Why We Need Wild Nature

This might just be the most beautiful thing ever!  Keep it handy to lift you up when you forget that we're in the midst of this every day.

Gifts from the Garden

Zen Frog in Martini Swamp

     This week I'll be helping with a very timely and sure to be fun UC Cooperative Extension Master Gardener presentation at Irvine's Great Park entitled 'Gifts from the Garden'.   I was tasked with making up a few small planted containers that could be used as hostess gifts for the coming holiday season. 

Since I'm slightly obsessive and once I get started with this kind of thing I usually end up spending too much money and taking an inordinate amount of time getting it done, I tasked myself with a limit of $10 or less per planted container and only one afternoon spent planting them up.  I tied each of the containers together with a common theme.

When I began, I wasn't sure what I would end up with.  But after prowling my local consignment shop, Michael's craft store and Pier 1 clearance bins, some ideas started taking shape.  The results were surprising, so easy and a number of the containers cost well under my $10 allocation! 

I bought all of my supplies at just a few places.  The plants came from my vacation home, also known as our local nursery, Plant Depot.   I bought a mix of herbs in 4" pots and 6 packs.  There was some landscape fabric lying around our garage which was handy for wrapping the little plants to preserve their soil.  I also needed spaghnum moss, craft tweezers, 20 gauge wire, raffia wrapped wire, pliers, some faux insects (from the craft store's clearance bin), scissors and a glue gun.

Here are the results of an afternoon of planting in the warm fall sun:

1) These two matching wire egg baskets came from the consignment shop.  The planted one features Lemon Thyme (Thymus citriodorus).

Wire Egg Basket Planted with Lemon Thyme

2)   This faux copper pot is planted with Oregano and topped with a toy turkey.  I love all the details on the turkey.  

I wrapped his feet with wire, left a longish piece at the end and poked it into the soil, then covered the top with moss.  It looks like he's sitting in a bed of Oregano!  It took about 15 minutes to make.

This would make a great Thanksgiving hostess gift.  A few of them lined up would be a fun centerpiece on a buffet table.



Faux Copper Pot, Toy Turkey and Oregano

3)  An inexpensive porcelain gravy boat with glass rooster placecard holder planted with Tricolor Sage (Salvia officinalis 'Tricolor') which features purple and olive green leaves with bright white edges.   Fun and whimsical, but elegant, too.

4)  A trip to the beach in a bowl!  The inside edge of this mini goldfish bowl (actually a votive holder) was packed with beach pebbles, found beach glass, some shells and Cilantro.  (The craft store had single metal votive holders on long stems.  I later thought that a little candle would have been a perfect addition to the beach theme, a bonfire!)



Pebbles, Beach Glass, Shells, Moss and Cilantro

5)   A cheerful red teapot with Lemon Verbena and floating butterflies on swirly stems.  This is where the glue gun came in.  Scrapbook butterflies were glued to raffia wrapped craft wire.

6)  These two little lidded tins in metal and bright red reminded me of compost bins.  I put Chives in one and Cilantro in the other and added a couple of butterflies.  One on red wire and one on silver wire.  The result is kind of silly and whimsical.  Fun for a fall garden party as party favors or with guest's names at place settings.

One thing to note:  All of these containers are somewhat ephemeral.  The herbs are meant to be taken home and planted in a garden or pot.  Although some of the containers would make better long term homes than others (you could pre-drill drainage holes in the teapot bottom, for example) most of them are just too small and lacking in drainage to make good homes for long.

Still, with this caveat to the hostess or party-goer, these planted pots would make a fun and functional addition to a holiday table.   Bon appetit!







Irrational Exuberance

Trycyrtis hirta just emerging in the Spring

     Almost three years ago we moved from New York state back to California.  While living in Long Island's Zone 7 I discovered and fell in love with a few plants that really should probably stay in the damp, woodlands of coastal New York; Epimedium, Callicarpus, Japanese Painted Fern.   A few of them I just couldn't give up forever so I've mail ordered and imported them to an appropriate (or so I tell myself) north-facing, shady microclimate in my Southern California side yard. 

As I set about recreating little vignette reminders of my New York garden I am wondering if it is all worth it.

Today, one of my very favorite plants, Trycyrtis hirta, is in bloom after a yearlong battle with slugs, fungus, dry rot, wet rot, locusts, asps and invading foreign armies.

You tell me...Here is what I saw when I went outside to inspect it this morning. 

It is covered in these stunning little spotted flowers.  It's still just a baby, only two years old, so it hasn't yet grown into its full size or arching habit. 

Part of me - a big part - says, YES!  It is worth it!  Just to be able to admire this complex and beautiful thing created by Mother Nature (for no real purpose that I can discern, except perhaps as a snail Chateauneuf de Pape) makes it worth it.  It really is the most remarkable flower I think I've ever seen.  It's like a tiny orchid, but better.  The closer you look at it, the more complex it gets.

So, my next quandary is....Is this worth it?

Another tiny baby plant, from Heronswood Nursery in Washington State, Schizophragma hydrangeoides 'Moonlight', aka False Hydrangea.  It will one day - and here is the irrational exuberance again - enshroud the stark whitish property line wall (as viewed from our dining room) with a dense cloak of shining silver green leaves and glowing white Lacecap Hydrangea-like flowers. 

Not next week, not even next year, but eventually...

Texture in the Fall Garden

Nasella tenuissima, Pittosporum Creme de Mint
and mossy fountain

It has slowly been dawning on me all summer that texture is supplanting color as a more interesting element in my garden.    Maybe it's becoming apparent now because in the midst of a very slow, gentle Southern California autumn, there is no fall color, not really, and it wasn't that long ago that I was awash in color at this time of year.   

