There's a little bit of that.
Usually by now the buckeye (Aesculus californica, left) leaves have started to dry out and drop to avoid the summer drought, but not this year. Not after all that rain this winter. Maybe next month.
The tall Verbena bonariensis is nothing if not airy.
You probably know that already; everybody grows this plant, huh?
As the plants reach mature sizes (which they have barely begun to do), their growth starts to define views.
Cobaea scandens, thick with flowers. And leaves. Just thick all over.
Would you be surprised to learn there's a whole tree in the garden that you probably don't know about because I have never taken a good picture of it?
Locals will recognize it immediately. For the rest of you, this is Psoralea pinnata, a pea family tree from South Africa whose flowers smell like grape soda. It's just now flowering for the first time. You'll be seeing more of it I suppose.
There's a lot of blue in the summer garden. Because blue is a cool color.
Tweedia caerulea makes the coolest blue. (But I can't wait for Salvia uliginosa, which should come online any day now.)
Dahlias should come online soon too.
Meanwhile, the manzanita is peeling.
We talk about moving in a few years. I'd like to take this plant with us, but I'm not sure how we'll get it through the backdoor.
Mimulus aurantiacus.
The cordyline serves as a focal point at the end of the cloud forest.
Looking back in the other direction it's a completely different view which is cool.
Senecio cristobalensis butts up against
Fuchsia boliviana 'Alba' whose flowers and edible fruit hang down in long, pendulous clusters. (Still waiting for 'Rubra' to come online; no indication of that happening anytime soon.)
My Tibouchina urvilleana makes a lot of orange leaves. More than any other Tibouchina in the whole world. It's not exactly what I want to see in June so I pick the leaves off with my fingers and let them fall and accumulate.
I find it hard to look at birds right now without thinking about the oil disaster in the Gulf...the disaster which apparently we are not allowed to see very many pictures of because...it would make us very angry?
You are safe here little hummer. There is no oil here.
And I refill the birdbath every day with fresh water.
Please just don't eat the swallowtail caterpillars.
In any garden there is good wildlife, and bad wildlife. For me the bad wildlife are possums that eat my squash. In order to thwart the bad wildlife, I received special dispensation to try squash in pots on the front stoop. I hope it's too exposed there for possums.
A potential problem might be that it's too exposed generally--to wind mostly, but maybe to sooty car pollution too? Will the black dust settle on my vegetables the way it settles on the walls of my house? I wash it off the house. I can probably wash it off the squash too. Right?
3 comments:
Good luck with your new squash location. I can't imagine growing squash in little pots like that, though. My two pumpkin plants are in danger of eating our house. Every day they're a foot longer, and one has already produced a foot-tall pumpkin. Ten days ago, on Bloom Day, all they had was flowers. How big is a pumpkin that's grown a foot in ten days going to be by October? Really, these plants are kind of terrifying.
That Tweedia does indeed have a fantastic color. Yet another plant I know nothing of.
My tibouchina is doing the same lower-orange leaf thing here in SoCalif. Just cut my two cobaeas back yesterday -- massive amounts of growth they make. Tweedia never takes off for me. Nice glimpse of your amazing garden and good luck with the squash -- look at all the vegetables grown right off Interstate 5 and the grapes off the roads in Napa with big tour buses. I'd say yours on the front porch are semi-protected in comparison.
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