Frankincense and myrrh These fascinating herbs are best known through the story of the Three Wise Men delivering gold, frankincense, and myrrh for the baby Jesus. Even though details of the story of the three wise men are questionable, the Bible does specify that gifts were given of gold, frankincense and myrrh. Besides gold, the…
Happy Holidays, everyone! Since my ‘Yuletide’ Camellia, usually on the patio, is in full bloom, we decided to put it inside for our Christmas tree. With lights wrapped around the base and just a few silvery ornaments, it looks as festive as any tree we’ve had! Will watch it to make sure it does OK inside. This…
Get down… Get down low…and see the mysteries that may be in your mulch and layer of leaf liter under the trees.. The ground is wet and I’m careful where I walk, so not to, literally, slip on the slopes. The mountain above my garden commands attention, frosted in snow or shrouded with cloud, ever…
Shasta Daisies and Ox-eye daisies The memories of the tall Shasta daisies in my grandmother’s and mother’s gardens created in me, a desire to grow some of my own. My mother would cut some and put them in a vase of colored water. Slowly the dye would creep up the hollow stems. Fun for us kids! …
Here’s a good reason to do so: When you have a pumpkin left over from Halloween and Thanksgiving, what can you do with it? If it is still firm, you can bake it and use it for making holiday treats, saving some of the puree in the freezer for later. If my pumpkin has not…
The recent snow we’ve had this Thanksgiving, as seen in the blog header, reminds me of our first snow…. From March 2006: Pictures tell the story of our first snow here. We’ve been in the new house for 4 months, and this snow, about 8 inches is our first experience ‘living’ in snow country. Now, the…
Oh, no! Someone has knocked down a pot of flowers and broken it! Ah, well, it happens… And sometimes you see a broken pot at a sale and think why in the world are they selling that? But wait, these can be bargains! Here is what I do. First I started putting a ‘carpet’ of…
Introducing you to… Mexican marigold or Tagetes lemmonii… Lemmon’s Marigold, Copper Canyon Daisy or Mexican Bush Daisy, you can call this flower any of those, but I like to say “Tagetes lemmonii”. I like the sound of it. I say TA-je-tees lem-MO-ni-I. I found this little gem at our local native and Mediterranean plant nursery, Intermountain,…
Yesterday, Saturday OK, I see it now. After several years of growing Sedum spurium ‘Dragon’s Blood’, I have only seen a bit of the flowers, which are supposed to give this plant its name. I’ve seen other folk’s examples showing the flowers, so I know it’s possible…until then, this Fall, I can now see the…
I don’t have to have my wood stacked like this, nor could I, to be satisfied, but I want to do a lot better to spiff up the little realities and necessaries in the garden here to make them fit in better with my natural surroundings. Lately I’ve looked at my garden with a more…
Do you remember H bees? I took photographs of these two, a bee and a wasp, today. I was reminded of when I was a child in Orange County, CA, when we used to catch what we called ‘H’ bees in our hands. After seeing the bees with the Hs on their backs we would…
How to plant a meadow in California foothills I do dream of that! In late summer, my new project was to find California native seeds in a large enough quantity at an affordable price, get rid of the weeds and get my meadow. A couple posts back are photos and a description of the beginnings.…
Discovering new natives I have always loved the names of plants. I don’t know why, but I must know what a plant name is and then look up all the information I can find on it. This property of ours, in the Central California foothills has given me lots of plants to identify and apparently, after ten years here there…
Dave’s garden is having a photo contest, so…I decided to enter the photo of the poppy ‘butterfly’ I saw next to the garden path last year, then found a few more I liked to enter. These are my entries…so far! There are many subject categories, for example, Annuals, Scenery or Pets and you can enter two photos per category. Each first-place…
