Faded: the sunflowers. They’re drooping in sad-Charlie-Brown fashion all along the side wall. They amuse me.
In bloom: yellow daisies, masses of them. Pink geraniums, always. Orange zinnias, still going strong. Sweet alyssum and snapdragons, recently added. (The summer alyssum crop, grown from seed, carpeted a corner of the yard all summer, then went brown and weedy. We missed them and put in a few nursery plants to tide us over until the next batch of seeds comes up.) Bougainvillea, small but promising. Lavender, keeping the bees busy. Basil, because I forgot to pinch it off.
In fruit: Tomatoes! Hurrah! I moved them to the front yard this year and voila, they are producing abundantly.
But overshadowing all of these by a mile: the renegade pumpkins. Last year (Halloween 2013) we had one jack-o-lantern and two smaller uncarved pumpkins. These got left alone when we tossed the melting jack-o-lantern. (That’s what carved pumpkins do in Southern California. They dissolve on the stoop.)
The two little pumpkins became a quiet science experiment during the course of the year. One was partly under a bush and retained its integrity for months. The other, in full sun, decomposed rapidly. All of us enjoyed comparing their progress during our comings and goings from driveway to front door.
By July, the shaded pumpkin had joined its mate in the circle of life: its skin crisped and cracked like old, brittle paper. Seeds spilled out everywhere. Did I pay them any mind? I did not.
In August, we noticed sprouts. Not only at the site of the departed pumpkins, but also along the side wall near the sidewalk.
By October, we had vines. Big sprawling vines with huge leaves, trailing all across the lawn and beyond. We had to keep kicking them off the sidewalk back onto the grass lest they trip up passersby.
And now, two days before the final pumpkin holiday of the year, we have (at last count) a crop of six young pumpkins of modest size in various shades of green and yellow. Not orange. No, not quite orange yet.
I figure they’ll be ripe in time for Christmas.
As soon as spring is in the air Mr. Krippendorf and I begin an antiphonal chorus, like two frogs in neighboring ponds: What have you in bloom, I ask, and he answers from Ohio that there are hellebores in the woods, and crocuses and snowdrops and winter aconite. Then I tell him that in North Carolina the early daffodils are out but that the aconites are gone and the crocuses past their best..”
—Elizabeth Lawrence, The Little Bulbs
The photo is not of my garden; this lovely sight of a neighbor’s front yard left me breathless last April. I haven’t been down that street lately to see what may be in bloom, but the daisies and poppies are coming up in other yards around town. My own poppies are all leaf, not quite ready to set buds yet. But soon. And some of these small daisies have popped up quite unexpectedly in a large planter by my front steps, along with some adorable johnny-jumpups. Either they jumped up indeed, right into the pot, or it’s possible Rilla planted some seeds…she’s always finding an old half-full packet in a drawer somewhere (why do I only ever plant half the seeds in a packet?) and taking it upon herself to do a bit of Mary Lennoxing. Today it was freesia seeds, inherited from a friend, and some sweet peas and sweet william. I grow freesia from bulbs, not seed, so I’m eager to see if these come up. It’s turning wonderland out there, already…the lavender has gone supersized this year, the bees are quite drunk.
It’s the season when I have no choice, I must read gardening books. The Little Bulbs is mandatory at this time of year, when the freesia are tumbling everywhere. I could live on the scent of freesia. This bit to Miss Lawrence from her horticultural pen-pal, Mr. Krippendorf, one February day, made me laugh:
“I was surprised to hear of the paucity of bloom in your garden, as I once read a book by an Elizabeth Lawrence who listed quantities of plants that bloomed in February or even January in her garden (which she alleged was in Raleigh, North Carolina). We have quite a few snowdrops now, and some eranthis, in spite of the fact that the pool on the terrace freezes every night.” And later: “I have your letter dated Fourth Sunday in Lent but not mailed until Tuesday. You say you might as well have lived in Ohio this winter—that sounds almost scornful. Yesterday was a wonderful day, not too warm, and sunshine off and on. I have tens of thousands of winter aconites in the woods—bold groups repeating themselves into the distance, also the spring snowflakes, and Adonis amurensis.”
All this sudden color is the result of the few days of rain we had the other week, after a crispy, crackling, waterless winter. And I know so many of you in other parts of the U.S. have had a really dreadful time of it these past few months. I wouldn’t dare to ask Miss Lawrence’s question, above, but I’m starting to see hints on Facebook and Twitter of a crocus here, a narcissus there, and Mr. Krippendorf’s tens of thousands of winter aconites gave me courage.
