Fiddleneck Spring

My daily hiking practice has yielded views of wildflowers of all kinds, but the one I am definitely seeing the most is the humble fiddleneck (Amsinckia intermedia). These cheerful yellow flowers are part of the Boraginaceae family, the same family that gives us borage, forget-me-nots, and phacelia, which are also similarly prolific. Flowers in this family have an inflorescence called a ‘cyme,’ which has this distinct curved row of flowers, with the oldest one at the bottom and the newest in the center of the curve. Bees love flowers in this family, though it’s been cold enough here that I haven’t seen a ton of native bees out yet.

Unfortunately the fiddleneck, charming as it may be, is often considered a weed, because it is toxic to livestock - and the hills around here are not just available to hikers. Ranchers use them for grazing as well. The irony is that often our worst weeds grow in disturbed areas, and the hillsides are very disturbed - by those grazing cattle! So sometimes what we most detest is also caused by us, which is not news to environmentalists.

Regardless, I enjoy seeing the fields of sunny fiddlenecks when I’m out walking; a beautiful yellow sheen punctuated by the orange of poppies and the blue of Dichelostemma capitatum.

Well, I have some bad news. My peppers are pretty much all dead. I planted them waaaaay too early, but covered them in the hopes that they’d make it; unfortunately we had some serious cold snaps in early March and that spelled disaster for these heat-loving plants. I also had some sort of animal disturbance in one of the beds…. squirrels? the local marauding cat? Who knows. I’m pretty bummed by 100 dead pepper plants, considering they were babied by me, indoors, for two months. Ugh.

However, my tomatoes are looking just great. I’ve had good germination and they are getting quite tall and beginning to sprout true leaves. I’ll have to decide what to do with them soon. Do I take the pepper lesson to heart and pot the tomatoes up and keep them in the greenhouse for a while yet? Or do I ignore the pepper lesson, throw caution to the wind, and plant them directly into beds? Am I feeling more lucky with the weather now than I did in February?

Luckily, the Master Gardeners are coming through for me this year in a big way. Their yearly sale is going ahead as usual, just not in person. They will take orders on April 6 and have them ready for pick up shortly afterward. I’m planning on ordering a whole bunch of pepper starts! The proceeds go to their garden, where they grow produce for local folks who are facing food insecurity, so it’s a great place to buy your veg starts.

Waking Up

I was a fanciful child, always reading and imagining. I remember that in my childhood home, I had two favorite places.

The first was my bedroom closet, which was enormous, or at least it seemed so at the time. It had a sort of metal door inside at floor level (housing a duct of some kind?) that had a screw at each corner. I used to imagine that there was another world behind the metal plate, and if I just could find my way in, I’d have all sorts of adventures.

The second place was outdoors on the grass underneath the Japanese cherry tree. I’d lie down and stare up through the pink blossoms and watch the sun through the leaves, which would make a gold outline on the edge of every single leaf. Both places magical. Both equally alive in my imagination.

Every day that I can, I go outside. Sometimes I’m there for an hour, sometimes more if I’m lucky. And right now it is just magical out there. California gets a bad rap for a lot of things, and rightfully so, but one thing California does right is early spring. God, it’s glorious. We’ve had a little rain, the hills are still green, and the native wildflowers are all popping up. I hear birds I’ve never heard before, and see animal tracks and scat I don’t recognize. Everything is waking up.

Out walking through a canyon today, I couldn’t help but imagine myself in Narnia. Were there dryads in the oak trees I passed? Would they speak to me? I felt I could hear them when the wind passed through their branches.

“Lucy’s eyes began to grow accustomed to the light, and she saw the trees that were nearest her more distinctly. A great longing for the old days when the trees could talk in Narnia came over her. She knew exactly how each of these trees would talk if only she could wake them, and what sort of human form it would put on. She looked at a sliver birch; it would have a soft, showery voice and would look like a slender girl, with hair blown all about her face, and fond of dancing.”

