Meet My New Friend

I've been crazy busy these past few weeks, but I wanted to take a minute to share a post about my SJC garden on the lovely blog of Alex Anderson - Love, Peace and Gardening. Alex writes about gardens and gardening and was directed to me when she visited the Hortense Miller Garden open house (although I am a docent there I could not make the open house this year). I was happy to share my garden with her on a misty morning and we had a lovely time walking, talking and discovering we had a lot in common, and not just about gardening. She also is passionate about Integrative Health as am I! Please pop over to her blog and see her observations as well as an interview with me!

Pruning

I think next to getting people to really understand the importance of the role the soil plays in gardening, pruning is the most difficult skill for a gardener to master. There really is no pruning 101 in my opinion, because each case is a little bit different depending on the plant, the position of the plant, the climate, and even the taste of the gardener. Of course different types of plants have different pruning requirements. If you prune a shrub that blooms in the spring heavily in the late winter, you will remove all the dormant buds and you won't get any flowers that year. On the other hand, if you don't prune some plants at all, you may not stimulate them to bloom much at all the following year. A good gardener knows which plants respond best to a severe cut back right before they start to grow in the new year to maintain their shape, while others are best handled with a little bit taken off here and a little bit taken off there to encourage a pleasing profile. Unfortunately, there are too many gardening maintenance people in the business that have not learned the art of pruning and it shows in sad looking landscapes throughout our neighborhoods. I often cringe at what my garden helper has done in the name of "cleaning up" the garden by severe cut backs when a gentle removal of a few branches would have been fine. Most of the time, less is more in my opinion. But these days I am just too busy too do all the maintenance by myself and so I really need to spend more time with him showing him what my expectations are for my garden since I have now figured out that he is not going to spend hours pouring over gardening books and magazines in his spare time like I do learning techniques and how to handle every kind of plant to make sure it is carefully pruned and managed to optimize its beauty in the garden. That is going to be a goal this year.

Getting Busy

I have been very busy recently and happily I can say that some of that activity has been in the garden! After almost a year of a bum knee and a really sore shoulder I am feeling better and getting out and getting my hands dirty this past month. Of course the up coming holidays are the main focus and sprucing everything up for the big Thanksgiving family reunion is a priority followed by the Christmas holiday events, but there are still just a lot of fall chores that I am happy to be able to undertake this year. I've planted some bulbs, cut back some shrubs, and added some fall annuals. We have even made sure to add a new rock to the garden for our new little granddaughter, Rosetta. I'm sure her big brothers will check to be sure there is one for her when they arrive next week!

I have also been busy doing a new task for the UCCE Master Gardeners. It is one that I am really enjoying and that is writing posts for their blog! They are short posts focused on what is happening in the Southern California garden based on topics that are currently trending on their hotline where local gardeners turn for help as well as other current topics in the backyard garden. You can read and subscribe to their blog here --> UCCE Master Gardeners of Orange County.

Its good to be back in the garden!

Fall Has Finally Arrived

Chrysanthemums

 I have to admit that when I left for a trip two weeks ago during yet another heat wave here in Southern California I was wondering if I would ever find the passion for working in my gardens that I have always had, again. Talking to other gardeners confirmed I wasn't the only one.

'Evelyn' Rose

A walk through the gardens at that time showed that what the heat hadn't ravaged, the insects had damaged. The heat loving natives pretty much just shut down in the summer and wait for cooler weather. The succulents, although alive, look a bit boring in the hot sun without any complimenting plants. Drought conditions make watering a guilt-ridden activity and so everything just gets enough to survive but not enough to thrive. Nothing new had been added in a while and as plants died off as they do, bare spots were left bare. Summer annuals never went in because it was just too hot and they used too much water so nooks and crannies that usually were filled with charm and sweet smelling annuals were naked all summer. Pots were left empty that usually housed annuals.
 

'Yuletide' Carmelia

 Most of the summer was spent in the house with the air conditioner on and the doors and windows shut, something I can't ever remember doing. Our Laguna House without any air conditioning sat empty waiting for a cool-down before we would even consider spending a night there.

Japanese Anemones

 But as is always the case, eventually fall arrives and with the shorter days come the cooler temperatures and upon arriving back home after two weeks away I was so happy to walk through the garden this morning and see signs of what the cooler months ahead had in store.  The azaleas are already starting to bloom and the 'Yuletide' camellias that I planted in the Gravel Garden last year (and immediately regretted, why would I ever plant a red flower?) even looked cheerful and made me happy.

Camellia Sasanqua

 Roses and iris that struggled all summer perked up and looked nice and healthy. Chrysanthemums were flopping over with heavy blooms, a fine problem to have! Graceful Japanese anemones had obviously been blooming for a while and had grown immensely since last year.

'Frequent Violet' Iris

The sunlight is so lovely the way it comes across the sky and through the trees and lights the garden in October. The temperatures are just perfect for working in the garden and taking care of all those issues that cropped up over the long hot summer that it is hard to believe that there was ever any doubt in my mind that there would be any place else I would rather be than in my garden this time of year. It's good to be back!

Gardening is Hard

The other day I ran into an acquaintance who asked me if I was still gardening. I was rather caught off guard by her question. I have never thought that I would someday not garden. I'm not saying that it is like eating or breathing, I'm sure that I would still exist if I did not garden, but if given the choice to do it or not, I would always choose to do it, at least in some form or another. My friend had said that she had quit gardening because it was just too hard and time consuming and she had moved to a condo where she didn't have to worry about the yard. Before that she had a beautiful garden that was in fact - perfect. It had actually won awards. The first time I saw it she was standing in the front yard with a bottle of spray pesticide in each hand, issuing orders in crisp Spanish to her gardeners. Every bloom was blemish free, every leaf perfect, every blade of grass the exact same shade of green and the exact same height. I understand why she gave up the battle, because that's what it was for her, a battle, unfortunately.

This time of year the gardens start to look a little tired. Hot days of summer, too many distractions, not enough rain, there are lots of things working against me. But it is my passion and I know that I will get back to it in a while, when the grandkids are back in school and our vacation is over and the weather changes and our visitors all go home, it will still be waiting for me.

When I talk to someone that is just starting out with gardening for the first time and they are just learning the basics, I always take a big sigh because I know they are going to learn that gardening is hard, and frustrating, and they are going to learn a lot of lessons in the years ahead. I just hope they are doing it for the right reasons because it is also one of the most rewarding life-long loves they will ever encounter!