***
Read today:
Henry Hikes to Fitchburg (ahhh, deep delight)
Grace for President
Here Comes Destructosaurus (coming out soon, quite funny, wonderful Jeremy Tankard art)
Finished Where Angels Fear to Tread. Forster is tearing me up, lately. I had to read Howards End because of the Susan Hill book, and it wrung me inside out, and Angels hung me out to dry. In a good way, you understand.
Overslept this morning, thanks to Daylight Savings Time (which I nonetheless adore) and to having stayed up past midnight, too wired from sending off a manuscript (yippee!) to sleep—or to read, for that matter. Fumbled at a crossword puzzle on my phone instead. Well, after talking at my poor exhausted husband for an hour.
So no early-morning reading for me today. And a whirl of a morning, catching up on the housework and garden work I’ve neglected these past weeks. It’s spring out there! Who knew! Loads and loads of freesia sweetening the air—almost knocked me over, the scent was so lovely and so unexpected. And the pink jasmine is blooming, and the lime tree and grapefruit (not as exciting as it sounds, those two—they don’t seem inclined to produce fruit, ever). Nasturtiums and sweet alyssum and loads and loads of lavender. I might have to live outside for a while. “I think your garden needs you, Mom,” said Rose only a little reproachfully. She’s right; the clover is overrunning everything, and let’s not even speak of the bermuda grass.
But inside, there was Spenser. We’re reading it in excerpts, with plot summary between the passages—Marshall’s English Literature for Boys and Girls is wonderful for this—if you, a 21st-century teenager, can forgive the condescending name. Today was great fun, as the girls kept spotting parallels to Narnia (Una happening upon the dancing fauns and satyrs, not to mention her devoted lion)—Rose or Beanie, which?, said “I think Lucy is supposed to be an Una, Mom.” And the description of St. George going forth unto the dragon’s darksome hole:
“And lookéd in: his glistering armour made
A little glooming light, much like a shade,
By which he saw the ugly monster plain…
Most loathsome, filthy, foul, and full of vile disdain.”
I thought of Bilbo and Smaug, but Beanie thought of Eustace. They know a lot about Tolkien’s literary credentials and influences from our Beowulf studies, and now they know about Lewis’s too. You can’t help but see it, reading Spenser.
Oh, and we returned to our Poetry 180 journey, poem #8, “Numbers” by Mary Cornish.
Now, during all this poetry-reading, Rilla was perched in her usual spot at the kitchen table, drawing, and suddenly she flitted across to the shelves behind my rocking chair and started piling up books—mostly volumes from our Poetry for Young People collection, plus Child’s Garden of Verses. Later, I found this pile on my bed. She informed me gravely that she has decided to be a poet as well as an artist, “and I’m going to need to study everything about poetry. All the poems, and the poets’ lives, and everything.”
All the poems. Well, then. No time to lose. We began with Sandburg, at her request—his “Between Two Hills” is her favorite. And then a bit of Poe (we are incapable of saying his name without belting “Poe, Edgar Allen, American poet, born in eighteen hundred and nine…“). She liked the Raven but deemed it “too long” (I can’t disagree) and said she prefers poets like Emily Dickinson who “tell a whole story in a short little poem.” I can’t argue with that, either.
We harvested most of the radishes. There is nothing, but nothing, like the sight of a three-year-old’s face alight in wonder at his first glimpse of those bright red globes. (But then the long taproots alarmed him and he flung his harvest into the dirt.)
Something is eating my baby lettuces. Peter Rabbit, probably, thinks Rilla, who has been enjoying the Potter stories with me. I always seem to pull them out this time of year.
We have exactly one lime on the little tree that has never produced in the five years we’ve had it. Much hope hangs upon this rather unimpressive specimen…
The heavy rains two weeks ago washed out most of our carrot seedlings. I need to replant and keep forgetting.
Bees are ecstatic in the salvia, tree mallow, and nasturtiums. There’s a single blossom on Rose’s yellow rosebush. It’s quite a stunner, as if the bush put everything it had into this one glorious flower. This is the bud that was crawling with aphids the other day. Rilla enlisted the aid of a ladybug and it must have lunched itself to the bursting point, because the blossom is unblemished.
I’m still waiting for the bees to find the borage we planted last week. I have my doubts about it; it’s an unusual white variety, and I wasn’t sure it would attract bees at all. White flowers are night flowers, the delight of moths. But Farmer Bill assured me it’s a bee charmer, and Farmer Bill knows his stuff. We’ll be patient.
