Two paths and a patio, November First Views Good Morning! As the sun comes up , I walk around the garden getting my first view of it this November 1st morning. I start by walking out the door to the patio in back. (When you live in the country, you never know which is the front or the back until…
One of my favorite color combos is cobalt blue and turquoise. That is why I like this picture! These are Western Bluebirds, Sialia mexicana, and have appeared here in my Sierra foothill garden for the first time this Fall. I’ve never seen them here in the ten years we’ve had the property. The Western Bluebird is…
First Views is a meme that Town Mouse started to show seasonal view of larger areas of your garden, rather than more focused photos of certain plants. She has a Mr Linky widget on her page so others can enjoy this idea, and add links to their blogs. Please visit her page to see her…
“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…
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…
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…
1st Week I’m ready to move some plants around and plant more in a new area of the garden. It’s a sloping hill, about 30×30 on the south side of the house going down to one Sycamore tree planted about four years ago. You know how you think and think about a part of your…
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!…
On these late October mornings when even a late riser gets up in the dark, make time to go outside and let the stars see you. We’re all part of the same wide universe here on earth. How can any challenges you may have stand up to that? If you are still a child, look…
Collecting milkweed pods I found these milkweed pods on a drive up to Bald Mountain in the Sierra Forest. I admired the neat way the seeds are ‘lined up’ and packed tightly in the pods, so when I threw them in a basket by the front door, I thought I’d come back later to sow…
Arrrgggghh! I did it to myself,…I planted Mexican Primrose in my front beds in my impatience for something to fill in while waiting for my evergreens and groundcovers to grow. Now, after four years, it has spread to the back garden and I have had it with the dried brown stems in the off season…
