To prepare for a community garden club talk on this meadow project today, this slideshow was put together to show highlights from the first two years. This will give you an idea of what changes have been made from this former weedy field! First I seeded the meadow the first year, 2010, with California native…
June’s Blue Haze, Brodiaea This is a picture story of Elegant or Harvest Brodiaea in the Sierra foothill garden. This is its native area, just south of Yosemite National Park. This and Pretty Face are the two main wild flowers existing here on the land we settled ion near the Sierra National Forest. Until starting this…
Lewis Creek is about 7 miles south of Yosemite National Park, CA. The trail all along it with the flowers,waterfalls and natural beauty are a lovely alternative to visiting the Park if you have limited time, or if you want to avoid crowds, or if the roads are snowy in the Spring. I described the trail and…
Pretty Face, Triteleia ixioides Sunny starry yellow, Pretty Face is sometimes called Golden brodiaea or Golden Stars, and is native to California, appearing only slightly beyond the borders, according to CalFlora. This variety, found on our place and all through the Oakhurst Yosemite area, may be Triteleia ixioides ssp. scabra or Foothill Pretty Face. This pretty bulb first shows up…
May Meadow In Fall of last year, I became tired of a field full of Filaree and embarked on planting a marvelous meadow of native wildflowers and grasses. The Filaree stickers are evil and they stick terribly to Maggie, our Corgi. Here are photos showing the progress and challenges, with the first wave of flowers blooming…
A wildflower experiment In my garden, I sowed a native California wildflower meadow. It was a very fun project and I learned a lot. Now, in another area of my garden I call “The Natural Meadow” I continue more experiments! See what I did! First of all, my objective here was to add very few…
Blue Flax, linum lewisii, a CA native, introduced in my garden
Blue Flax, linum lewisii, not native to my property, but wildish
Blue Flax in the meadow
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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…
My idea of gardening is to discover something wild in my wood and weed around it with the utmost care until it has a chance to grow and spread. – Margaret Bourke-White Covered with the greenest and freshest grass, the open woodland is where the earliest wildflowers of Spring spread their wealth of ephemeral loveliness.…
Project: Weeding the Meadow After rains and four weeks of sunny weather, a check on the progress of weeds and seedlings in the meadow showed lots of green, and yesterday it took a lot less time to weed than I thought, about an hour and a half. This is a 30×30 foot area, 900 sq…
Lewis & Clark discoveries we can plant… In 1803, President Thomas Jefferson requested $2500 from Congress to send Meriwether Lewis and William Clark off on the Corps of Discovery expedition. See how their discoveries influenced the garden world of today in our foothills! Lasting from 1804 to 1806, this was the first exploration of the new…
Last update for Fall 2010 …next Winter! Before the latest rainstorms, new photos were taken of progress on my little seedlings in an area chosen for a meadow. Here, was a field of weedy filaree, awful weeds with seeds that form curlicues that screw themselves into our Corgi, Maggie’s fur in the spring and summer.…
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.…
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…
When landscaping in a fire risk area, like the Central Sierra foothills of California, you normally have to keep a hundred foot fire safe barrier around your home. There is quite a bit of research done concerning plants that ignite slower and burn slower. First, protect your property by grooming the branches and brush 10 feet…
These Favorites are ‘Gardening Links’ I use often, some are local and some are websites anyone can use to get more enJOYment from your garden. Two are wildflower ID sites. Fun!
“What is that wonderful smell”, guests exclaim! So spicy and fragrant, Common Madia, Madia elegans and Rosinweed, Calycadenia truncata are both referred to as tarweed in the Sierra Foothills.
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