Rainy Summer

Today's forecast said rain, and since we are just a couple days from July....I didn't take Mark Finan seriously. Boy was I wrong. There's not much that keeps us from going outside to check on the garden. On a day that we should have had 90-100 degree weather, we had pouring rain. Umbrellas in hand, but wearing flip-flops because we're in denial, we still made the trek.
My poor garden. This year has been crazy. The weather has been unpredictable. I've spent most of my time fighting weeds and plant disease instead of enjoying the garden.

The plants that do like this rain? The ones that I just planted Sunday...like this Eryngium proteiflorum pictured above.
As we ventured around the garden looking for squash, we came across this poor little bee hanging out on my newly planted Erigeron glaucus 'Wayne Roderick'. I guess this poor bee wasn't expecting the rain either, and got stuck in the storm. There was still life left in him, so we picked the flower and brought the bee to a protected area.
He's now hanging out in a little pot of succulents near our front door where we can continue to check on him. Will he make it? Probably not. But I love seeing how much my daughter cares for this single bee. And if we do save him..... well, that's just awesome. At 4 years old my daughter recognizes the importance of bee's.... something that most adults take for granted.

She also knows the importance of snails. They feed the ducks :) hahaha.... We pluck them and throw them in the lawn where a couple ducks happen to be enjoying a mud puddle.

And tonight, we go back to summer dreaming. We hear triple digits are on their way again..... but we'll believe it when we see it :)

Meet Ted! The Titan Arum "Corpse Flower" at UC Davis

Meet Ted! Ted is a Titan Arum (Amorphophallus titanum), otherwise known as the "corpse flower". He just started blooming today at the UC Davis Botanical Conservatory and we were lucky enough to see him before the smell of rotting flesh took over the greenhouse.
What do you think? Should this be our Christmas card photo? haha...


The Titan Arums are found on the island of Sumatra in Indonesia. This particular plant is from seed acquired by UC Davis in 1995.

Once blooming, the Titan Arum puts off this smell of rotting flesh to attract flies and beetles to help with pollination. We got to the greenhouse fairly early so the smell wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, but I hear later tonight it will be extra stinky! It appeared to be "spraying" its stink every 3 minutes or so while we were there, but I imagine right about now it should be spraying pretty regularly.

The picture above may look like a tree, but it's considered to be a single leaf. This particular Titan Arum should be blooming next year. I believe this is "Tabitha the Titan"? Titan Arums can take about 15 years to bloom for the first time, but then will get into a bloom cycle of every 2-5 years. The inflorescence of Ted will die back to a corm (?) and one of the leaves pictured above will appear. Eventually the leaf will turn yellow and die back, and the plant will go dormant, until its next bloom cycle occurs. Each "flower" can produce a couple hundred seeds.

Pictured above snapping pictures is Ernesto! He was awesome! It is so fun to meet someone that is super excited about plants and clearly passionate about the work that he is doing at the conservatory. Seeing this place almost made me want to go back to school. Almost. Since that probably won't happen, I will probably sign up for one of their tours instead because this place was plant heaven!

It was fun to sit back and watch the different visitors that came. We got to meet a nice man that was actually from Indonesia, who said that when he lived there as a kid, the villagers didn't seem to value these plants.

Despite the stench, they are gorgeous. Some of the ladies were commenting on how they'd WEAR the bloom because it reminded them of a silk skirt. The petal part of this plant is actually called a spathe. And the inside- the crinkly fuzzy loaf of bread as my daughter called it- that is called a spadix. It looked as if it was covered in velvet. Below the spadix, in a section that we can't really see, are several hundred little male and female flowers.

If you get the chance tomorrow, the "petal" will be much more open, and the smell will be dying down. This bloom process lasts about 48 hours, then you have to wait a few years for the process to occur again. Thank you to the UCD Botanical Conservatory, and all of the staff that is donating their time over the next two days so that the public can participate in this rare event. You can visit their site to get information on the visitation hours for Ted. Admission is free to visit Ted, but please consider donating to the conservatory! Or as Ernesto said "When you get rich, remember us when you die." The Titum Aruns also have their own Facebook page because they are THAT cool. You can find their FB page here.

Adding Plants to Your Garden? Consider Your Neighbors

What's living in your backyard?

