The garden of scarce blog posts

I apologize for the scarcity of blog posts recently, but I've been distracted by non-garden stuff. I'm not as tweeting much either.



The garden really slows down this year and it's tempting to think "nothing is happening". Also, the light is mediocre most of the time. There's a very narrow time interval when you can take pictures.



You can see what I mean from the deck.



But things are happning; there's no confusion about that.



I learned about the crimson-flowering fava beans from Michelle.



I forgot the name of this tiny Gladiolus





Echium pininana may be the closest thing this garden will ever get to a "structural plant". I have five of them in the ground, and sixth one on the way. The first batch grew vigorously from fresh seed, but seed sown later seems less so.



Anyway, they grow straight up and become towering spikes of blue flowers in the spring and summer. I'm not sure if that will happen in 2010 or not, so I have a wait-and-see approach.

Lots of things are sprouting from the ground, besides mushrooms.







And some trees have flowers.



And some of the trees that don't have flowers will have flowers later, like this Ceanothus with Rosa 'Moonlight' climbing up into it,



an idea that occurred to me while I was writing a note to Frances about what I should do with Rosa 'Moonlight'.

Saturday morning garden

My new camera can't come fast enough. I found the Canon of my dreams on Ebay for $300 and Guy made it my Christmas present. Yay! It's a discontinued model, but I can't imagine going without the vari-angle LCD. As a garden blogger, that feature is my life. Do you hold the camera up to your eye every time you take a picture? Ugh! No way.

Hopefully, the new camera will come this week. In the meantime...



Tithonia diversifolia. The fragrance is more than just chocolate. It's like chocolate + vanilla.



Just a couple flowers on it right now.

A surprise Fremontodendron flower in November. With the ever-present little brown ants. What insect eats ants? I need need to attract it.



And Clarkia amoena, also a surprise. This was from a seedling planted in July that benefited from proximity to a Meyer lemon getting supplemental water. What a horrible sentence.



There was some leftover Bailey's from Thanksgiving, and I'm drinking Irish Coffee. That's what's in the black mug.



Yesterday I sat and watched three different little birds come through the garden picking worms and caterpillars off everything. I just sat in that chair and watched them hop from place to place, feasting. Unfortunately, I didn't have a camera with me.



The raspberries are doing very well. I've been picking one or two here and there for eating in the garden. The canes take a year to really get going I guess. I look forward to having raspberries by the basketfull. Maybe next year I'll make a raspberry cheesecake for Thanksgiving. To go with the Irish coffee.



I've been cutting back the dead parts of the two remaining tomato bushes and letting them keep going otherwise. I mean, why not, right?

Love makes a family

A high pressure dome off the coast of California is keeping us sunny and warm in San Francisco. It was raining slightly when I came here to get married two weeks ago.



Today we came to protest 52% of California trying to take that away.











The sound system was a little faint, but we liked what we heard. The speakers emphasized the need for more cooperation and outreach, to avoid blaming other people, and to stay focused and clear-eyed. The winning side's support has fallen several percentage points in the last 8 years. We can win this, and we will.



As this is normally a garden blog, I am pleased to include a few pictures of the victory garden that was planted in the Civic Center last spring. Until today, I had not seen it. The garden was recently planted with winter crops like coles, greens, and peas, garlic and onions.



It was nice to see people enjoying the garden,



But a wood chip mulching is clearly in order.



And why not chip the clippings from the sycamore trees that got pollarded this morning.



We got there early, and the arborists were just finishing up. This picture was taken before the others. Fortunately, we found a spot under some trees that hadn't been pruned, so we had shade.

There were some good signs, most of them hand-made. We talked about making one, but unfortunately we didn't get around to it.



(Okay, I didn't even notice that Churh is missing a c!)









My favorite sign had a famous quote paraphrasing from Mohandas Ghandi, "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." So it goes.

For me, this one sums it up best: