DryStoneGarden

Lobelia Queen Victoria

The word on the street is that this summer has been the coldest and foggiest in the Bay Area in 39 years. I can believe it; it has been so foggy and windy at our house, I started wearing long johns last week. The plants in our garden don’t seem to mind as much as I do. I don’t notice any particular lack of flowers, and the usual late-summer suspects are all blooming. I missed last month’s bloom day, but most of the same plants are still in bloom, with the Lobelia and the Stargazer Lily being the two main ones that hadn’t quite opened in mid-July.

Stargazer Lily

In June we accidentally let our containerized native lilies dry out, so they declined to bloom this year. The Stargazer is in the ground, so it’s flowering nicely.

Indigofera

The Indigo Bush, Indigofera heterantha, behind the Stargazer is our reliable summer-blooming shrub. It has been happy this year, with none of the aphids that appeared on it last year around this time. The ornamental oregano at its feet hasn’t seemed to attract as many honey bees as usual, probably because the weather has been so chilly.

Western Spicebush, Calycanthus occidentalis

The Western Spicebush is our other summer blooming shrub. It has been going for several months now, with lots of seed heads, flowers, and new buds. It loves the graywater from our laundry machine.

Rocoto Flowers

The Rocoto pepper is also enjoying a long season. The flowers aren’t very noticeable from a distance, but I like them up close. I don’t think people with sunny vegetable gardens can appreciate how happy I am to find a pepper that produces so well in our foggy, part-sun site.

Coyote Mint, Monardella villosa

The Coyote Mint, Monardella villosa, also has a long bloom season in our garden. And the Beach Primrose, Camissonia cheiranthifolia, has been going for a while. It’s doing a nice job of sending flowers out into some of the other plants around it.

Dudleya plant, Camissonia flower

Thanks to Carol at MayDreamsGardens for hosting bloom day. Click through to find links to tons of other blogs showing off what they have in flower. Below, I have a list of our other plants in bloom.
(more…)

This June Bloom Day finds the garden needing some clean up and maintenance, but with plenty of things blooming. I like how the Brodiaeas look and the big spicebush in the back is really happy and the purple leaved canna in our gray water container is about to start blooming, but all of the spring bloomers still need to be deadheaded and there are bamboo leaves in all the plants, and the skunks have also started digging in the garden. I can hear them out there digging as I do this post. There are four young ones in the local family this year, an improvement over last year when there were seven.

Oriental Lily

This Oriental lily is probably the most accurate depiction of the state of the garden.

Lemon Lily, Lilium parryi

I have several Lilium parryi, the native Lemon Lily, grown from seed, now in gallon pots. This is their third year and my second flower. The flower doesn’t last long, but it’s really pretty.

Fried Egg Flower, Matillija Poppy

This year the Matillija poppies really remind me of fried eggs.

Monardella macrantha Marian Sampson

The Monardella macrantha is draping down into the foliage of some Clarkia. It might have my favorite red of all the California natives.

Scrophularia

The Scrophularia is a nice red if you put your face or camera about three inches away. Otherwise, it can be hard to tell that it’s blooming. I like the Galvezia from a little more of a distance.

Galvezia speciosa, Island Snapdragon

Calycanthus occidentalis, Western Spicebush

A couple more shots of the Spicebush which has completely taken over the area in front of the outdoor shower. The fragrance of the flowers is just barely noticeable, unlike the wisteria which was very strong. Interestingly, the fallen petals of the wisteria burned holes through the leaves everywhere that they landed on the spicebush. None of the other plants have that problem.

Nasturtium in the Spicebush

Spicebush and Canna

Thanks to Carol at MayDreamsGardens for creating and hosting bloom day. Click over for links to all sorts of other blogs showing off their flowers.

I’ve been keeping a list of everything in bloom in our garden each month, so I’ll be adding that to this post when I get a chance. It usually takes me a couple of days to add it.

