Los Osos at all. We have had such a dry winter.

Happily everything was fine!

(do please click on the images to get a larger view!)

Two new thymes along the path got a bit wilty but nothing serious.  The rest looks great. Even the newly planted mediterranean garden looks fine (gotta love California natives). Yesterday I gave everything a good soak and there is a good chance we will get some rain tomorrow.

The view from my kitchen window is even more enjoyable now that my Geranium maderense is in full bloom!

More to come in the near future but I just wanted to check in.

Winter Walk Off 2013!

A few weeks ago I had to get away from all the construction happening on my street so I decided to go for a walk so I could take part in this years “Winter Walk Off” inspired by Les of A Tidewater Gardener.  Last year my post was a bit crazy.  Fifty photos!  This year I am a bit more busy so I am going to keep it short. I’m trying to keep my blog posts at fewer photos anyway.  There is such a thing as too much of a good thing. I don’t want busy people quickly scrolling through my posts but if you don’t have much time for blog reading DO at least scroll to the end of this post. I saved the best for last.

I walked up to the northwest part of town which is known as Baywood Park.

There is beach access there so you can enjoy views of Morro Bay and the estuary.  From left to right you can see Morro Rock, the unfortunate smoke stacks at the Morro Bay Power Plant, the Morro Bay Heights, the golf course, and Black Rock.

There are million dollar houses all along the estuary and the bay.  This one is for sale. Quite a bargain since not only do you get a house with a beautiful view but you also get  a magnificent Leucospermum cordifolium.

And a lot of Linaria. This spot is just itching for some new Protea specimens. That is Black Hill again in the background.

Orange Leucospermums are very popular in town.  I fear for this ones safety as I believe there were some lateral sewer line markings on the street right near it. If you remember my post from last month the path of destruction is pretty wide. I don’t believe most Proteaceae transplant very well. Especially when they are this size.  This is quite an artistic little house. I think leaves on the little tree in the background are fake. Made of metal or something.

They have a nice little Garrya elliptica too.

Does anyone know which Acacia this is? There are quite a few of them around town.  They start blooming in January or February and are quite pretty but I still don’t know my Acacias. There are so many of them but they get quite big so I haven’t used any in garden designs.

This is the garden I wanted you all to stick around for.  A really great design just a few minutes from my house. Nick Wilkinson from Grow Nursery had a hand in creating it.

The part that really knocked my socks off were these three HUGE Aloe polyphylla! I have seen a photo of huge specimens in their home in South Africa but never this big in California.

They are so big they are barely fit in the space allowed them!

Nick says they are about five years old and he has never had Aloe polyphylla at any other location get this big.  It must be the exact right combination of our chilly coastal climate and maybe the excellent drainage from the large raised beds.

Whatever it is these are some really happy plants! I can only hope mine are even half this glorious some day.

The entire garden is really charming and full of great specimens. This is another garden I really hope will be spared any sewer destruction.

I’m really glad that winter is coming to an end (though truth be told it has been quite spring-like here the past month). I’m going on a trip in a few days but I’ll be doing a spring bloom and garden update post soon.

Path Garden One Year Later

My father is sick of reading about the sewer construction on my blog so I promised I would post something about flowers instead! I realized that it was almost a year ago that I installed and planted the path garden so it is time for an update.  What worked and what was a big old failure?

This is how the front yard looked when I moved in December 2011. I wondered why the little front path ended abruptly in the middle of the lawn. Turns out that is where the property line ends and the rest is all public easement.  D’oh! The sewer was going to go right through this garden but luckily plans changed and very little damage was done to this part of the yard. It is still all in the public right of way but it should be safe now.

Back in this post I described the process of creating the path(also here and here). Luckily I had help from Gabe and Victor. Those 2 X 2 concrete squares are so heavy I can barely lift one myself.

I finished planting on March 7th, 2012. The garden was basically an experiment to see what would thrive in just 2 or 3 inches of soil on top of several inches of decomposed granite. Not the best growing conditions.

Two months later and the garden was in bloom and looking pretty nice. For a full inventory of all the plants I used go here.

