Yes Virginia, there is a Planta Claus

Last week I went trolling for Little Bluestem seedlings (Schizachyrium scoparium) on Facebook, hoping that Scott would tell me that he had a bunch lying around. I have all the finesse and subtlety of a sledgehammer.

Instead Jane told me that she had some Elijah Blue seedlings and would I like some? Then she delivered them to my house while I was working! Like some sort of magical Planta Claus!

Festuca glauca 'Elijah Blue'

I have been continually overwhelmed by the generosity and community spirit of gardeners. They offer up advice, encouragement, and commiseration when plants die or design plans go awry. They provide tons of inspiration and they are mindful of the other creatures that inhabit our planet and how our actions affect them. They share.

And they plug a LOT of money into our local economies while they feed their addictions.

Thank you, Jane!

Have you hugged your gardener friend today? Go do that now. And maybe make sure they are drinking enough water; it's getting hot out there.

Let there be light

Every year my friend celebrates his birthday by donning a bathrobe, inviting a bunch of friends over, and watching The Big Lebowski in the backyard. He projects the movie onto the back of his house and it's really fun. The last two years we have been lucky enough to host that party for him. It's all the fun of hosting a party with none of the stress and it's great.

Have you seen those great outdoor weddings where they have a ceiling of globe string lights? They are beautiful and I've always wanted that for the backyard.

Photo source:  apartmentsinteriordesign.com

In the first months in the house I had friends over for dinner and I tried to create that effect by running Christmas lights from a ladder to the roof. It looked tacky and sad. It's hard when you don't have mature trees in your yard to run lights to. I have the one mature tree in my yard, the cedar, which has a line running to it that we wrap with Christmas lights. It helps during barbecues but you don't get the ceiling-of-lights effect.  


Greg and I threw a couple of ideas around. The first was to take one of those very heavy umbrella stands that people use under their patio tables and stick a pole in it, from which we'd run lights. But we didn't think that would be strong enough. I've read that you can stick a pole in a bucket of rocks but that doesn't seem strong enough either.


Ultimately what worked was driving a 3.5 foot DWV pipe (supposedly less brittle than PVC) into the ground with a sledgehammer. 

I held a piece of wood over the pipe so it wouldn't split where Greg hit it with the sledgehammer. We left about a foot sticking out, into which we inserted a 12 foot pole we found at the Home Depot. An eye screw at the end, a couple of zip ties, and a carabiner and we were in business. We wanted globe lights for the party but couldn't get them delivered in time, so these rope lights we had on hand worked for the time being.

We tucked the pole behind the flowering currant and have plans to sink another one behind the Cryptomeria. The pole bends a bit from the tension in the rope lights so we may run a counter-wire behind it to pull the pole back a little. 

When we're done we can throw the pole in the garage and cap the DWV pipe so it doesn't fill with debris or water. Not bad for $15 and an hour of labor. The globe lights will be more expensive but I think they'll look even better at night. We're slowly classing this joint up.

Get off my lawn.

The other day I was working at the dining room table and I heard conversation from the yard. Four neighbor boys were walking through my yard, over the berm, through the rain garden, across the rocks, everywhere but the sidewalk. I politely asked them to get the hell out of my yard and they very politely scurried off.

When you see one set of footprints it was then that I carried some trash that I dropped in your rain garden.

And I know that you just have to let go when it comes to the front yard. Cats poop in your mulch. Dogs lift their legs on your favorite yucca. Other dogs then pee on your favorite yucca. People step on plants in the hell strip and throw cigarette butts amongst the ground covers.

And dogs, enough with the peeing on my favorite yucca. Jesus.

But now I'm pondering growing stinging nettle or prickly pear in the berm. Someone tell me to let it go.

Yard work makes me cry

A long time ago I ordered way too much soil for the first iteration of vegetable beds. Then I dug the rain garden and removed a ton of soil. Then Greg removed a lot of soil to resod the grass when we moved the vegetable beds. All of the soil from these projects ended up here.

