Category: Plant Profiles

Of fog and rain

“An absolute patience. Trees stand up to their knees in fog. The fog slowly flows uphill. White cobwebs, the grass leaning where deer have looked for apples. The woods from brook to where the top of the hill looks over the fog, send up not one bird. So absolute, it is no other than happiness…

Mexican Marigold Tagetes lemmonii closeup

Best Fall bloomers: Mexican marigold

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,…

Discovering and identifying the Oracle Oak

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…

An Explosion of Asters

Their colors are so intense, majestic, it is a privilege to be out among the asters and goldenrods and drying weeds under a hard autumn sky.                                                              Robert Morgan 1970 In notes, after seeing the first blooms of some New England asters, Symphyotrichum novae-angliae, in my garden 3 years ago, I say, simply, ” Get more asters!…

Ice Wings

Each with their secret and each with their song Narcissus lifting their faces to me Paper-white petals so fragile so strong Only in darkness can one truly see Miracles dance in the moonlight tonight! Dull was the day but the midnight was bright!                                                    by Steven Curtis Lance   I’m planting bulbs now, for bloom…