Sunday, December 18, 2011
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Bloom Day
Daylily
Alonsoa meridionalis 'Red'
Salvia greggii 'Dusky Pink'
Strawberry blossom
Armeria maritima - Sea Thrift
Gaillardia x grandiflora 'Oranges & Lemons'
Asclepias curassavica 'Silky Gold'
Agrostemma githago 'Milas'
Agastache aurantiaca 'Coronado'
Verbena lilacina 'De La Mina'
Pea ‘Oregon Sugarpod II’
Ceanthonus 'Dark Star'
Saucer Magnolia
Alonsoa meridionalis 'Red'
Salvia greggii 'Dusky Pink'
Strawberry blossom
Armeria maritima - Sea Thrift
Gaillardia x grandiflora 'Oranges & Lemons'
Asclepias curassavica 'Silky Gold'
Agrostemma githago 'Milas'
Agastache aurantiaca 'Coronado'
Verbena lilacina 'De La Mina'
Pea ‘Oregon Sugarpod II’
Ceanthonus 'Dark Star'
Saucer Magnolia
Saturday, November 12, 2011
Divisions and Seed Starting
Oh, I think one of my absolute favorite parts of gardening is dividing my plants. That time in their development when they're finally big enough to fill the space I put them in originally and look lovely... but awkward as well because they suddenly seem to stand all alone or in a strange arrangement compared to how I thought they would look. Take my two little island plantings, originally they were arranged like this:
Now the Ladybird poppies were gorgeous but as an annual inevitably does, it died away. That left me with two rather sad looking planting beds on either side of the pathway. But it's fall and I've had quite a few plants for nearly a year now so a couple weeks ago I became possessed and divided half a dozen plants in one evening.
Now I'm in love with the arrangements on our little island again, even if they still need some growing in. The right side now looks like this:
The plant colors and texture mesh much better now. In the bottom left, there's a large clump of lambs ears that I took out of the clump I started from seed last year (it does look like new leaves will have to grow in before it's beautiful again but there are clearly new ones growing). Then in the middle is an Agastache 'Purple Pygmy' and the Aristea inequalis I had on the other side of the island earlier. Their blue and purple flowers will blend beautifully next year I think. Then, in the slightly bare space below them, is a hunk of the pink dianthus I bought a year and a half ago from Annies (they don't carry it anymore and I've forgotten the name!) and some reseeded Nemophilia 'Baby Five Spot'. Also for added texture the one clump of blue fescue that I had before is now two much prettier clumps and I also have a short bronze grass I never got the name of. Lastly, you can barely see the newly two clumps of Sisyrinchium hybrid 'Devon Skies' at the top corner. I'll take another division of those and fill the very corner as well eventually.
Then on the other side:
As the plants aren't in bloom at the moment, one has to imagine the effect but large and in the middle is a Cleveland Sage and around it I have put another division of Blue Fescue and lambs ears. Then, in the same place it has been all year, now hidden by the sage, is my Foothill Penstemon, one of my favorite california natives. Here's a picture I took of it earlier:
But shortly before my division spree, I cut all the spent flower stalks off this one Penstemon and collected the seed. It was an amazing amount of seed! I thought after cutting the stalks that I would just lay them down on the porch and go back to the garden for a while but when I put them down a spray of seeds went flying out of them (apparently I was just in time to collect the seeds). So I swept what I could of those seeds into my hand and put the stalks in a large mixing bowl and by the time I was done, I had covered the bottom of the bowl completely with seeds, probably a thousand, maybe even two thousand seeds. And those from maybe four or five stalks. (by the by, the seedpods for Foothill Penstemon smell very much like dung)
Shortly after collecting them, I planted some into four small pots and put them out next to the lawn and in a couple weeks had this:
The two in the top row on the right, I had thought were Mask Flower seedlings but I was so happy to find out that they were baby Agastache Coronado. I knew when I finally touched them last week and smelled the strong mint scent. So last weekend I carefully split up these six pots into two full flats of baby plants.
With the Agastache, I was very happy to find, I had enough plants to fill 16 pots and even put two to a pot for a few of them. Then, even though I only had four pots, I split the Penstemon into 14 larger pots with a bunch of little plants in each one. God, I'm going to have more groundcover than I will know what to do with.
As if those aren't enough seeds to be going on with, before splitting those, I planted a bunch of other seeds in this flat:
If you wanted to look at the plasticware I've written on with a permanent marker to make cheap plant tags (I quite like the look hehe), you would see I have: Dianthus (from before), Geum 'Mrs Bradshaw', Ladybird Poppies, Blue Flax, Lambs Ears, Catnip, Broccoli and two types of Lettuce. Other than the vegetables and Catnip, everything is from my own garden collected seeds. And I can confirm since about last week, every pot has some germinated seeds! So happy! Especially for the poppies because I wasn't even sure if the powder that was in my seed bag with the seed heads was actually seed or dust.