The picture above was taken today a year after being installed.  It is looking pretty good (aside from the sand washing in from the sewer construction). Let’s talk about what worked and what didn’t.

Dianthus ‘Shooting Star’ worked pretty well. I lost one early on but I think that was just a fluke. I replaced it and the new one did fine. From a design point my only issue is that I planted these right next to Armeria maritima and they are the exact same color and overall shape. From a distance they looked the same.

Armeria maritima is of course the perfect sort of plant for this sort of garden. It is really tough in all sorts of climates and conditions. Here on the California coast it bloomed most of the year.

There is something about Thymus X citriodorus ‘Lime’ that just makes me happy. It is such a bright golden color.  I did use it in a client’s garden and for some reason it failed but in my garden it has thrived and formed nice little clumps.

Thymus serpyllum ‘Coccineum’ is another winner.  This red thyme has a creeping habit and spreads to form a nice mat.  Probably better for walkway areas than the mounding thymes because it stays so flat. My only complaint is that weeds seem to love to go through it. Particularly little yellow flowered creeping Oxalis. You practically need tweezers to get it out.

Delosperma dyeri ‘Red Mountain’ is a great ice plant that is hardy to at least zone 5. One slight problem is that the quails love to eat it.  The damage you see at the bottom is from quails nibbling on it.  It is so vigorous that it doesn’t seem to do any long term damage and the plants fill back in quickly but it is something to consider if you have coveys of marauding quail coming through your yard.

Delosperma spalmanthoides is a cutie. Perhaps too small and delicate though. The leaves are almost microscopic and the flowers are pretty minuscule too. It needs careful placement to be seen and to avoid being swamped by more vigorous plants. It bloomed heavily for me in February but seems to bloom sporadically off and on all year.

Berlandiera lyrata is a cheerful little yellow daisy that smells like chocolate. It bloomed nicely all summer and lots of little seedlings came up this winter. I’ve potted up about a dozen of them.  The thyme here is Thymus X citriodorus ‘Green Lemon’. It forms a nice lush green ball for most of the year but as you can see when it bloomed the whole plant turned deep purple.

Nepeta ‘Kit Kat’ gave me that beautiful blue-lavender catmint color on a small almost prostrate plant. Really nice here with Sesleria ‘Greenlee’s Hybrid’.

This beautiful little juniper leaved mounding thyme was sold to me as Thymus juniperifolius. I haven’t been able to confirm that this is the correct name though.  Two other that are more likely are either or T. neicefferi or of T. neiceffii. I’m not sure which is correct but it is a gorgeous plant.

It is already getting ready to bloom in early March.

Now for some of the failures.

Chamaemelum nobile ‘Treneague’ is a dwarf flowerless chamomile. The smell is wonderful but this spot close to the street was a bit too sunny and dry. They prefer a damper shadier position so I moved them closer to the house where they are looking much nicer. Definitely worth growing just so you can squish them with your hands to release that sweet fragrance.

Lysimachia ‘Goldilocks’ was a complete disaster. Again it was too hot, dry, and sunny by the street. This was the best they looked all summer so I eventually tore them out.

Saxifraga ‘Pixie’ was really cute covered in tiny pink blooms but in the summer they started to go brown in their centers and very quickly were little dried out lumps. I will probably just repeat the Dianthus and Armeria combination from the other side of the path in the space they left.

Sedum dasyphyllum has really cute succulent foliage, right?

But then when it finishes blooming you are left with this hot mess.  Ugh. Not cute AT ALL. It had to be sheared back almost to the ground and didn’t look nice again until the winter rains.  If only it didn’t bloom it would be perfect.  I think I will move this to a less visible location.

One plant I loved was Frankenia thymifolia. Think of it as a really lush vigorous thyme with little pink rose-like flowers and foliage that goes red when it is a bit stressed. I planted this along one of the edges of the mediterranean garden and 4″ pots quickly grew to over a foot across.  This is the plant I decided to replace the chamomile and Lysimachia with at the front of the path.

