Enjoying the dog days

Well, as we get older, time seems to move faster, and sure enough it doesn't seem half a year since I was lamenting the early daily disappearance of the sun (and hence early end to the yard-work-day in California's peak gardening season). Yet here we are in the dog days, and from yesterday until mid-week we'll enjoy the latest sunsets we're gonna get. The sun sets at about the same time for a span of evenings (according to this site, from June 25 to July 1) just as it sets at the same frustratingly early time for a span in the winter. Yet around the time of the equinoxes, the sunset times change rapidly--by as much as a minute per evening. My brother says this is because the sun and earth have a sinusoidal relationship and at the solstices we're sitting at the top or bottom of the wave, whereas at the equinoxes we're climbing up or down. This blows my mind a bit too much, and all I really know is that long summer days rule.  The irony for California native gardeners is supposed to be that it's during the short winter days when there is a lot of work to do (like planting, redesigning, propagating, weeding) and in the long days, the garden is supposed to be kicking back in semi dormancy, and the weeds are theoretically gone and not returning, due to lack of moisture. But somehow I still feel pressure to get out there and get things done.

One task screaming to be done is the cutting down of the annual wildflower stalks, which are now pretty crusty and sad looking. I'm sure my neighbors are eager for me to do this, but I want to let a few seed capsules finish ripening and dehisce, so that I can have more wildflowers next year.  But not as many. I still plan to do a post where I discuss designing with annuals, and the main thing I'm learning is that while they look fantastic when they're not thinned, they take a toll on the garden's permanent residents--smaller perennials and bulbs--by shading them out. Here is a mess of annual and perennial action from a couple months ago:

The other work I can't get on top of is babysitting and eventual potting up of plants grown from seeds or cuttings during the winter. And finally, there's watering, watering and watering of containers on the patio. I don't feel good about it because conserving water is one of the reasons for gardening with natives. But those in containers seem to be thirsty every dang time I turn around. My plan is to install drip, at least in the containers that are grouped together along the fence, and this will cut down on their dependency on me, and I hope will sort of cut the overall water use as well as keeping the conditions consistently moderately moist, rather than subjecting the poor plants to a  crazy moisture pendulum that continually swings from saturated to parched.

So once I get the crusty annuals down, the baby plants potted up and the entire patio on drip, then I will get some Mojito mix and start enjoying the long dog days.  Which I hope won't be over by then. And for those curious about why we say dog days, I was too.  Seemed to remember hearing it had something to do with our  buddy Sirius, the dog star, but didn't know what, since we don't see him this time of year. Turns out "dog days" refers to the days when our brightest star Sirius rises at the same time as the Sun, and apparently, the ancient types reckoned it was this convergence of two bright celestial objects that caused the summer heat. (Not quite, but I'm impressed those guys could figure out any of that cosmic stuff at all.) All I know is that in summertime, the livin' is supposed to be easy, so I better get out there and get those chores out of the way.

What's this butterfly doing?

And what kind is it? I'm hoping some of you knowledgeable folks out there can tell me, because regrettably I don't know much about butterflies yet. The thing is this one was hanging out on my Aster chilensis but not moving, even when lightly prodded (by a gentle kitty paw).  Was it dying? Sleeping? Laying eggs maybe? I'd be incredibly supportive of any butterflies and moths who want to raise families in my plants--especially the Aster, because it's not like a few caterpillars are going to make a dent in my supply of that, no matter how hungry hungry they are.  (Aster chilensis spreads by rhizomes, and quite enthusiastically.)

I had to thank my little quadrupedal  gardening buddy for pointing this insect out to me.

I had to sort of keep my eye on him to make sure he didn't attempt to harass or eat our winged guest, and he was actually quite cooperative.  Also, he asked me to ask you to not hate him because he's beautiful:

Thanks for any info on the butterfly!  I hope I'm doing something right for it to have been there.

