The blog year in review, 2009

We began 2009 with a visit to UC Berkeley. The Garden of Old Roses enchanted, despite being half-dead.



We went to the flea market where I didn't buy anything.



Listening to your comments, my dad finally agreed to cut down the Tragic Ash. Rest in Peace, Tragic Ash.



We wandered around in the Mission District. I showed you around where I used to live and my car got smogged. I popped down to the garden after watching the Obama inauguration.



The new president must rank high on this year's List of Big Things. I was happy for the change, but Obama doesn't do anything for me. I continue to not really get it.

We took a little jaunt around Nob Hill but the hike up Twin Peaks marked the first, substantial blog post of 2009. We took the 24 Divisadero bus to the Castro and walked the rest of the way.







We finished off January with a herbal medicine-making class I didn't care for at all, and a little visit to Chinatown.





I joined Twitter around then. It's been a disaster for the blog! You may recall the goal of 300 blog posts I made for 2009. I feel short by, ahem, 109 posts. In fact, I made 74 fewer blog posts in 2009 than I made in 2008. In light of that, what should my resolution for 2010 be? I'm reluctant to make any resolutions.

But to be clear: My commitment to this blog is permanent and steadfast. Doing this and hanging out with you is great fun and I never want it to end. So there!

February 1st was cool and crisp. We enjoyed some coastal vignettes.



I finally found the low, endemic form of Fremont's Camas on Bernal Hill



and we used Adah Bakalinsky's book Stairway Walks of San Francisco to visit parts of my neighborhood I'd never seen before.



I especially enjoyed this picture of Tecomaria capensis, Ceanothus sp., Salvia leucantha, Euryops pectinatus, and Rosmarinus officinalis (blurry, in front) blooming all together in a community garden.



I won a poetry contest on Garden Rant for free seeds from Botanical Interests.

It rained on February 15, so I rolled out Bloom Day Ellis Hollow-style, using a scanner and black cloth.



I made bloom day posts every month in 2009: January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December.

I stayed up late one night to finish Julia Child's outstanding biography My Life in France. At the time, I didn't know a movie starring Meryl Streep as Julia Child was in the works. Of the few movies I saw in 2009, Julie and Julia was easily my favorite.

We hiked 3-miles on Pulgas Ridge and waited for the rain.





In March I was a tourist in my own city. We visited Fishermans Wharf,



and the Musee Mecanique.




And then I was a tourist in someone else's city.



And by city, I mean remote tropical island.





Islands plural; we hopped.









Ah, so nice. We're going back in March. I am counting the days.

We came home to spring in full swing.









We took the stairs to the top of San Francisco's tallest building, 555 California Street, to benefit the American Lung Association. (Second tallest in absolute height, but 555 is built on a hill, so it stands taller.)



(I want to do it again in 2010, but we're catching that plane to Hawaii right afterwards and I don't want to push it. We'll see.)

April is usually the best month in gardens. 2009 was no exception.



We popped up to Seattle for a few days. The fascinating bonsai specimens at the relatively obscure Elandan Gardens in Gorst blew my mind.



We also had a fabulous dinner in West Seattle and visited the Kubota Japanese Garden.

When I got home we went to lovely Capitola. The blogger even made a rare appearance, getting a kiss!



We watched the surfers and found what must be the world's largest specimen of Echium fastuosum.



Going north this time, we stopped at Russian River Roses on our way to Healdsburg.



I did an East Bay garden tour and only enjoyed one garden. I was shocked. I don't think the gap between designer gardens and gardener gardens ever seemed so stark to me. I learned that I am not a designer gardener. Big surprise to you, I'm sure.

Meanwhile, my gardener garden got rain unusually late in May.



Seattle visitors came to us and I took them to Point Bonita Lighthouse in Marin County,



and Telegraph Hill




and North Beach in San Francisco.




Back home the garden seemed unseasonally wet for May



I used pictures to vent about something I read on Garden Rant. We recollected 2005, the year I began to garden.

We let the Bakalinsky book be our guide whenever possible. Here we are on Russian Hill.