Only one of my sunflowers came up! It’s taller than Huck now and working on a bud. I wonder what critters got the rest of the seeds?
All weekend I couldn’t drag myself out of the garden, but today is cold and rainy. That’s all right; this is much better writing weather. This blog is going to be low-key for a while. I’m in the cave.
Outside my door, I hear the pleasant clatter of dice against a table, over and over, and murmuring girl-voices. Rose and Beanie are playing D&D. Rose is the game master, the story-crafter. Beanie was delighted, this morning, when she rolled a charisma check and came up high enough to converse with the black dragon she’d encountered. Apparently Rose does an excellent extemporaneous dragon.
Rilla has all the Draw Write Now books spread out across the bedroom floor. There are horses and dolphins to be drawn. I will emerge to a menagerie in crayon, later this evening. The boys are playing Wii Party. Jane is getting ready for her web design class. Scott’s got music playing, something with lots of inquisitive trumpet, while he tackles the lunch dishes. Crows are calling through the rain. Yesterday we planted seeds: radish, butterhead lettuce, carrots, field peas. And in the flowerbeds: cosmos, sweet alyssum, California poppy. I found a few stray sunflower seeds that had spilled out of last year’s packet into my gardening basket; we tucked those at the corners of the veggie patch. I’ll have to remember to plant those blue morning glories again at the base of the stalks when the sunflowers come up.
Perfect timing, this rain.
I spent most of the day in the garden, most of yesterday morning too. I found some old bricks and used them to lay out one end of a small raised bed for our veggie patch this year. We’ve planted banana peppers, onions, and cilantro from starts, and there are seeds to go in tomorrow: carrot, butterhead lettuce, and radish. I’m not sure anyone in the family cares much for radishes, but they grow so quickly and are fun to harvest. Oh, and we’ll plant a few beans. We buried a couple of seed potatoes this afternoon. Will I ever cease to marvel at this climate? February was always the longest, hardest month back east. My children love snow (those who remember it), but not I.
Saw our first monarch of the season today! Alas, it made two passes around our yard and fluttered on by. My milkweed has buds but isn’t open yet, and may not bloom at all—it’s horribly infested with little yellow bugs I thought were a particularly squicky kind of aphid, but now I’m doubting think not. We recruited an army of ladybugs, who munched dutifully for a while but have now flown home to check for fires or something.
Bees: a respectable number, but not the legions we hope to see when the salvia blooms.
I took a million pictures today but hardly any of them came out. Ever since I dropped it on the street during Comic-Con, my camera is reluctant to focus.
Bloom notes, mostly for my own reference. I like to poke through my archives and compare…
geranium (three kinds)
tree mallow
Cape honeysuckle
lavender (two kinds)
jasmine (the one with the pink buds, not the white)
the yellow marguerites
African daisies
snapdragon
nasturtiums
sweet broom
viola
alstromeria
sweet alyssum (white and purple)
ice plant, in magenta profusion
bougainvillea (trying—I think I need to move it to a better spot)
red salvia (barely)
petunia
stock
Probably more things I can’t remember right now.
This list staggers me. I say that every year but staggered I am again.
FEBRUARY.
We do penance for this in October, when the very air crisps your skin and the only color in the garden is brown.
We’ve just passed the five-year anniversary of our arrival in San Diego. We were going to commemorate it last week with a trip to a favorite park, but the three youngest kids have taken turns with a lovely little virus, so we’ve postponed.
After five years, you’d think I’d be used to the strange seasons here, but a Southern California October still feels novel to me. My garden dries up in August, goes dormant almost, unless I’m willing to douse it with gallons of water daily. (I’m not.) Now, after a week of wonderfully cool(ish) weather—why, the mornings have been almost brisk!—and sheltering clouds, things are perking back up a bit. Suddenly the roses are blooming. Up and down the block, my neighbors’ rosebushes look like the end of The Blue Castle. The cape honeysuckle is magnificent, swarming with bees. Geranium, lantana, plumbago, and morning glory: everywhere I look is color. Red, pink, orange, sky blue, violet.
We planted lettuce starts and peas this weekend. There’s one melon ripening on the cantaloupe vine, and the watermelon I planted over the summer is finally thinking about blossoming. Will it produce? We shall see.
(My garden attracts all sorts of critters.)
So wait, it’s July all of a sudden? I need to do some quick June notes.
* Brief trips to Phoenix (with Rose & Bean) and Pasadena (with Jane)
* A day with Kristen and my amazing goddaughter
* Shakespeare Club performance of scenes from Twelfth Night:
oh those kids made me proud!