Since last week, I've taken all my flats of seeds and added them to the top of the garden in my vegetable area.
As I don't have anymore Sluggo and the weedy bulbs of onion and oxalis are coming out in droves, I put my flats on top of a weed suppressing blanket of cardboard.
Next time, I'll hopefully be able to say the other two and half flats I have up there have also germinated.
Now the Ladybird poppies were gorgeous but as an annual inevitably does, it died away. That left me with two rather sad looking planting beds on either side of the pathway. But it's fall and I've had quite a few plants for nearly a year now so a couple weeks ago I became possessed and divided half a dozen plants in one evening.
Now I'm in love with the arrangements on our little island again, even if they still need some growing in. The right side now looks like this:
The plant colors and texture mesh much better now. In the bottom left, there's a large clump of lambs ears that I took out of the clump I started from seed last year (it does look like new leaves will have to grow in before it's beautiful again but there are clearly new ones growing). Then in the middle is an Agastache 'Purple Pygmy' and the Aristea inequalis I had on the other side of the island earlier. Their blue and purple flowers will blend beautifully next year I think. Then, in the slightly bare space below them, is a hunk of the pink dianthus I bought a year and a half ago from Annies (they don't carry it anymore and I've forgotten the name!) and some reseeded Nemophilia 'Baby Five Spot'. Also for added texture the one clump of blue fescue that I had before is now two much prettier clumps and I also have a short bronze grass I never got the name of. Lastly, you can barely see the newly two clumps of Sisyrinchium hybrid 'Devon Skies' at the top corner. I'll take another division of those and fill the very corner as well eventually.
Then on the other side:
As the plants aren't in bloom at the moment, one has to imagine the effect but large and in the middle is a Cleveland Sage and around it I have put another division of Blue Fescue and lambs ears. Then, in the same place it has been all year, now hidden by the sage, is my Foothill Penstemon, one of my favorite california natives. Here's a picture I took of it earlier:
But shortly before my division spree, I cut all the spent flower stalks off this one Penstemon and collected the seed. It was an amazing amount of seed! I thought after cutting the stalks that I would just lay them down on the porch and go back to the garden for a while but when I put them down a spray of seeds went flying out of them (apparently I was just in time to collect the seeds). So I swept what I could of those seeds into my hand and put the stalks in a large mixing bowl and by the time I was done, I had covered the bottom of the bowl completely with seeds, probably a thousand, maybe even two thousand seeds. And those from maybe four or five stalks. (by the by, the seedpods for Foothill Penstemon smell very much like dung)
Shortly after collecting them, I planted some into four small pots and put them out next to the lawn and in a couple weeks had this:
The two in the top row on the right, I had thought were Mask Flower seedlings but I was so happy to find out that they were baby Agastache Coronado. I knew when I finally touched them last week and smelled the strong mint scent. So last weekend I carefully split up these six pots into two full flats of baby plants.
With the Agastache, I was very happy to find, I had enough plants to fill 16 pots and even put two to a pot for a few of them. Then, even though I only had four pots, I split the Penstemon into 14 larger pots with a bunch of little plants in each one. God, I'm going to have more groundcover than I will know what to do with.
As if those aren't enough seeds to be going on with, before splitting those, I planted a bunch of other seeds in this flat:
If you wanted to look at the plasticware I've written on with a permanent marker to make cheap plant tags (I quite like the look hehe), you would see I have: Dianthus (from before), Geum 'Mrs Bradshaw', Ladybird Poppies, Blue Flax, Lambs Ears, Catnip, Broccoli and two types of Lettuce. Other than the vegetables and Catnip, everything is from my own garden collected seeds. And I can confirm since about last week, every pot has some germinated seeds! So happy! Especially for the poppies because I wasn't even sure if the powder that was in my seed bag with the seed heads was actually seed or dust.
Since last week, I've taken all my flats of seeds and added them to the top of the garden in my vegetable area.
As I don't have anymore Sluggo and the weedy bulbs of onion and oxalis are coming out in droves, I put my flats on top of a weed suppressing blanket of cardboard.
Next time, I'll hopefully be able to say the other two and half flats I have up there have also germinated.
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Home Renovations
Yes, amazingly, as promised I am actually doing a post on our interior work! Over the summer, over two months ago, I finally finally finished plastering the living room. I did all the plastering, and most of the paint removal before that, so it was supposed to be my husband's job to sand the walls. Of course, there was no attempt to sand the walls in the last two months, but eventually, we decided we should sand it together the weekend before this.
So we draped everything in plastic to avoid the dust problem we had when we stripped the paint.
We even taped up a tarp over the doorway, though with a quite weak tape that failed a few times as we worked. The draft was fun to watch, making it billow back into the dining room.
