The Gardeners Anonymous Blog

The Bright Side of the Drought

 

So there’s a drought. On the bright side, the Brugmansia I tried hard to grow for 9 years or so is finally doing well, so well in fact, that it has taken over a small portion of my yard. That’s what happens when you plant something in the right place. It also helps there is a drought and the temperature hasn’t dropped below 49 degrees all winter and NOW it’s spring and no end to all this great weather in sight. Damn, oh well. 

All these perfect conditions caused my angel trumpet to grow and grow and creep up the stairs to my tenant’s apartment. My tenant is so sweet she would never come right out and say,” Why don’t you trim that stupid plant? I practically need a machete when I walk down the stairs!” She would say things like “Do you need some help with yard work? I could start right over there by the stairs to my apartment.” or “Wow! That plant sure has grown! I can barely find my way up to the apartment.” Every morning the poor girl has to climb down the stairs and under my Brugmansia like Snow White in the dark forest, the branches grabbing her hair and pulling at her nice work clothes. I’m sure she expected me to be waiting at the bottom of the steps with a hairy wart on my nose and a red shiny apple.

 

At the beginning of the “winter season,” assuming the plant would die back on its own, I cut the branches back. But with this year’s absence of winter, the Brugmansia just kept growing and blooming and blooming and growing. Mirror, mirror on the wall who has the fairest Brugmansia of all? Tis my Brugmansia and it’s time to cut her back again.

 

Maybe we will actually have a winter next year.

 

Flash Flood Fashion

 

Flash Flood Fashion When my phone’s text alert woke me early in the morning last week, the first thing I noticed was the roar of driving rain battering my roof. Oh, I sleep so well when it rains. There is something so soothing and cozy about the sound of the rain….and then there was that little tinkling alert from my phone.

I rolled over and groped though a pile of reading glasses on my nightstand for a pair with appropriate magnification, and examined my phone. There was a large scary red triangle staring back at me with the words “FLASH FLOOD ALERT IN YOUR AREA.” I had never received a message like this before. This was a warning for ME, on MY phone, flash flood alert in MY HOUSE. This seemed like a bad thing.

With visions of the apocalypse bearing down, I leapt out of bed onto a large, unsuspecting dog, ending up in a heap on the carpet next to where he had been lying. While he licked the surprised look off my face, I listened to the rain on my roof, which now sounded like the beating of Sioux drums telling me that Custer was on his way.

I stumbled to my closet and hastily got dressed. Catastrophic circumstances have never been a good thing for my personal fashion presence, historically speaking.

I sprinted outside wearing a baseball cap under the hood of my rain jacket, which I was wearing over my robe, which partially covered my pajamas, which were tucked into my black rubber muck boots. The only thing I was missing was a black rectangle over my eyes, and a big “DON’T” stamped across my outfit.

Lotusland Lost

I would tell you what part of Lotusland this is, but I don't know 'cause I couldn't get a reservation.

I have, for some time, been longing to tour Ganna Walska Lotusland, a private garden in the upscale neighborhood of Monticeto, California.

I had planned to hitch a ride down to Santa Barbara with my friend Paree and meet up with another gardening fanatic friend, Jennifer, to tour Lotusland. The day before I left, I called Lotusland to make a tour reservation. The phone call went something like this:

Unknown Garden Docent or vagrant sleeping next to phone: “Hello, Lotusland.”

Pathways

I am finally installing pathways throughout my garden.

  In a perfect world, I would pay someone to carry out my designs. I have done it before—when my wallet was fatter. 

In leaner times I come to the realization that I myself must carry out my own designs, and do my own bidding, if you will. Whaaaaaaah!

Luckily I have a teenage son who can help me, so here goes.

I am trying two techniques, I’m sure they are both wrong, But… 

With the first technique I will lay out the design on the ground, take off the topsoil, lay down some permeable weed-block fabric and then cover it with 3-6 inches of decomposed granite. Make teenage son tamp down decomposed granite with nifty tamper-downer-thing purchase at hardware store.  Dogs can be like cats, they love to lie down right in the middle of whatever you are doing.

I line the edges with rock and voila…pathway. 

The second technique will be the same as first minus permeable weed-block fabric. If you really must know, I am trying out the second technique because I ran out of weed-block fabric.

My landscaper (who I can't afford anymore) never uses it. He says that you don’t need to, so we shall see which technique works best.

In Search of Lotusland

I ran into an old friend at the beach. She told me her daughter is attending college in Santa Barbara.

First of all, that is where I want my kids to go to college. 

Is it a good school? Who cares? Education, shmeducation. 

It’s all about attending a place that I want to visit, isn’t it? 

I also like Cal Poly, because it sits smack dab in the middle of SLO County, another one of my favorite places. 

Or, Maybe I could ship them off to Hawaii? 

I digress. 

My friend and I got on the subject of, surprise…gardening…and she told me about a garden in Santa Barbara called Lotusland. It’s a public garden that operates in a private residential neighborhood in Montecito. 

Lotusland has a rich and colorful history, but not as colorful as it’s creator, Madame Ganna Walska. As part of her search for creative fulfillment and personal enlightenment, Madame Walska bought the 37-acre Cuesta Linda estate in 1941. She called it Tibetland.