We have a fair bit going on for bloom day. The woodland strawberry bed has campanula and Allium unifolium and the last of the bearded irises.

Coastal Cal Poppy with Geranium petal

Aquilegia Black Barlow

There is something about A. ‘Black Barlow’ that’s so black, it’s like how much blacker could it be, and the answer is none. None more black.

Aquilegia chrysantha

Aquilegia chrysantha is my favorite columbine. I even like it better than the native one.

Nicotiana Limelight

3 month old Hellerbore blooms

These flowers were new and purple for February bloom day, invited back into the bloom day mix because they still look pretty good three months later. Gotta like a flower that can age so gracefully.

Beach Primrose, Camissonia cheiranthifolia

I also like how the Beach Primrose flowers age.

Hebe Pattys Purple

We have a spot by the front steps where we rotate in whatever we have blooming in a container, like a display at the nursery. This month is Allium unifolium, in March we had Daffodils, in April Freesias. Next month should be the Lilies which are now budding. I’m not sure what we’ll have after that, but it’s starting to become a thing, to have something blooming in that spot every month if possible.

Allium unifolium blooming

Click over to MayDreamsGardens for the growing collection of links to all of the other bloggers posting for bloom day. My thanks to Carol for hosting.

I’ve been keeping a list of everything in bloom each month for bloom day. I should have the list up soon.

– Update — And now it’s up, below the fold.

(more…)

Meadowfoam with Blueberry and Iris

Happy tax day to everyone. I took these photos while working on our taxes, but I don’t see any signs of anti-tax fervor. I did first type out ‘Blom Day’ for the title, in true tea party style, but overall the gardens seems quite free of financial angst. Except for spittle bugs on some of the plants, the garden seems quite happy.

The wisteria shower is the highlight of the garden, with probably the meadowfoam (Limnanthes douglasii) the next best. We have four patches of it in our garden, with the sunnier patches in full bloom now and the shadier patches just starting up. I really like it. It does great in any spot where we’ve improved the soil with some compost. Though it has a reputation for liking water, it has never needed any extra, probably a sign that our garden is naturally somewhat damp.

Meadowfoam and Geranium Bill Wallis

The Geranium “Bill Wallis” didn’t work its way into the mass of meadowfoam quite as well as I’d hoped, but some of the flowers are together. This is the third year for this patch in the vegi garden. The meadowfoam seems to finish at just the right time for planting a tomato or zucchini, and then it comes back on its own as the summer crop is ending.

Meadowfoam, Mustard, Miners Lettuce, Garlic

Triteleia ixioides Starlight

The Triteleias have started. It seems clever that they open the flowers down at ground level, before raising them up to where you can see them.

Sacred Flower of the Incas, Cantua buxifolia

The Sacred Flower of the Incas is blooming.

Sacred Flower with Wisteria

A couple of branches made it up into the wisteria. I’m not sure if I would call the Sacred Flower a vine, but I wouldn’t really call it a shrub either.

Bearded Iris

We brought home some bearded iris divisions three years ago and stuck them in the garden without knowing what color they’d be. When we don’t like the color we move them to my mom’s house. We’ll see about his one.

Freesia

We’ve had a few mystery freesias for a couple of years, too. The orange turns out to match the poppies and calendulas in our inner yard, so these can stay.

Purple Needle Grass, Nassella pulchra

And the bunchgrasses are blooming. I sometimes forget to think of them as flowering plants.

Festuca californica

Thanks to Carol at MayDreamsGardens for hosting Bloom Day. Click over to her blog for links to a ton of other bloggers showing what is blooming in their gardens. The full list of what is blooming in my garden and a few more photos are below. (more…)

Coastal California Poppy, Eschscholzia californica var. maritima

A lot of our plants seemed to make an effort to open their flowers for Bloom Day, including our first Cal poppy of the year which opened yesterday afternoon. It looks like it has been storing up sunshine all winter and is now ready to give some back.