Apparently, you should use duct tape instead, next time we definitely will. Also, we probably should have know not to pile everything we had in the living room on the dining room table. As you will soon see. Here is what we had after the three or more hours of sanding (Not bad for all the grueling hours I put into getting the plaster onto the walls; electric sanders are wonderful).
Then, a bit of the way into those three hours we noticed a light snow building up behind the curtains so tried to lessen the damage by draping another tarp over all our things on the dining room table.
We had had the forethought to close the doors to the bathroom and two bedrooms, however...
As you can see from the fog of dust, it might have been a good idea to shove some towels into the inch wide opening between the bedroom doors and the floor. The bathroom came through pretty much unscathed though because there's a raised lip of wood to cover the edge of the tile floor, pretty much eliminating that gap.
Then, there was this weekend. Starting at noon yesterday and working leisurely until about 6 o'clock tonight, we finally painted our front room. Let us please remember where we started.
Now, finally, a finished room - viewed from sunset, of course, but you can just see the light subtle green.
This makes 4 out of 6 rooms painted, but this one feels the real accomplishment. This is the only room that has been properly replastered and sanded. There were a dozen large cracks throughout the room, now all completely invisible.
Maybe this will make us more eager to get the rest of the rooms done.
So we draped everything in plastic to avoid the dust problem we had when we stripped the paint.
We even taped up a tarp over the doorway, though with a quite weak tape that failed a few times as we worked. The draft was fun to watch, making it billow back into the dining room.
Apparently, you should use duct tape instead, next time we definitely will. Also, we probably should have know not to pile everything we had in the living room on the dining room table. As you will soon see. Here is what we had after the three or more hours of sanding (Not bad for all the grueling hours I put into getting the plaster onto the walls; electric sanders are wonderful).
Then, a bit of the way into those three hours we noticed a light snow building up behind the curtains so tried to lessen the damage by draping another tarp over all our things on the dining room table.
We had had the forethought to close the doors to the bathroom and two bedrooms, however...
As you can see from the fog of dust, it might have been a good idea to shove some towels into the inch wide opening between the bedroom doors and the floor. The bathroom came through pretty much unscathed though because there's a raised lip of wood to cover the edge of the tile floor, pretty much eliminating that gap.
Then, there was this weekend. Starting at noon yesterday and working leisurely until about 6 o'clock tonight, we finally painted our front room. Let us please remember where we started.
Now, finally, a finished room - viewed from sunset, of course, but you can just see the light subtle green.
This makes 4 out of 6 rooms painted, but this one feels the real accomplishment. This is the only room that has been properly replastered and sanded. There were a dozen large cracks throughout the room, now all completely invisible.
Maybe this will make us more eager to get the rest of the rooms done.
Monday, August 8, 2011
Stress Relief
These past two months have been filled with stress after stress. First, my husband, the OUSD teacher, received his pink slip, along with 1/3 of all the teachers in Oakland. About a month ago, that slip was rescinded, but two weeks before that I found out that my near senile boss had advertised my job. Not that I was looking for jobs at the time, I was good at my position and enjoyed the work, the ridiculous old man accidentally showed me proof of the ad himself. One of my many roles was to draft the occasional e-mail for him, so he asked me to do that for him on that Monday and I see a response to his ad at the top of his inbox (he's an old man who doesn't really understand e-mail). Even more shocking, two weeks later, I was able to quit for a new position in a walnut creek medical office. Again, it doesn't end there, the seemingly kinder, more level headed new boss turned out to be a completely deluded nutcase and about a million dollars in debt with no income coming in (to be brief - I could go on forever about my month with her and prove it but this is the wrong blog for that). I practically didn't stop looking for jobs because of what I saw the first day I logged into her QuickBooks.
But for the past week and a half, I've been at my new place of work - God, I hope this one will work out. I'm working for a landscape design and construction company in Berkeley - 5 Elements Design.
This could be a dream come true...! And the end of our problems...?
During all of this, I've found comfort in working in the garden and house. Next time I post, I'll try to show some of the house. It's just hard to show the slow slow progress that I've made in plastering the front room. But the garden has changed quite a bit in this month.
The lawn is firmly established, about 60%-40% grass to weeds.
About a month ago, you could see the ladybird poppies and lupine, the stars of this area.
The lupine grew shockingly fast, from a tiny 6" puff to 3 feet with blooms in two months. But it grew too large for its place, so last week I pulled it out and pruned the lavender next to it and moved it into the vacant spot.
This spot isn't shining anymore but the lavender will fill the area nicely and of course, next year the daffodils will still have room to come back up.
These two sad looking plants, I planted just next to the pink Dianthus above. I started these from seed a year and a half ago, letting them die back three and four times, not watering them, and not repotting them until a few weeks ago when I decided to finally pay them some proper attention.
