My Favorite Flower*

*At least, at the moment.

People ask me what my favorite flower is all the time, and my answer tends to change depending on the season or month. November is for saffron crocus, for example, while December is for narcissus, January for manzanita, and February for ceanothus. It gets harder to just pick one in the months of March through October. When California poppies are blooming, they’re all I want to look at. When sunflowers are tall and broad and proudly enormous, I’m smitten. It’s like this with every flower; it’s hard to choose just one.

But right now - oh, right now - my favorite has to be the dahlia.

Particularly the dark-foliaged dahlias. There’s been an explosion of new dark-leaved varieties in the past few years, and I just think they are so striking. There’s the Happy Single series, and the Mystic series, as well as some old-fashioned varieties that have dark foliage. Frankly, I want to plant every single one.

But only the single-flowered ones, please. The single flowered varieties are best for pollinators. All those double blooms, and cactus blooms, and pom-pom dahlias - those have all sacrificed, in the hybridization process, nectar and pollen for extra petals. I don’t want extra petals; I want the insects to be able to use the flowers. Frankly I don’t want any flowers in my garden that can’t be used as food for something.

Dahlias are tubers, and here in coastal (ish) California, we can leave them in the ground all winter; in colder climes, the tubers need to be dug up each winter and stored in a cool dry place, and replanted in spring. They hail from Mexico and Central America originally, and that tells you something about the growing conditions they prefer: Dahlias like full sun, and a good amount of water. I find I sometimes have to give them supplemental water when it’s over 100 degrees. In that respect, they are not a terribly good choice for arid California, so lately I’ve been growing them more in pots, where I can baby them a little.

These flowers give me so much pleasure, I can’t imagine summer without them.

Catching Up

I’ve been laid up. I had knee replacement surgery on May 19th, and was ordered to keep my foot 18” above my heart as much as possible. Other than Tom taking me out for ‘airings’ (that’s me, well-wrapped up and happy watching the shorebirds at Pt. Pinole while Tom had a long walk), completing my daily range-of-motion exercises, and doing some rudimentary gardening, I’ve been following doctor’s orders. I’m starting to feel better, and am hoping that I will be cleared for some walking at my next PT appointment.

I don’t know if it was entirely allowed (don’t tell my PT), but I did harvest the garlic and shallots at the beginning of the month. Tom hung the garlic in the garage (our usual method), and spread the shallots on the front porch bench to dry. It’s imperative, if you want alliums to last a long time, to get them as dry as possible (“cured”) before hanging them inside the house. I expect they’ll be ready for braiding by the end of this month.

This past winter, we dug up the hops that we used to grow every year in large containers on our back patio, and donated them to my school garden, where they are happily growing up the side of a shipping container. To replace those, I ordered four new clematis vines from Brushwood Nursery, which Tom planted while I was in Georgia. They’ve begun blooming, and every day I spend a few minutes just admiring them. One is yet to open (‘Emilia Plater’), but the other three are so lovely.

‘Arabella’

‘Blue Angel’

‘Black Prince’

We have a family of Cooper’s Hawks in the neighborhood, which are keeping me entertained while I’m resting on the back patio. I’ve also delighted in watching the lizards hunting honeybees below the hive, and swallowtail butterflies foraging in the pollinator gardens. It’s been quite nice to have some time to just sit still and watch, even though my knee aches while I sit there.

All the orchard trees have survived and are thriving. Recently, the persimmon bloomed. We’ve had some windy days and some of the blossoms have blown off. I collected them and arranged them on a table, because they are so beautifully wing-shaped (photo above). I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a persimmon blooming before.

Rin drove me to the garden center (Rin is walking and driving again!) so I could get some bedding plants to refresh some containers. I keep trying different things in the pallet planter, which is in a very hot and dry spot. Nothing ever lasts long. I’ve decided to try portulaca (moss rose) this summer and I hope it survives. I’ve made some pretty groupings of pots in different parts of the yard, and I must say they look really nice. These are the sorts of things I haven’t had time for, since I’ve been teaching. It feels good to spend time in the garden and spread some love. The blueberries and raspberries are coming in, and soon we’ll have tomatoes and peppers and beans and cucumbers!

Groupings

I don’t know about you, but one of the things that is making me so happy right now is walking out into the garden and watching everything waking up. The fresh new green leaves, the various flowers, the birds mating and building nests, the bumblebee queens making their first foraging flights - it’s all very exciting, and it’s changing every day.

And as I’ve been observing, I’ve also noticed specific groupings of plants that are particularly pleasing. None of these was created on purpose; it’s either happened completely by accident or because the plants have migrated or seeded themselves into this position.