We visited an old haunt for a few hours right around the time that I got sworn in as a juror on a 5-week trial in federal court.



I lost a lot of blogging momentum during those weeks, but I got this nifty trip to Preservation Park out of it.



During a trial recess, we busted of town for a weekend and made it all the way to Mendocino, always one of my favorite destinations.




If you go, plan 2-4 hours just to explore the coastal cliffs around town.






The garden didn't miss me very much while I was on jury duty, but I missed the garden.





2009 was not a banner year for vegetables, but I enjoyed the first Magda squash.

Edgewood Park was beautiful in early summer.





According to the blog, I finished jury duty on June 24. and celebrated with Bloody Marys a the Cliff House with an old friend. We visited the Camera Obscura.



Recovering from jury dudy, I painted the garden door green and entertained many visitors.



I visited Filoli



and the Pulgas Water Temple right next door



and had lunch at lunch at Rossotti's.



Back in the City we admired the giant urn in Forest Hills and took in the view from Mount Davidson.



I hiked along the beach in Half Moon Bay and stumbled upon artist Michael Powers' incredible house.




We popped up to Seattle again for a couple days. I saw Ciscoe Morris's front yard, and had drinks in West Seattle.



We went to Guerneville again and played Pee Wee Golf under the redwoods.



It was nice to finally see the Moraga Tiled Steps. And the stairway walk around Golden Gate Heights ranks among my most favorite despite, or maybe because of, the foggy summer conditions prevailing on the day we did it. Four stars for the Golden Gate Heights walk.



We visit the Garden for the Environment all the time, but I saw some things in late July that I especially liked.




There were some great plant combinations below Twin Peaks



and above the Castro.



I received gifts from FitzGerald Nurseries in Ireland including this bright red cordyline, and two new "black plants", Phormium 'Black Adder' and Ceanothus 'Tuxedo'.



By late August, the garden settled in to full repose. This is my favorite time of year, when the ground has gone bone dry for lack of rain and the adaptive qualities of our Mediterranean flora work their magic.



All summer long, the house sparrows who visited the bird bath reliably at 11:35 a.m.



The Green Gulch Farm Trail hike was been on my to-do list for years. In 2009, I finally crossed it off. I want to do it again in spring 2010. The hills were dormant by the time we saw them in August.

September was way too hot to lug myself around Potrero Hill for a stairway walk, but I did it anyway.



We welcomed the appearance of cool blue in the hot summer garden.





And I began to notice signs of fall.



I offered to help my neighbor with some gardening, and he turned me down.

Blue skies and fog were the rule in San Francisco this September.



We had fun navigating the straw bale labyrinth at Arata's Pumpkin Farm.



I gave you my take on freaky-deaky Bolinas and we made a pilgrimage to legendary Larner Seeds for wildflower packets.




By early October, the light was getting awkward for taking pictures, but I had raspberries to show you and the Sea Squill bloomed (Urginea maritima).



A huge rainstorm blew in off the ocean mid-October, effectively ending summer.



We got 2.5" overnight, rare in California; the garden rejoiced.



I finally got a great picture of Miss Patty.



We took our second opportunity to visit Guerneville in 2009, this time blogging nearby Monte Rio and Cazadero as well.



October ended with one of 2009's big highlights, a weekend in Calaveras County to visit Calaveras Big Trees State Park. We spent the night in Angels Camp, grabbed lunch in Murphys, and spent the day hiking the north and south groves.














Back home, Bernal Hill was romantic at dusk.



The frequency of blog posting declined with the decreasing amount of daylight.



We went to Ukiah, but there wasn't much to see up there either. I squeezed out another stairway walk in December. And that pretty much brings us up to where we are now.



Are you writing a year-in-review post? Mine was light on the actual gardening this blog is nominally about. I still have 2 days, so come back and maybe we'll talk about major developments in the garden, like removing the bamboo, and the experiement with gravel mulch. We also got a new compost bin and I fought off marauding attackers.

If we don't talk again before 2010, I wish you a fun, memorable, meaningful night. Do something special for yourself and your family. Enjoy the Blue Moon. Happy New Year!