The grass grew up and over it, the bamboo invaded it, the neighboring cats used it as a toilet, and all the weeds that ever were took up residence here. There's about two cubic yards there.

A show of hands: is anyone having the worst allergies of their lives? I am. I have never been so miserable. I spent Saturday night unable to sleep because I couldn't stop sneezing and I couldn't breathe. So I was operating on about four hours of sleep and I felt crummy when I decided that we should get rid of the pile.

I started digging and filling up the truck. I got really frustrated and tired and then I started crying! I swear I don't normally do that. Greg was like, "Okay, wackadoo," and took over. I am the worst.

We took two loads over to Wood Waste Management, who has the most genius business model. We pay them to take our dirt, then they mix it with compost and sand and sell it back to people as "soil mixture." But I'm happy they exist and our soil didn't end up in a landfill. And now our area looks like this.

Next up I want to dig up that bamboo and put it in a container, as it is very badly behaved. And sadly I think the Pieris is going to have to go. Greg and I were planning and drawing and plotting the future deck and pathways and we just don't see how it fits in. I will probably shed some tears when we remove it because that's apparently what I do now.

Planning other people's gardens

My sister recently texted me with a request for plant ideas on her back patio. The owner of their condo installed a new fence and took out the English ivy that was covering the old fence (my guess is that it will be back) and gave them an additional four inches of bare dirt. She misses the greenness of the ivy but doesn't want to do edibles this year. She wants tough, drought tolerant ornamentals that can take part shade and won't require daily watering once they are established. She has young kids that play out there, so the plants can't be poisonous, pokey, or irritating.

The area is 17' long and 22" deep. This is a split view of the area at 8am:

And 1pm:

And 6pm:

So half the the space is getting dappled shade and half is getting full sun at the hottest part of the day. She lives in Campbell, CA. Her zone is 9b, which gets pretty hot in the summer, with about 19" of rain annually. It's not unreasonable for her to take a trip to Richmond to visit Annie's Annuals. Her kids are out of school for the summer and they'd have a blast there, right? As a result, I picked out plants solely from Annie's. She should be able to dig up and move everything she plants if they move to another house.

Here's what I have picked out so far. If she had full sun at her disposal this would have been a LOT easier. Salvias! Agastaches! So! Many! Grasses! This was a fun challenge. For whatever reason the color blue has always reminded me of my sister, but she's also a brash, sassy shit-talker, so I included some hot orange with lots of chartreuse to brighten up the shade. Presented in no particular order (all images are from the Annie's Annuals website) . . .

Aeonium escobarii, a blue-hued succulent:

Agastache foeniculum 'Golden Jubilee', a compact, chartreuse perennial that smells nice. This is only plant that might need regular water.

 Anchusa azurea 'Alkanet', a pretty 3-4' bush covered in blue flowers. I just purchased one of these for my yard. 

Asclepias curassavica, a grey-leafed evergreen milkweed with hot orange flowers. It attracts butterflies and is 3-4' tall and wide.

Muhlenbergia rigens, a tough low-water grass that might self-seed but she's in a rental so who cares! This one really might be too big for the space.

Crassula lycopidiodes, a chartreuse succulent that I want to grow in my yard so badly.

Senecio mandraliscae, a blue succulent that will work as a groundcover. Bonus: it grows in our brother's yard, so she can dig some up and not spend any money on it.

Here's the mock-up of what I had envisioned. I used the iPad app Paper, which I'm deeply in love with right now.

And with chicken scratch writing on it. Can you tell I don't own a stylus?

Option 1, nothing is to scale.

The grass anchors the L-curve with the Aeonium on the left and the Crassula and Senecio to the right. That leads to the orange milkweed, the Anchusa, three bunches of the Agastache, then another milkweed, and finishing with another combo of Crassula and Senecio.  Here's how the plants would look, going left to right.

The total should clock in at about $73, if she goes with this list. 

I've also thought about this placement: 

Option 2, nothing is to scale.

Or this one:

Option 3, nothing is to scale.