Spring by Hallmark

I'll do a post in the near future about how my yard was taken over by wildflowers. I never have been good at saying no to a wildflower volunteer. But for now, a picture show highlighting the showiest players, the Clarkias. These are Clarkia amoena (Farewell to Spring) and Clarkia unguiculata (Elegant Clarkia).  They got their start in my yard two years ago when I decided to buy a measly two of each from Annies Annuals, and I planted them in a tiny area where I had cleared just enough ivy to fit in a few 4-inch annuals. They didn't even do well, because 2008 turned out to be our driest spring on record. But they managed to fulfill their life cycle as Nature intended, and dropped enough seeds that the following year, when the ivy was all clear, I had a veritable Clarkia Forest.  Then the forest begat another forest this year.  They are a little over the top for a native garden--I think they are hybrids designed by the nursery to appear hopped up on steroids--so last year I felt like that was sort of cheating, and I actually tried to cut most of them down before they went to seed so as to keep their reproduction at bay and have a more "realistic" yard this year. I didn't succeed. And I'm glad too, because, well. Take a look. They strike me as worthy of a greeting card you'd send to your granny.  So for all the grannies out there:

Name this weed please

Ages since I've posted here and I feel bad, but May is always a busy month for me and I can't seem to get a word typed in edgewise. I'm really grateful for you readers who stop by here when I post, and I'll try to keep up better now!  I have a lot of spring flower-riot type photos, since it is that quite magical time of year, but for the moment, here's a quick, if embarrassing, ID I need help with!  You weed-identifiers, please help me out. This crazy thing started growing about a year ago and it had a monocotish appearance at first--just a few blades--so I thought it might be one of the bulbs I'd planted months earlier, just behind schedule for whatever reason. It stayed in a holding pattern for months and months and finally started growing tall this spring. It finally developed more slender leaves and stalks almost 5 feet high, and when it developed buds they looked awfully weed-like, so I was disappointed. I'd planted an Ascelepias speciosa roughly in that spot early in the garden's life, but it seemed to die (for some reason I have had no luck whatsoever with Asclepias) and even though the leaves weren't like that plant's, I sort of wondered if it were maybe some other Asclepias, mislabeled from the nursery. At some point when I wasn't looking one of the buds not only flowered but moved right on to become a huge crazy seedhead. That had to come down before spreading over the entire neighborhood.  Anyone know what it is? Most weeds come in dozens or hundreds or thousands, but this is the only one of its kind out there that I know of.

Thanks for any info!  Pictures of happier, non-impostor plants to follow soon!

The Sacred and the Profane

Okay. Confession time.  *Ahem*.

I have a privet tree in my yard. Legustrum japonica. No one hates invasive exotics more than I do, but...it's complicated. I didn't know trees or plants at all when we moved into the house, but I quickly recognized this tree as the Bane of My Life.  In summer, the tiny whitish flower petals cover everything in the yard, clog the gutters with fine debris, and make birdbath water-changing a pretty much constant task. Year-round the tree covers the doorstep in leaf-drop, and in winter, there are: The Berries.  (Queue Psycho music.)

I'll get to the berries in a bit.  You're wondering why I don't cut down this tree.  Well, now that I know more about plants and understand the harm done by invasives, the tugging on my conscience is even more compelling than my sweep-weariness, but for one thing, this is not the only privet in town. I know most of the privets on the street are volunteer weeds, some of them possibly the prodigy of my tree, and I sometimes feel like more yards have them than don't. So removal of mine wouldn't change the overall local Privet Menace much. But yes, that's a cop-out, and I don't truly want to be part of the problem.  But the birds!  This is the bird tree of all time. I go outside in spring and there is a din of birdsong--a solid wall of sound--and most of it is located in the privet. I look up in the scaffolding (the only view of this tree that I think is kind of pretty) and see woodpeckers and nuthatches bouncing from branch to branch as well as sapsuckers, juncos, towhees, kinglets, finches, sparrows and others. And in winter armies upon armies of robins and waxwings.  I go back and forth over the idea of getting rid of this tree. If I did, there are still the other trees--mostly birches, also far preceding our ownership of the home--and I see birds in them too. But not close to as many.

