spidra's Journal

I justified paying for a landscape designer because I figured we’d save more money if we leaned on the expertise of a pro rather than relying on trial and error. Unfortunately, there were quite a few mistakes we paid for. One was siting pineapple sage in front of the raised beds. They grew to a height between 4 and 5 feet, shading a lot of the beds. The point was to grow something in front of the beds to soften the hard edges of the boards making up the beds. But you only need a plant between one and two feet tall to do that. Bad design.

I hate to give expensive plants away free, but being disabled makes it so. I can’t both sell it and ask someone to dig it up themselves unless the plant is super-valuable. So I Freecycled the plants. Someone came to dig one up today and the other one will be dug up tomorrow by another person.

After we’d finished, one of the hummingbirds buzzed the empty space disapprovingly, then moved on to the one bush that’s left. He’s going to be pissed when that one goes tomorrow. Of course, there’s plenty of hummer plants in the front yard but I don’t think as many of them are in bloom now. The Pineapple Sage is in full bloom.

I’ve learned that I need to cut this plant back or it gets sparse at the bottom and keeps growing at the top. It wasn’t getting enough water earlier this year but it looks much better since I caught that problem.

It has set a nice crop and it looks like it won’t be too too long before they’re ready to pick. Hard to tell with citrus, though.

They’re probably only a couple weeks from being ripe. My first decent sized crop off this tree.

Before I left on my trip, I had to go through a whirlwind sloppy round of transplanting. When the plants are in pots, particularly when they’ve been in there as long as I leave them in, they dry out faster than if they were in the ground. But transplanting as fast as we had to isn’t so great, either. Probably killed the passiflora.

The asparagus wasn’t looking too bad when I left but it looks better now.

I went to the UK for the first time recently. I had long read of the British love of gardening. I only had 18 productive days of travel for my trip to the UK and Ireland. Unfortunately, I couldn’t fit in any of the famous gardens. Not the Lost Gardens of Heligan. Not the Eden Project. Not the Poison Garden.

But that gave me an opportunity to observe “garden variety” (or “bog standard”, as the Britons like to say) gardens. For the most part, I didn’t see creative or elegant plant choices. The plants chosen were often garishly colored blooms with little subtlety. However, I had to admire how important it was to have hanging baskets, window boxes and other planters in public places. It was clearly important because it was everywhere. And I saw the posters and mementos of past wins for “…in Bloom” competitions. It really had a great effect. There were some towns I passed through that were very densely populated and had loads of brick or grey stone. The plants were a visual breath of fresh air in all that.

That’s something the US could learn from. The SF Bay Area has many many gardens and creative landscapes. But many other places in the US are full of sprawl. Full of concrete and little green space. Container gardening would be a way to ameliorate it all.

Even though I didn’t get to visit the famous gardens…no “Capability” Brown for me…the tidy bits of color the average Briton nourishes despite the challenging weather prove that gardening really is the national sport.

I didn’t grow up with them. I hardly knew anything about them. At some point, though, I got it in my head that I needed to grow mums because the irregular Asian style mums never show up at cheap florists. So I ordered some from King’s Mums.

Not only do they propagate easily, not only do they come back, they provide color at a time of year when it’s scarce. I came back to a grey Bay Area and the waning light of Fall.

I still need to know more about them. Highly-bred mums need to be pruned and pinched a certain way to look their best. So though I love the display I’ve come back to, I know it would look better if I’d pinched more and if I’d cut them back after last season. Now they’re tall and falling all over themselves with the weight of their inbred flowers. Still, they are really pretty and I love seeing the yard in bloom.

I highly recommend them.

These went into bloom while I was gone so I wasn’t able to be precise about when they started and how long the bloom period is.

I’m single. Perenially so. And I’ve been so financially unsuccessful as an adult that I dare not own pets. I have trouble affording my own healthcare, much less the healthcare of an animal. In the past, on those rare occasions when I could afford to vacation out of town, this has been a boon because I didn’t need a pet sitter or childcare. But when I got back into gardening in a big way, suddenly I needed to take care of something while I was gone.

I tried to get my drip irrigation system fixed before I left but the woman who was going to give me an estimate kept dragging her feet and doing things differently than she said. When she finally gave me an estimate, not only was it sky-high, but it came so late that I had no time for it to be done before I left. So I had to depend on friends. I hated to ask the favor, but otherwise I was going to lose all my plants due to the unseasonable heatwaves we’ve had this year.

I just arrived home last night. It’s been raining in Berkeley for the last three days, so that’s good news. However, I seem to have lost several expensive houseplants and expensive outdoor plants. So the feeling is bittersweet. I’m happy my friends could help me out by stopping by my house during the many weeks I was gone, but I’m bummed that despite having someone watching things, mistakes were made and expensive plants were lost.

On the good side, I’m so happy to see the chysanthemums in bloom. Even though the yard is looking shaggy as hell and there’s lots of work to do, it’s nice to have some color.

I usually see humming birds on my salvias, but I was stunned to see a hummingbird nursing one of these while I was showing a prospective housemate around. I wish I hadn’t been busy housemate-hunting because I would have dropped everything to grab the camera.