The Gardeners Anonymous Blog

Seed Gathering Detour

I’m a freak. We had our annual Forth of July party on Saturday. We have a lot of friends and neighbors over. Around 100 of them.

This means days—sometime weeks—of preparation. Our party is held outside, of course. It’s hard to light sparklers and piccolo peets in the house, and the water slide just doesn’t blend with my carpets.

The problem with having the party outdoors is: It happens to be in the middle of my garden.

Why is this a problem?

Well, it’s not so much a problem with the location as it is with me. You see, while trying to get my party chores done, I get sidetracked. That’s right.

My neighbor popped in to see if there was anything he could do to help and there I was bent over a paper plate squeezing seeds out of the dried head of a columbine flower. I had absconded with the plate from the party stack I was supposed to be arranging on the table with all the other paper products.

Table? Oops I forgot to set it up.

Where were those darned paper products and plastic utensils anyway? Who cares?

Escargot Away

The pests in my garden have been out of hand this year.

It’s kind of depressing. I am growing some strawberry pots filled with succulents but something has been eating large holes in my hens and chicks (Sempervivum tectorum).

I had a sneaking suspicion who was eating my little hens, so my sons and I borrowed a high powered flashlight from my husband and we waited for the sun to go down (which took a while since the summer solstice just occured) and then we crept outside to the scene of the worst damage—and look what we found.

My hunch was correct.

While my sons and I were collecting a container full of these fat pig-like mollusks our neighbor, who also happens to be a chef, stopped by and laid claim to the snails.

You see, he wants to take them and purge them and make escargot from their little soft bodies.

Umm—tasty.

My kids couldn’t have been any more grossed out.

Love Apple Farm

I went to Love Apple Farm today.
My trip was very short because it was last minute and unannounced.
I hope to return for a more in depth interview and tour sometime soon.
While there, I did notice that Cynthia Sandberg the owner and I have quite a few things in common.
Cynthia lives in an old farmhouse, I live in an old farmhouse.

Cynthia likes herding dogs, I like herding dogs.

She raises chickens, I had a chicken once.
Cynthia uses organic compost and worms castings. Me too.

She seems to like mosaics, and so do I.

Cynthia reuses and recycles broken concrete, I reuse broken concrete.

She has a vegetable garden, so do I,

Cynthia has an RV, I have an RV.

Cynthia supplies Manresa, a famous Michelin-rated restaurant, with fresh produce from her garden every day

and…I have an RV.

Columbine Orgy

Before the season passes, I thought I would share some photos of my columbine. They went rather crazy this year.

High Hand Nursery: The Anal Retentive Place

I’ve been to many nurseries–in my home town, in the next town, in all the surrounding towns. I go to nurseries when I travel, nurseries when I’m on vacation, nurseries on Mother’s Day, on Father’s Day (I can always think of some ruse). Oh, and the plants in nurseries are so plump and full and lousy with blooms I just want to rub them all over my body. 

O.K., well maybe I going too far, but come on, you plant addicts, you know what I mean.

I was recently visiting a couple of good friends in the Sacramento area:

Friend #1

Friend #2

Friend #1 and #2 together at High Hand Nursery.

These two girlfriends, knowing that I have a fondness for greenery, took me to their favorite nursery in a little town called Loomis. Loomis was once the second largest fruit-shipping depot in Placer County.

The residents of Loomis show their concern for keeping a small-town feel by the great number of historic structures they have preserved.

High Hand Nursery is located in one of these structures. The place used to be High Hand Fruit Growers, one of the two main fruit packing and shipping plants in Loomis.

I like to refer to High Hand Nursery as the anal retentive nursery. Goodness, it was like Disneyland in a non-corporate way. There wasn’t a leaf out of place, heck, there wasn’t even a leaf on the ground. Maybe I should call it the happiest nursery on earth.

I had the urge to leave my shoes at the entrance to the nursery—it’s so clean.

My friends waited patiently while I wandered around with my jaw gaping open—it’s so gorgeous.

The potted plants for sale were artfully arranged among growing shrubs, bronze statues,




and old stoves—it’s the nursery where antique stoves and old trucks go to die and become planters.



The main fruit shipping building houses an art gallery—it’s so unexpected in a nursery.

There was an indoor nursery that any mother would be proud of—it’s so orderly.



We had lunch in the conservatory, smack dab in the middle of the nursery. And even though the food was just O.K., eating in an all-glass house under a Big Assed Fan in the middle of a lovely garden was heavenly—it’s such a great idea.