When we moved in to this house back in the summer of 2004, no one told us about the dangers that lurked in the backyard. Want to take a nap on the hammock? Forget about it. Unless you enjoy nightmares of Swamp Thing coming after you when you sleep.
When we bought this house we were too concerned about the plumbing issues to see that there was this horrific green monster that was tearing down our back fence. Well over a 180 feet of basket-weaved style fencing was being brought to its knees by this, a popular plant of the eighties, a way to keep things "green" with little upkeep. A popular housing option for rats, and the smell of cat pee that lingers with it, this green beast is not your friend.


What people don't understand is that not everyone likes ivy. I hate it. We're on a corner lot and I feel like I am constantly battling it from both sides. When we've chatted with our neighbors about the decline of our fences, we hear things like "But it's holding up our ivy." Holding up your ivy?! How about the safety of my dog and child and not having a secure, fenced yard. The yard that I paid for?
As we continue to install metal posts along our fence to hold it up, we get no support from the neighbors that installed the evil green beast on the other side. Who's responsibility should it be to maintain this? If you plant something that takes over your neighbors yard, I would expect that it is the responsibility of the "planter" to resolve the issue with the neighbor, no?
Thanks to our neighbors, the vegetable garden we once tended to in the backyard has been overtaken by ivy, and an overgrown fig tree. We gave up on the fight, and instead ripped out the grass in the front yard to start our vegetable garden, since our neighbors refused to tend to their own gardens, and keep the ivy from growing into our yard. Lucky them- now they get to look at my tomato cages!

What's your take on invasive plants from neighbors? I've heard horror stories about bamboo and ivy, and obviously I'm experiencing it myself. It's one thing if it's just green and pretty- but what if it's ripping down your fence, as shown above?

Soooooo, what's my point? How about considering your neighbor with everything you plant? Your favorite plant may not be theirs, and you need to consider that as you're picking plants out for your own garden. Anything that says "can be invasive" should probably be avoided, unless you have a full time garden staff that is willing to battle for you. And that battle will still come at a price. Do you want a nice relationship with your neighbor, or not?

Father's Day at Effie Yeaw Nature Center

Happy Father's Day to all of the awesome dads out there! How did you spend your special day? In our house it's not about gifts, but instead about quality time with the family doing whatever it is that dad wants to do. My husband chose to do a little hiking at Effie Yeaw Nature Center in Carmichael, CA.
The Effie Yeaw Nature Center is ran under the American River Natural History Association, who took over the center in 2010. A family membership to the ARNHA is a modest $40 (and includes parking at Ancil Hoffman Park), and not only helps preserve the Parkway, but supports the education programs at Effie Yeaw as well. You can also find Effie Yeaw and ARNHA on Facebook.

Effie Yeaw is a great place to introduce young kids to hiking. Most of their trails are about 3/4 of a mile, and they have lots of benches along the trails to catch a break when needed.


Western Redbud, a member of the pea family, is starting to show off its lovely red seed pods. In the spring their purple flowers are eye-catching....errr, trail-stopping?

You can't see her very well in this picture (because I have a horrible camera, and I follow the rules and stay on the path!), but Effie Yeaw has a wide variety of wildlife that call these 77 acres home. Besides the deer resting in the photo above, you'll often find turkeys, coyotes, rabbits, hawks, snakes, and many, many more. You'll also find a wide variety of BUGS here! Not just bee's, but the valley elderberry long-horned beetle, and about 86 varieties of butterflies call this place home.

A great place to sit and watch the bugs is at this swale pond. We grabbed a bench in the shade, and enjoyed the butterflies fluttering around us.

Housing seasonal overflow from the American River, in 1999 this pond was lined with over 200 tons of clay to help keep the water through the summer months.

Can you tell we're enjoying ourselves?

Effie Yeaw has a butterfly garden, but also includes signs along the pathways that talk about many of the native plants you'll find along your trip, like some of the ones mentioned here.

This meadow is a sea of flowers in the spring, full of star thistle, winter vetch, mallow, wild oats and foxtail fescue.

Here Alex is checking out a Valley Oak that is near the end of its life. Valley Oaks are the largest oaks in North America, and you can only find them here in California. Yet another reason to visit us :)

Oh, and while you're visiting, stop by the Discovery center and shop (open 9am-5pm during the summer) and visit Sophia, a saw-whet owl, who came to the center after being injured in the grill of a truck. Sophia is just one of the animals you can see at the vistor center.