Tazetta Narcissus, Falconet and Golden Dawn

We have two kinds of Tazetta Naricssus blooming. I think Golden Dawn is the slightly paler one, Falconet the slightly more orange one, but I’m not actually sure. It turns out that when you buy very similar-sounding varieties, you end up with very similar-looking flowers. Between them, they have our yard smelling of Narcissus.

Blue Eyed Grass, Sisyrinchium bellum

The Blue Eyed Grass seemed to do the California poppy thing, where the first flower from the plant is unusually large and the subsequent flowers are smaller. I have about a dozen throughout the garden. I think they are all blooming at this point.

Unopened Tulipa saxatilis yesterday morning

A few of the species tulip, Tulipa saxatilis, have been trying to open for about a week, and then yesterday’s sunshine popped several open. My first time growing a species tulip; supposedly this one will naturalize here. I’m happy with them even if they don’t come back.

Opened Tulipa saxatilis in the evening

New Zealand Tree Fuchsia, Fuchsia excorticata

The New Zealand Tree Fuchsia, Fuchsia excorticata, is probably the strangest plant in bloom right now, with flowers that change color over a long period of time. I’d seen them in New Zealand and was curious to see one in bloom, so I bought one a few years ago. Now that I’ve been growing one, I’m still not sure what I think of it.

Heuchera, Ninebark, Wind Grass, Hardenbergia

The Heuchera maxima is another plant that opened it’s first flowers yesterday; the hybrid heucheras have been blooming since last week. The ninebarks are budding and about to open, which seems really early for them. The hardenbergia in the background has been blooming for a while, maybe the plant most fully in bloom right now.
I’ve been trying to maintain a list of everything in bloom on bloom day, but I haven’t had a chance to do that yet; I’ll probably add it to this post later tonight or tomorrow night (11/21 — it’s now below the fold). The list will be quite a bit longer than last month, as one would expect in the Bay Area in March. My thanks, as always, to Carol at MayDreamsGardens for creating and hosting Bloom Day. Click over to her site for links to about a hundred other garden blogs showing off their flowers. (more…)

Arctostaphylos Louis Edmunds

I’ve haven’t posted about the garden since we got back, but it has been doing well. Pretty damp, despite the sun this weekend. Almost every plant is happy about all the moisture, though not too many have started to bloom. Most are still in foliage mode; a number of them have a few stray flowers and others are budding up, but not too many are in full bloom. One of our manzanitas, Arctostaphylos ‘Louis Edmunds,’ is pretty much the one plant at peak bloom. It’s a good one, though, maybe my favorite manzanita.

Columbine New Growth

Not a flower, but the new growth on the columbines has an almost floral look. The various shades of green in the garden look very lush after my month down in the desert.

Iris reticulata Clairette with Beach Strawberry foliage

The first of the bulbs are going.

Our First Daffodil of the Year

Hellebore Buds

The first of the hellebore buds opened this weekend.

Hellebore Opened

Crocosmia

I don’t usually go for a tinted window as the backdrop, but the crocosmia does sort of belong with my truck in the background. I brought it back from the yard of a client who had tons of them and wanted something different. I wasn’t sure if I wanted it either, so I did one of those ‘unloading the truck after a long day’ type of installations, just dumping it in the ground in the nearest bare patch of soil I could find. Three years later it’s still in the same spot.

Crocosmia hanging out with the Ford Ranger

Aloe

The most dramatic plant right now is not actually ours. Our neighbor’s aloe, right on the property line, has been blooming since before we left for Baja. The rest of her yard is juniper and ivy, but I’m jealous of the aloe. This time of year, I always tell myself I should plant more aloes.

A list of our other blooming plants (all of them actually in our yard) is below the fold. My thanks to Carol at MayDreamsGardens for hosting bloom day. Click over to her site to see what other garden bloggers have blooming this month. (more…)