Another plant I considered for the path was Phylla nodiflora which I had used along my driveway. As you can see above it has really sweet little Verbena-like flowers. But after a year of observation I’ve decided that it is basically a lawn weed, it doesn’t bloom long enough, and the foliage is a bit too rough. It could be nice in the right spot but it won’t work for my path garden.

The other succulents were also not terribly successful. Echeveria ‘Violet Queen’ hasn’t really blown me away. Sedum album ‘Murale’ started nicely but got really straggly this winter. It also blends in with the mulch so doesn’t really stand out in this spot.  Geum ‘Mango Lassi’ bloomed beautifully for a few months but then faded away.  I’m sure the shallow and poor quality soil had something to do with it but to be honest I lost all the Geums in my garden. I think I just didn’t water them as much as they would like. Uncinia uncinata ‘Rubra’  also withered away by the end of summer despite my attempts to keep it moist and Isotoma is still trying to hang on but can’t compete with Chrysanthemum paludosum and other annual seedlings that have been coming up.

Overall I am pretty happy with how the path turned out.  A few tweaks and replacements for the weaker plants and I think it will look really nice this year.

More Mediterranean

I’ve finished this round of planting in the medit garden.

Remember that ugly lawn? I’m so glad it is gone. Of course I still have to weed out sneaky clumps of Kikuyu grass but the worst of it seems to be over.

The new panorama feature on my iPhone is great for getting a full view of the garden. Try not to notice any ugly bits.

Chamelaucium uncinatum ‘Purple Pride’, from western Australia, has replaced the purple-leaved plum.

I’m hoping that Phylica plumosa, from South Africa, will make a nice mounding specimen in the center of the bed.

Dudleya pulverulenta has doubled in size since last spring.

I’m really fond of the South African heaths like this Erica Baueri. I love any Ericaceous plants that have waxy or plastic-like flowers.

I’m really proud of this Erica diaphana that I grew from seed.  It is about six inches tall now and looks like a miniature Christmas tree. The seed was like dust and I left them in a plastic bag under grow lights for ages until I felt like they were large enough to be potted up and safely brought outdoors. They were less than an inch tall when I pricked them out and I never thought they would survive the process. Even though I have grown tons of plant from seed this is the first woody shrub I have ever attempted. Next step is getting it to bloom!

Now obviously the plan for this garden is to grow plants from all the mediterranean climates of the world. Much of California, central Chile, western South Africa, southwestern and southern Australia and of course the Mediterranean region itself are all considered to be mediterranean climates with dry summers and mild rainy winters. Other dry regions of the world with drought tolerant plants are acceptable as well such as parts of the southern US and Mexico and the Canary Islands.  Whatever it takes to make beautiful garden with plants that will need very little water in the summer.

Of course sometimes I will make mistakes.

When I saw a six-pack of Craspedia globosa (actually Pcynosorus globosa) last summer I couldn’t resist.  It is normally a really ugly container plant and I couldn’t bring myself to pay even wholesale prices for a one gallon plant.  But a six-pack of tiny plants was cheap and seemed worthwhile. It is an Australian plant and I kept finding references that mention that it is drought tolerant. The common name is Billy Buttons and the flowers are little yellow spheres that make great cut flowers.  Sadly it is native to eastern Australia and my experience has been that it really wants very regular water. If I let it go dry it wilts dramatically.  It seems to be happiest in moist heavy clay which won’t do at all. I am willing to spot water thirsty plants when they are getting established but in the long run I really want plants to be able to fend for themselves for long stretches in the summer. I don’t plan on adding drip irrigation to this garden. So at some point they are all going to be removed. I may try to relocate them but I am not sure I want a plant that needs a lot of water to be happy.

I may replace them with Nepeta tuberosa. This is an unusual Nepeta with upright spires of blooms rather like a Stachys. It is from Spain and Portugal and should be much happier in dry conditions. In fact I am not sure why it didn’t get planted in the medit garden in the first place.  Luckily the three clumps I planted last year in the other border had about a dozen little seedlings all around them so I potted those up today. Once they are large enough I may use them to replace the Billy Buttons. The picture below is from June and I think this plant will add just the right amount of architectural drama that I want.

What a difference a year makes!