* The Penderwicks at Point Mouette
* Lots of game time for everyone,
including The Floating City and Glitch
* The Bat-Poet with Rilla and her stuffed bat, Bitty
* 84, Charing Cross Road
* New session of speech therapy for Wonderboy
* Jane started a C++ class online
* Huck’s hair went curlsplosion again
* The sunflowers are forming buds
* Hollyhock bloomed AT LONG LAST (we waited three years)
* Monarch caterpillars on the milkweed
(first spotted today, so technically a July note)
This virus has really knocked the stuffing out of me. We had to bail on almost all our planned activities this week, including (to my dismay), the extra Shakespeare rehearsals we’d planned. And I’ve ignored my garden dreadfully. All my herbs went to seed.
I would be sorry, but—
Who knew cilantro made such a lovely flowering plant?
That’s shot lettuce above it, the weedy yellow flowers.
Our nasturtiums have grown into huge bush-sized clumps, a tangle of red and yellow and orange flower cups that the bees are mad for. Sometimes the tangle of color happens on the petals of a single flower.
Elsewhere in the garden…
“Is there anything you want?” (asked Mr. Craven.) “Do you want toys, dolls, books?”
“Might I,” quavered Mary, “might I have a bit of earth?”
In her eagerness she did not realize how queer the words would sound and that they were not the ones she had meant to say. Mr. Craven looked quite startled.
“Earth!” he repeated. “What do you mean?”
“To plant seeds in—to make things grow—to see them come alive,” Mary faltered.
—The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
I’m laughing at myself. I was reading over some of my garden-notes posts, and the way I go on, “my garden” this and “my garden” that, you’d think I was describing some vast Martha Stewart-esque estate. Um, y’all know I’m talking about a small suburban backyard, don’t you? I mean, I know I’ve described where we live in other posts, how this house we’re renting is about half the size of our Virginia place, and the lot size is your standard bitty-slice-o-ground. Just before we moved in, the owners (who are some of the nicest people you’ll ever meet) put down some wonderfully thick sod in the back, so we’ve got a nice place for the kids to play, and there’s a patio and a fence. But the grass was all there was in back (in a climate like this, that’s a lot!). What trees there are, are on the other side of the fence. (Also on the other side of the fence: an elementary school, which cracks me up.)
Our neighbor to the north put up a rather high concrete-block wall between our houses. It’s veryclose to the side of our house. You’ve seen it here before; remember when the kids decided to brighten it up with some sidewalk chalk? Between the grass and the back fence, running the width of the yard, is an area about six feet wide that was bare dirt and weeds when we moved in. Here it is in June 2008, less than a year ago:
The owners let us put down mulch to keep the weeds at bay, and my mother helped me plant some flowers there. Whenever I talk about “my garden,” that’s what I mean. That and a long concrete planter built into the patio against the house wall. The geraniums and lambs-ear I posted a picture of the other day grow in the planter, and the poppies, and some lavender and thyme and a few other things. In the back mulch bed (that’s what we call it) are all the flowers I was gushing about yesterday. There’s a small square area on one side without mulch (where the wall meets the fence in the photo above); that’s the veggie garden my mom planted in January. It’s right up against the neighbor’s concrete wall and gets good southern exposure. The rest of the wall is bare and not what you would call attractive. I keep meaning to plant sunflower or cosmos seeds along the wall, something tall to cover it up a little, but the kids like having access to it for chalk drawings and bouncing tennis balls off of.
The south corner of the mulch bed is just bare mulch, with some determined Bermuda grass attempting to reclaim the territory. I keep meaning to plant cosmos and poppy seeds there, too. Seeds because they’re cheap and the plants are easy to remove if the homeowners should wish to, at some point. In between the bare-mulch corner and the veggie-garden corner are the sunflowers, the salvia, the ice plants and moss roses, the birdbath and bird feeder, the wandering jasmine, the daisies and cranesbill and strawberries. It sounds like a lot, but it’s all packed right in there together. So now you know when I gush about “my garden,” I’m talking about this one flowerbed.
