This and That in September

 Not sure what this little guys is - maybe a hoverfly? He is kind of cute!

 My favorites, abutilon, is starting to bloom as the days get shorter and the nights get cooler.

 Don't remember planting this, but I am enjoying this pretty display of allums nerver-the-less!

We have never has squirrels here in SJC - until I bought this sweet little squirrel ornament. Suddenly I have started to see them here and there in the gardens! Weird!

Buddha in the Garden

 Sitting quietly, way on the back of the gravel garden, is Buddha. Most of the winter he is surrounded by white azaleas. The rest of the year, by various cool shades of green succulents and tropical plants.
 

It is hard to see in this picture, but there is a perfect umbrella of duranta over his head. Duranta, if you are not familiar is a flowering shrub that has arching sprays of blue flowers (at least this one does). I always seem to miss it in bloom back here. Buddha's hands form a perfect cup to hold enough water from the sprinklers to keep blooms fresh for a few days and I try to keep them filled with long lasting flowers when I pass through this garden.

But Tilly seems to think that Buddha is there solely to offer her a little refreshment, for her own personal benefit, just like the rest of the gardens, and everyone else in the household for that matter.

The Raven

This is the time of year our garden sculpture by Gerard Basal Stripling looks especially apropos!

Conceding

My peaceful Buddha sits in the very back of the serene gravel garden in a flower bed that I have replanted every year we have lived here. The white carpet roses do fine but I have a terrible time keeping any other groundcover thriving there. While adding some gravel to the back area, my son went ahead and covered the bare soil with some of the remaining gravel. I must admit it looks better than it did and there is a good chance I was not going to get around to adding more doomed plants anytime soon. The beauty of it is that I can always take up the gravel if I get ambitious in the future and want to add more plants, but for now, this will work fine for me. I concede!

The Front Door Garden

There was a little lawn area to the side of the front door when we moved into the SJC house three years ago that was one of the first areas I tore up and changed around. I added the flagstone paths because it was a natural shortcut to the back and made sense. The birdbath was already there and I added a few flowers and grasses for interest.



The next year I added the white birch tree and some flowering plants as well as the John Seeman sculpture.


This year it is starting to grow into it's potential as a pretty little garden that is full of roses, iris and perennials. It is a spot that I see a number of times a day, every day as I come and go so I put a little extra effort into making it a garden that makes me smile.

Stepping on Leaves

I bought these leaf steps made of copper many years ago from a catalog. They have little posts on them that penetrate the ground making them secure. I thought for sure they would rot away after a few years, but not so. They are just as charming as the day I put them in this little path around the rose garden in Laguna.

Time in the Garden

With daylight savings time upon us I always wonder if there are people who actually adjust their sundials. We have had this one that was a gift from a friend when we first started transforming our vacant hillside into a garden, for about fifteen years. I can't remember once adjusting it, probably because I rarely even think of it as a timepiece, not just a garden ornament that I love dearly.

What Was That Name Again

I have long forgotten what kind of bush this is with the coral-pink flowers, but I bought it because its color complemented the tile obelisk in the Laguna garden.

The Bird Gates

I was on my way down to the garden the other day and I realized I have never posted pictures of my beautiful gates in Laguna. They were custom made for me by artist David Wolf many years ago. These gates have 17 different kinds of birds on them, all from our area and life size. It is hard to photograph them so that they show the beauty and workmanship that went into them, but take my word for it, they are lovely!

An Ant To Remember

A few years ago some friends gave us this amusing "ant" made of scrap metal and rocks for the garden. I'm sure they have forgotten all about it, but I think of them fondly whenever I see it.

Consuming the Rabbit

This tagetes lemmonii is coming close to enveloping our Flying Rabbit statue in the back yard in SJC. My DH keeps asking me why I don't cut it back. (BTW, the statue is straight, my photo is crooked!)

This is what it looks like on the other side. Too beautiful to cut back right now!

The Raven

This summer we added a new piece of art to our gardens in SJC. It is a raven by artist Gerard Basil. It is entitled 'fortis miles' and is bronze and French limestone.
It was made especially for this spot in Palm Alley and the medallion around his neck was designed to signify our family crest by myself and the artist. I like the raven because there are so many crows and ravens and hawks in our area that they are as much a part of the landscape as anything else and add a lot of drama to the skies in our area. Ravens are very smart, social birds. We rescued one many years ago and turned him over to the local bird sanctuary where he was nursed to health and released. He used to come every Saturday morning while I sat on the deck with my coffee and greet me with a raven-speak thank you! This one is right on target for the season!

