The unseasonally wet garden

Tomatoes are still small in the orange cages but at least the cages match the poppies.



Speaking of poppies, I've been looking at these for weeks trying to figure out what makes them different. Well, they're double. Duh!



Here's another orange I like right now, from an unnamed Senecio.





This wet May weather is weird, but it's almost August-like. A heavy fog will do this too.



Remember the unfurling top-setting onion from last week?



Here's a little area I'm unhappy with. There is too much root competition from the cup-and-saucer vine (Cobaea scandens) for anything much to grow here so I put down some rocks, and sowed some Nigella seed. The Nigella's coming up; that could fix it. But this corner just feels cluttered and messy to me. I'm thinking of using some Sempervivum here.



I gave the Cobaea a big pruning on top; it's all the way off the deck right now, but it will come back. It is coming back.
Besides the flowers, I really like its ropey trunk.



Here's another place where I'm not happy. I did some pruning and made a hole. Whoops.



The hole let me find this lost Calochortus tho'.



I guess planes flying over my garden would get a view like this.



And this. Remember when I moved my compost bin? It used to be over here under the tree fern. Now that I've moved it the tree fern has lost a major feeding artery, and the fronds are coming up much smaller than they used to, which is, well, horrible. Size matters!



Here's a view from where the compost bin was.



And another.



This is the nursery area. I'm still not sure what to do with the lovage (Levisticum officinale). How big should a pot be to keep it reasonably happy?



And the meadowsweet (Filipendula ulmaria). I need a plan for that too. Maybe some would be nice underneath the tree fern.



This year is going to be big for fall aster (Symphotrichum chilensis). I have four big, spreading patches of this plant. It may actually become something that I have to dig up in places to keep under control. Or, maybe not.



Also doing extremely well, but not subject to being dug up, Keckiella cordifolia--a favorite California native, from SoCal, I believe. Ungainly and wild, its stems spread through neighbors and resembles a frightwig. Then it makes hundreds of red trumpet-shaped flowers. Bring it.



In the lower left, I staked a pot* of Nerine to shore up a slope that was exposed and eroding into the path a bit. (*Poked bamboo stake into ground, put pot on top of stake through drainage hole--thus securing the pot from tip-overs when accidentally kicked by clumsy gardeners.)



Sinningia tubiflora may flower soon. In the meantime, the felty leaves are the softest leaves in the garden.



Even softer than lambs ear (Stachys byzantina)



I'm just about sick of looking at bulb foliage. Where I haven't cut it to the ground, I'm braiding it.