I know it’s a cliche, but I’m a huge believer in blooming where you’re planted. Or in this case, I suppose, making things bloom. Gosh, I love to go out in the golden afternoons, the green mornings, and stand among those flowers and just breathe. Look. Listen. The thing about gardening is that it really does engage all your senses. There’s beauty to see and smell and taste and hear and feel. (Oh those velvety lambs-ear leaves! That sharp rush of cilantro on the tongue! The white stars of jasmine perfuming the evening!) There is so much peace there, where things are growing. And so many stories unfolding all around you. The busy insects, the treasured bees, the gossiping birds. The ants have been working for two days on removing a dead worm to their underground storehouses. The armies of aphids have vanished from the pincushion flowers’ stalks, and a lone ladybug quietly trundles up and down the slender stems. I could swear the mockingbird singing a rhapsody in blue on the wire above the concrete wall is showing off just for me.
I made friends with a mockingbird once, our first year in Virginia. I was digging out a flowerbed and kept coming upon fat white grubs all curled up in stasis, horrible things, and I would flick each one off my trowel onto the grass a little way away, and the mockingbird would swoop down and gobble it up. After a few days like this, it used to perch nearby whenever I was working in the yard, watching me, expecting more snacks. I felt like Mary Lennox befriending the robin. But this was no Secret Garden, just another run-of-the-mill suburban backyard. I loved helping to transform it to something unique and lovely (albeit always jungly and weed-plagued) during the five years it was ours. I am loving, now, the coming-alive of this borrowed patch of ground, loving it with a joy as raw and childlike as Mary’s joy when she was given leave to do what she liked in her own “bit of earth.” She found a secret Eden, but it wouldn’t have mattered, really, if all she’d had was a corner of the kitchen garden. There’s magic in every bit of earth.
Photo taken today, May 1st, 2009. More work-in-progress photos here.
This post is for me, just so I’ll know what was blooming when. Also I think my mother will like to hear how fruitful her labors were this winter and spring.
I’m laughing at the bare mulch behind the children in the pictures on my last two posts. That’s the only part of the yard where things aren’t awash in flowers, but it’s where we sit in the afternoons because that’s the only bit of grass with shade. And the mulch bed is bare for the same reason there’s shade: the neighbor’s pepper trees tower over the fence, blocking all afternoon sun. I’ve tried some (shade-loving) impatiens there but they didn’t amount to much.
The rest of the yard, though, oh my. An abundance of bloom.
Currently in flower:
scabiosa
sunflower
jasmine
ice plant
cranesbill
salvia (red and purple)
columbine (fading)
moss roses
Mexican sage
um, those little white flowers
African daisies
yellow daisies
nasturtium
thyme
freesia
lavender
snapdragons
petunias
geranium
stock (not looking good though)
those purple things, nemesia maybe? pink ones too
strawberries
alyssum
the pansies are on their last legs
oh the lovely poppies!
In Virginia, we always used to plant our peas around St. Patrick’s Day. Here in San Diego, we’re harvesting them. My mother helped the girls put in a small vegetable garden during her visit in January: lettuce, tomatoes, basil, beans, peas, cucumbers, carrots. Which, now that I see the list written out, doesn’t sound small at all.
The peas—they planted just a few starts—are ready now, affording the children the singular delight of picking and eating them warm in the sun, impossibly sweet, crisp, perfect. Or so I’m told. I wouldn’t have dreamed of depriving Rilla of one single magical pea; this may be the first time she has voluntarily eaten a vegetable.
The lettuce is ready too; we’ll be having a big green salad for dinner tonight.
The pole beans are about a foot high. Tomatoes ripening, and desperately in need of staking. (I forgot to buy the cages for them, Mom.) That’s on my Saturday to-do list.
We’ve got a few carrots sending up their feathery greens. The cucumbers are spreading. Uncle Ray’s bean seeds haven’t sprouted yet but it shouldn’t be long now.
Jasmine is blooming along the back fence, and the bougainvillea too. The bird-spilled sunflower seeds are half as tall as the fence now. The ice plant is thick, lush, unabashedly magenta. The tall graceful spikes of lavender and salvia nod at each other from their opposite corners of the garden. The Oriental poppies are are shedding bright orange tissue-paper petals beneath their fat, fuzzy buds; they look like the day after a party.
Hordes of brown aphids are coating the stalks of our pincushion flowers. We watched one valiant ladybug wearily do her part to combat the pillaging troops. I fear ’tis a losing battle.
In the front: pansies, petunias, snapdragons, rosemary with its tiny blue flowers like the scraps left after someone stitched a sky-quilt. Yesterday I read the perfectly beautiful picture book A River of Words about William Carlos Williams, and I had to laugh because all week I’ve been hearing an echo of his red wheelbarrow poem whenever I pass the front step, where purple velvet petunias are tumbling over the rim of their green glazed pot: so much, indeed, depends upon this, these blossoms, this gray stair, the merry pansies below.