Embracing Art

This staghorn fern seems to be enthralled with this tall art structure from artist Gerard Basal in our Laguna garden.

Poor Planning

With 12 month gardens comes the added responsibility of making sure there is plant interest every month of the year. It is one of the elements of a well designed garden. The picture above illustrates what NOT to do when designing a garden right outside your front door! Do not plant materials that require cutting back at all the same time! The result, however lovely it may be in June, is not worth the look of sad demise that January brings about. Cut back grasses and roses along with a dormant birch tree just looks bare. There are many plants that look great this time of year and this area desperately needs some of those!

361 Days Later

The above picture was taken November 2nd, 2007 just days after we finished putting in Flying Rabbit Island where there used to be just lawn. Here are pictures of what it looked like then.

This is what it looks like today. Although the California pepper trees have not grown much in a year, all of the shrubby perennials have filled in nicely. The plants to the right of the picture were recently cleaned up and cut back after a summer of blooms.

Flat Jack

This charming bronze sculpture lives in our 'Flying Rabbit Island' in San Juan Capistrano and is one of my favorite pieces of art in the garden. It is by artist Tim Cherry. It is entitled 'Flat Jack'.

Sky Watch Friday July 18th

This is the sky in Laguna Beach,
right behind a wind sculpture by
Seattle kinetic artist Andrew Carson.

View the sky from around the world at
Sky Watch Friday

An Award

Cindee of Cindees' Garden was kind enough to pick my blog for the Arte y Pico Award. I am very honored to be chosen by such a talented and generous blogger. If you are not familiar with her blog stop by for a visit, you will not be disappointed. Thank you, Cindee!

The origin of the Arte y Pico Award: "This prize has arisen from the daily visits that I dedicate to many blogs which nourish me and enrich me with creativity. In them I see dedication, creativity, care, comradeship, but mainly, ART, much art. I want to share this prize with all those bloggers that entertain me day to day and to share this prize with those who enrich me every day. Doubtlessly, there are many and it will be hard to pick just a few. The people I will name today deserve this prize, as do the very long serious list of bloggers I also enjoy to read. But I will name the first 5 and leave the rest of the work to all the bloggers that visit other's blogs and are nourished by them."

There are 5 rules for this award:

1. Choose 5 blogs you consider deserving of this award for their creativity, design, interesting material, and contribution to the blogging community, regardless of the language.

2. Each award should have the name of the author and a link to his/her blog to be visited by everyone.

3. Each award winner should show the award and put the name and link to the blog that presented him/her with the award. (I know it says this is a rule, but I also know that not everyone likes to do this. I won't be hurt if you don't!)

4. The award winner and the one who has given the award should show the Arte y Pico blog so everyone will know the origin of this award. Translated, it means "the peak of art."

5. Show these rules.

As the rules go, I too need to choose five blogs I consider deserving of this award for their creativity, design, interesting material, and contribution to the blogging community, regardless of the language it is written in. So, I pass this award on to:

1. Savannah Garden Diary: a garden that makes me wish I lived in Savannah! I admire their ambition!

2. The Hummingbird Garden: a blog filled with beautiful pictures of all kinds of plants that attract birds and of course, lots of lovely photos of birds!

3. Gardening While Intoxicated: gorgeous pictures of roses and inspired plant combinations.

4. Carrots and Kids: a charming, well-written blog I always look foreword to viewing

5. Compostings: a Connecticut gardener who inspires me to plant more vegetables in neat rows!

Bird Merry-Go-Round

This wind sculpture is about a quarter of the way down in my Laguna Garden. We have a number of wind sculpture throughout the property because I think they add an important element to the garden - movement.

This particular one came from an Sherwood Art Gallery in downtown Laguna Beach and since its purchase the owners of the gallery have become very close friends of ours.

The most amusing thing about this sculpture is that the birds sit on it as it turns in the wind like a little merry-go-round!

Note: The sculpture is very straight. My photo is crooked!

Vine Embraces Bird

On the front entry way at our Laguna home lives a pair of "rocking" birds. They are sculptures that my husband found in Boston many years ago. They are made of metal and a large rock for the body and they are configured so the body of the bird rocks in the base which is the birds' legs.

They are positioned at the turn in the steps leading from the street down to the house and everyone taps them to set them rocking on their way down to the house.

Evidently this jasmine vine from the nearby flower bed wanted in on the action and reached over to embrace this bird.