Do you remember last year when I asked you not to laugh at the puny plants in my brand new mediterranean garden? Check out the gardens progress in just one year!

Everything looks so tiny and sad in a newly planted garden.  There is still work to do (look at all those new black pots in the second photo) but the garden is filling in nicely.

Some added good news is after I took the second photo my new landlady gave me permission to remove the little purple-leaved plum. It was throwing off my whole design. A Chamalaucium will go in its place. She has also expressed an interest in removing that horrible chain link fence which will certainly make my garden more photogenic. I’ll be doing some work in the back area behind the fence in the coming months as well.

And some added GREAT news is that I have confirmation finally that they will not be digging up the garden to place sewer pipes! The pipes will go through the street instead!  What a relief. As I suspected one of the things that helped our case is that with the original placing not only would the construction go through both of my driveways and my garden but it would have cut right through my neighbors entire driveway.  I’m sure the construction will still be a nightmare but at least it looks like we minimized the property damage.  Once we have to connect the house to the sewers part of the yard will have to be torn up but since that is done by the homeowner you have a lot more control over the how and the when so you can prepare accordingly.

As you can see from the new black pots I have quite a bit of work ahead of me so look for more updates soon.  And do check out the “Mediterranean Garden Inventory” link up at the top of the page. You should find a link leading to a Google spreadsheet with an updated inventory of the plants in this part of the garden.

Winter Garden

Our weather here on the central coast has been quite cool and rainy since the fall. This past week we warmed up considerably but not before a stretch of night-time temps dipping dangerously low. Luckily in my year old garden I have not amassed much of a tender plant collection (yet).

My self-sown seedlings from last years annuals are doing remarkably well.  In fact I have had blooms already!

Mentzelia lindleyi was grown from seed last year and planted out rather late.  They didn’t bloom until June. Left to their own devices their seedlings have grown to flowering size remarkably quickly.

California native annuals are pretty cool, huh?

Another neat California native is Coreopsis gigantea, native to the southern California coast  down into Baja and on the Channel Islands.  I’ve posted pics of them before, from my trips to see them in bloom along the coast north of Malibu, but now I have one of my own.

 

Can you believe this three-foot tall monster was a little plant in a 4″ pot last March.

I was pretty excited to see that it is starting to form its first buds.  The bright yellow flowers should start opening by March.

Maireana sedifolia is doing  well next to the Coreopsis. It is very important that both of these plants have excellent drainage. They are planted on a raised mound of soil which helps but it makes me a bit nervous that an Artemisia frigida planted right below them completely rotted out.

Salvia africana-lutea has been bulking up and I’m finally getting to see some blooms.  Whatever nasty little caterpillar was eating the flowers last summer doesn’t seem to be active in winter.

One plant that was very unhappy with our 30 degree weather is Trichodesma scottii.  It is a borage relative from the island of Socotra. All of its buds and the ends of its leaves turned to mush. I hope it will bounce back and bloom this summer. At least now I know it isn’t cold hardy and can throw a sheet over it on freezing nights. Other plants that suffered some damage were Lotus berthelotii, Iochroma cyanea, and Pycnostachys urticifolia but they should all bounce back.

I was just looking at pictures of this garden from last spring when all the plants were brand new and it is exciting to see how much everything has filled in.

I am still not sure exactly what is going to happen with the sewers. I know the original plan was for the pipes to go right down the center of the left hand bed in the photo above.  My landlady made an appointment with someone from the town and spoke to them about it and apparently she can fill out an amendment requesting that they go through the street instead.  Unfortunately I had an appointment on the day the guy came out so I couldn’t be there and I only got to speak to her about it briefly.  So for now I am cautiously optimistic and I have decided to do a bit of work on the garden.

The garden looked OK last summer but I was not completely happy with it.  I kept adding to it bit by bit as interesting plants became available and the overall plan was a bit off.  So I dug up all the Santolinas, Scabiosa, and some of the Festuca and rearranged them. I moved my Eryngiums to the other side of the bed and replaced them with some Phlomis leucophracta that I grew from seed. I’ll be adding some inexpensive plants to empty spaces and across the front of the garden I’ve moved around some of the seedlings that are coming up.