After the dissolution of her sixth marriage, she changed its name to Lotusland.

So, I happen to have another friend whose parents happen to live in Montecito. 

You know who you are.

I plan to kidnap you, drive you to Montecito, pick up your mom, and zip off to Lotusland. 

Someday. 

Soon. 

Please comment if you’ve been to Lotusland. I want to hear all about it.

Green Fountain

My friend Jennifer planted her fountain and made this beautiful succulent sculpture.

It is magnificent. Think about it. Here’s a way to save on electricity and water. It’s a green fountain in more ways than one.

I saw something like this a couple of years ago at the San Francisco Flower and Garden Show. It was my favorite thing there.

Since then I was lucky enough to find my own fountain (for a small sum) to turn into living art.

My fountain scavanged off Craigslist next to my urn

I have tried to use it as a fountain but it leaks and splashes and the pumped get plugged up. Really the only ones that benefit from that fountain are the mosquitoes.

And we all know that they suck. Sorry, I couldn’t stop myself. 

So, this spring, guess what? 

Yep, I’ll be following in Jennifer’s footsteps and filling in the mosquito village with dirt and plants and maybe even an alligator head or two.

 

Why I Love Early Girls

O.K., I get it.

Heirloom tomatoes are da bomb. 

Some of this season's heirlooms

Every time I go into grocery stores—or to parties—I’m bombarded with these beautifully colored, interestingly shaped fruit.

The colors of the fruit can be pink, yellow, purple, or black. The fruit comes in so many different colors they look like fruity Easter eggs.

I try to be cool and hip, so I plant hip groovy heirlooms but they are hard to grow, so I end up being the dorky loser gardener. The plants get diseases, and pest infestations. And they don’t seem to produce much fruit. 

Heiloom tomato plant suffering from late season wilt.

Along with the difficult heirloom varieties I also grow the usual suspects like Better Boys, regular cherry tomatoes and my favorite: Early Girls. 

Early girls

Here are the reasons why I love Early Girls:

They are prolific.

They produce early and often.

They are resistant to diseases and pests.

You can’t beat their taste. 

While all my heirloom plants are dead, my Early Girls keep growing and producing.

This tomato is also well suited to dry land farming  or gardening techniques. This means that the tomatoes are not watered after they are planted, so they develop deep roots to seek out moisture. Because the plant receives little water the fruit becomes super flavorful.

Early Girls also do well in coastal gardens where the weather is cool and overcast during the growing season.

I love them. 

Think I’ll go pick some right now.

How to Get Paid For Putting In A Garden

The Urn is finally in place: Now All I Need is a Garden to Go With It.

I made the mistake (a couple of years ago) to take out a lawn and put in a drought tolerant garden instead.

Well, that wasn’t the mistake really. The mistake was not telling the Water District about it. You see, the Santa Clara Santa Valley Water District has a program whereby they pay you a rebate for every square foot of lawn you take out—as long as you replace it with something drought tolerant. Even if you document your lawn removal meticulously, the county doesn’t care. If they don’t get there and document your lawn before you remove it—they don’t pay you.

So this time I did it right.

I called the Water District and a nice man named Henry came out to record some information about the lawn I’m removing, and to show me how to save water with the lawn that I’m not.

I’m taking out 1,500 square feet of lawn, which means they’ll give me a rebate of $1,500 for my new garden. He told me if I wanted to remove 500 more feet of my other lawn I could have $500 more.

The rules are simple. You must replace at least 100 square feet of high water landscape with a low water landscape. This landscape must be made up of plants from the approved list on their website. www.valleywater.org/Programs/Landscaping.aspx.

What a Difference Eleven Months Makes.

In my last post, I published the latest photos of my drought-tolerant landscape. Then, I wanted to compare the photos I took when the yard was newly planted last November.

At my age, I normally look at photos and think “Hmmm, wasn’t that just last year—or last month?” When in reality, it was like 1983 and I had thick eyebrows, a tiny waist, and giant hair.

But in this case, I really was shocked to see that this yard was only planted at the end of last year, less than eleven months ago.

It just goes to show how fast natives grow.

Here are the comparison shots.

Hey, they’re from here. They know they’re way around the local dirt.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

BTW–natives make up about fifty percent of the plant material.

Stumble It!

Drought-Tolerant Update

I was having lunch with a friend the other day and she said that she hadn’t seen the finished product of my drought-tolerant garden. I told her that I had indeed finished it and had written a blog article about it. She said she had seen the beginning and middle but not the end. I insisted that I had written and posted it along with pictures. She said she had done a search for drought tolerant and only two posts came up. “Oh,” said I. My friend said “Maybe you don’t have the proper tags on your post to link it to similar posts.”

Dang, there’s that technical stuff again.

I can hear my kids now,
“Mom, don’t you know anything about computers?”
“Well son, child O’ mine, the answer to that question is very complicated. You see when I was your age we had these things called typewriters and well, I wasn’t even very good at those, let me put it this way¬–have you ever heard of white out? O.K., no, I don’t know anything about computers, that’s why I had you, so, shut up and fix my blog and make all my articles link to each other already.”

Enough of talking to my children in my mind.

Here are the latest pictures of my drought-tolerant landscape.

Notice the tags.

Stumble It!