Fall flowers

My husband announced to me this weekend, "Do you know how many plants are flowering in the backyard?!" I guessed 15, to which he said,"I counted 18!" This is our little 'ol postage stamp, inner-city garden - in Fall.  And we'll be blooming all winter.

The crazy fuschia is doing great.  This is the one we got at the Botanical Garden Plant Sale 4 or 5 years ago (I'm too lazy to go digging through the tags), and had to cut almost to the ground after the killer frost.  Shoshanna fell in love with it.  Musta heard her, 'cause next I know there's a volunteer baby in the curly willow pot just waiting to be dug up.  Very cooperative!

The Salvia puberula looks amazing now that it's established and not getting beat up by roofers and squirrel chasing dogs.

Yep, it's fuzzy like that to the naked eye from far
away...

The side garden is frankly embarrassing. There is NO path left to the door. Diane would be horrified.  I loved it this summer when I could open the door for air and enjoy complete privacy.

But now I got a real mess!  I got sucked into not pruning in March because I felt bad taking nectar away from the hummingbirds.  Now the pineapple sage (Salvia elegens) is across the sidewalk and in the driveway, pretty well choking out the lavendar.

The scary part is the limelight. This is it's first year.  It's beautiful!  It's growing into the garage!  Again!  Doug hacked a big branch off last month.

Of course Pinkie (and the rest of them) love it, and fight constantly over the Salvias.  It is not safe in my garden.  Any moment you can get buzzed by hummers in battle.  They are especially fond of the Mexican Bush Sage, which is halfway across the front lawn (sorry Bill).

Tillandsia sp?

Kapow!! I was SO excited by the 7 spikes this year! And of course had to share.

But being a lazy gardener, I have no clue what species this guy is. Well, not lazy in this case; I scrounged it from a bin at Home Depot. So I went online to find the species, and found pictures of people holding football sized clumps with 30+ spikes that kind of look like mine, but not quite. At first I thought it was an albertiana, but the purple coming out of the magenta is tubed, not a tri-petal shape.

I've had this plant for almost 12 years, so go figure how old a 30 spiker must be.


Maybe an Aeranthos Bergeri Hybrid? I don't know - the foliage doesn't look right. There are 600 species and umpteen hybrids. Quite a beauty!

I'm pretty certain this one is tillandsia ixioides (another Home Depot find - not that I go there for plants; from back in the days when there was a Home Depot run every weekend to fix something or another).

I totally want to build a real pergola (as opposed to the mutant bench thing that came with the house), line it with a misting system, and get more tillandsias. That's where you'll find me on hot summer days...

This is the flower that Bella ate...

This is the flower that Bella ate.

This is the flower that takes 3 months to ripen,
swelling and pregnant,
all teasing aside.

Opening slowly,
till fullness round midnight.

Calling the neighbors 'cause they can't believe,
the beauty in hand that blooms once a year!

Fading so swiftly, and gone the next day.

This is the flower that Bella ate...before it bloomed this year :-(

Sample Pots

I just down loaded my camera and found some great photos from June of sample pots inspired by the Hort. The Hort does a wonderful job of displaying a mother plant in full glory with smaller For Sales on the shelf below. The sample pots are never for sale, but are amazing beautiful.

I'm a definite sucker for the babies. That's how I ended up with my first orchid, the Green Hornet. I couldn't figure out why it didn't bloom for 7 years until I started reading up and realized orchids need to reach maturity first - typically 7 years! Then there was the CA native that I thought was dead and when I dumped it in the compost discovered it was dormant and the new shoots were just about to reach the soil surface. Quick re-pot!

I've never been much of a "pot" gardener, but after years of drooling over mother plants, I set to making my own.

This is a close up from the campanula sample pot. No, I don't know the exact species. There are many many hybrids and I'm too lazy to dig through the tags. A wonderful plant for the shade garden, providing ground cover and a profusion of blooms in spring, though mine kick some color all year long. I've got entire beds covered in the cute, sturdy little leaves. And it's not overly-aggressive, like mint.

This is from the lobelia pot, one of my favorites at the Hort, and what started the mono-species craze in my garden. I shamelessly copied, throwing 6 different colors in one bowl. Be careful to buy the trailing kind and not the clumpers. I made that mistake once; I thought I was going to cover the ground in front of the rhodie with a mat of lobelia, and instead ended up with 6 mini bushes. Doh! They look real nice hanging too.

Un-hybridized Lobelia is really bizarre; tall spears of big flowers, kind of like a cross between foxglove and delphinium, but in a beautiful claret shade. I bought some. It didn't make it.

And finally my newest addition. This gorgeous little mimulus is a testament to genetic engineering, but oh my it's a breath taker! Because this sort of mimulas is one of the riparian water hogs, as opposed to the drought resistant orange natives that cover our hills, I put a cheap self-watering reservoir in the pot when I planted. It does just fine in 100 degree weather without constant watering.

Yes, for those of you noticed, I haven't posted since last November; kind of shocking really. I had every intent, but first Mom's heart attack and then Kenai's passing kind of took the wind out of me...then there was the attack of the Alaskan Red Gopher.

Bella's technique for native gopher erradication is quite unique, though effective: She digs the tunnel up. The WHOLE tunnel. And everything around it in a 3 foot radius. And she's really, really fast. Made quite a mess of my beds. Doug got very creative with the bamboo fencing.

Other than that, she's absolutely perfect, and the gophers are gone.