Blooming Artichokes: Bee Crack

A few weeks ago I had a lady ring our door bell, with a bag in hand, saying "You're letting a lot of artichokes go to waste, I'm here to pick them." When I told her the rest of the artichokes were for the bee's, she got a little rude and stormed off, as she told us we were being "wasteful".
To me, being wasteful would be picking the artichokes and then not eating them. Allowing them to bloom is not letting them go to waste, it's just simply beautiful.

The above artichokes haven't started blooming yet, but they are getting close. This particular variety is a beautiful shade of purple inside, which you only see if you allow them to age this long on the plant.

And then once they bloom, it's like a pool party for bee's. Jumping, diving... if I could see their faces I'm sure they're plastered with artichoke-lovin' grins. How many bee's can you see in the picture above?

Consider this my thank you to them for all the hard work they do all year.

So, I'm sorry dear neighbors if we seem wasteful, but I welcome you to stop and check out the artichoke blooms. And don't take it personally if they moon you.

Garden Gifts

Last year I wrote a blog post about sprucing up my grandparents garden. My grandma was suffering from ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease) and spent most of her time indoors. I wanted to give her something pretty to look at through the window, but I also want to try and encourage her to go outside. Hummingbird and bird feeders made her backyard really popular with the local wildlife. I split up a lot of plants from my own yard to help keep the costs down, and Farmer Fred was also generous with plants from his own garden. I was able to fill in their entire backyard with a variety of plants all for under $50, with over half of that going towards an orange tree for my grandpa. One of the plants that I received from Farmer Fred was an alstroemeria. The chunk he gave me was rather large, and I was able to split it up into several plants and share with other family members (and I kept some for myself too).
This past weekend my mom brought over a bunch of bulbs. Most were bearded irises that had been split up from my grandma's garden many years ago, but some were bulbs that I had planted in my mom's garden several years ago when I didn't have a garden of my own. On her way to my house she had also dropped off some bearded irises for my great aunt and her cousin (I think everyone in my family now has bearded irises!). In return I went through my garden and split up a bunch of my plants for my mom. She took home various kinds of rudbeckia and echinacea, which have happily reseeded themselves all over my garden. She also took home coreopsis, liatris spicata, and I split up that alstroemeria that I got from Farmer Fred again.

After we were done splitting up plants, we went around my garden with my 4 year old and we made a large bouquet of flowers to bring to my grandma. In that large bouquet was a lot of alstroemeria. My grandma never got to see hers bloom.

We brought the bouquet to where she's buried at St. Mary's Cemetery.

2010 was a difficult year for my family as we had to say goodbye to several family members who passed away long before they should have.

I took some a few flowers out of my grandma's bouquet to share with my cousin Harold, who also passed away this fall and is buried nearby.

The rest of the day ended up being an emotional garden day for me. As I planted the bearded irises that I got from my mom, I was noticing all of the plants in my garden that I've received from family and friends over the years. I have some hen and chicks that I dug out of my grandma's yard a year ago that my grandpa said she had got gotten from my great uncle Leonard, who we lost to cancer last August. I also cut back foliage from my dutch irises and daffodils yesterday that were bulbs that I planted in my mom's garden 9 years ago to use in my wedding (the dutch iris was my husband's favorite flower, daffodils were mine). A few years ago my mom dug up most of those bulbs (which have continuously multiplied over the years so she gave me several hundred of them), and since I didn't have room for all of them myself I happily shared them with other family and friends. We also have a gingko tree that my father-in-law got us when we first moved into this house. When he passed away a couple of years ago, our neighbor across the street brought us a white azalea. That azalea is planted next to the hydrangea that our good friend Patricia gave us when we first moved into this house, back in the summer of 2004.

So, as you can imagine, I cried. I cried because somehow I had forgotten about how connected my garden is to all of our family and friends, and how thankful I am that so many people have contributed to the beauty that we wake up to every morning. The alstroemeria that I received from Farmer Fred just a year ago is now in four different gardens in my family, and I'm sure it will continue to be divided and planted every time a family member buys a new house (along with bearded irises, of course!). The flowers will continue to make their way to St. Mary's Cemetery where my grandma, great-grandparents, cousins, and great aunts and uncles are buried. Last night before I went to sleep I made sure to send Fred an email to thank him, and to let him now how heavily that plant has become rooted in my family in just a short period of time. I hope I get to make that impact on someone someday.

Do you have a plant in your garden that is extra special to you? How about one that has been passed down through generations? I'd love to hear your stories!