I’m just going to move forward hoping that this garden won’t be harmed and if worse comes to worse and I have to dig everything out again at least I got some exercise.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’ve been here before…

If I see more annoyed than distraught about my gardens impending doom it is because I have dealt with this before. The first garden I created was back in the early 90′s when I was living with my aunt in Ringwood, New Jersey. Initially we got rid of the lawn and covered it with wood chips (we were lawn haters back before it was cool and trendy) and put in two rows of rose bushes.  I learned about gardening and plants by visiting the New Jersey Botanical Garden at Skylands and reading lots of gardening books.  Bit by bit the garden grew.

As you can see above the garden had very humble beginnings. I didn’t really know what I was doing so I would just carve out beds and add plants that I liked.  The house was at the bottom of a small hill.

It wasn’t perfect but I think it was pretty good for a self-taught first time gardener. This garden lasted about seven years and then disaster struck. In the winter of 1998 we started having septic tank problems.  Because the property was situated on a large wooded slope the only place to put a new septic field was the front yard. Because it was winter we weren’t able to dig up and rescue any plants. I think I was also in denial at the amount of destruction that was about to take place. I remember being shocked one morning and seeing a gigantic back hoe and a six foot deep hole where my Peony collection had been the day before.

By the time the work was completed our front yard looked like the above photo. Everything was gone. Our house was no longer at the bottom of a hill. We were now level with the street.  We used to walk up steps to get to the front door but not any more. Of course I was distraught at the loss of all those plants, but on the other hand at this point I knew a lot more about gardening.  I had started taking continuing education classes at the New York Botanical Garden and I had learned so much from building my first garden. It would be kind of fun to start with a blank slate and use my new knowledge to build something smarter and better. We also had the crew use their back hoe to dig a big hole for a new pond. Something I wouldn’t have been able to do by hand. We had them make us a beautiful brick path with lighting.

In just two years my new garden was already much nicer than the old one.

Of course this garden didn’t really have a happy ending for too long. In the fall of 1999 I moved to Manhattan and my aunt sold the house and moved to Key Largo. The new home owners ripped out almost every single plant and put in a lawn. The only thing that survived were some Dicentra and Alliums that they missed because they were dormant when the lawn went in. Oh well. Lesson learned. If you leave behind a garden don’t go back. Never go back.

But I went to school and worked at some great botanical gardens. I became a horticulturist and created many more gardens, some my own, and some at the places I was working. I had already learned one important lesson though. Gardens are ephemeral. They change from one season to the next and if you move away it is unlikely the new home owners will keep everything the way you loved it. And sometimes, frustratingly, big construction projects will be necessary. In my first garden it was a new septic field, in my current garden it is the town converting from septic to sewers.

I still don’t know for sure when the work will begin but I am starting to make a mental catalog of what needs to be saved. Some things will go to the safety of my backyard and some may be potted up and saved or planted in clients gardens. But even when all the work is done I won’t get too attached to whatever garden I create because some day I will move again and start a new garden. Hopefully in a home that I own that I will live in for a long time.

 

 

 

 

All the little things…

So some of you may have noticed it has been many months since my last blog post. There are a few reasons for that.  First of all I am not, and will never be, a fan of late summer and early fall. Too many memories of “back to school” as a child.  Most of my unhappiest moments took place in school and I carry those memories with me even as an adult.

But aside from bad childhood memories I’m also a bit gardened out by the end of summer.  All the mistakes I have made in my own garden are on display and it is really too late to do anything about it. All I can do is take notes and make plans to fix things in the fall and winter. Here in California the mistakes are even more evident as we have now gone about five months without rain and the garden is looking parched and dry. It is too early to start new plantings so I must wait patiently for the rainy season to begin.  Does anyone else have a least favorite time of the “garden year”?