The Nest

Last December, one of the female Anna's spent a lot of time in the side garden, particularly in the Dahlia Tree. Oh no! we thought. There's no way she could be interested in building a nest, because a) that plant gets cut to the ground in late January when it dies back, and b) well, it's just too close to the kitchen and all the commotion that goes on in there with the dogs and kid and me at the sink 4 hours a day.

I watched her nestle in the crook of one of those fragile leaves and thought: she's just resting. Then there was this bizarre little platform that looked to be made out of mud, but it was flat and it was almost January, cold and dark. Hummingbirds couldn't possibly start nesting that early! It's not even Spring.

Then in mid-January, 1 week before I was ready to do the deed and cut the dahlia, the platform turned into a cup and we had a problem. Frantically I looked up Anna's hummers and nesting and hatching times online. I figured we had to keep the plant up until May, somehow, fighting the darn snails and bracing it against the Spring winds.

Our Lady of the Dahlia was all alone. The males do not assist.

We hung our heads out the upstairs window whenever she was off eating, looking for eggs. But often busted by a very irritated mama bird who would buzz a foot away from our faces in the 2nd story window. Then one day, creamy yellow eggs the size of jelly beans appeared - but unlike a carton from the grocery store, these exuded life. A few weeks later, the pin-heads emerged.

The babies grew and grew, the nest flexing with as they got larger, mama building up the sides with each feeding. And they developed personalities. The one closest to the window was more aware, hungrier, adventurous. We called him Boy, and though I talked to all 3, he was the one that captured my heart.

Our sleepy little babies were more often awake than not, and spilling out of the nest. Mama had to cling to the edge of the leaf for feedings. Everyday when she went to eat, I crawled through the garden and picked snails off the bottom of the leaf and nest. Doug shamed me for interfering with nature and fretting over what was not mine, but then I'd catch him building supports and agonizing over whether mama would continue to feed the babies after his intrusion.

Their wing feathers came in, and the boy entertained us with flexing and preening. He started to exercise, beating them as fast as he could, holding on to the nest with his little feet, wanting to fly, scared to go. Then one day he let go, and it was a miracle! He hovered up, and I thought I'd lost him forever, thrilled by his independence and might.

He practiced for a week, buzzing around the dahlia, then to the fern, and over to the camellia, gone longer and longer each time. Till there was only one, the little girl.

But the boy came back, urging her on, and 2 days later she too fledged. Again I struggled with joy and loss...until I realized they just moved to the backyard! They followed their mother for over a month.

The females still spend a lot of time sucking sweet nectar from the flowers, but they are shy. It is Pinky, that hungry boy, who follows me in the garden, even perching outside the window when I sit in the turret. He is all grown up. A shocking pink cap covers his head, black stripes run the length of his wings like a hot rod.

The king of my garden.

Fall at Mills College: Halloween

It is Fall at Mills College. The leaves on the deciduous trees are swiftly turning and branches stand stark and naked. The remaining threads of chlorophyll look like tie dye on a hippie's T-shirt...a popular costume for Halloween this year in the East Bay.

It was not so long ago! Or maybe it was...I was a child of the 60's. I remember making bell-bottoms by splitting the seams, shopping at thrift stores, my mom sprouting alpha and making homemade yogurt, composting...and of course her garden.

My mom let me dig rivers in her rose bed, make mud pies in her cookware, and decorate with flowers from the lantana. She let me run barefoot through the babies tears that ran shin deep on the side of the house, cool and soft on my barefeet on hot summer days. We ran the sprinkler to play in just for fun, and grew strawberries to pick and eat warm in the sun.

Mom reveled in my childhood fantasies. She never yelled or fretted when I played with bees or sat high in the avocado tree pretending I was an elf and the limbs my home. That sense of peace, of oneness, the escape from worldly cares is still there, awaiting in my garden - in all the gardens I love. And for that alone, I am forever grateful to my Mom.

Secret pathways and hidden fountains, miniature oak forests and flocks of birds, inhabit Mills College.

Epiphyllums: More Detail

Not to beat the epiphyllum topic dead, but I finally dumped my camera (it's been since June) and found this pic from last month. I think this one looks like a fire works display. The flowers on this plant last a few days.

As opposed to the paltry 12 hours for the one Lin gave me, but the flowers are twice as big...

From what I read, it took years before folks hybridized colors other than cream or pale yellow. The pink below is an inherited plant. It must be at least 30 years old - I've had it for 10 years; it came from Claire's Aunt Lillian when she passed away. We had literally 50 blooms this year lasting almost 2 weeks. Amazing.

Epiphyllums are REALLY easy to propogate. Just cut a "leaf" to the base, if that's what you can call those spiny things, let it set for a few days, and then pot in fast draining potting soil. You don't need any kind of "special" soil as in orchid or cactus. I like clay pots because they dry out fast after watering. I line the bottom and top with rocks.

They prefer bright shade. Mine are on a covered bench with the tillandsias, a native orchid, and a venus fly trap - just to give you an idea of who else is happy in this light. I tend to clump plants into micro-ecosystems. Our entire backyard is shaded by the umbrella of a 70 or 80 foot deodar cedar, so we've really gone for that rainforest feel, inspired by hikes through the redwoods and the great abundance of readily avilable central american salvias and fuschias that we are blessed with in the Bay Area. I water about 2 or 3 times a week.

Primary pests are aphids and snails. I use my fingers and spray with soapy water to combat the aphids and throw Sluggo in the pots for the snails. Sluggo is a non-toxic mineral that desiccates the snails in their shells.