For instance, take the group at the top of this page. It’s mostly native plants. In the center on the wooden tripod, there’s Garrya elliptica ‘James Roof;’ behind that on both sides is a Ribes sanguenium which is quite happy and growing larger every year; in the back on a green trellis is Pacific Ninebark (Physocarpus capitatus) which will get big as the season goes on; and on the other side is a towering white ceanothus. In the front on one side you see the feathery leaves of Artemisia palmieri (San Diego mugwort) and on the other side are narcissus leaves, with columbine starting to reach up behind. It’s such a pleasing grouping, and all these plants are thriving in this shady, protected spot by Adam’s train shed.

Near the driveway gate, a white ceanothus is positively groaning with blossom; the light purple spikes of black sage (Salvia mellifera) are poking up through it while the chubby cones of Pride of Madiera (Echium candicans) are just starting to bloom. You can see the leafy branches of Caryopteris clandonensis ‘Dark Knight’ jutting up - these will eventually be covered with purple inflorescences that the bees adore. To the left are some gladiolas that a friend gave to me years ago, which bloom spectacularly pink every summer. Since this is at the top of our driveway, every time I pull the car in, it feels like the plants are welcoming me home.

Just inside the driveway gate, there’s this little grouping behind some hurdles Dad made for me out of invasive French broom: Self-seeded Nigella damascena (Love-in-a-Mist) in the foreground, then a striking plant with white blooms that I was given at school and never recorded the name of (don’t do this!), a Japanese maple with dark red foliage in the middle (Acer palmatum ‘Crimson Queen’), and a sweet autumn clematis (Clematis paniculata) growing up the fence and on the trellis over the gate (which blooms an abundant and dramatic white every fall). Ajuga repens ‘Burgandy Glow’ (carpet bugle) runs under everything and common plantain is scattered throughout. In May, Geum chiloense ‘Sunrise’ bursts out and adds an orange glow, along with some purple-blue true geraniums and some native white yarrow.

Here, I particularly like the view of the pinky purple chive blossoms against the purple blue rosemary flowers, which then leads your eye to the pink Montana clematis growing up the side of the house. (A pair of house finches have decided to make their nest behind the clematis this year, which delights us.) Delicious, fragrant oregano carpets the ground to the left of the rosemary. The handsome form and the smooth gray-white bark of a southern magnolia tree completes the picture.

Under that same magnolia, self-seeded Stachys bullata (CA hedge nettle) is taking over, and will soon have tall purple blossoms, which mirror the purple-blue of the Geranium pyrenaicum ‘Bill Wallace’ just behind. And behind that, you can see the new dark leaves of Psycocarpus opulifolius ‘Monlo’ (a variety of Pacific Ninebark) starting to emerge. This ninebark gets tall and the dark leaves get very large, and that foliage is very striking against the green and purple below.

In the South Garden near the gate, I like the garish combination of the magenta California redbud (Cercis occidentalis) against the bright orange California poppies, and the deeper oranges and reds of the Sparaxis ‘tricolor’ (Harlequin flower). You can also see this year’s crop of garlic, looking wonderful. That will be ready to harvest at the end of May!

Finally, near the front porch there is a spectacularly green Acer palmatum ‘Lemon Lime Lace’ which arches over the delicate blue of self-seeded Chinese forget-me-nots and some freesia that perfumes the air every spring. The silvery-grey foliage on the right is a butterfly bush, and the spiky bulb beneath that is our California Douglas iris, which will bloom a little later in the season.

I wanted to share these groupings with you because it just proves that you don’t have to know what you are doing, or make big and complicated plans, to make an interesting-looking garden. Just pick some flowers that you like and give them a try! The results will likely surprise and delight you.

I’d love to know what’s happening in your garden this spring!

Saving Poppy Seeds

This year, the California poppies in our garden were insanely beautiful. They self-seeded everywhere, tending to find the worst soil at the edges of the garden, hence this picture above (taken about a month ago) of mostly borage and salvias, with the poppies peeping over the back, in a patch of neglected mulch next to the train shed.

Now, the poppies have mostly gone over and set seed. Many will self-seed again for next year’s display, but I also like to collect a good deal of seed to give as gifts, or spread in other areas of the garden. Collecting the seed couldn’t be easier.

