Battered Blooms

Several (weekly!) downpours of rain, gusty winds, and even hail. This has been an interesting year in the garden. I've got weeds growing that I've never seen grow in my garden before, such as the picture above (btw, I consider a weed to be anything I didn't plant, or anything I can't get rid of). I didn't plant this one, but I'm enjoying it.

The cooler temperatures have prolonged my artichoke harvest, and my four plants just can't stop spitting them out.

Some plants have flourished with the rain.

Some seem confused.....
Some are battered......

And some blooms are clinging for dear life.....

The poppies haven't stopped showing up, they keep spitting out more and more flowers, which means more and more seeds and poppy plants for next year.

The citrus tree's keep getting their blooms knocked off in the wind, and this particular tree, a Chandler pummelo, was not a huge fan of the hail.

But, the sun is out now. And if it decides to go away for a few days again, I'll just go hang out by the Ursinia 'Solar Fire' to heat up until the sun comes back again.

Morningsun Herb Farm, Vacaville

Saturday I went with Kristi, Katie and Alex to the Open House at Morningsun Herb Farm. This was my first time visiting their nursery, although I purchased plants last month from them at the California Flower and Garden show. I've drooled over their selection of plants on their website for a while, and I'm kicking myself for not making the trip sooner!

Oh look- who's that checking out some of their demonstration gardens?! I was two seconds shy of getting her dancing on camera. Oh well, there will be other opportunities I'm sure!

They had a lot of people here for their event as you can see in the background. I admit I was more interested in the plants than participating in any of their classes available that day or browsing the several vendors they had.
Alex says "Come this way, I want to show you something!" Her plant pick of the day was a Helianthemum "Dazzler" and surprisingly didn't have a single flower on it and she still picked it! I was impressed when I got home and looked it up online to see that it is a red flower (which I've been trying to buy more of) AND is drought tolerant. Whoohoo! Good job kiddo!

I was VERY impressed with Morningsun. It was very well organized, with separate greenhouses for herbs, medicinal plants- even an entire greenhouse dedicated to salvia's (their selection is to die for!). I only bought one salvia today- a Peruvian sage (white leaf and a black flower)- and that's only because I already bought four of them a few weeks ago from them! Their prices were outstanding at the nursery, much cheaper than they are on their website (most 4" pots were in the $4.25-$6 range). I still bought a whole flat of plants even though I told myself I would only buy a couple(including a 6 pack of misc. basil plants- why don't more places sell a multi-pack of basil like that?! Genius!).

I can't wait to go back. Sorry I didn't take more pictures, I was overwhelmed with the selection of plants and was in full shopping mode! If you want to see more pictures, hop on over to Katie's site to see hers. I promise I'll take more pictures next time!

Davis Community Garden

To celebrate Mother's Day I went to Morningsun Herb Farm's Open House. But, that's not what this post is about! This is a little tour of the Davis Community Garden, courtesy of my friend Kristi who shares a plot here with a friend. This was a detour on our way to Morningsun, and if you can't wait until I post my pics, you can check out Katie's pics here.

Kristi did a post about this garden about a month ago, which you can find here. It's fun to see how it has changed in just a few weeks!

This is the really cute tool shed.

Princess Alex is trying to figure out how this giant cabbage does not smell like a flower. If it did, I'm sure she would have tried to pick it in a heart beat.

As much as it was fun to see everyone out planting their vegetables, I was drawn to all of the flowers.

Ta-Da! Here's Kristi's garden- complete with a bunch of hop plants (which I want to grow, but will admit I have no clue what to do with them).

I couldn't end this post without commenting on the poppies. I am SO jealous that they are doing so beautiful here- I tried starting a bunch from seed this year with very little progress. Oh well, at least I now know where I can go to enjoy them!

Front Yard Update

It has been a while since I've posted about my front yard project. It's not because nothing is happening! I'm out there every chance I get- pulling weeds, watering (since the irrigation isn't done yet), shoving plants into the ground, and harvesting our bounty (which right now is just the artichokes and various herbs).

Clearly it's a DIY project, and I'm not a landscape designer. That being said, I'm pretty proud of it so far. There's a nice mix of edibles and ornamentals, and my daughter LOVES it- so I have accomplished what I set out to do.

What a difference 6 months can make. The bark pathway that I did today on the left is the same exact bark that I use on the slope to the right, last summer. I actually can't wait until some of the red color disappears from the cedar, I prefer it when it has aged.

The outside section of the fence continues to fill in slowly. Maybe slower than I had hoped, as I had hoped to barely see the fence by now. Give it another couple of months though, this strip is heavily planted with rudbeckia, autumn joy sedum and coneflowers that will fill in this summer and provide some additional snacks this fall to the birds.
Now for question time. Does anyone know what these are? A neighbor dropped them off at my house. She said they have an orange flower, and what we're seeing now is the leftover seed pods. I have no clue where to put them since I don't know what they are! Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Wordless Wednesday

Dry Garden Nursery, Oakland

On a recent trip to the Bay Area I finally made the trip to Dry Garden Nursery in Oakland to check out their selection of drought tolerant and rare plants. What a treat!This isn't your ordinary nursery. And I'm not just saying that because of the vine that is about to swallow the Golden 1 Credit Union billboard that's on the property.

