30 Saturday Jan 2010
Posted in garden, gardening, roses, Uncategorized
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I lied. Here is another way I fill those empty holes -- potted plants!
I have been meaning to write this for a while. This is my garden manifesto and the one overarching philosophy I seem to have for gardening—-no holes.
What does this mean? Well, sit back, and I will tell you.
Wherever you see dirt, plant something.
That is it. That is my big philosophy and design mantra. Plant things where you have holes.
The most fabulous way to fill a hole is with a rose.
Ta da.
30 Saturday Jan 2010
Posted in garden, gardening, roses, tomatoes, Uncategorized
Niece and nephew helping ( I think.)
Niece comes to visit for an afternoon, but I have to plant the roses. She doesn't garden. But she says she will help even though she is wearing white pants!
Nephew soaks the roses in a bucket. You are supposed to soak the roots a few hours prior to planting.
My new Austin Roses arrived in a box today. They are three of them, bare root, scraggly ones, but large like they usually are. They are in a box in the garage until I can plant them tomorrow. I wonder how they will grow. Where will I plant them? I will probably dig up that Terrible Tomato–yes, it is still alive. My brother explained its unbelievable lifespan as “determinate” vs. “indetermiate” plants. This must be an indeterminate tomato because it has never died despite the winter. It even had three tomatoes on it, but they just now rotted and erupted. Weird. Anyway, I will rip it up and plant the Queen of Sweden there. Oh no, I didn’t buy that one. I bought, Jude the Obscure, Harlow Carr and James Galway — I love those very British names. I love Thomas Hardy so Jude the Obscure was a perfect rose. (Queen of Sweden wasn’t recommended for my climate. Oh my!) Anyway, too bad they didn’t have Tess of the D’Urbevilles or Charlotte or The Lady of the Lake — I’m sure I would have bought those too.
P.S. As you can see from the above photos, I had some help planting the roses. That was very nice since i did not want to leave them in the garage in a box any longer than I had to. I think my niece and nephew survived. I hope my rose did, too!
20 Wednesday Jan 2010
Posted in garden, gardening, roses, Southern California Rain
Today my garden soaks up the rain. The palm trees whip the sky and the cold drizzle shines the leaves of roses and society garlic, pincushion flowers and pink pom pom flowers on groundcover that I can’t remember the name of — sea foam, maybe?
It is a good day for the garden.
The old dog dug a gigantic hole in an unused bed. (Smiley face.) Still a good day for the garden.
Millions of little seedlings mass in the outside-the-wall flowerbed. These will grow to fringed purple poppies, orange mariposa poppies and Toadflax–all spring favorites. Right at the lamp post six or seven daffodil shoots are now pushing through the once dry dirt, enjoying the rain, I am sure. The Hollyhock I planted where my Blue Hibiscus tree died is revived, tiny knots of buds forming along its stem. I hope it grows tall as the tree it replaced, one giant HollyHock as tall as the sky.
I want to buy fertilizer and sprinkle it everywhere. I am waiting for a break in the rain. When this happens, I may try to clean up my vegetable patch, now overgrown with Swiss Chard I’ve never eaten, spinach the snails have indulged in, six or seven snap peas straining to grow upwards. I have only supplied a few bamboo sticks that haven’t been supportive enough to keep them safe from this wind.
El Nino? La Nina? The weatherman says this rain won’t be enough to make up for three years of drought. But let’s not dwell. Let’s watch the garden and say,
Hurray for the rain!
07 Wednesday Oct 2009
David Austin Roses
Since each of my entries has had a fairytale theme, I might as well keep it up. I love British things. I’m weird that way. I love British novels, poets, Boden, tea, vacations in the Lake District. So last year, when a garden editor came to photograph my garden for her magazine (I say this with glee, but nothing ever ran in print), I asked her about David Austin Roses. I had seen them somehow, somewhere, who knows why, and I loved them. But seeing as how they are from England, I did not think they would grow here in this hot coastal climate (where in my odd microclimate, it freezes in winter even though I am steps to the sea.) So she was very nice and a month later, I received a letter in the mail with recommendations for Austin Roses for hot climates. Yippee! I bought five–four for me and one, a Christmas gift to a gardening friend. Two were climbers that I planned to grow along the front wall and two weren’t.
I could write a lot about all these roses, how I planted them one afternoon when I had Strep throat, how I study them every day, and spray off every aphid, leaf cutter, sucker, mold and mildew while trying to stay organic (all these problems!) and I probably will tell you lots more later, but to spare you from boredom, I have to tell you that the climbers are scaring me. They are positively prehistoric. They are unstoppable. UGLY. THORNY. NO Blooms. But growing like those vines that kept the handsome prince from rescuing his sleeping beauty. Remember Maleficent? She could make some baaad flowers, dragons, too.
Oh once in a while I get a bloom…just enough to keep me loving them.
Many Austin roses have 99 petals or more on each bloom. They look like paper confections, they smell like myhrr. They are gangly and gorgeous. Yet these vines….how do I get them to bloom? Now that it is cool, I’m tempted to put Super Bloom on them even though I just put Grow Power. It isn’t working fast enough. I just want to force them to flower–all over my front wall. Pale pink papery floating blooms everywhere on those pink thorns and reddish vines with the tiny sharp green leaves–those vines must sprout out about two inches every day. They stick up into the sky or run over the Bower vine. (Do you think they will kill it?)
The David Austin Web site says as long as they are horizontal, they will keep growing. What mechanism inside the plant could determine that? Are they smart enough to know what I am thinking? Should I be scared?
These are the beasts.
Should I be ? 
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