There's a storm blowing in

So I don't have to water up here today.



I'm trying to simplify and harmonize the roof garden. I'm an uninspired container gardener at best, and it's always been a hodgepodge up here. I'm tired of it. I took out all the weedy Nassella tenuisima, raggedy gazania and Cotyledon orbiculata and a very sad specimen of Agave vilmoriniana who'd turned yellow and had roots growing a foot or two through the hole in the bottom of the pot.

I brought up several 1-g pots of this fragrant Aeonium balsamiferum from the nursery downstairs,



and made several divisions of Echeveria 'Afterglow', really one of the easiest succulents to propagate. And that's saying something.



Those two are the new backbone on the roof. I also have couple nice specimens of Kalanchoe beharensis and a vigorous black Aeonium 'Schwarzkopf' for a bit of contrast.

I replaced one clump of feathergrass with the restio Chondropetalum tectorum that I bought in a 4" pot a while ago. I don't know if a restio can grow well in a pot on the roof, but if it does I'll get another one. I like there to be some movement in a garden when the wind blows. Succulents tend to be rather inert.

Once the echeverias are done blooming I'll take them out of the copper fire pan and encourage this one Sedum whose name I can never remember to fill in the whole thing.



The plan is to improve the feeling up here using repetition. I hope it works.

We are temporarily hosting a beehive downstairs. This is my friend Claire's.



For unknown reasons, this hive is not doing well. It's also been raining a lot so she's feeding them saturated sugar solution in that inverted jar. They come out on sunny days.

Have I shown you Kitty World?



Guy and his dad built this last summer.



The kitties love it, especially at night. I coaxed Penny out for a picture.



It's not much, but it's better than nothing.



Down in the garden...



Everything is getting so big. I could be a case study in the perils of over-planting.



Plants aren't dying necessarily,



But there is definitely some congestion.





And, actually, there have been some losses, mostly among the natives. The Fremontodendron californicum, a favorite tree/shrub fell over in the rain last year and could not be salvaged. I managed to kill my treasured Keckiella cordifolia. I'm not sure how. I gave the Ribes malvaceum away because it never flowered. What good is a Ribes that doesn't flower? But we still have the buckeye,



here with a fuchsia,



and of course the Ceanothus 'Ray Hartman'.



It's peaking right now. Soon there will be pruning! There's a Passiflora sanguineolenta vining through it right now.



I never get to see the flowers, they are so far overhead. We still have many native perennials, like Grindelia hirsitula, Verbena lilacina, and Salvia spathacea all grown from seed by me, and doing well. It was hard to get that Salvia started, but it finally seems happy, spreading at will. I see lots of flower buds.



I managed to right the birdbath again, for now. Stay with me, birdbath. I took out one patch of Festuca californica for the sake of this Delphinium elatum 'Dusky Maidens'. I thought those flowers would look nice with the black phormium and gray artichoke nearby.



The Douglas irises are about to bloom. That will be nice. I started a couple seed trays of summer annuals this morning, Madia elegans and some Clarkia, I forget which. It seems kind of late to start seeds, so I hope it works out. Anything I plant from here on out will have to be watered this summer. So it goes.



We had a lot of daffodils this year, but I didn't get to enjoy them much with school. This is the last of them and it has a caterpillar.



Some remnant foxglove from a massive planting I did a couple years ago are still hanging around.



Remember Cobaea scandens? It became so massive I had to hack it back unto death. It's back! Volunteers are, anyway. You can see it climbing the deck post.



I can't allow it back on the deck, per Guy (and I agree), so I'm going to find out whether it's possible to hold it at 10 feet or so. Doubtful! I loved those woody vines as much as the flowers. I did not like the flowers dripping copious amounts of sticky nectar on the deck, however.

Another plant I was known for once upon a time, Hardenbergia violacea, has also seen better days. I hacked it back after letting it go wild for a couple years, and it has not rebounded. I may take it out altogether, or start with a new one. I think I'd like to try the pink variety.



Under the deck, Bartlettina sordida is doing very well, and right on schedule for April flowers.



Claire tells me there is movement afoot to change its generic name. This might be a Eupatorium soon...



The Bartlettina has been a great plant for us. I got it at a San Francisco Botanical Garden plant sale in 2005. Our other giant aster, Tithonia diversifolia continues to embiggen itself.



I need to go in there and do some serious pruning too. Unlike the vines, I don't think it will hurt this plant. It responds to being cut like a hydra, spouting 6 new shoots for everyone I lop off. Clematis 'Comptesse de Bouchard' is threading herself into it.



I've encouraged this with some feeding recently. Go, lady, go...

Anyway, that's what's going on here. I'm looking forward to spending more time in the garden this summer.



In the meantime, the cats and I are back inside waiting for the storm to blow in.

