The Dry Stream Bed

I was having a hard time deciding what to take pictures of today (and it's only Jan 6th!). But the wind was blowing outside, and the grasses looked pretty, so I figured pictures of the dry stream bed would be good!

For a really neat view of what wind can do in a garden, you should go look at David at the desert edge's post on wind as garden element. It made me think about different ways I might be able to incorporate the wind (that's always here!) into my garden, without driving my neighbors nuts with wind chimes!

The dry stream bed occupies the whole south-side of my property. I put in the front garden part of it first, about three (almost four!) years ago now:

Looking towards the back garden



There are three pink Muhly (Muhlenbergia capillaris) clumps, spaced along the dry stream bed. They're surrounded by decomposed granite, with local stone making up the stream bed. The larger rocks match the rocks on house. I wish I could say I planned that, but it was a happy accident!

This hasn't been the best year for the pink plumes - they're getting cut back soon.

 In the picture above, you can see two colors of decomposed granite - the soft pink/ground color is the stream bed, and the blue-ish color in the bottom left is a path. These same two colors repeat in the back garden stream bed:

The back garden, looking west

 This part of the stream bed was put in early in 2012, and uses pink Muhly along with Mexican feather grass. It's about 60 feet long, and ends in a stone "pond", where I currently have a big green pot (with nothing in it):

West-most end of dry stream bed

 I have been thinking about what to do with that area, to make it more of a focal point. There is no water to that container, so if I plant it, it would have to be something that could deal with my (at best) neglectful hand watering. I could also turn the container into a water feature. Or (and this is my latest crazy idea) I could replace the container with a small, above-ground pond, to both add a water feature and plants! We'll see what happens...

There is one thing about the two dry stream beds - while they match, they aren't actually "connected" in the sense that water could flow - as seen in this picture, part of the block wall cuts the two stream beds in half. And another note to self project - I'd like to do something to that gate, probably paint or stain it.

All the plants are on drip-emitters, which helps cut down on water use and keeps weeds from growing (win-win!)



Mountain Hike

We went for a hike about an hour out of town - amazing how the landscape can be totally different. These pictures are from Towsley Canyon, which is part of the Transverse Ranges in Southern California. I took way too many pictures, so I follow David at Tropical Texana's example and made some collages.

Let's get started:

Near trail head entrance

 The mountains in these areas were created by tectonic forces and faulting stemming from the interaction of the Pacific Plate and the North American Plate along the San Andreas Fault system (per Wikipedia...) There are a lot of interesting views, and some curiosities, like caves and oil seeps


Caves, oil seeps and yellow trees! Oil seeps smell...

 The mountains make for some nice views:

Views looking both East (inland) and West, as well as inside the canyon itself (center)

As do the trees and various other plants, including coastal sage scrub, chaparral, and oak woodland. In the summer, the whole area smells like sage, which is a little strange.

Following the trail - a 5 mile loop

 A few years ago, there was a fire in this area. You can still see some of the damage on the trees, especially the oak trees. Some of oak trees died, and leave these kind of bare tree shapes, while others regrew (bottom left)

Some of the trees recovered completely - except for burn marks on their trunks (lower center)

 The oak trees are native to the area, and many of them are gorgeous, especially against the blue sky:

I think this is Quercus lobata (Valley Oak), still holding on to some of its leaves

 Even though its only January, signs of Spring are already starting to emerge:

No rattlesnakes yet though!

 

In the canyon itself (or Towsley Gorge), green ferns are growing up the canyon walls. The creek was still flowing on this side. I'll have to go back in the Spring - part of the trail involves fording the creek, which might be more exciting if there's more water.

G(r)o(w)-ing up!

 This picture, to me, shows what these mountains are all about: an oak tree, on a ridge line, with blue sky and scrubby chaparral-like stuff. In this case, that's probably Quercus agrifolia, Coast Live Oak.

A sense of place - the coastal ranges

 After enjoy the gorgeous weather all morning, some clouds started to show up. Rain is supposed to be coming tomorrow.

There was a rainbow here... My picture-taking skills need work...

Posting pictures everyday in January would be a lot easier if I got to take hikes every day! I'm hoping that I'll have time to hike in a park that's closer to the desert next week, and share those pictures. It's amazing how much ecological variety there is in this area!

Front Garden - Review

For today's picture, I went out early and took a picture of my front garden, like the ones I took earlier this year:


on 01/04/2013

For reference, here's what it looked like in the summer:


on 07/14/2012

And earlier in the spring:


on 04/27/2012 - not sure why this one is blurry...

It's pretty colorful in the spring, but it definitely needs more summer and winter interest. I've taken some steps for that - there's a few plants hiding under my neighbor's tree's leaves (some Coreopsis, if they survive the winter), and there's a hardy Lantana in the back, near the window. Some other changes I'm planning is removing at least that front-and-center Mexican Feather grass with something more interesting - at least a purple fountain grass, or maybe something more unique/interesting/local (any ideas?)

There's also a longer term project that will happen in the area with the cherry tree, which is pretty dark at this time of the year, that's the north side of the house. I'm planning a gravel garden with a dry stream bed and some agaves and optunias. I'm laying out the plans right now! There's no irrigation back there, so whatever I plant will have to live off the rain and my neighbor's lawn overspray.

