Spending time in the Pacific Northwest provides an important contrast to my Southern California Wild Suburbia. Wild Suburbia is sunny, hot, and dry. It is aromatic, gray and tan. The sun is strong and bright, even harsh. The Pacific Northwest has its own magic. It is a land of tall trees, ferns, and mosses. Sunlight […]
garden photos
Pacific Northwest Cottage Garden
It has been foggy here on Orcas Island in the San Juans. I woke to thick mist, the sound of fog dripping from conifer trees, and the low, melancholy song of fog horns. Once I woke up, I remembered that following the flurry of blog posts on drip irrigation in June (Irrigation basics, Controllers, Drip […]
What should I plant?
This is the perfect time to prepare your plant for upcoming native plant sales and fall planting! This slideshow presents garden-worthy plants from woodland, scrubland, chaparral and desert plant communities. Barbara is a South Pasadena-based native plant gardener, horticulturist, writer and blogger. Her recent book, Wild Suburbia: Learning to Garden with Native Plants, guides new […]
Orcas Island Garden Tour
Garden tour of five special gardens featured by Orcas Island Garden Club
Brown is a color
Summer in my garden is mostly brown, with beige highlights. The fallen leaves are cool, crunchy, and comforting. Soft gray spider webs are sprinkled around in grass, on trees and suspended in mid air. This is summer in Southern California.
Wildflower headshots
It is almost the summer solstice but there are still lots of flowers blooming in the nature park. There is a mighty fine display of California buckwheat (Eriogonum fasciculatum). Toyon (Heteromeles arbutifolia) is also blooming, a harbinger of lovely red berries in winter. Wild sunflowers (Helianthus annuus) are just getting started, standing tall with several blooms per stem. […]
Neglect
The first method of lawn removal listed on the Lawn Removal Methods: Pros and Cons sheet is neglect. I have used this method more than any other in reducing the turf-covering in my yard. And yes it does work, but as noted in the con category, it takes time, requiring a good bit of patience. […]
Can you feel the heat?
All of a sudden it got really hot here. And more heat is predicted for tomorrow, the next day and the next day and the next day. Welcome to summer. I got a few new, used lenses for my Nikon D7100 today. Couldn’t wait to try them and they didn’t disappoint. I tried to capture […]
Beats computers
Yesterday I spent most of the day inside trying, unsuccessfully, to “migrate” from a Windows image database (IMatch) to Lightroom. The reason for the move is that I migrated from Windows to Apple about six months ago. I prefer IMatch as an image database but Lightroom has really nice image editing capabilities, and IMatch is […]
Wildflower Weekend at Rancho
This weekend was the Wildflower Festival at Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden. If you weren’t able to see the Wildflower Show, it will be open for a third day, on Monday, April 21st. Though the irises have past peak, the garden is still looking lovely. The following album shows pictures of the garden taken today. […]