Have you heard the good word?

Hey guys, did I miss anything while I was off, not blogging? Hoo, everything is terrible, no? I’m a weird one in that I don’t always find solace in my garden when times are tough. For a lot of reasons (terrible neighbors, forest fire smoke, an inexplicably bad ant year) I didn’t do much in the garden in 2020. I didn't buy any plants or complete any big projects. I hid in the house and watched RuPaul’s Drag Race like the bible tells us to do in difficult times. It made me feel better, even if Greg wishes I’d stop calling him “hunty.”

By the time 2021 and vaccines rolled around I was ready for Hot Garden Summer. But jesus, NOT LIKE THAT. The heat dome hit at the end of June and really crisped the shit out of the garden. Our back garden measured a top temperature of 115.5. It was terrible.

Good thing we’ve introduced a never-ending source of joy into our lives: palm trees. Much like coconut oil in 2015, they work in any application and cure any ailment. I grew up in an area where they are ubiquitous in Safeway parking lots and gas stations, so I took them for granted for many years. At some point I came around and in 2018 we bought some 1 gallon Trachycarpus wagnerianus from Rare Plant Research. By 2021 they were still pretty small and I decided that I was willing to shell out a lot of money for some instant impact.

Still quite small after three years

At the end of 2018 we had the Home Depot yellow bamboo removed from our back garden. They came with the house and had become increasingly problematic. While it was a relief to have them gone, I had never appreciated the privacy those two clumps provided or how they anchored the back. I picked up Chusqea culeou from Bamboo Garden but it’s going to be many years before they have the visual heft we want. 

Before removal

After removal

The replacement bamboo is . . . sparse

Enter palm trees. I visited Oregon Palm Nursery and bought three palms ranging from 5-7’. As soon as I got them in the ground, I wanted more.

Luckily disaster struck and a wind storm took out the Ceanothus thyrsiflorus that framed the entrance to the back garden. 

A lot of people made excellent replacement suggestions but I ignored them and planted yet another Trachycarpus wagnerianus. And another and another because nature loves odd numbers and palms really can be squeezed in anywhere. And if you’re paying a flat delivery fee, you might as well make it worth the driver’s effort. In a fun twist, the trees were delivered one day prior to the heat dome hitting, which meant I had to hustle after work to get three 6’ trachys unboxed, put in the ground, and watered in. I'm not sure I've ever been that sweaty, muddy, and tired. 

Did I mention I was opening my garden in a few weeks, so that Ceanothus absolutely had to be replaced as soon as humanly possible?

I LIVE ON A PALM FARM

Scott Weber kindly photographed my garden this summer so I would have a few non-blurry iPhone shots of my garden.

Photo by Scott Weber

Photo by Scott Weber

Photo by Scott Weber

I'm not saying palms will cure your cancer but I'm not saying they won't not cure it, either. At the very least you might feel better and it's a less stupid trend than oil pulling. These palms make me SO HAPPY. I tend to treat them like I treat Bee, which involves a lot of staring and whispering "You're so good."

The look when you're not giving her snacks fast enough

Stay tuned for my next trend talk: Fuchsias – I'm Suddenly Extremely Into These, Possibly Because They Look Great With Trachys?

I only know how to take blurry iPhone shots

I'm sadly very late to the game acknowledging that two friends wrote exceedingly nice things about my garden in the last two years: Loree Bohl at Danger Garden and Alyse Lansing at Lansing Garden Design. You both make me feel extra #blessed.

Book giveaway winner!

 

Congrats to Laurie G! I used a random number generator and you were selected to win Loree’s book. Please email me at heather [at] justagirlwithahammer.com with your address and I’ll get it shipped to you.

Book giveaway! Fearless Gardening by Loree Bohl

I started blogging and gardening in 2009, during the heyday of longform content. I quickly found Loree's blog Danger Garden. She introduced me to so many plants I didn't know and that I didn't know could grow in our zone. She also reframed a lot of plants that I had grown up with in California, which I thought I disliked. Her blog had a huge effect on my emerging gardening style and opened my eyes to so many new ideas.