“She looked at the oak: he would be a wizened, but hearty old man with a frizzled beard and warts on his face and hands, and hair growing out of the warts. She looked at the beech under which she was standing. Ah! - she would be the best of all. She would be a precious goddess, smooth and stately, the lady of the wood.”

C.S. Lewis, Prince Caspian

I just want to encourage you: If you can get out right now, do it. Don’t miss the poppies and the fiddlenecks and the red maids and the blue dicks and the milkmaids and the buttercups. Don’t miss the buckeyes unfurling their vernal green leaves or the pink of the wild plums. Don’t miss the nesting falcons, the foraging bluebirds, the shy flickers. Don’t miss the tiny rills, the deep gullies, the ephemeral streams. Don’t miss spring. Get out there and see everything waking up.

In Praise of Messy Borders

Last weekend I was working in the garden when a neighbor walked by and asked a question about a particular plant. This plant wasn't in my yard, it was down the street a bit, in a newly landscaped yard of another neighbor. So I walked down with her and we looked at this new landscaping and identified some plants. The particular plant this particular neighbor was interested in was Kangaroo Paws, which is an interesting and wise choice for drier California gardens. As we stood there in this other yard chatting, I mentioned that they way the landscaping had been planted was displeasing to me. It's a vast expanse of lawn with a border of these kangaroo paws and other more common plants, all planted about four feet apart from each other. The ground in between the plants is mulched with wood chips (and that's great!) but the plants are so far away from each other. I said that I preferred a riot of plants, all close together, making a kaleidoscope of color and texture; some high and waving in the breeze, some low to provide a living carpet mulch. I waxed poetic about that type of planting until I looked at this neighbor next to me, who had a sort of blank look on her face. So I stopped talking and she said, "actually, I'm the opposite. I prefer plants to have lots of blank space around them, so you can appreciate each blossom."

Well, that was interesting. I had never considered that there were people who preferred that type of planting, something I've always read about and thought of as 'polka dots.' I then remembered another neighbor who once looked at my front woodland border and said, "I prefer things neat." It's fascinating, isn't it, the way we each have our certain ways of doing things, and the way our eyes see beauty? 

I don't think of myself as a messy gardener; after all, we have a strict pattern of raised beds all over our yard, each of which has a neat, defined border of wood, and plants growing within that border. In spite of that, or perhaps even because of it, I like my borders to be a bit wild. The interior spaces are dedicated to production - food for our family. Therefore they must be organized and neat. But the borders can be a tumultuous array of natives, ornamentals, perennials, and annuals, all growing in a haphazard manner and lending the garden a sense of the carefree.

I'm not knocking my neighbor's preferences for orderly spaces, but there is some science behind letting your flower beds, and indeed even your vegetable beds, be a little bit on the overgrown side. Let's go through those reasons one by one.

1) These wild borders mimic natural spaces. Where in nature do you see a neat, orderly, polka-dotted landscape? Nature fills in space, with whatever it needs in that place to improve the soil for the next plant. Soil life depends on living roots in the ground for optimum health. Living plants are constantly feeding the microbes in the soil and making important exchanges to improve both the soil and the life of the plant. Dying foliage offers nutrition to the area. Conversely, orderly landscapes show only the asserted will of humans. I'm not sure when the trend of orderly landscapes started, probably a long time ago in Europe and Asia, when humans decided they could improve nature, and started manipulating plants. I'm not saying there is anything wrong with asserting a human force of will on your garden. But I'm saying that, while it might be enjoyable to the gardener, it may not be what nature intended. I would say mowed lawns fall into this category. Where in nature do you see a lawn? Now a meadow, maybe. 

2) Pollinators like drifts of flowers. You'll attract more butterflies and bees if you plant drifts of flowers, all close together. Pollinators like a place where they can go and stay awhile. If your plants are few and far between, they may just skip the joint all together - it's too much work for too little reward. If you like seeing beautiful wildlife (birds too) in your garden, and if you like having your food plants pollinated, plant more closely and in drifts. 