Every once in a while, usually from the freeway, I'll glimpse what might be a deciduous tree with a shimmer of fall color.  Not often, though.  The blueberries that I feel compelled to grow in our alkaline soil have vivid red tips.   I'm not sure if this is fall color or their silent expression of reproach at being planting down here where they don't really belong.

Norway Maple leaves blanket
the ground

Either way, this small shaft of color in no way compares to the stunning oranges, reds and yellows which would fill the sky overhead and eventually blanket the ground at my former home on Long Island, New York.  





So maybe this is why I am lately noticing subtle and not so subtle texture contrasts all over my garden; summer flowers are mostly gone and as I search for some change to signal the passing season I find texture in lieu of fall color.

From this angle, I admire the texture of wispy Coleonema beside chunky Coleus lanuginosa beside a splash of Liriope beside old fashioned Cast Iron Plant. Each calmly asserting their form, much more gently than would a Sumac or Dogwood as their emerald chlorophyll slowly ebbs away.
It's really in the fall that the garden starts to come alive in California.  As the weather cools and the rains start to sprinkle or pour all the accumulated salts are washed from the soil and the plants are renewed. 

A contrast of scale; my newly beloved (as I have set up colonies all over my garden!) Coleus lanuginosa (really a Plectranthus) with Erysimum 'Bowles Mauve' sans the mauve.

The Coleus (I know...for goodness sake, enough with the Coleus!) with our native groundcover Coyote Mint 'Pigeon Point' with the ever-present and armageddon-proof Rhaphiolepis 'Clara'.

My hope is that the Coyote Bush (Baccharis pilularis) is ornery enough (it is a clay tolerant, dry summer loving California native after all) to compete with the polite, but relentless Coleus.  I'd like it to weave its way through the coleus as a dainty contrast to the succulent, waxy leaves.

And to end the way I began with a contrast of stone against  plant:  Aztec man, purchased at a Long Island antique market, and very content to be relocated to the West Coast, nestled in a bed of Dianthus 'Ichmery'
(Annies Annuals in Richmond, CA.)

How One Mom Helped Create a School Garden - Volunteering & Fundraising | GreatSchools

How One Mom Helped Create a School Garden - Volunteering & Fundraising GreatSchools

The Wonders of Respiration

Some years ago I read about a relaxation-inducing breathing technique, something one can use if a stressful situation is causing one to breathe in short, fluttery breaths like a frightened squirrel on one of those spinning bird-feeders, not in slow, relaxed breaths like a calm and controlled adult human being. The technique was called something like 'Breathing the Universe'.

The basic idea is that the person performing the technique observes their out-breath, and ignores their in-breath.  They basically just wait until their lungs naturally fill with air again all by themselves.  According to the technique's inventor, we are part of a living, conscious universe and the universe conducts our in-breath, so we don't have to.  When we consciously breathe out, the universe will automatically breathe in with and for us and thus we relax and unite with nature as we breathe out and, through us, it breathes in, like an enormous oxygen exchange apparatus of which we are a tiny part.

Yes, yes, we breathe.  This is no secret, you say.  How does all this relate to plants? Well, I thought about this connection last week as we were studying transpiration (essentially, sweating) and respiration (essentially, breathing) in plants.  It's true, plants breathe and sweat, just like us.  See all those tiny droplets on the strawberry leaf in my raised veggie bed?  You always thought this was dew (falling as condensation from the sky), didn't you? Me, too.  It's not. Each drop corresponds to the end of a leaf vein which corresponds to the end of a root. The plant has dragged moisture out of the soil through its roots, pulled it up its stem and, in the morning, gently purged the excess as this stunning little diamond necklace hanging from the leaves.  Soon the droplets will evaporate into the air where they will become one with the universe, or at least with the air in my backyard, and later fall back to the soil where they will be pulled in by the roots, travel through the stem and be set free by the leaves once again.  

And, about the 'respiration' part.  Plants breathe.  Oxygen.  Just like you and me.  They also breathe carbon dioxide, as we all know, but in much tinier concentrations than we imagine.  Luckily, even though they don't take in all that much of our CO2 relative to the amount each of us exudes in one form or another, they graciously release quite a bit of oxygen for us to breathe due to the large amount of real estate occupied by their collective aggregation of leaves.  They breathe oxygen into their leaves, and even into their roots, which is why we unintentionally drown many of them by lovingly overwatering, thus eliminating oxygen at their roots.  This is also why we are told to 'aerate' our lawns, to re-introduce oxygen back to the roots of the grass we have so happily trampled into a concrete block.

While studying all of this breathing and sweating of plants it occured to me that we as a species are as utterly and completely entwined and enmeshed with nature's breath as my strawberry plant is.  Whether we want to acknowledge it or not.

Master Gardener Training Begins!

With great excitement and anticipation I recently began Master Gardener Training in Orange County, California!  Many Master Gardener programs, including Orange County's, have waiting lists and often more interested applicants than available spaces. My class consists of 45 Master Gardeners In Training (MGITs) of varying ages and walks of life. Get more information on Master Gardeners here:  http://www.uccemg.com/

Our Botany Lab class was held at The Huntington Botanical Garden.  What a wonderful way to spend a winter's day!  The world-renowned Desert Garden was a boggling mix of undersea shapes in galactic sizes.  Seeing a fully mature cactus and succulent garden was a treat and a long way from the tiny pots of cacti and succulents I'm used to seeing at the nursery.

We wandered the garden prior to class, before it opened to the general 
public. 

The Chinese Garden transport-ed me to a far away place as I strolled along the peaceful paths amid the bursting pink plum tree blossoms, elusive wisps of wood-smoke swirling in the air.