I think I've rambled plenty lately, so hows'about a little eye candy for a change? The spring flowers around here have been beautiful and I just don't think you should miss out!
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Clematis |
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Butterfly and I have these growing on our arbors ... in purples, pinks and whites.
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Clematis |
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Maybe it's just me, but I think even the left-overs of these flowers are beautiful.
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Clematis seed pod |
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Valerian |
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I will always have an extra fondness for Valerian after seeing it growing wild along the roads of France, my home away from home. While I was living there, it made me smile, thinking of it growing wild in my California garden.
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Rose - Voo Doo |
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Coral bells |
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California poppies |
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California poppy |
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Rose - Ginger Snap |
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Rose - Ginger snap |
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Fox glove |
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Columbine |
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Columbine |
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Bridal wreath & bottle brush |
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I threatened Butterfly within an inch of her life when she planted the cute little baby bottlebrush plant in between these two bridal wreath bushes. She has trouble envisioning what the mature plants are going to look like and how much space they'll require. Her favorite line, when we point out to her how crowded parts of her garden are: "They were 3 feet apart when I planted them!" So now we have the battle of the bushes. She doesn't care.
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Bee on the bottle brush |
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Coreopsis |
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Yes, that's Butterfly's propane tank you see in the background - disguised as a watermelon. Are you surprised?
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Matalija poppies |
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These plants are a California native. Not just a California native (probably native to Mexico and a gazillion other places, too), but they love dry, rocky soil. We're happy to share ours with them. Rocks R Us. Butterfly scaled the hillside by the freeway to snag her start of these plants. The highway patrol has been known to stop to "assist" the broken-down Butterfly, when really she's just "helping herself" to some plants. One of these days ...
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Matalija poppy |
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This is what they look like when they have just opened up - all crinkly and newborn looking. Isn't it just too gorgeous for words?
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Matalija poppy |
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Here's one that's a little bit "older" and blowing in the breeze. These are just about as big as your face.
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Rattlesnake grass |
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Ahhh, now we've come to one of Butterfly's favorites ... rattlesnake grass. Psycho Cowboy brought her some of this several years ago and she very carefully salvaged the seeds to sow. Now we have it everywhere.
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Rattlesnake grass |
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If you take a close look, it really is very beautiful. When it dries, and the wind blows, the seeds rattle around in there and sound a bit like a rattlesnake rattling. Only a bit. NOTHING really sounds like a rattler rattling (or else I'd be having heart attacks all the time around here when the wind blows), but that's another story.
Allow me to ramble just a bit. Last year I took Butterfly with me to a Soroptimist Club meeting to beg for money to sponsor our 3-day, 60-mile Susan G. Komen breast cancer walk. Butterfly rarely goes anywhere without an offering from the garden. So that day she took rattlesnake grass to hand out to everyone in attendance. It just so happened that the guest speaker for the day (in addition to us) was the county's agriculture commissioner. Uh oh. So there was Butterfly, passing out non-native grasses to the natives, in front of the county's agriculture commissioner.
I wanted to crawl under the table. I was probably going to have to spend the afternoon bailing my mother out of jail.
Thankfully, the commissioner was very gracious about it and chose to overlook the whacko Butterfly flitting around, handing out grass. And we scored a very generous donation from the Soroptimist Club!
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Name that creature! |
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Speaking of reptiles, no tour of the garden would be complete without a of photo of the critters scurrying about. I'm not sure what this is. We have lots and lots of blue-belly and alligator lizards, but this guy ... well, maybe he's some mutant version of the two of them. And he's not alone. I've seen a few that look like this.
Back to the flowers ...
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Poinciana |
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Gaura |
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Flower trailer |
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Last but not least, I show you this to prove that you can take the ugliest thing in your yard (or barnyard, as the case may be) and make it pretty by sticking some dirt and flowers in it. For some unknown reason, my dear, departed father (aka Pops) hauled this old trailer to our place years ago and left it. I think he thought we had some use for it. He probably just wanted to get rid of it. It has never budged from where he parked it. It is slowly rotting away, but while it does, I keep making use of it as a planter. Electric Horseman hates that I cover the flowers with wire (old pieces of fencing), but it's the only way that Butterfly and I have come up with to keep the deer from completely destroying our plants. We (Butterfly and I) no longer even see the wire. Wire? What wire? Do you see any wire? Didn't think so.
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