3) A plethora of plants helps shade the soil and conserve water. Here in our dry state of California, choosing plants by water needs is a good way to go. If you plan your border to reflect a particular plant community rather than 'native' or 'imported,' you can have lots of flowers that you enjoy that may not be particularly suited to our state. Natives are important and I try to keep the contents of my borders 50% native; but you don't have to limit yourself to those as long as you put plants in similar communities and water needs. Plus, if you have lots of plants, you'll actually conserve water. This is because the plants form a canopy that shades the soil and allows less water to evaporate from the ground. A moister soil also helps regulate the temperature under that canopy, so that the plants don't get too dried out. It's a win-win.

4) A dense canopy of plants also helps to crowd out weeds. If every space is taken by a plant you intended to be there, there will be no room for weeds. 

5) You'll attract beneficial insects. Not just the pollinators that we all know and love, but also weird creatures that like to shelter in a denser canopy. These weird creatures are often the good guys, eating up the aphids and thrips and whiteflies that plague our crops. We all have plenty of prey insects, regardless of whether we want them. The trick is to invite the predators in too. And one great way to do that is to plant a full and diverse border.

6) And that brings me to the subject of diversity. When you plant a diverse grouping of plants, you're solving lots of problems at one go. You'll get some plants that have shallow roots, some that have deep. You'll get some lower growers and some tall growers. You'll get some flowers with daisy-like heads and some with umbrella-like heads. You'll get some who have lots of pollen and some who have lots of nectar. You'll get a gorgeous flower show from the entire rainbow, as well as different greens from the leaves, which create texture. You'll get big leaves and small leaves, coarse foliage and fine foliage. In other words, it's a delight for your eye, for the insects, and for the soil.

7) Plants grow better with friends. As long as you are careful to plant in correct communities (things that like acid soil, things that like clay soil, things that like shade, things that like dappled sun, etc), plants will do better with a diverse community around them. Permaculture has the right idea about this with their guilds. 

8) Perhaps the best reason of all, it's less work for you as a gardener. Why are you spending time mowing and chopping and weeding and watering and cleaning up all the time? And you can do this in containers, too, if you don't have yard space. My mother, who lives on a rocky hill that has remained (sensibly) a native habitat, has hundreds of pots on her deck which are always awash in color and beauty. 

I don't mean to imply that having this kind of garden is no work at all. I do spend a lot of time on these borders. First of all, they take years to establish, depending on the kind of plants you purchase. The full look that I've gotten (and love) has taken me all my 13 years at this house to achieve, and there's plenty of spots where I have yet to achieve it. It takes planning, time, and money at the outset. And the ongoing maintenance also is an issue if you choose more annuals over perennials. I like to have about half of each, so that means some seasonal work to replace the spring annuals with summer annuals, for instance. Some clean up is necessary and some re-seeding. And if you put out seeds frequently, you'll need to clear a little space for those seeds so that they have room to germinate, and you'll need to water a little more frequently. 

So it's not work-free! But the constant 'taming back of nature' isn't part of that. Instead, your goal is to allow nature to take over and do the work for you. 

So, for my part, I shall leave the heavily tended, cultivated polka-dot look to my neighbors. Instead I will continue to crowd my space with diversity and beauty, and reap all the rewards of it. I believe that, once you understand the reasons to do it this way, you'll want that too. 

What's THAT on the Yarrow?

On Sunday afternoon, Tom welcomed a special guest to Poppy Corners: A woman who had bid on an auction item ('Jam Session') we had donated to Kate's theater group. It was basically a how-to class, about jam-making and water-bath canning using strawberries from our favorite farmers' market vendor. While the jam was cooking on the stove, I took our guest out to the yard for a little tour, as she had expressed interest in the garden. We came to the yarrow patch in the North Pollinator garden, and she was enchanted. As she ran her fingers through the blooms, I watched in horror as a cloud of flies erupted and then resettled. I was embarrassed. I think I said something lame like, "Gee, there's a lot of flies this spring! Must be all that rain we had!" and we promptly moved on to a different, less buggy section of the garden. But I filed that moment away in my brain, and today, as I passed by the same patch of yarrow (which I must do a hundred times a day, as it's right next to our back gate), I stopped to watch. And it was like an episode of Wild Kingdom.