Plus, this is a mature tree and a huge feature on the landscape. Removal would result in my shade garden becoming not a shade garden, and us getting to know the neighbors a lot better.  Any replacement would be years away from having the same sort of presence.

Now the berries. They come out in the fall, coloring the whole tree blue-black, and they start raining on everything in December or so. They stain my clothing, and, embarrassingly, the clothing of unsuspecting guests and passersby.  They make the birdbath into purple soup every hour or so. Then the robins and waxwings arrive.  I think of the New Year as Waxwing Season, and welcoming these gorgeous flocks is an inspiring way of welcoming the coming year.

I'm on the lookout for the Waxer Army over Christmas, and then one morning I look out the kitchen window and see that the privet has become a Waxwing Tree, branches drooping with great clusters of birds. Then something spooks the flock and the tree seems to explode as the cloud of birds moves on to some neighbor's privet.   The waxers eat other things--good things like Toyons, as well as Pyracanthus and Juniper--but the knowledgeable lady at my favorite retail store, Wild Birds Unlimited, tells me that their favorite is Legustrum, "hand's down."

In addition to the waxers are lots and lots of robins, feasting on the same berries. All this also makes me refer to the early part of the year as year Purple Poo season. All the yard's pavement, front and back, and all stones, birdbaths, pots, cars--everything--is covered in purple poo from berry-glutted robins and waxwings. When I pour out the grape-colored birdbath water, a dark blue stain remains on the bowl.

Around mid February, Purple Poo season ends and I say farewell to the waxers (the robins stick around but not in as shocking of numbers). I miss them, but then again I don't. Well, I do. But that messy season is icky. And then spring arrives and where there was once only horrible purple poo there is now...seedlings!  Any time I go outside, even just to get the paper, I start pulling a few privet seedlings and get sucked into a vortex. I can lose hours to this task. There is no end to the seedlings. Spring is the worst, but there's never a non-seedling time.

So, such a virulent, vicious non-native invasive standing tall above my yard of native shrubs and perennials, making a mess and creating chores. It's messed up, I know. I feel like I can never put my house on the local native garden tour with this nemesis on the premises.  I suppose I'd have to plead guilty to aiding and abetting it--along with an army of masked bandits.

On gardening buddies, meadows and snakes

For the last week or so I’ve had a new garden buddy. Seems my almost-middle-aged cat has got himself a bad case of spring fever, so I’ve been letting him come out with me and help trim the grasses—and call my planting choices into question. I’m in the cat-guardian camp that believes the danger of being flattened by a car or carried off by a coyote is too great for free-range kitties, so I keep mine inside, but Neo has always tortured my conscience with his howls to go out. In the past we’d try the leash thing and he’d spend the whole time trying to Houdini out of the harness, but he seems to be mellowing with age. I love having him around and I envision a time where he can chew on Festuca rubra and Koeleria macrantha to his tummy’s content while I do some weeding or sit in the sun and read a book.

All this is very good, except that it's got me regretting my back yard planting design choices. A spring-flower-filled meadow that would fade to tan as the summer wore on seemed too pretty to resist, despite my own objections that it might create a rattlesnake hazard. (They don’t invent expressions like “snake in the grass” for nothing, you know!) We live in a fairly rattlesnake-heavy area, and every spring and summer we see a handful in the yard. They like to relax under cool plant cover on hot summer days. The ivy was total snakeville, so I knew better than to create a similar situation.

And yet here and I am with a dense meadow patch. The idea was to replace our small lawn with drought-tolerant grasses that would be extravagantly colored by the blooms of Sisyrinchium bellum, Linum lewisii, Linanthus grandiflorus and Silene laciniata, as well as bulbs like Allium and Triteleia. This is coming along pretty well, though the Silene seemed to disappear. But what I have most of this year is Gilia capitata. My meadow is only a year old and wouldn’t be very dense yet, except for that impenetrable forest of Gilia.

