The Garden in December

"For the gardener, winter is a season in its own right, with enough time to seek out the best, often elusive scents, notice the texture of bark, enjoy shadows cast on the lawn by trees and trelliswork. ~Rosemary Verey...1990

In December, my Silverado Canyon Garden has only a few spots of color.....the glorious sycamore, the red and gold California wild grape, a few white roses here and there, and of course the hardy salvia waverlys that seems to delight and thrive in the weak light and cold days.

The Garden in August

"Gardening should really be done in blinders. Its distractions are tempting and persistent, and only by stern exercise of will do I ever finish one job without being lured off to another."
Richard Wright "The Garderner's Bed-Book"

This past weekend I spent some wonderful moments in my garden, being lured from first one job to another. Watering the perennials, roses and herbs (parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme, basil, tarragon, chives and mint). Roses always need dead-deading this time of the year, as does the vibrant pink valerian. Speaking of which....masses of tiger swallowtail butterflies chased each other and followed me throughout the native garden on Saturday. What a magnificent sight they are! Cucumbers are coming along nicely......at least the flowers. Will we get any to eat, I wonder? Sweet 100 cherry tomatoes are sweet and succulent, wonderful tossed in a big green salad. The peaches are ripening.....turning sweet and the most beautiful color. I need to get to them before the scrub-jays. The hose is still not patched; dreary job, no inspiration there. Maybe next week. Oh, what I wouldn't give for more space to grow a big vegetable garden....sweet white corn, bush beans, peppers, melons and more.

July........and summer heat

"There is nothing much more difficult to do in outdoor gardening than to plant a mixed border well, and to keep it in beauty through the summer." Gertrude Kekyll

Well, Gertrude, so true. My colorful mixed borders are struggling through the July summer heat.

June in the Garden

"June is the luckiest time for weddings. A bridal bouguet should include a sprig of sage to insure domestic peace, good health, and a long life; a sprig of lavender for undying love; jasmine for harmony; a sprig of marjoram, the gypsy herb of love; a sprig of borage for courage----always borage." Linda Ours Rago, The Herbal Almanac

Shall I cut, dry, and save some for the late September marriage celebration? Mais oui!

What herbs are growing in my garden? Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme. Also several varieties of basil, chives, tarragon, and lemon balm.

Garden in Full Bloom

"My garden is my most beautiful masterpiece." Claude Monet

My Silverado Canyon Garden---in early May is in full bloom! Roses, alystomeria, salvias, hucheras, bacopa, begonias, abutalon---pink and yellows, columbine, poppies, valerian, pentstemons, campanulas, primrose, and much more. 407 people visited for the Mary Lou Heard Memorial Garden Tour on May 2 and 3.

Color in the Garden

"When selecting plants for your garden, you may want to consider what colors pollinators prefer. Bees---yellow, blue, purple, utraviolet; butterflies---red, orange, yellow, pink;....hummingbirds---red, orange, purple-red."
Angela Overy, Sex in Your Garden.

                     Roses, campanula and columbine in the front garden.

Pink valerian and bright yellow Dendromecon rigida (tree poppy) blooms......and butterflies are everywhere in the California natives section of my garden.  Anna Hummingbirds are particularly attracted to the creamy-white and pale purple salvia waverily blossoms.

Spring Blooming

"As for the roses, you could not help feeling they understood that roses are the only flowers that impress people at garden-parties; the only flowers that everybody is certain of knowing. Hundreds, yes literally hundreds, had come in a single night; the green bushes bowed down as though they had been visited by archangels."
Katherine Mansfield....The Garden-Party

In my Silverado Canyon Garden, the Iceburg roses and Cecil Brunner's (it seems overnight) are now blooming. The icebergs with white blossoms next to Iceland poppies. And in the native garden, Cecil Brunner with full-blown pink blossoms! The deep purple iris have also made an appearance and seem to be withstanding the heat in a respectable fashion. Jasmin Polyanthum scents the air and red-breasted male finches and drab brown females vie with a raucous scrub-jay at the bird feeder.

My Modest Garden......

"A modest garden contains, for those who know how to look and to wait, more instruction than a library."
Henri Frederic Amiel....Private Journal

Every day now I'm looking and waiting with anticipation for the cheerful California poppies and blush-pink Cecil Brunner climbing roses to bloom....this is instructing me in patience.....nothing happens before its time.

Late Afternoon

"It is good to be alone in a garden at dawn or dusk so that all its shy presences may haunt you and possess you in a reverie of suspended thought."
James Douglas-----Down Shoe Lane

What's Blooming?

What's currently blooming in the garden?

So much...........Pink roses, purple iris, Anisondontea hybrid, Huchera Maxima and Canyon Pink, Azalea "George Tabor" "Alaka" and "California Snow", Blue-eyed grass, Diascia Red Ace, Coreopsis auriculata---"Nana", Anisodontea "Capensis", Bacopa, Oenothera---Evening Primrose, Hardenbergia, and Jasminum polyanthum.

Every flower glows.........

"It was the moment between six and seven when every flower.....glows."
                                                          Virginia Woolf  from Mrs. Dalloway    

                                                                                                                                                 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

Anticipation

"One of the most delightful things about a garden is the anticipation it provides."
W. E. Johns "The Passing Show"

                         

This is especially true in mid-winter amidst heavy rains when Silverado Creek is flowing, and so much in my garden lies dormant. It's so quietly satisfying to plan, peruse catalogs, buy seeds, and well.........anticipate the first stirrings of spring, the first buds, and then blossoms.

Pleasure in Gardening

In "Down to Earth" Anne Scott-James reflected...."There is more pleasure in making a garden than in contemplating a paradise."

Spring Daffodils and Tulips

“The tulips along the border are redder than ever, opening, no longer wine cups but chalices...........






                                                                   
                          and lemon yellow daffodils

                                

Early Spring Bloom

Cecil Brunner roses are blooming over the arbor in my native California garden

as well as the Santa Rosa plum tree and the Western Redbud

Blogging and Gardening

The thing about blogging is that it is similar to ....."The trouble with gardening........it does not remain an avocation. It becomes an obsession."
Phyllis McGinley.......The Province of the Heart

My Silverado Canyon Garden stone walls....

I love old stone walls, their permanence and the stories that they may hold.

If these gray garden walls could talk, would they divulge the struggles of early canyon inhabitants, weary settlers or wary animals, and narrate the history of this place?

Early March in the Garden

After a cold and somewhat rainy winter, my Silverado Canyon garden is coming back to life. The yellow daffodiles and narcissus are blooming; the plum tree is blossoming; and the lilac is beginning to bud. Work has begun on getting ready for the Mary Lou Heard Memorial Garden Tour scheduled for May 2 and 3. Will my garden be ready? Will the roses be blooming? Eternal Optimist that I am.....Yes!!