In 2012 a reader wrote me and offered to swap some plants. She had a number of agaves and a toddler, a bad combination. Would I want to trade them for something in my garden? 

Agaves in their original location

I had never grown agaves before but Loree gave me permission to try them out in my garden. And I mean that literally: I emailed Loree and asked if she knew what kind of agaves they were and should I put them in the ground? She told me she didn't know but that I should plant them anyway and then she walked me through how to prep my soil. Nine years later they are the anchors of my front garden. 

If you haven't yet purchased your copy of Fearless Gardening: Be Bold, Break the Rules, Grow What You Love, I am here to tell you that it's great. It's that magical unicorn of a book: equal parts inspiring and practical. 

In a time when our gardens are more important than ever, she gives you permission to break the rules and grow what you want. And then she gives you great tips for how to work with any limitations you might have. 

I should mention that I am a librarian and, after working in an academic library for years, I stopped buying books. I made an exception to my usual rule of "just borrow it from the public library," and I'm really glad I did. I know I'm going to return to it whenever I need a creative shot in the arm.

I am giving away a copy of Loree's book. Just leave a comment to be entered in the giveaway. If you're having issues with commenting shoot me an email.

Diary of a wimpy gardener

I've just returned from another successful Garden Bloggers' Fling, this time in Denver, CO. I had so much fun (or possibly lost so much blood to mosquitoes) that I'm still trying to recover. One of my favorite things about the Fling is that I get to explore another gardening environment and it always makes me realize that I garden exactly where I should.

Because guys, I am a wimp.

I'd never been to Colorado and I was unprepared for how much tougher it is, being at a higher elevation and in such a dry environment. I felt perpetually thirsty, tired, and unmoisturized. They only average 17 inches of precipitation per year! It often snows in MAY. The bees are absolutely enormous and their mosquitoes are blood-thirsty. YOU CAN'T BUY WINE IN A GROCERY STORE, WHAT THE FUCK COLORADO, YOUR PEOPLE ALREADY ENDURE SO MUCH.

But in that pioneer spirit, they make do. They manage to create stunning gardens even though they have a much shorter growing season than most of the country. They create fascinating topography using rock, which I suspect looks great even covered in snow.

They create beautiful vignettes in pots.

They create visual interest using unusual materials.

They seemingly spend entire paychecks on annuals.

Their porches go up to 11.

They hunt down liquor stores for a measly bottle of chardonnay, apparently. People drink wine IN CHURCH, Colorado. This feels punitive.

They plant poppies galore.

And penstemon, so many penstemon!

And the most beautiful flax I've ever seen.

Bonus Jean color echo!

They embrace color amongst the evergreens and really squeeze every opportunity out of their growing season.

The gardeners in Colorado are exceedingly warm and generous, allowing us not only into their gardens but also their homes. Many of them provided snacks and let us use their bathrooms.

I really enjoyed myself, in spite of my Pacific Northwesterner wimpery (and I'm an especially tender example). Huge thanks are owed to the organizers, who did such a fantastic job. I left inspired to up my container game and to appreciate that I can buy wine at Safeway, the way god intended.

Coloradans are creative, friendly, and far tougher than me. They make spectacular gardens.

Just a girl with a nail gun

This spring I actually experienced spring fever for the first time in many years. I felt itchy to get in the garden and I purchased prolific amounts of plants via mail order and local nurseries. Our dog and her friends ran roughshod over the garden and I didn’t even care because the seal was broken and I! was! buying! everything!

I grew sweet peas (‘April in Paris’) for the first time and, holy shit, people, those smell as good as everyone says they do. I got my new plant babies in the ground in a timely fashion! I kept thinking, "This is my year. I'm going to stay on top of weeds and for once I won't be embarrassed to have people over."

Then I had to travel to California a bunch of times and then the weather turned hot and my brain and body lost all of their go-go. Oxalis covered everything and Greg would helpfully ask, "Do you think you should do something about that?" and I would glare at him and return to melting in front of the garden mister.