A common green bottle fly

I've been spending this morning trying to figure out just what kind of bugs I saw on the yarrow. Some are just regular flies, like the fellow above, and I'd chalk that up to the location of this flower patch, which is next to the chicken coop and the compost heaps. But I've also seen what I think are syrphid or tachinid flies, both of whom are predatory and eat the bad guys, like aphids (and yes, I've also seen a few aphids on the yarrow) and thrips. 

I'm pretty sure this is a Sphaerophoria philanthus, or syrphid fly

I've also seen several spiders, just lying in wait - they're no dummies. What better place to catch a fly than where the flies are hanging out?

Waiting.... and then.... 

Gotcha!

A different spider. I thought this was some type of orb-weaver, but they are really more nocturnal. Would love to know what these are.

And I've also seen numerous beetles.

These beetles are truly tiny, and most of my photos have them with their heads stuck in a flower, so all I can assume about that is that they are pollinating the plant - but I have been unable to figure out what this is. Chime in if you know it.

These are incredibly small and they are all over the buds. They look a bit like a minute pirate bug, but with large eyes, also a bit like a squash bug. It could be some sort of a big-eyed bug, which are beneficial predatory bugs. If you know it, please share!

It's exciting to see all the activity on the yarrow, and a little shivery too, I must admit. Getting up close and personal with these critters always helps me to appreciate them, whether they are beneficial in the garden or no.

This particular yarrow is Achillea milleflorium, Common Yarrow. It's a little hard to get going in the garden, but once it starts, it can be quite weedy. However it is easy to control by pulling it out. Once pulled, it is an excellent addition to the compost pile, as it apparently acts as an 'activator' or 'accelerator,' due to its high nitrogen content. It's also an excellent medicinal plant (although it hasn't been scientifically studied, of course), used for everything from healing wounds and stopping bleeding to bringing a fever down. And, it looks pretty - remember our guest running her hands through the blossoms delightedly? It really is a beautiful plant. There are lots of cultivars with different color blooms; I have some peachy pink ones that are particularly nice.

A flesh fly. Yeah, it eats what you think it eats. It's a natural composter!

Our 'Jam Session' student went home with a dozen half-pint jars of fresh strawberry jam, and hopefully she'll mostly think of that when she thinks of the day at our house, rather than the flies! But I am glad that she discovered them, because it has made this patch of flowers much more exciting and ecological for me.

A Class Excursion to Alcatraz Island

My 'Weeds in the Urban Landscape' class meets every Wednesday morning, and each week, we travel to a new place in the Bay Area to study the weeds that grow there; some are coastal, some are inland, some have northern exposures, some southern, some are in sandy soil, some in clay, some in landfill. On Alcatraz, we had an opportunity to see weeds in pretty much every exposure, in pretty much every kind of soil. Alcatraz is just a bare rock rising out of the San Francisco Bay; when it was used as a military outpost during the Civil War, dirt was brought in to mobilize cannons, and to absorb the shock waves when they were fired. This dirt came from nearby Angel Island. Gardens were first planted by the military families who lived here, then by the inmates when Alcatraz was used as a prison, as well as by the families of the guards who also lived on the island. The prison was closed in 1963, and for years there was no official gardening program; however, in the last 15 years, a large volunteer corps has arisen to plant and tend the flowers on Alcatraz.

One of the 'official' gardens on Alcatraz, on the site of the old hospital. There are some historic roses planted here. as well as many native and exotic perennials and bulbs. Angel Island is in the background, on the right.

The weeds arrived here in the soil that was brought in, and by birds colonizing the island. There are many seagulls (California and Western) and cormorants (Brandt's and Pelagic) that nest here each year; I met an ornithologist whose job it is to study these birds, and we had a fascinating conversation about the mating and nesting habits of the gulls and cormorants, as well as the Black-Crowned Night Heron, Snowy Egrets, and Pigeon Guillemots that were all over the island. 