This grass-and-Gilia patch that I’m seeing as a little dangerous is, naturally, the cat's favorite spot. He retreats to it every time something spooks him and I’ve dubbed it Homegrass, in reference to Hometree in Avatar.

So now I have to decide: 1) pull out the Gilia so that there is enough visible soil to spot snakies, or 2) prohibit cat use in that area till after blooming, then cut it all down with a weed-whacker. I have a feeling the cat in question is going to exercise his veto power on option 2. So far I’ve just been giving the area a visual inspection by parting the Gilia forest, but because many rattlers this time of year are babies and therefore small and rattle-less, I suspect they could go undetected. (By they way, I’m not against the snakes in principle—it was their home before it was mine—I just don’t want them biting my little friend of friends.)

Next year I will resolve to not let the Gilias run amok, and I’m kind of thinking of making Yarrow (Achillea millefolium) the backbone of the meadow. I have it elsewhere and so far, it doesn’t have stalks at all, but is just a nice, low turf-like cover. Maybe when it gets its stalks it’ll cause the same situation, but I’m wondering if it would be less dense, and therefore easier to peer into.

I do enjoy Yarrow, though find it needs a bit more water than I’d planned on giving. Yarrow is sort of a mascot in my yard though, because I have this memory of my mom buying some and my sister laughing at the purchase because “you can just find it growing in the wild.” Yes—and that pretty much encapsulates my whole garden ethos now.

Well, rainy week, so no need to decide right away what do with the meadow. My new garden buddy doesn’t ask to go out if it’s as much as drizzling. It’s probably worth modifying my meadow for him. He's better company than my old gardening buddy:

Directive?

Happy springing forward, everyone! I live for that transition to where I can get home in daylight and check in with my plants any evening of the week. March is a magical time.

And now that we’re done reeling from that other March ritual, the Oscars (just kidding, I don’t get too invested, I mostly like to see the gowns, like everyone else), I thought it a good excuse to set out some thoughts on a movie that got some, but not enough, recognition last year. And don’t worry, it relates to native gardening, some. This year, Pixar’s Up became only the second animated movie ever to be nominated for a Best Picture award. How much this is attributable to the fact that there are now 10 nominees rather than five is a matter of speculation, but either way, I couldn’t help wishing the distinction had gone to last year’s magnificent Wall-E. Of course Wall-E got good reviews, and the Best Animated Feature statue (as though Pixar would ever not win that), but when Up was released last summer, it felt to me like Wall-E was forgotten and tossed out like so much Buy N Large refuse. I was pleased that at least The New York Times’ A.O. Scott named Wall-E the best picture of the decade. It is a film worth remembering. It’s not that I begrudge Up its many merits, its sweet story of enduring love and its eye-thrilling colorscape, but Wall-E is a deeply beautiful film, and a profound film. It is a film about what it is to be alive and a film that makes you want to change your life.

This is an essay that’s been rattling around in my cranium for a while and I’m posting it on a native plant blog. Well, in Wall-E, the human race is saved by a plant. The plant’s specific nativity is not the point. (We don’t actually know what kind of plant it is, but my money is on Algerian Ivy, given its stubborn persistence in all conditions, including the vacuum of space.) From the perspective of the people in the movie, the plant’s nativity is Earth, and so is theirs. Light-years from their home planet, the people have devolved into infantile and helpless creatures caught in a 700-year string of tedious, artificially-lit days that yield no joy or sorrow, no experience or sensation discernibly human. The people are lost to the earth and themselves.

There are many reasons gardeners cite for going native—save water, help wildlife, grow plants likely to thrive—and I agree with all of these, but, together they add up to maybe 1% of why I choose natives. I moved to the Bay Area in late 1994, so I have called it home for over a decade and a half. I always admired pretty gardens and pretty plants. But once I started learning about the plants that grow here naturally, only then did I begin to see this place, to be at home in it. Recognizing and knowing the plants as my neighbors and my hosts is what made me, as the late and very great Wallace Stegner would say, “a placed person.” Displaced for seven centuries, the people in Wall-E are re-placed because of the truth contained in a single plant. It’s easy enough, too, to see the ship as a metaphor for our modern lifestyle—plugged into machines and trapped in sterile indoor worlds.