Tomorrow I'm going for a hike - so I'll have some pictures of something other than my garden!

post-christmas trees

For today's picture, here are my two real mini-Christmas trees, all undressed out of their finery:

I still have to find nice planters for them

 The plan is to keep these two alive, more or less at their current size, and use them again next year. This year, one of them sat by the front door, while the other one stayed inside. They're both Italian Stone Pines, the same kind as the larger, in ground pine trees in the back yard:

Pay no attention to the weeds... or the weirdly growing ice plants!

The in-ground trees are going into their second year. At least they're a plant I don't need to worry about winter hardiness this winter. And they seemed to survive our hot summer pretty well also.

Succulents and More

I wandered out into the garden today, to see what might be interesting to take pictures of... I decided on some of succulents braving the weather, and my garlic!

I think my pictures have more of an impact in a collage....

You can just see a pad of the Optunia sticking into the picture with the garlic. This is the first time I'm growing garlic, so we'll see how it works!

Blooms for the New Year

Here is what is blooming in my gardens on the first day of the new year. I know it's not Bloom Day, but I wanted to start the year on a high note:

sweet alyssum, in the back pipe garden

 How do you know that a plant is not well suited for the desert? After spending all spring, summer and fall looking not all that great, the sweet alyssum (Lobularia maritima) has completely perked up in the last few weeks, while everything else froze. And with no watering either! I'll have to remember this for next fall...

This is Senna artemisioides, also known as Feathery Cassia or Silver Cassia. One of the branches is starting to flower! I think that's early for this plant, but since it was just planted last year, I'm not sure. This is a drought tolerant, interesting-looking plant, native to Australia.


This one has grown a lot -it started from a small (1/2 gal?) size

 I'm not sure this next one counts as a flower, but my one winter crop that didn't get eaten by the bugs is making a broccoli head! I'm not sure I know when it's ready to eat, but I'm glad this one is working.

I wonder how it will taste...



The front garden doesn't have a lot of blooms, but the Camellia japonica near the front door has started to bloom! I'm glad I found something that will grow in this shady spot, and tolerate the summer heat. It seems to be doing OK with no water in the fall/winter, and a twice weekly watering week in the summer.

I like seeing the blooms right next to the front door

 And there is one sad bloom left on the roses on the north side of the house - I think it might be frozen:


Rosa 'Blaze' - apparently this species was introduced in 1932...

That side of the house gets very little direct sun during the winter... but I checked, and the cherry tree is once again already making buds! I've been planning a new garden bed over there, hopefully in the spring, once I find some time. I'm thinking a gravel garden... with the roses and cherry tree!

Happy New Year! May 2013 give you the garden you always wanted!

More Pictures - Desert Garden and Bamboo

Happy New Year's Eve! I wanted to share some more pictures from yesterday's visit to the Huntington Gardens. Here they are, in no particular order. I'm trying to practice taking pictures (and posting!) for my own January challenge.

The Aloes are really starting to bloom:

In the Desert Garden (top)

 A lot of the agave were putting on bloom spikes too, but none were blooming yet.

Golden Barrel and Agave parryi planting

Here are some random snapshots of some of the agave and aloes I saw. I always end up with a ton of pictures, and never remember what anything is. 

the one in the lower right is Agave cellsi

 This next picture is one of my 'favorite' plants - if I were forced to pick one. It's actually behind the cactus house (structure on right), and when the sun hits it right, it just glows.

The Aloe blooms are color-coordinated!

 The weather on Sunday was "wintry" for southern California - overcast and mid-fifties. It even rained and hailed at one point! Which meant a lot of people were hiding inside the museums, and not in the gardens.

The sky and trees made for some neat combinations.

 There were some animal visitors too, like this one at the waterlillies' pond.

He was watching the Koi - all of which were bigger than him...

 The Huntington just got done renovating the Japanese garden, and adding the new Chinese garden. Thankfully, all the construction has left the bamboo groves untouched. The ones at the end of the Japanese garden are especially huge:

Towering bamboo - I have no idea what kind

 The big grove is some kind of green bamboo, but they have some smaller groves of yellow, variegated and black bamboo also. Not much grows under the bamboo, but there was this blooming Camilla in the big grove:

The Camilla in the Camilla garden are also starting to bloom...

 Here is a picture of one of the culms, with my hand for scale. These things are huge!

Giant grass...

 It's like being in a forest - but made of grass. I wonder how much maintenance they have to do to keep the bamboo from growing through things (like the pathways!)

It is pretty cool though

 I hope everyone has a happy and healthy New Year! May 2013 bring you the best garden ever!

Huntington Garden - Steel and Stone

Last night, I fell down a rabbit hole in blogland... one of those cases where I was looking at a blog, clicked on a link in their blog roll, read through a new blog, which reminded me of something, which reminded me of the Huntington Gardens, which meant I had to look at their website, where I found an exhibit I hadn't known about. Now, I really don't have the sophistication to understand viewing stones (although I saw the exhibit and it was nice) so the real exciting exhibit to me was "Steel and Stone".

