A Backyard Habitat is a transformation of your garden into a place that provides the things wildlife need to live there. You also ‘reduce the civilization’ there to make it more welcome and safe for small, beautiful creatures. My mother did this in 1970 in the suburbs of LA and I have established a wildlife habitat…
Places to sit in the garden? You’ve got to have them. Especially when the place is affectionately called ‘Rancho Relaxo.’
First the paths…
We took our time to figure out where to lay out paths and the words “paths of desire,” I’d read about stuck in my head. Paths of desire are where you really want to go.
“Landscape designers sometimes talk about “desire paths”: the paths traced by people’s habits of movement from one place to another, the paths that make clear where we want to go, and how we want to get there.” Dominque Browning in “Paths of Desire”
Regardless of where a professional designer would lay out paths, it’s good to let a little time to go by and figure out where you want to go on your place and build your paths there.
The first places to sit were old furniture I got curb shopping or from friends. These we put on the patio, …we had two, one the same level as the house and one down a level, built from stamped concrete in place of the deck that we had originally planned.
Old furniture from trash day on lower patio.
We had two level 70′ long leach lines as the start to our paths. The rest of the place is on a slope. Each year we’ve ventured further out building a network of paths in order to be able to walk out without tromping through weeds. I laid out a path going through the garden planted around the lower patio.…
Weeding the natural meadow I work quietly, allowing my thoughts to fade away into just being. I especially don’t think about the enormity of my goal, and the only urgency I feel is the one. The weeds are going to seed. The last three days I have spent in the natural meadow two levels below…
Everyone has seen these garden spheres in the garden, but recently after finding a bowling ball at Oakhurst’s “Clutter Clearance” I decided to try decorating one. I was inspired by an example found online on Google images, bought some bags of ‘gems’ used for filling vases to hold stems straight.
First the materials were gathered, 5 or 6 bags of 'gems', stones or tiles and 2 tubes of G.E. Silicone II for outdoors, in clear.
Start with a clean and prepped bowling ball. Use rubbing alcohol or vinegar to get any wax finish off. Sand lightly, then wash and dry the ball before painting. I filled the two smaller holes with tin foil and just glued right over them. Leave one hole uncovered and positioned at the bottom so if you want you can set it onto a piece of rebar in the garden. It helps to print out a photo of a design you like from Google images, shown. I used 5 0r 6 bags of ‘gems’, shown, and 2 tubes of G.E. Silicone II for outdoors, in clear.
With pencil I marked the top, opposite the largest hole and cut a five pointed star for a design to fill in
I used pencil to mark a dot on the top, opposite the hole I left unfilled. Then I drew freehand lines vertically to mark four sections, then used a paper cut-out of a star to trace around as a starting point.…
Notes on what I am really doing in the garden.
Mexican Primrose, with fleshy bulb-like root.
Mexican Primrose eradication in front beds
Last Fall I decided to sift the soil of the front beds after the first quick weeding did nothing to get rid of this stubborn pretty. It is pretty at one stage, but dries to tall sticks throughout the planting beds. So, there I was taking bit by bit, each area and making sure.
Mexican Primrose coming through root ball of killed plant. Yellowish fleshy root shows at the bottom.
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I got all the roots, I think, with a sharp trowel. All the plants affected were dug up, shaken out, forbidden roots found and placed in nursery pots in the shade. The roots have a thick, fleshy root, which is yellowish, rather than red like the stems of this plant. This must be romoved completely or it will come back.
Fast forward to last month when a second thorough check was done and more stragglers found and dug.
Germander, Teucrium chamaedrys 'Prostratum'
Last weekend, another month later, I put all the plants back, added a few monkey flowers and sages to go with the existing conifers, Germander, Teucrium chamaedrys ‘Prostratum’, (below), Thyme and Snow-in-summer, Cerastrum tomentosum. These last three are some of the most useful Mediteranneans for a California garden.…
The difference between trash and junk I posted a picture of my terribly messy potting bench area on my FB page, Flea Market Gardening, and asked for help with what I should do with it. They posted tons of ideas and I’ve been working on it for the last couple weeks. Here is the “before”: Why…
This snowy, drippy day…what else to do but check on past projects. Getting rid of Mexican Primrose 10-15-2010 Invasive plants and impatience in the garden March Update: There are a few sprouts coming up of the Mexican primrose which confirms that it’s the right decision not to have replanted the plants I removed from the front…
I first noticed the beneficial qualities of rotting logs when I gardened in the suburbs. The tree trimmers left stacks of logs next to the street trees and I promptly snagged as many as I could for flower beds edgings. As they broke down over the years, I could see that they were home to…
Becoming stewards of our forest For some of us, here in the California foothills, especially those who live near the national forest, nature provides the perfect landscaping. Using the existing trees and native plants can help your garden design blend smoothly into the surrounding landscape. Caring for a large forest property has its challenges and rewards.…
Maggie says, "Let's go."
Today, Maggie and I walked all the way to the bottom of the property, where it’s fairly wild.…
Here are some of the favorite posts of the last few months. It’s interesting to see what people like and what their search terms are.
Native plants of Lewis and Clark found in the Sierra Foothills 350
Using broken pots in garden 162
Sierra Nevada Webcams 154…
Jan 1, 2011 This afternoon when it warmed up to a brisk 40F degrees, I tapped little soil ice cubes out of a planting tray, getting ready for my first attempt at wintersowing. I have a lot of seeds saved, and after counting how many grape boxes I had, selected a number of varieties to…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
