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!

Verbena, Daisies and Yarrow

My gardens in San Juan Capistrano are all fairly new so there is still a lot of filling in to do as far as plant growth goes. This one little area that was planted last fall in the 'Flying Rabbit Island' flower bed is doing well and finally showing its potential.

In the background is one of my favorite plants for adding an airy feeling to the garden, verbena bonariensis (I've seen it commonly called Peruvian verbena). In front of that is the very fragrant tagetes lemmonii (sometimes called French Marigold Bush or Copper Canyon Daisies). Some people like the smell, others aren't crazy about it, me being one of the latter. In the very front is white achillea (yarrow) which is a favorite among the butterflies. All of these plants are drought tolerant.

Chartreuse and Burgundy

One of my favorite foliage color combinations in the garden is chartreuse and burgundy and this is one of the best examples of that combination at its peak in my mediation garden. This is heuchera 'Persian Carpet' (I believe), bacopa 'Olympic Gold', and ajuga 'Chocolate Chip'. This area gets partial sun.

Sally and the Loquat Tree

I inherited the loquat tree in the Laguna garden. It was most likely planted by the birds many years ago as they pop up everywhere with great enthusiasm. If you are not familiar with them they are a tropical fruit that somewhat resembles an apricot in color and texture but are smaller and more oval in shape. They are quite tasty and they have three large seeds in the center of each fruit. I eat them all them time while working in the garden, but I never really harvest them for some reason. The birds and I are the only ones that really eat them come to think of it. They are actually a member of the rose family and some people plant them in place of magnolia trees because they have large dark green leaves with fuzzy brown backsides much like a magnolia, but the similarity ends there.

The rose is a Sally Holmes climber, one of a dozen that I have growing over arbors that adorn the steps down to the eucalyptus grove at the bottom of the garden.

An Aquired Taste

When I first discovered Lamb's Ears (stachys byzantina) I fell in love with its soft bluish gray color, soft fuzzy leaves and easy disposition. I just didn't like the flowers. I would go crazy trying to keep them all cut off, much like other plants that are grown mainly for their foliage. Eventually though, mother nature prevailed and there were more blooms than I could keep on top of so I just let them go and amazingly enough, I actually started appreciating their subtle beauty. And the bees love them too!

Tamora

Another one of my favorite roses for the garden, Tamora, a lovely David Austin rose. She stays reasonable small (most roses quickly grow overhead around here) and has a pleasant fragrance, as so most of the David Austin roses. I have her in a couple different flower beds and always in a group of three bushes which is how David recommends.

Same Stone, Different Fillers

This is a flagstone path that we put in last fall on the sunny side of the house with woolly thyme as a filler.

This is the same flagstone that we put in on the shady side of the house last fall with baby tears as the filler.

Both are filling in nicely!

'Rozanne'

Next to green, the most prevalent color in my gardens must be purplish-blue. It is the backbone color in most of my beds and then I move into either complementary colors or contrasting colors depending on the mood I am after. This crane's bill geranium, 'Rozanne' is one that I use over and over in sunny, warm spots. It blooms most of the year and remains compact when it is cut back in the late winter. It is the perfect size for those spaces in between the shrubs and groundcovers. I have also noticed that the rabbits aren't particularly fond of it, although they did do the initial pruning on some in my front bed late last winter, they seem to have found something else they prefer since then.

A New View

Behind this bench the planter was filled with large, white azalea bushes when we moved into this house. They were lovely when in bloom, but they were not self-cleaning (they didn't drop the spent flowers) and so there were weeks of brown blooms that were a pain to deadhead. I recently had my son help me relocate all the azaleas to the new areas in the front moonlight garden where they would be more in the background and much to my delight, this opened up the view to the beds behind the planter. I plan on filling in the newly empty bed with ferns and shade plants that will be lower than the azaleas were to keep the open feeling.

Tripping Over The Roses

I love abundance in a garden and this is the sure sign of decedent abundance, when the roses are falling all over the steps because they are so lush and heavy. Why stake them, they seem perfectly happy where they are and I have no problem walking around them.