This was not my year. I didn't stay up on weeding. That said, I did achieve a couple of things. I replaced the rotting fence between us and our newest neighbors. They are delightful but they smoke constantly and they have a clear view of our yard from the raised deck off the back of their house. So we asked if we could replace the fence and foot the bill. I disassembled the old fence and built the new one in three hours one Sunday morning while Greg was gone because NAIL GUNS ARE AWESOME. 

Before

After

Weirdos from Craigslist took the old boards for reuse and I drank two cocktails at a tiki bar and took an epic four hour nap. The fence is now seven feet tall, which should also help block the view of our backyard from the three-story condos that were recently built at the end of our block. 

I also reorganized our garage, which looked like the touchdown site of a tornado. Our garage is long and skinny and full of junk. It looks like the inside of my purse but dirtier and with more things that draw blood. The previous owner, a paranoid mess who wrapped every heat register in the house in tin foil (so the government can't listen in on you), installed a useless shelf with a gigantic mirror tilted back. 

See, I don't need safety measures like mirrors to know if someone is sneaking up on me because I left 900 nursery pots at the entrance of the garage. There's a pile of styrofoam you can fall on, too.

We finally took the mirror down, demoed the shelf, and removed a weird cabinet in the corner that we used to store spiders.

We moved our metal shelves to the back and I built a potting table, modified from this video I found on YouTube. Men have largely convinced women that we'll kill ourselves if we use power tools but it turns out building stuff isn’t that hard and its super fun.

Then I added hanging storage to the walls and now sometimes I just stand in my garage and coo in this general direction. As my mother always says, "Simple minds = simple pleasures."

Next up we’re having the yellow bamboo that came with the house removed. It has been terribly behaved, sending rhizomes through the root balls of neighboring plants, at a shocking speed. It leaves culm litter everywhere and it sucks. WHY IS THIS THE BAMBOO HOME DEPOT SELLS EVERYONE? In its place I'm planting Chusqea culeou, which is a true clumper that shouldn't be quite so messy.

Next year is going to be my year, I can just feel it. I'm going to stay on top of weeds and for once I won't be embarrassed to have people over. And I will buy a lot of plants, that I know is true.

Happy accidents when you don't know what you're doing

Lately I've been appreciating a bit of seredipity in the entrance to the backyard. Back in 2011 I posted about how I wanted the entrance to the back garden to envelop you, so you'd get a slow reveal to the rest of the yard. 

After a couple of unsuccessful plantings (mock orange, flowering currant, some other stuff) I planted a Ceanothus thyrsiflorus in 2012 and it grew quickly.

My neighbors had a gorgeous ceanothus that spilled into our side yard and it had been trained as a tree:

When the next door house was flipped and sold they removed this ceanothus and I lost all the shade in my side yard.

I'd never really seen another Ceanothus because I was new to gardening so I didn't realize most people let them grow as shrubs. I limbed up mine too and now it provides a nice canopy along the pathway. Most visitors don't recognize what it is because, you know, it should be a shrub. Or maybe the straight species is always a tree but everyone grows more exciting cultivars like 'Dark Star'.

Tree sized in six years!

I don't always love this ceanothus because its bloom time is short and the flowers aren't as intensely colored as some of the named cultivars. It's also messy once the blooms die. The good news is they don't live very long so I'll probably be shopping for a new tree/shrub in the next ten years.

Please also admire the color echo between the hosta and the hose junking up the photo. Based on every photo I have ever taken it looks like I live in a hose-testing facility.

And since we're looking at that old post, let's do a before and after!

Before

After

Looking back at the entrance, you can see that my wine barrel has since been planted with bamboo, the rain garden was installed, and everything grew like crazy. That old bit of fence on the left was removed as well.

Before

After

Standing in the middle of the yard and looking at the back of the house you can see that we were, in 2011, considering building a huge deck off the back of the house. It's not all happy accidents when you don't know what you're doing! What the fuck were we thinking?

Before

After

Another gigantic whatthefuck was forming here with that goofy shaped bed (hinted at here with stones on the lawn). Circles and squares, damn it! None of this freestyle nonsense!

Before

After

So the moral of the story is that you can limb up your ceanothus but you shouldn't hire Greg or I to design decks or raised beds for you. We suck at it.