Seasoned gardeners: do you have any opinions on plant placement, plant choices, or anything else? Any glaring errors? As I'm writing this I'm noticing that her cement is stained with a light blue, which pretty much matches the Senecio I'd planned to use as a groundcover. That might look dumb. 

Drunk plant shopping

The best part of having the memory of a goldfish is that I order plants online and, two days later when they arrive, it's a genuine surprise opening the box. What did I order? Why would I order only one of these? Why did I order this plant I'm recommending for my sister's yard? It's a mystery and a little like living in that movie Memento, except without the constant tattooing.

I've been wanting to rearrange some plants in the yard, some of which were just working as placeholders. I received this Carex flagellifera 'Toffee Twist' at a garden exchange and plopped it in the ground in the front yard. The agave berm didn't exist then. I really dig this grass but being surrounded by brown mulch wasn't doing much for it. Greg thought it was dead and I was just having a hard time letting it go. I hoard dead leaves and empty nursery pots, Greg, not dead plants.

It's alive

I moved it to the berm, where hopefully you can see it a little better against the light gravel and agaves.

I planted some Showy Milkweed, Asclepias speciosa.

We still had a tarp covered in extra gravel hanging out next to the berm. It looked super classy, especially with the garden hose laying about. I finally got the extra gravel moved to buckets in the garage and I planted some of the plants I don't remember picking out. I have to stop shopping when I've been drinking wine.

I will never stop plant shopping while drinking wine. It's way too fun.

I need something to make my Dasylirion grow BIG, now.

Where the tarp used to live I planted an Anchusa azurea 'Alkanet' and a silver sage (Salvia argentea).

I know it will happen soon but I want everything in the front yard to grow already. It all looks so placed in a line. 

In the hellstrip I planted two Redbirds in a Tree (Scrophularia macrantha). They look exactly as advertised. They are supposed to be clay tolerant and require no summer water.

In other news, the Coreopsis 'Moonbeam' that I got from Kate is exploding in buttery colored blooms. I hear these peter out after a couple of years, so I'm enjoying it while it lasts. I'll forget what it was by then, so remind me, okay?

Bought anything good while you were tipsy lately?

Removing sod, six inches at a time

I truly believe that at some point we will have almost no lawn in the backyard. I suspect I'll have removed all of it by hand, small section by small section. It would have taken an hour with a sod cutter to remove it all in one fell swoop but now I have all these muscles, so I shouldn't complain.

Because I'm landscaping as I go, with just a rough idea of what will happen here, we end up with a lack of transition between spaces. To wit:

Does anyone use their recycling bin for recycling?

We plopped down cedar chips when we removed the cement slab and relocated the vegetable beds with the hazy idea that we'll have more pathways filled with cedar chips that take you around the yard, past a small circular lawn we haven't laid, past the deck we have yet to build, and through the gate that doesn't exist on the west side of the house. Some day we'll figure it out but for now we have a weird triangle of grass that wants to encroach on both the rain garden and the cedar pathway.

I needed a hose break right about there, so I wouldn't run over the grasses in the rain garden when I watered the side entrance. My fig tree in a pot has been homeless since we tore out the cement slab, floating around the yard wherever I needed a bit of height. So I removed a bizarrely shaped strip of grass, getting rid of that triangle and creating a wider mulch moat between the lawn and the rain garden.

Now we have a different weird transition.

I didn't have any cedar chips on hand, so there's fine mulch to the left of the fig tree where there should be chips. It looks silly right now but I do like having the tree there. We've always wanted a green screen here so we'd feel tucked in when we sit in our morning coffee/evening Manhattan chairs.

Sorry for the blown out photos--it was actually sunny!

So I think my plan to have a lush greenness pull you into the yard is sort of working. You enter the side yard . . . your eyes are drawn to the nursery pots full of dead hyacinth. What the . . . ?

Then your eyes are drawn to the random rain barrel, in the middle of the lawn. Surely there's a better place for that? And why is there a recycling bin full of empty nursery pots?

As you walk down the pathway to get smacked on the right by rhubarb leaves. One day you'll get smacked on the left by fig leaves.

Planning is for suckers. At least this guy is happy.