A criticism that is often made of Wall-E is that it is powerful in its wordless first half but falls into action-cartoon stereotype in its second half, but I don’t buy this. The second half is the story, the hero’s journey if you want to go all Joseph Campbell on it. There are of course other themes at work, such as the film’s representation of love as light—think of the bulb that blazes into light at Eve’s touch and later doesn’t shatter when Wall-E compacts it, or the string of lights Wall-E uses to anchor Eve to himself—but fundamentally it’s a human-redemption story.

Wall-E finds the human ship midway through the film, obscured in a nebula, a not-unobvious metaphor for the mental and spiritual state of its inhabitants. The literally ungrounded passengers of The Axiom have so long forgotten their identity as embodied creatures that they can’t chew food, to say nothing of standing up and experiencing the simple pleasure of walking. They are admonished to “Remain stationary. A service bot will assist you momentarily.” Their entertainment amounts to sitting still next to a pool, or playing sports by controlling robot surrogates with a remote control. Even their wardrobe of identical jumpsuits is chosen by machines.

The idea of Earth, a tiny sample of which is brought to the gleaming ship by Wall-E, in the form of caked-on dirt and grime on his body, is so unfamiliar it literally sets off alarm bells, and sends an obsessive-compulsive little cleaning-bot on a mission to catch the offending visitor and eradicate the “foreign contaminant.”

Wall-E and his foreign contaminant, and his living plant, bring an element of chaos to the flawlessly streamlined ship. This starts to knock people off their machine-feed, turning their jumpsuits from cold and bloodless blue to vital, sanguine red, and causing the people to discover tools they’ve never known they had. Like eyes. “I didn’t know we had a pool!” “So many stars!” And hands. When two passengers inadvertently touch hands while pointing at Wall-E through a viewing bay window, we see that they are experiencing another’s touch for the first time; cut to the next scene, they’re splashing in the pool, likely the first playful human act in centuries.

Wall-E’s journey affects more than the passengers: fans of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest may see a bit of Randall McMurphy in Wall-E as he sets the defective bots free and inspires them to mimic his joie de vivre. But the most important impact is on the ship’s captain. As Wall-E had been programmed with the “directive” of compacting trash, and Eve the directive of scanning for signs of life, the captain’s directive, as the humans’ leader, is to take them back to where they all belong. When he proclaims “I don’t want to survive, I want to live,” we know he will do this, but it is the remnants of the home planet aboard his ship that impel him to start making the right queries. “Computer, define earth.” “Define sea.” (And unforgettably, “Define hoe-down.”) I defy any viewer to stave off goose bumps, and possible ocular waterworks, watching the scene where the captain whispers, “Computer, define dancing,” and the camera cuts to Wall-E and Eve in a glitter-tailed choreography outside the ship.


When I was a kid I loved 2001: A Space Odyssey. Dave Bowman’s journey into pure consciousness seemed exciting then, but these days I’m more concerned with the world of substance. Whenever I watch (yet another space adventure) The Empire Strikes Back, I’m always annoyed in the part where Yoda pinches Luke’s arm and scolds, “Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter!” Luminous beings we may or may not be, but I can never help wondering just what this little green punk has against crude matter. I happen to like it. Yoda is supposed to represent the enlightened master, but I don’t think he’s as sharp as real-life monk and author Thich Nhat Hanh, who said, “The true miracle is not walking on water or walking in air, but simply walking on this earth.”

Near the end of Wall-E, the Axiom’s passengers tumble out of the ship’s chute onto bare earth, reborn, and they stand up and walk, feet on ground, crude matter on crude matter. I emerged from the theater euphoric and speechless, crying and laughing. I wanted to wrap my arms around the trunks of trees and sink my hands into the dirt. We need make no hyperspace journey across the galaxy. Our miracle is right here.