A Garden Grows in California

18 Dec '07 10:21 am

Mark, my good friend!!! I have aways been admiring you garden captures for their very special light and silvery glow!!! The colours are never strong like in my garden (during the good season, I mean...), but this silver glow!! I love all your gallery!! It is so joyful, and as Jacqueline stressed ,it shows how much you love and care for your beautifull garden and plants!!! I respect and admire that with all my heart!

18 Dec '07 12:11 pm

Hi Liza,
so close to Winter Break now. Just three more days of school! Happy holidays to you too my very good friend. I loved your picture of Nicolas in the xmas ornament. Before I blew it up I though it might be you as a child. Do you see yourself in Nicolas?

You have always been so encouraging about my garden and photos. I know we have different challenges where we garden and that is at least part of the difference in our styles I think. I always think how well your very colorful and bountiful borders look with the green of the hedges and lawn to set them off. I think the same amount of color in a more crammed setting or with less neutral green around would work less well. Since I must use must use less water here, I will never have that rich green back drop so what flower color I have will have to play off the color of gravel and stones and wood and other pathway materials. I do know how well you like my garden and the quality of light here just as I hope you know how much I appreciate the beauty of your incredible garden. Viva la difference!

3 Jan '08 7:06 am

I really need to stop posting pictures under new forum posts. Makes it tough to remember what photos I've already put up. Well the following pictures are at least new to this thread and I will try to be more consistant about only posting photos of my garden here from now on. After I load these I'm going to go outside and exercise my shutter finger a bit. Yesterday I put in my first decent day of gardening since school started in September. Today I'll do some more since rain is predicted for the rest of the week and then I start back up at school.

4 Jan '08 6:22 am

Good thing I took these photos yesterday. It's overcast and rainy today.

4 Jan '08 4:10 pm

Wow, Mark - Your pictures bring back fond memories of California at this time of year! Loved them all, but the black bamboo with the mushrooms was fabulous! I'm in the process of printing it onto matte paper to frame. What a wonderful contrast in colours!!

Today while I was "downtown" Rolling Eyes

, I spotted what must be the first tree in bloom here for 2008! It was storming so much that I didn't stop to get a closer look, but next time I go there, I'll take the camera, as I'm not sure I recognize the species. It's probably some sort of a flowering plum, but you never know!!

Anyway, all the best to you!

-gordonf

5 Jan '08 3:52 pm

Hi again, Mark!

I hope the terrible storm that I just read about didn't affect you very much. The article said that it stretched from Sacramento to S.F. and left a million people without power. Wow!! But then, I guess, in such a highly populated area, it doesn't take much to affect that many folks, does it? Anyway, I hope you and Lia are all right.

Cheers!

gordonf

5 Jan '08 4:30 pm

but that is really good for us, Gordon. Our water supply depends on the constant melt of a substantial snowpack here in California. There is also so much rain in the lower lying areas that flooding is a possibility. I've had quite a bit of wind damage. About half my tree dahlia's trunks were blown down and about a fifth of the tree daisy's branches were broken. The worse damage though was to my Wigandia tree out by the creek which had gotten still bigger with huge leaves up to 18 inches across and 30 inches long. I think all this taller growth with the big leaves acted as a sail and helped to blow down a good portion of the tree. I'm afraid it may be somewhat uprooted. I'm going to cut back the longer trunks and hope that it recovers. It was too miserable out there to do it today so hopefully I'll get a break tomorrow. The second set of pictures I just loaded were taken the day before the storm hit. What a difference! Thanks for your concern, Mark

6 Jan '08 1:22 pm

Hi, Mark-

I'm glad to hear that you weren't terribly affected by the storm, but I'm saddened to hear of the damage in your garden. I know how hard it can be when you've devoted time (sometimes years) and effort to bring the trees and other plants to their present state, only to have them uprooted and broken by a relatively short but severe wind storm. However, gardeners being the ever-optimistic souls that we are, I'm sure that you'll clean up the damage and carry on to even better things!

I went back downtown to get a closer lok at the flowering tree that I spoke about the other day. Well, it turned out to be some sort of a mountain ash which has pink and white berries on it. From a distance the berries look deceptively like pink flowers! So, I guess it isn't the first tree to bloom here this year, after all!

Cheers!

gordonf

6 Jan '08 2:34 pm

Looks like the Wigandia will be alright. I cut it back severely to take pressure off its roots in case we get more high winds and I cut back most of the higher growth. I think it will recover now. Below are pictures of it after I trimmed it, two weeks ago and back in June of 2006. (It never flowered last year because we got a late frost which set it way back after it had put out a lot of new growth.) I've also included some before and after photos of the Dahlia and Daisy trees. Really more to share an appreciation for the force of nature than sadness. They'll both be alright. I've been wanting to dig up the Daisy tree and move it away from the deck anyhow and now I have no reason to wait.

Just to show there are no hard feelings the garden produced its first flower head for the very early flowering bulb: Bulbinella. If the weather continues rough these flowers will be beaten down and end up crawling across their raised bed on their bellies like snakes. In a less stormy year, they will stand up nice and tall looking like miniature knifophias.

I trust your garden is battened down for the winter and is doing well under its occasional blanket of snow. Compared to the winds you get through there I don't think what we just had would be very impressive. If we continue to get a lot of rainfall the little creek below me can become quite the torrent. One year during a downpour it rose so high that it went over a foot bridge in the park, leaving a layer of mud and debris. It also took out some trees along its banks that year. I'm actually on the 'good' side, on the inside of the turn. So my bank tends not to get washed away as much.

6 Jan '08 7:27 pm

Hi, Mark-

Once again, you have a very interesting group of pictures. I burst out laughing at the picture of Fletcher!! He reminds me SO much of Joey when the camera appears! That wigandia tree has very lovely flowers, doesn't it? Do you have any idea where it is native? I've never heard of it before. And the bulbinella - where's that one from? Do you think it might grow here but just bloom later?

By the way, the little euphorbias that I grew from the seeds you sent are all healthy and a lovely, soft green in colour, but they seem to have stopped growing for the time being. They don't appear to be suffering, though, as they are in a south-facing window (the sunny side, for all the southern-hemisphere readers). You said that they were deciduous, but apart from losing the "baby" leaves, they show no sign of dropping any more leaves; could that be because they are indoors? Are yours outside? Here's a picture of mine - as you can see by the tape measure, they are about 8" high.

I'm planning on going down town tomorrow to collect some of the pink berries from the mountain ash tree that I discovered to see whether or not I can get them to grow. For the near future, if I succeed, I'll grow them as a bonsai grove. Later, if i do, indeed, move to the Interior, I'll plant them in the ground as a hedgerow.

Cheers!

gordonf

A Garden Grows in California

Mark's Silvery Shining Garden!!

Some Pictures From December

First pictures of 2008, January

Dreams of California!

Snowstorm in CA !!

Looks like we are getting snow in the mountains

Storms and Flowering Trees

Good News, Gordon.