So of course I went to the Huntington the next day to see it. I love being on vacation!

And the exhibit was awesome. It was different sculptures by an artist named Khachik Khachatatouryan, who I'd never heard of before. Here is the poster for the exhibit:

There were about 10 different sculptures, but I won't show pictures of all of them, in case anyone gets a chance to go down and see them. The information said that the sculptor had seen all these plants at the Huntington, so I went and took pictures of them also, to show the steel versions side-by-side with the real ones:



Pachycereus schottii 'Monstrosus'

 I actually have one of these at home! So it was kind of neat to see a sculpture of one of "my" plants.

Myrtillocactus geometrizans (crest)

Echeveria 'imbricata'

 This next one is my second-favorite. The picture of the real plant is an old one - these ones are only in the cactus house, which isn't open on Sundays. Go on a Saturday to see the cactus house!

Echeveria gibbiflora hybrid

 This piece (the largest) is my favorite. It was labeled as Agave salmiana, which I couldn't find in the desert garden... I think it might be in the cactus house also. But I found several "lookalikes". Some of those real plants are even almost the right color!


Agave salmiana (steel) and assorted Agaves

I'm sure Khachatatouryan's work is very expensive, but could you imagine having one of those as a piece of garden art? Maybe surrounded by real Agaves...

I also found this Agave, look at the curls! The species names started with an "V", but I didn't get a picture because it was off the path, and I didn't want to get yelled at by the guard...

Next time I might take a closer look at the name tag...

The exhibit runs until January 2nd, in case anyone is interested. I might have to go to the gardens again soon - all the cacti and succulents in the desert garden are getting ready to put on a show! There were bloom stalks everywhere. Some of the Aloes have already started:


Reds and Yellows everywhere..

I think it would be easy to post a picture a day if I got to go to the Huntington or another garden everyday in January! Too bad that definitely won't happen...

Beginning, again

Whoops.

2 months between posts is a little long. My only excuse is work - too much of it to both take care of the garden and blog, so guess which took priority? And I have been working in the garden - replacing summer veggies with winter ones (which the bugs all ate), uncovering the sedums underneath the melon (which promptly caused them to get sun burned) and planting more bulbs. At least that worked!

Daffodils coming up - do they know its still December?

 Since its almost the end of the year (and almost a year since the back garden got re-done!) I figured some comparison pictures might be good:

Manfreda undulata 'Chocolate Chip' (top) and O. macrocentra (bottom), when first planted (left) and now (right)

'Chocolate Chip' actually looked better a few weeks ago, before the crazy cold weather hit, but it's still going. I'm hoping it might make some flowers next year. O. macrocentra pretty much exploded in size, and has regained its purple coloring with the cold nights. It bloomed a lot last year - I wonder if the same will happen this year?

My project for January, to get back into blogging regularly, will be to follow Allison at Bonnie Lassie's example, and post one picture per day. It might be a few bleak pictures, depending on how the weather goes! It's been abnormally cold here the last few nights (down in the 20's, even 17 deg F!), so most of my time lately has been spent wrapping up some of the succulents/cacti... But tell that to the little stone cactus, hiding under the leaves and Mexican Feathergrass:

A flower bud again - I thought this thing would be dead after the first year... Maybe the grass helps to keep it warm?

A new beginning, again, for both the stone cactus and my blogging. Happy New Year!

Flower Surprise

One of the side-effects of being away from the garden for a while is finding surprises when you get back. Like the fact that I planted a Canna in one of my planting-tubes:

Surprise! I think this is an orange Canna (it looks like it) but I don't remember planting it...

 I actually tried to get rid of what was growing in this tube when I replanted it with some smaller plants (now hiding under the Canna leaves). These two plants have grown in about the last month or so, and just started flowering... The leaves have a pretty color pattern also:

The leaves have green and purple streaks on them. It looks like there are two stalks growing.

 The flower is orange, and very cheerful when I see it from my kitchen window. I think it might be the cooler weather we've been having lately, as compared to the summer, that made this plant grow and flower again. I didn't do anything special to this pipe. And I pulled off most of the foliage that had been growing over the spring and summer when I replanted the pipe. If this plant had come up earlier, I probably wouldn't have done anything to it.

It was a nice surprise to find when I got back home, especially when compared to the weeds in other parts of the garden. It will be interesting to see what happens - if all the buds will actually bloom, or if the flower will shrivel up and die (like my stupid glads do every year).



And there are more buds... Hopefully the flowers will last for a while

 I guess now I'll have to rethink some of my plantings - several of the pipe plantings are getting big enough to need more room, and I had been planning to overhaul this pipe again. But I like the bright flowers, so maybe it will get to stay instead.

Grass Takeover!

While I was gone for a while, the grass was busy staging a takeover:

That's not supposed to be a lawn...

I got about half of it pulled out before it got dark. The plan is to finish tomorrow and Thursday, and then plant a fall/winter crop of garlic and Swiss chard. I've never grown either, so we'll see how that goes. And I found another watermelon hiding in the grass too!

With the weather cooling down somewhat, and fall getting here, I'm getting excited to get some of my plans moving again!