I just pull out the plants, and make a big pile. Then I methodically go through the pile, choosing the plumpest, driest seed pods (the ones that haven’t dried completely and already burst open). I pull them off and place them in a parchment bag. I like these:

These bags are quite large, about a gallon maybe, and hold a lot of seeds. After filling, I crimp the bag tightly at the top to keep the seeds safe; when the pods dry, they spring open and scatter the seeds, so if the top is open they go every which-way. Because the bag is paper, it allows for air to freely circulate and dry the seeds. If you store them in plastic, they will likely rot. Another thing I’ve done in the past is put them in a glass, quart-sized Ball canning jar, and used cheesecloth to cover the opening.

Here they are, as I’m starting to fill up the bag. After I’ve saved as many as I like, and crimped the top, I put the bag in the house in a cool, dry spot so that the seeds have a change to dry out completely and burst. Once they pop, I can take out the dried seed pods easily, saving the collected seed at the bottom to scatter in the garden next fall or winter.

Nature has some brilliant designs, and watching (and hearing) these seeds dry, then spring open to release the seeds high into the air, is fascinating. Lupines do the same sort of thing. I’ve collected lupine seed from my hikes before (shhh, don’t tell anyone, you’re supposed to have a permit for such things) and stored it similarly in paper bags on the piano. One night, Tom and I kept hearing a rustling in the corner while we were watching TV. We were convinced that a rat had somehow gotten in the house, and kept pausing the TV and searching around the room for the rodent. Imagine our chagrin when we realized the sound we were hearing was just the lupine seeds popping open in their paper bag.

Mayan Milpa Garden

There are many things that I love about teaching. One is that my students have terrific ideas and are enthusiastic about making them a reality, which lights a fire under me to try new things. Another is that I am on high alert for any program that will send us free stuff to use in the garden. I belong to many such organizations now, such as CalCAN, the California Agriculture and Climate Network, which provides helpful information and resources. Through them, I got a notice of a cover crop seed company (Green Cover Seeds) providing milpa seeds, for any organization that wanted to grow them, as long as some of the food it provided was given away to the community for free. We are already giving lots of greens to our school food bank, Merritt S.O.U.L. Food Pantry, so I knew that I could also contribute some of the produce from the milpa bed, in time. And, my students themselves eat what we grow, both taking extra home each day, and also they enjoy it at school (they make salads and smoothies every time we meet)!

Ok, so two things to share with you here: One, what the heck is a milpa garden? And two, what kind of bed did we build to house this garden?

A milpa garden is simply a bit like a three-sisters garden, based on indigenous knowledge of growing certain plants together. In the three-sisters case, it’s corn, beans, and squash. The corn grows tall, the beans twine up the stalks and also provide nitrogen to the soil, and the squash spreads out and covers the soil, preventing weeds and water loss. A milpa is a similar kind of idea. It’s also sometimes called a ‘chaos’ garden, because it’s lots of different seeds in one place. Above you can see how many different kinds of seeds were in this package! It’s fun to see which seeds are coming up and picture how the bed is going to look when it really gets going.

And speaking of the bed: My students wanted to build a hugelkulture bed, with logs and branches that we found on the property, as well as much of the contents of our compost pile. We dug a trench around the perimeter, then laid down cardboard to smother the weeds, then set the big logs in the trench, and lined the bottom with smaller logs and sticks. Then we carefully packed it with all the dry matter from our compost pile. Then we covered the whole thing with soil, watered it, and planted the seeds!

This is a birds-eye view (literally; my co-worker climbed a tree on the nearby hill to take this picture) of our garden space. You can’t see another space between the house and the barn on the left, which is where we have a bed of peas and a bed of potatoes, as well as an enormous pollinator garden. We got the seed for the pollinator garden from Pollinator Partnership, a local non-profit who I’ve been collaborating with for years. Below is a picture of some of the flowers coming up - native goldfields, tidy tips, and California bluebells! We are finally starting to see lots of bugs on the property. At the start, when this was just a weedy, abandoned place, we didn’t see any bugs at all.

It’s fun to try new things. One of my students was keen to build a keyhole bed, so we made a double keyhole using old slate that we found on the property (and took turns breaking up using a pick, the only tool we had that was somewhat appropriate), and planted our tomatoes in it. You can see that in the top photo up above the milpa bed.

It’s been tricky making a garden with very little money. Most of our budget has gone to buy soil, gloves and eye protection for the students, and seed. It’s very helpful to find these organizations who are willing to donate seed to a good cause. I’ve even had some friends give me seeds and starts and trellises (thanks B!) which has been terrific. Of course, it’s a good lesson to build an urban farm using only materials that are found on the property (we call this ‘scrappy farming’), so there’s definitely a silver lining to making do with less.