About

About

Hello!

Hello!

My name is Sue Langley. In 2005, my husband and I moved to seven acres of land in the Sierra Foothills of California, located just below Yosemite National Park. This began a new adventure for us and as a couple of city kids, we sure got an education about country life.

We never dreamed we’d be building our own house,…much less designing, tiling floors and painting it!

As a lifelong gardener, I am excited about gardening in this new location. The surroundings are wild and scenic, with a mountain rising high above the sloped property, filled with scrub oaks, manzanita and Ponderosa pines.

This is the story of my new house and garden, started from scratch, in Zone 7, with the help of my Sunset Garden book, a stack of clipped out magazine articles, the neighbors and the local garden club.

Why do I call myself a new mountain gardener?  Why, because I’m always learning new things about my garden and the surrounding mountain community!

~~ Sue Langley

18 comments

  1. Patti O'Kane - Reply

    Dear Sue, I love your website. Found it by surfing the web for a Thanksgiving image. Would you consider giving me permission to use your Nov. 2010 “Wordless Thankful Wednesday” photo of the birds, pumpkins, pine cones and valley for my 2011 Thanksgiving postcard. These are for personal use only & I print them from Snapfish. I make about 30 postcards which go all over the continental US and to friends in Europe & the Middle East. I design my own stamp also from zazzle.com Of course I would credit you with the photo. So I am not a total stranger, I am a serious birder by passion (with some limited songbird banding training which I received along the Migratory flyway of Lake Ontario, outside Rochester, NY at Braddock Bay Bird Observatory. My friend is the master bander there,,,she would be one of the folks to receive my postcard!) and a psychiatric nurse practitioner in East New York-Brownsville, Brooklyn by vocation. I send out holiday cards with meaningful images to my friends to remind us of our great blessings. I just love your photo. It reminds me of visits to CA & my yearly summer trips to AZ. I hope you will consider permission to use the photo. No matter what your decision is, I wish you all good gifts & bountiful joy in your gardens. Thanks for pondering my request. Gratefully, Patti O’Kane

  4. Nancy Wisseman - Reply

    I was looking for spider pictures, trying to identify one we found on our property near North Fork, CA when I found your site. You even have a picture of the same spider. 🙂

    • Sue Langley - Reply

      Isn’t Google wonderful? I’m glad you found it,…probably giant crab spider. The locals *call* them ‘wolf spiders’ but they aren’t really. Always a bit startling. If you like gardening, you may like this blog… Sue

  5. Nancy Wisseman - Reply

    I actually sent the picture into a spider identification web site and was told it is a variety of a Huntsman spider, also called a Giant Crab Spider or Woods Spider. Anyway, I subscribed to your blog because I do like gardening. My husband and I have a smallish one right now, but we are planning on expanding by next year to a much larger one. We love growing food for our family to eat.

  6. Adele - Reply

    https://sierrafoothillgarden.com/2011/02/01/nz-week-tuesday-totaranui-and-abel-tasman-natl-park/

    Hi Sue

    I am a Kiwi living in London and was searching the internet yesterday looking for a beautiful image of the Silver Fern, and I found the above link which looks like a photo you took while on holiday in my beautiful country. I am wondering if you would mind me using the photo on my website that is being relaunched later this week. The photo will be used on my About Adele page. It will feature 3 images of NZ fauna I love. The Koru, your image of fern leaves (hopefully), and a Punga tree.

    I am a international small business consultant/coach/mentor, and I am re-modelling my ‘stuff’ a bit to bring a bit more of NZ into my teaching world.

    I look forward to hearing from you ASAP.

    Thank you in advance.

    Adele McLay XX

    • Sue Langley - Reply

      Yes, Adele, you may use this image,…sorry I didn’t see this before… Thanks for the great comliment!

  7. Celeste Wheeler - Reply

    Sue, I am writing the press release for the workshop you will be presenting in Sept. for the Oakhurst Library and I need to ask you a question. Please call me at your earliest convenience at 559-641-5435. Thank you.

  8. Lynda Pearson - Reply

    This post is for Sue Langely regarding Bill Tyson and Hillside Iris Gardens. I had the wonderful
    experience of going to his iris garden last year and bought iris to add to my garden.
    Do you know if the gardens will be open this year and when.

    Thank you,
    Lynda Pearson

  9. Blake - Reply

    You have a post about burn piles that should be updated. Cal Fire’s recommendations have changed over the years. If you have a suitably dry pile, you should not need fuel to start it. We usually start ours with a bit of dry kindling and the flick of a lighter. Current standards are to maintain a pile 4′ in diameter, not the size of a car. While it’s a hard standard to achieve (scotch broom usually taller than me and hard to cut in half), we go to great lengths to clear the ground and keep our piles on the smaller side. It can take a full day to go through our brush in a small pile. And we do that a few times each winter. Some neighbors like to make a fuss, but that’s life in the woods.

  10. Linda Legman - Reply

    Hi Sue,
    First, let me say this is a terrific website!

    My husband’s family owned property in the High Sierra Meadows (2 hrs north of Oakhurst) that we sold when his mother passed away a year and a half ago.

    Among the family things we found the 1967 Oakhurst map. Do you have any idea what it’s worth and anyone who would want to buy it?

    Also, check out my website. I’ve got a gray fox on a vintage map of Yosemite.

    Thanks,
    Linda

    • Sue Langley - Reply

      Hi Linda,…I did a little blurb on the map you found…I found one at a thrift shop in my former town, amazingly… It wasn’t until I scanned it at a high dpi that I REALLY saw it closely.
      Here’s the link,…and although I’m sure many in this area would love your map, I wouldn’t know how you’d find them unless you sold it on eBay or joined one of the local FB pages and described it there.

      https://wp.me/p3ghRX-2g2

      At least you’ll know the history for sure,…and there’s more detail in the comments…

      Thanks for your kind words!

  11. Peter Jelito - Reply

    In preparation to write a piece for the local news paper on oaks I came across a discrepancy on Oracle Oaks between the observation of six Oracle Oaks on our property (near Summerville High School), the description of Oracle O. in the book “Oaks of California” and your observations. Can we have a phone conversation sometime?

  12. Jerry West - Reply

    Hi Sue,
    I just found your site while searching on wildflowers in the area and thought that I would say hi. I was a patrolman on the Bass Lake Ranger District from 1971-1976 and before that spent many days fishing and scouting in the area in the 1950s and 60s, and it is always nice to read good stuff about one of my favorite areas.

  13. Kathy Posey - Reply

    Hi Sue,
    My name is Kathy Posey and I wanted to ask if you were still doing presentations on gardening topics for small groups. I have attended many of your presentations in the past and they were wonderful. Would you be interested in giving a short presentation to the Women’s Guild at Our Lady of the Sierra in Oakhurst? We have monthly meetings and the ladies would be so interested in your gardening tips. My phone number is 559-641-6572 so if you are interested, please give me a call. Thank you so much.

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