After lunch I took one last stroll around the nursery. One of the girlfriends finally came and got me. She took my hand and led me to the other’s idling car. She quickly shoved me in the back seat, jumped in the front while the other sped out of the parking lot slinging a wave of gravel onto another antique truck planter.
 
I watched through the back window as the High Hand Nursery sign grew smaller and smaller.

If you are in the Sacramento area I highly recommend a visit to High Hand Nursery.
High Hand Nursery is located at 3750 Taylor Rd, Loomis, CA 95650, (916) 652-2065

See ya there.

Alligator in My Garden

This weekend, after cleaning out the scary spot in my yard, I had to relocate several alligator lizards. As I have mentioned before, I can handle lizards (literally), but I can’t handle potato bugs. They are the Spawn of Satan. Ick.

I like lizards. Alligator lizards eat insects, millipedes, ticks, spiders and snails.

Imagine, a small alligator-like animal that eats ticks and snails. So I found homes for all my displaced alligator lizards in different areas of my garden.

I have a large yard. It’s like painting the Golden Gate Bridge. I start at one end and work my way to the other and then start all over. By the time one end is finished, the other end needs tending.

I placed one of the lizards in the shade under my apple tree, as I did I noticed this was the part of the Bridge that I hadn’t gotten to yet—there were weeds and snails everywhere.

I let the lizard go. When I came back with my clippers a few minutes later, this is what I found:

My lizard snacking on snails.

The Ick Factor

I knew I was in trouble, but I couldn’t help myself.

For six years there has been one of those spots in my yard, the spot where you throw all your unwanted stuff, one of those places that is forgotten and neglected. We all have them, like the junk drawer in the kitchen, or my purse, or my closet, maybe my bathroom, oh yah, definitely my car, goodness there’s always my attic, icky, then my dreaded garage, O.K., you get the picture.

The spot in my yard is home to my garbage cans, the worm composter, the regular composter, a tuff shed (another scary, neglected place) so it had a lot of problems already.

I have wanted to clear it and clean it out for a long time. This weekend I finally got my chance. I had my own slave. The slave was my husband working tirelessly under the guilt of Mother’s Day. He cleared the old woodpile out while I removed the broken concrete that was thrown there for lack of a better place.

I knew it was just a matter of time before I ran into a…gag…gulp…kak…POTATO BUG.

Oh yeah, I not only ran into one but two.

TWO. And after that, I dug up a tarantula.

The four alligator lizards were just icing.

I am happy to report I only screamed once.

Orchids–You Can Dress Them Up…

Before                                             After friendship make-over

Friends are great; you can learn so much from them. They teach you to use things like Preparation H to get rid of wrinkles (I swear I never really tried it) and also how to dress up your orchids.

My friend Kim gave me her orchid once so I could get it to re-bloom for her. I got it to re-bloom and I gave it back to her. I went over to her house to visit one day and there was the orchid. But there was something different about it. It was gorgeous. It was all dressed up.

This is how she did it:

Instead of the usual bamboo stick to hold up the spike, Kim replaced the stick with a cool branch from a curly willow. She added green moss spilling over the plant base, and where the orchid spike was tied to the cool artsy branch there was a little poof of moss to hide the tie.

It looked beautiful.

Above and below are my attempt at Kim's orchid dress-up on my spiking orchids.

Before                                            After friendship make-over

Stumble It!

My Drought-Tolerant Yard is Finally Finished.

Dude, it’s here.

That’s right, my husband finally coughed up enough money to finish the job. Recession-smession, I’m not sure he understands that his job is to make the money and it’s my job to spend it. Who knew that a bunch of ground-up bark would cost so much?

The planting is still a little sparse. I am going to see how it does through this season and then maybe add some more plants–drought tolerant of course.

Stumble It!

Free Flowers.

I spend so much time in the garden tending my plants and flowers that I always forget to pick them.

Sometimes I’m so lame that when I’m at the store I’ll buy a bouquet of flowers.

I have an acre of gardens, so chances are something’s in bloom most of the year.

You mean I can cut my own bouquet of flowers for free without leaving home and spending any money?

What a concept.

Oh and by the way, the bouquets don’t have to be made out of traditional flowers, especially this time of year.

Here is my good deed for the day:
While running with Moondoggie I learned the hard way that the trail I normally run was closed. This added two miles to my run that I wasn’t expecting and didn’t want.

It also added two VERY STEEP hills.

So I decided to inform every single person that I saw that the trail was closed. Ninety percent of the people I told did not know and thanked me. The other ten percent already knew but still thanked me.

Thank you, for reading my blog.