Now they've gone from scrawny and sad to beautiful pink Echinacea (with a little more growing, they'll look great from every angle).
Down closer to the house and my neighbor's garage, the wildflowers are completely faded now. I've cleared most of this already and collected tons of seed. I'll have more wildflowers next year but positioned around perennials so that I don't have totally wasted looking areas next year.
Already the perennial monkeyflower is starting to fill in that bare area. There's also a very small buckwheat and milkweed that aren't quite photo ready. I've left just one of the wildflowers standing because of the peculiar way the bees were acting around it...
I think this is Gilia capitata... and well the bees apparently like to use it as a bed... or drugs den. I can see them there everyday, completely stoned and oblivious to my presence. I can move the flower heads around, brush the bees themselves a little and all they do is twitch their wings or move their legs a bit.
Then, there's the new bed next to the garage which has filled in very nicely. The trellises are completely covered by the nasturtium vines I bought from Annie's.
From this angle, the vines are just what I wanted - a beautiful pop of yellow on blue. However...
The lower you look the worse it is. I've decided I'll be changing the vines next year, I really love the reddish pink bougainvillaeas or maybe a clematis. But no more yellow, it sounded nice and looks good up close but from far away it looks too much like yellowing leaves.
The little hostas are flowering quite prettily, not sure what type they are.
Geranium pyrenaicum 'Bill Wallis'.
Then there's our first attempt at edibles. My husband has a great weakness for rhubarb pie so here we are. One month ago, we had this.
Now we have this! What ridiculously huge leaves. The two lettuces I tried between them, I've ripped out now - turns out they were a bitter type, not something I'd like.
We've put the half wine barrel up in the back right of the yard where we plan on putting more edibles someday. Then, two weeks ago, I dug up and divided a very old Salvia leucantha and planted 5 large divisions along the fence here. I can just imagine how beautiful the line of them will look next year.
But for the past week and a half, I've been at my new place of work - God, I hope this one will work out. I'm working for a landscape design and construction company in Berkeley - 5 Elements Design.
This could be a dream come true...! And the end of our problems...?
During all of this, I've found comfort in working in the garden and house. Next time I post, I'll try to show some of the house. It's just hard to show the slow slow progress that I've made in plastering the front room. But the garden has changed quite a bit in this month.
The lawn is firmly established, about 60%-40% grass to weeds.
About a month ago, you could see the ladybird poppies and lupine, the stars of this area.
The lupine grew shockingly fast, from a tiny 6" puff to 3 feet with blooms in two months. But it grew too large for its place, so last week I pulled it out and pruned the lavender next to it and moved it into the vacant spot.
This spot isn't shining anymore but the lavender will fill the area nicely and of course, next year the daffodils will still have room to come back up.
These two sad looking plants, I planted just next to the pink Dianthus above. I started these from seed a year and a half ago, letting them die back three and four times, not watering them, and not repotting them until a few weeks ago when I decided to finally pay them some proper attention.
Now they've gone from scrawny and sad to beautiful pink Echinacea (with a little more growing, they'll look great from every angle).
Down closer to the house and my neighbor's garage, the wildflowers are completely faded now. I've cleared most of this already and collected tons of seed. I'll have more wildflowers next year but positioned around perennials so that I don't have totally wasted looking areas next year.
Already the perennial monkeyflower is starting to fill in that bare area. There's also a very small buckwheat and milkweed that aren't quite photo ready. I've left just one of the wildflowers standing because of the peculiar way the bees were acting around it...
I think this is Gilia capitata... and well the bees apparently like to use it as a bed... or drugs den. I can see them there everyday, completely stoned and oblivious to my presence. I can move the flower heads around, brush the bees themselves a little and all they do is twitch their wings or move their legs a bit.
Then, there's the new bed next to the garage which has filled in very nicely. The trellises are completely covered by the nasturtium vines I bought from Annie's.
From this angle, the vines are just what I wanted - a beautiful pop of yellow on blue. However...
The lower you look the worse it is. I've decided I'll be changing the vines next year, I really love the reddish pink bougainvillaeas or maybe a clematis. But no more yellow, it sounded nice and looks good up close but from far away it looks too much like yellowing leaves.
The little hostas are flowering quite prettily, not sure what type they are.
Geranium pyrenaicum 'Bill Wallis'.
Then there's our first attempt at edibles. My husband has a great weakness for rhubarb pie so here we are. One month ago, we had this.
Now we have this! What ridiculously huge leaves. The two lettuces I tried between them, I've ripped out now - turns out they were a bitter type, not something I'd like.
We've put the half wine barrel up in the back right of the yard where we plan on putting more edibles someday. Then, two weeks ago, I dug up and divided a very old Salvia leucantha and planted 5 large divisions along the fence here. I can just imagine how beautiful the line of them will look next year.
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