I also received some very sad news this summer. In the interest of privacy, I won’t go into any details, but I have felt distracted and in a bit of a haze.  My creativity is low and I certainly wasn’t feeling very bloggy. I tried to talk myself out of my funk by thinking “This is a part of life and you know I really have had it pretty good. There are plenty of people who have faced far worse things that me in their lives.”  Well that wasn’t a very good idea. That just made me feel really awful for those people. So instead I am going to try to just focus on all the little things that make me feel joy and wonder. Things that bring me comfort or make me smile.

First of all my family! My father had a big party in August to celebrate retiring from his private practice.  That is my dad in the red shirt. I’m in the purple and my brother is the other skinny chap with glasses (people say we look alike but they are wrong!) and my sister is in the white dress. My father’s brothers are on either end and that is his sister in the blue. And my lovely cousin, next to me in the black, who I met for the first time that night. Even though I live thousands of miles away and even though they sometimes drive me crazy they are hugely important to me.

But this is a garden blog so it needs pictures of the flowers that make me happy!  Impatiens tinctoria has bloomed on and off all summer.

Hummingbirds have visited all summer and always bring a smile to my face!  Salvia sclarea ‘Piemont’ and Nictotiana mutabilis were their favorites.

When I returned from my trip back home this Echinopsis ‘Spring Blush’ bloomed for the first time. I am not really a big cactus grower. I just have a few but a bloom like this is making me think I need to add a few more to my collection.

And here is a side view so you can see just how ridiculous the flower is in comparison to the plant!

Pelargoniums are best known for the common red “geraniums” that people grow in planters and window boxes.  But the family is quite diverse and has all sorts of interesting oddities. Like this Pelargonium tetragonum, I grew from seed this year, flowering for the first time. The plant is mostly wiry, succulent, stems with a few small leaves. Kind of an odd ball but with beautiful flowers.

Pycnostachys urticifolia started blooming in August and should continue to do so through the winter.

Does anyone know what this little guy is? Lizards are pretty common in California but not at my house. I think it is too cold here most of the time for them to be out and about much.  But on a hot fall day (it got to about 94 degrees which is 30 degrees more than the usual average temp) I found this little critter hanging out by my front door.

It is that time of year when I start coaxing my summer dormant mesembs back to life. I’ve shared pictures of this Monilaria moniliformis coming out of dormancy in the past and it is always such a joy to watch. Maybe this year I will get flowers for the first time?

And speaking of flowers for the first time, my first Frithia pulchra finally has its first flower bud!  This is the little plant that first got me interested in growing succulents from seed.  Since I couldn’t find any for sale I decided that growing from seed was my only option.  But it would have been silly to just order one pack of seeds.  So a new obsession was born. These little plants are almost two years old and finally I am going to get a flower.

Titanopsis primrosii have been much less stingy with the blooms.  I have about twenty plants and most of them have been blooming on and off since May.

I believe this is an Echinopsis. I’m not sure though because it was a plant left by a former tenant.  I haven’t really paid much attention to it since I lived here. I tend to be a bit negligent when it comes to caring for plants that don’t have an emotional attachment to.  So It got shoved in a corner and now and then I would splash a bit of water on it if I was watering my own plants.  Well now that I have seen it in bloom I think maybe I will lavish a little more care on it.  OK plant. You got my attention!

One of the things that really helped get me out of my funk was a garden that I designed way back in February that was finally installed in early October. I’m pretty excited about it.  It is a beautiful space, the clients were a delight to work for, and it has three different elements.  A succulent bed in the front of the house (pictured above getting ready to go in the ground), a mediterranean garden along the side of the house, and a shrub border and Carex lawn in the backyard.

Here is a panorama of the mediterranean garden.  Kind of fun how the new panorama feature on the iPhone distorts the image. This area is actually rectangular and not L shaped like the photo would have you believe. But it was a fun way to get it all in the same shot. I really enjoyed designing this garden and the installation came at the perfect time to cheer me up. I look forward to going back and taking pictures as the garden progresses. I think it is going to be really beautiful.

And one more panorama of the Morro Bay Sand Spit. I have to remind myself how much I love it here. I’ve had some crummy things happen both times I moved here but in the end it is all going to be OK and I think I’ll be really happy here on the Central Coast.  At least I have scenery like this to cheer me up, right?