So many nurseries that I go to spend so much time in presentation and staging the plants. It might sound weird, but it was refreshing to go to a nursery that wasn't selling the "unobtainable dream". This guy was selling plants. And not just plants, but plants for SERIOUS plant lovers.
It was also a good lesson for my daughter to be exposed to the "Don't Touch That" lesson. Picture this: "Hey Alex, watch out for that plant". And then she says "Why?", like any toddler would. And I respond with "Because it's covered in three inch spikes that will hurt like needles." And then I swear in her head she must have said "Wow- I highly doubt it, you're crazy" because two minutes later I hear a scream. I could try to transcribe to y'all what she was saying but it was at a frequency that I can't understand. I THINK she was saying "I DON'T KNOW WHY I DON'T LISTEN TO YOU MORE BECAUSE THAT HURT LIKE HECK", but I can't be sure. Lesson learned, the rest of the time we were here she refused to touch anything.

And if you happen to be missing your balls, they have an extra set for you. Or twelve. I know of a few of you that could use these.

All in all, it's worth a trip if you happen to be in the area. If you're not in the area, I'm not sure it is worth the trip. They are expensive, I'm not gonna lie. But it's cool to visit (it's an old gas station!), and they have an excellent selection of rare plants and succulents. I actually did not buy anything here- and for those of you who know me in real life, you'd know that it's nearly impossible for me to visit a nursery and NOT buy something.

Disclaimer: When it comes to succulents, don't listen to me. This is an area that is totally new to me and I know NOTHING about. I bought a bunch of them last year thinking I'd be saving on watering, and then watched most of them turn to mush at the first sign of frost. So, now I'm avoiding succulents. We don't get along. They are high maintenance for me. Well, most of them are. Until I figure out all of the ones that like it here in Sacramento, just ignore me if I talk about succulents. You got that?

Yerba Buena Gardens, San Francisco

My better half had to go to a seminar in San Francisco last weekend so Alex and I decided to hitch a ride and enjoy a beautiful weekend in the city. I had heard about Yerba Buena Gardens, but somehow missed it every time we were in the Union Square area. Yerba Buena Gardens is a public facility located around 4th and Mission Streets, and happened to be only a block away from the hotel we were staying at this weekend, so this is where Alex and I spent most of our time.

I'll admit that in some ways I was disappointed with it, but in other ways I was completely overwhelmed, and almost jealous that we don't have something like this in Sacramento. The sunny weather brought out lots of people to the park, and we managed to see a few impromptu performances by local actors in the Esplanade as well.

The gardens have been around for about 17 years, and they added the Children's Garden in 1998. An interesting factoid: Mayor Willie Brown took the first ride on the children's carousel when the children's garden opened. Mayor Willie Brown also declared April 13th 2003 (my wedding day) as Jason & Carri Stokes day in San Francisco. Yeah, we're like famous. Okay, no we're not, he was a Board Member where I work and a super cool guy, and we got the "declaration" certificate the day we got married. Realizing I am now totally off subject (sorry), I'll move on with my little picture tour....

The plant selection at the gardens could be much better. I know it makes me sound like a plant snob (which I'm not), but perhaps I should blame my visit to Annie's Annuals the day before for making me feel like they could have done a lot better. In San Francisco they can grow SO many more cool plants, and yet they didn't. But, for a public facility I would say it's better than most!

Moving on to my tour of the Butterfly Garden, yeah, that little picture of the "Butterflies Only" sign is the only picture I took of their butterfly garden. Seriously, it was horrible. First off, it was almost all shade. And second, the plant selection was horrible (a bunch of overgrown buddleias, a dill plant, a bunch of violas, and some mondo grass) . I didn't see a single butterfly when we were there, and for obvious reasons. I'm also disappointed that they kept it really small. I have a larger butterfly garden in my own yard, and they have a million times more space to work with- I guess I expected more. Still, at least they have a butterfly garden.

Moving on to the children's garden, this is one area that they did right. They have a maze for the kids to get lost in (in a good way). They have a huge playground with really awesome slides for the kids. They have a children's museum called Zeum, which Alex was a little young for but she still enjoyed. They also have the lovely carousel, which we took quite a few spins on last weekend.

Of course one of my favorite things about the children's garden is their Learning Garden. It was a small garden full of edibles, but easily showed parents that you don't need a lot of space to have a vegetable garden. We saw an apple tree, citrus trees, artichokes, potatoes, raspberries, and a lot of herbs. And I was a proud mom as my daughter told some other kids what everything was (without me even telling her- yay! I'm doing something right!).

As a gardener, Yerba Buena Gardens left a lot to be desired. But as a parent, they did an amazing job making it a fun environment for little ones. Throw in the fact that there is a movie theater, ice skating rink, bowling alley, and several restaurants, and they've made it a nice playground for adults too. We were able to spend two full days in this area without ever getting bored- and we never even ventured off to MOMA as we had planned. All in all, consider it a must see next time you're in San Francisco.