Garden Glimpses

I need to finish the roadtrip blog posting, but it's already getting so late. Maybe I'll just do one more post to wrap it up. In the meantime, I visited my garden... Spring is here but I don't have any wildflowers this year which is a damn shame. Spring without wildflowers in the garden feels awful. But with school, I just didn't have time to edit the garden to make room, or get seeds started.

Anyway...I think the closest thing I have to wildflowers might be some Camassia, a grassland prairie bulb. This particular bulb is three or four years old and very reliable in the garden. If/when we move, I'm digging it up and taking it with us.



Heracleum lanatum is another wild plant, and one of the heaviest self-sowers in my garden. I have to be careful where I allow volunteers to remain because the leaves get BIG. If you want a mini-Gunnera for a couple months every spring, welcome Heracleum into your garden.



My love affair with California-native perennial bunchgrasses might be waning. They are also heavy self-sowers, and I find them hard to identify and distinguish, even from weeds. Maybe the mistake was in planting too many different kinds. I think my favorite is California fescue (Festuca californica), but it's a little bit on the large side for the small city garden. Good thing I'm also fond of the smaller Nassella cernua which I also have a few of. If I were starting over now, I might use only Nassella cernua (which you can get seed for from Seedhunt, or buy already growing 4-inch pots from Annie's. But I am also interested in the exotic sedges like Carex testacea and Uncinia uncinata (the redder one in this picture):



Someday, I'll have a large monocots-only bed with those plants and a few hopefully well-placed cordyline, phormium, and beschorneria.





I also want a tree fern glen...



inter-planted with fancy fuchsias.



That's not too much to ask is it?

The Echium pininana (seen here, with Fuchsia boliviana) is in bud and soon to flower. The flower buds (you can't see them here) look red which is interesting because the usual flowers are blue. They could still open blue of course. Or be red. Echium species can be variable and who knows what might happen.



Do you do hanging baskets? So hard to water. I tried a few different times with different plants. Nothing really worked. Maybe in California hanging baskets belong in the shade garden, with tuberous begonias or something.

I've resorted to hanging glass instead.



A few freesia left... some came back from last year which is nice. These naturalize well for my friend on the peninsula. Maybe if I did less gardening they would naturalize for me too. I think they get dug up and/or buried too deeply with my constant puttering. (Not so constant this year tho'.)



The Fremontia is flowering. This plant has decided to do its own thing, totally disregarding the plans I had for it and the role in the garden I intended it to play. All I can do is prune it now. It's kind of cool after the first rush of flowers has faded to cut them all off and let them lie where they fall. They hang around for a couple days; it's a neat effect.

Late winter garden

Spring is almost upon us. Suck it, winter!

Up on the deck, Anemone coronaria is wrapping up for the season, so I had to get one more picture.



I always have a few flowers up here, but the deck is mostly succulents.



I've had very little time to do any gardening. These are musk strawberries I bought from Raintree Nursery. Exactly when and where are they going to get planted, I have no idea.



The pure red form of Fuchsia boliviana I grew from seed is finally blooming, after three years.



Fuchsias do well in San Francisco, except for the familiar hybrids which suffer from debilitating mite infestations. Before the mite arrived, those fuchsias were widely grown. Now you rarely see them and we have these kinds with elongated, tubular flowers instead.

That's Echium pininana behind the fuchsia; I grew it from seed too. I thought those plants were indestructible, but I've lost three for reasons I am not entirely sure of. They were doing well and then precipitously lost all their vigor and died, as if they got a fungal infection. Meanwhile sister plants right nearby are fine. I'm not sure what to think.

By and large, bulbs have not fared well this year. We have marauding rodents. A few Crocus 'Negro Boy' managed to survive.



All these pots had bulbs in them that got eaten.



Jonquils and other narcissi all survived. The animals must detect some fragrance from these bulbs, even buried in wet soil. Pots of tulips were destroyed but pots of daffodils were left completely untouched.



One of my favorite shade plants, Omphalodes cappodocica, starts to bloom this time of year. This low, spreading borage family member is widely available in nurseries here. Annie's Annuals sells another less well-known species (to me anyway) that I'd like to try out some day. It has white flowers.



I grow it under and around the tree fern, and fuchsias.



Usually I have to refill the birdbath with fresh water every day, but not this year. We've had that much rain. And they warned us to expect an exceptionally dry winter!



I've only had Clematis overwinter for the first time this year. I'm surprised at the rapid progress they're making. Buds on all of them already.



They make even the freesia seem tardy.



Cestrum elegans seems to bloom as steadily and reliably as any Abutilon. I cannot remember this plant without flowers since it started to bloom a few months after I planted it.



The Hardenbergia is almost done. Such a great vine. Love, love, love.



When I have a job again, and discretionary income, the garden will get more glass. There's that Echium pininana again.



Let's end with that most glorious of Californian winter bloomers, Ceanothus arboreus.



Recent, heavy rains have knocked it down a bit this year.



Hopefully the bumblebees are not too discouraged.