The Garden of June Rains

We got quite a bit of rain yesterday. The Bay Area got more rain in June this year than it did in January. That hasn't happened since the Gold Rush. To commemorate, this morning the kitties got some supervised release.



The garden has gotten away from me. Ahem. I'm removing plants now, and doing lots of pruning. I'm not going to buy any plants in 2011.



Haha--just kidding. I'm sure I'll buy something. No plans to do so right now, however.



The buckeye didn't bloom this year, again. It has never bloomed. I see young buckeyes blooming all over the place...but not in my garden. I think it's because I've over-amended the soil with mulch and compost, so plants grows more leaves than flowers. Well, I'm done with that. Hopefully all this lush growth is depleting the soil and making everyone a little bit less...complacent.



Well, leaves are okay. I'm quite fond of branches and stems too.



Some clematises are on the way out. I have a couple vines making new buds right now. More on those later.



We have the last of the foxglove. Where I can, I'm letting them make seed. Unfortunately, the tall, expiring spikes tend to lean into the paths. That was fun for a while, but I'm over it. Snip, snip.



Dahlias are just coming in. Except for one plant, I grew all my dahlias from seed. In pots last year, this year most of them have been moved into the ground.



The garden has four passionflowers. Two are blooming: Passiflora sanguineolenta,



and P. citrina.



Meanwhile, the compost bin is getting a lot of action.

In Brooklyn

These three colors--green and two members of the brown family--figure prominently in Brooklyn's Park Slope neighborhood which I visited last Thursday.











A friend from college has been living there for a number of years. He's moving back to California soon, and I was lucky enough to catch him while he was still there. We had a fine lunch at Campo de' Fiori--salads, the cured meat sampler, and square-cut Roman pizza--and then we visited the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.

He said people call this "the California market" because it has a parking lot and people can fit down the aisles side-by-side. I had to take a picture of the California market. It's funny that California is the reference point, because grocery stores are like that everywhere outside of New York (even in other dense cities, like San Francisco).



Brooklyn has meadow scenes too, just like Manhattan.



That bed was in front of the Brooklyn library.



Near here, I very much admired these urns. Want!!



The Brooklyn Botanic Garden was more like an estate garden than what I'm used to seeing in a botanic garden.



Lots of roses.

















And there's a large greenhouse complex...



where they keep all the plants we grow outdoors in California...







And many that we do not.









"The Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden is one of the oldest and most visited Japanese-inspired gardens outside Japan. It is a blend of the ancient hill-and-pond style and the more recent stroll-garden style, in which various landscape features are gradually revealed along winding paths." Link.



It was lovely indeed, but at this point I needed to hydrate so we did not linger long.

The High Line

Do not visit the High Line in the middle of the day. Go early or late, I think.



Even with the sea of humanity, it was still a thrill to visit my first Piet Oudolf garden. Since I am not afraid to make bold pronouncements, I will go ahead and call this the greatest new public space of the 21st Century. I can't be the first person to say so. What else could possibly push it out of the Number 1 position?



From now on when I visit New York, I will try to come here first thing in the morning. It sounds like Guy's job will be happy if he goes to New York at least once or even twice a year. I will tag along when I can. I think we might go in October. In the meantime, I will fondly recall a blazing hot Saturday in June.























Good for you, New York.

High Line, I look forward to our next meeting.