Seagulls nesting in an abandoned yard, and in the ruins of the guard's cottages; looking south to the San Francisco skyline, and part of the Bay Bridge

Snowy Egrets nesting in trees and bushes, with a view west to the Golden Gate in the distance. The egrets made the funniest noises; sort of a cross between an angry cat and a kid grumbling. At one point we were able to get within three feet of nesting colonies.

Not the best picture; I was on top of a cliff looking down at the edge of the island. These cormorants are making nests, can you see the brown piles? Cormorants find a new mate every year and nest in a new place; seagulls mate for life, spend most of their lives away from each other, and come together every year in the same place to build a nest and raise chicks.

There were a lot of distractions on the island, but we came to study weeds and make a revised weed list for the naturalists in charge, so that's what we did. We took the first boat out to the island, with the rangers and workers and volunteers, at the crack of dawn. This was lovely because we were able to have some time alone there before the hoards of tourists descended. The last time I visited Alcatraz, I was in my early twenties, and I was more interested in the prison and the stories there, rather than the external natural communities. On this visit, we did not go inside any buildings, as our time was focused outdoors.

Since I've been taking this weeds class, I've developed new eyes. I've always noticed things that other folks haven't, when I'm on hikes or out in the wild, but now I am even more aware of the little things. There's so much to see in the micro world. However there was one thing that was very obvious right away, in a macro way - the pro-Native-American graffiti all over the island. Either I hadn't seen it in my previous trips, or it has been done in the last twenty years.

We spent the lion's share of our time on the island making a current list of all the weed species, both native and exotic. We were able to find and categorize over 100! We wandered around the island for hours, talking about plants; we had a lot of tourists stop to listen and ask what we were studying. Then they'd move away, disappointed. Why study weeds? I can totally understand this opinion. But I have grown to have a new respect for weeds, and how and why they behave the ways they do. Scrappy. That's what they are. 

However I'd have to say that the planned and tended gardens really were more fun to look at, and we spent a lot of time talking about those as well. What was so terrific about all these gardens was the setting. All these old, crumbling facades, with brilliant flowers set against them. The juxtaposition of old and new was what really made this place beautiful. And then, of course, the location and the background of the bay and the surrounding hills and communities. Man-made vs. nature. 

a classmate looking north towards Angel Island

It was also very gratifying to see native bees all over the flowers. That means that they are nesting there. I only saw one honeybee - who knows from how far away that bee came? I didn't see any feral honeybee hives on the island, but I suppose there could be one in a tree or in an old building. I doubt the folks in charge would leave a feral bee nest in a place that gets millions of tourists visiting, though. Doesn't matter, the native bees do an excellent job here pollinating the flowers.

It was a fabulous trip. Not so fun on the boat ride back, with about a thousand other people; where we had been able to roam all over the ship on the way over, even in front of the captain's deck with our face to the wind and the Bay, now we were jammed check-by-jowl with a many-languaged humanity. I suppose that has its own rewards, but I was pooped and glad to get off that boat at Pier 33, only to then face traffic all the way home. One of the things about spending so much time in nature, outdoors, is how awful you feel when you're trapped in a vehicle, on a bridge, in crawling traffic. I kept thinking about a seagull I had seen on the island, perched in an agave blossom, high above the human activity milling about below.

My midterms are over, and I'm officially on spring break. Time to turn my thoughts to the home turf. It's still not time to plant the summer garden; temperatures remain in the 40's in our yard at night. However I can start to do more planning, and get the truckload of compost delivered and added to the beds. I'd like to get all my term papers done over the next week too, as well as hike in the nearby hills and see which native wildflowers are blooming. I've definitely felt that I haven't been very home-and-hearth focused, though, so I need to get some stuff done around the house and spend some time with my children, whether they want to or not. :)