I love this shot because it shows the poppies lining my walkway all the way back. Below the Showy Penstemon is a monkeyflower bush. And there are still more flowers to bloom this season!
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Spectacular Showy Penstemon (Penstemon spectabilis)
It may not seem like it looking at these photos, but I actually have had trouble keeping Penstemon spectabilis alive. I’m am almost sure the problem is too much water. I mean, they look lush and as if they want water. But, I don’t think so.
I took these shots this morning because I liked how vibrant the color was with the sunlight slanting in behind them. The time of day makes the flowers seem to glow! Then I took a couple close-ups because the flowers are so interesting to look at.
Plus, knowing me, I’ll kill this one soon overwatering it.
I planted this penstemon in Fall of 2016. So it has been in my garden for just about a year a half. It was very small when I bought it, probably six to eight inches. It is now pretty close to 4 feet tall, I’d guess now.
Showy Penstemon at Las Pilitas
Resurrection?
The plant with the blue flowers looks an awful lot like the Foothill Penstemon, Margarita BOP. But, the thing is, I was pretty sure it had died. Yet, here it is, blooming amid yellow wild flowers.
I don’t always remove dead plants. It’s not a plan. I just don’t feel like it all the time. This is the second “dead plant” that has seemingly come back to life. So, some plants can keep living in their roots and re-emerge when conditions are right.
It’s good to see it, regardless. Those are some pretty flowers.
Hummingbird moth!
I took this video last night. This is a hummingbird moth aka Sphinx moth. I think this is Hiles lineata but I might be mistaken. And the plant is Penstemongrinnellii, I believe.
Sky Lupine (Lupinus nanus)
I got a few packets of wildflower seeds from my favorite nursery, Grow Native at Rancho Santa Ana Botanical Gardens in Claremont. This lupine is from those seeds. I only had poppies last year. I’m enjoying watching the wildflowers grow this year.
Part of my plan is that these wildflowers will help crowd out weeds. It has been a struggle to eliminate weeds from the garden. There was a time when the entire yard was all weeds. I have tried using mulch and removing weeds by hand. I will admit to using some Round Up but it’s difficult to use around my plants.
Wildflowers should help by both crowding out the weeds and also by helping establish the underground microorganisms that feed the native plants.
In the meantime, they are beautiful to see.
Baby White Sage Sneaks In
Above, you’ll notice the very large White Sage (Salvia apiana) at top left. It’s about 5′ tall. When the flower wands sprout, it will touch 7′. But look down and toward the center. In the bottom right corner is a California Golden Poppy (Eschscholzia californica). Just above and to the left is another smaller White Sage. Two branches sticking up about a foot or two. I didn’t plant that sage. I’m assuming it is an offspring of the larger plant there! And if you look closely to the right of he larger sage, there is a Penstemon centranthifolius (or eatonii, I’m not sure which it is) that has also sprouted there.
I love that new plants are growing in the garden that I didn’t plant myself. I take that as a sign that things are going well for those plants.
Spring: 2018: Back in the garden
A friend suggested posting something each day, even if it wasn’t much. I am going to try something similar. I have been very interested and amazed to see the changes in my garden. Spring brings on new growth, blooms, and color. And this is the third year many of my plants have been in the garden.
First they sleep, Next they creep. Third they leap!
This is, I am told, an old adage among gardeners and has mostly been true in my experience with this garden. Most of my plants barely grew at all the first year. Little buds here and there.
So, this being the third Spring, I’m seeing some good growth in many places.
I’ll try, if nothing else , to post a picture and a sentence or two about it. At least 3 per week. More if possible. Why? I don’t know. Why not?
I had some physical limitations get the best of me over the winter. I’m limited in some activities, like lifting heavy objects or bending over. That makes garden chores more difficult. Or expensive. It cost me $60 for my son to help me weed this month. I don’t mind paying him. He’s doing a lot of work and he does well at school. So, he deserves some pay. I could not have done it without him.
Please enjoy these pictures from my garden in the last week.
California Poppy “‘Mahogany Red” from seed.
Below is my stream area. White Sage, Upright Rosemary, California Morning Glory, some succulents, Jelly Bean succulent, Firesticks, and some other succulents. I’m not so knowledgeable about the succulents, I admit.
Above, a wide shot of my garden showing my California Buckwheat, Eriogonum fasciculatum. There’s a big bunch up front, behind that, and another to the right. Up front is also Penstemon “Margarita BOP”, some black sage, white sage, Bee’s Bliss sage, ceonothus, manzanita.
Below, Penstemoncentranthifolius ScarletBugler with some buckwheat creeping behind it. I didn’t plant this. It grew from seed from another plant!
California Morning Glory Calystegia macrostegia and a California Golden Poppy.
Below, some wildflowers from seed I got from Grow Native nursery at Rancho Santa Ana Botanical Gardens. Also, I think there’s a Margarita BOP penstemon at the bottom. I swear I thought that thing died. Note to self: ignoring plants seems to help them live after a point.
Above, lupine, monkeyflower, poppy.
Below, a black sage with blue flowers (all my other black sage plants have white flowers), poppy, and California Sagebrush.
Fall Planting Season is Here!
On October 21st, the Rancho Santa Ana Botanical Garden’s nursery, the Grow Native Nursery, and my favorite place to buy plants, had their annual Fall Planting Festival. As a member, I got to go in at 8 a.m. with other members and pick out plants early.
I had done my research. I lost a good number of plants this summer. I lost four “Winnifred Gilman” Cleveland Sages, several White Sages, a couple Penstemons, all four or five sticky monkey flower plants, a “Canyon Sparkles” manzanita, and a Desert Willow. I might have left some out, but that’s what I’m remembering now.
My research was to find the plants that are not only native to California, but native to the same kind of area in which I live. The site for Las Pilitas is a treasure trove of information. There, I learned that my area is a Chaparral plant community. I had previously thought it was Coastal Sage Scrub because Las Pilitas said my zip code was in that area. But, I live in the “Inland Empire” a region characterized by heat and wind and little rainfall. We are in the foothills of the San Bernardino mountains but my elevation is about 1500 feet.
So, although this might be a Coastal Sage Scrub area, the heat and wind means the plants need to be able to put up with all of that. And, as I look at the areas of land that aren’t developed, it most resembles a Chaparral area. The Coastal Sage Scrub (CSS) is a cooler area. And, the plants get a significant amount of fog that drips on them and is a source of moisture, while the Chaparal plants have to deal with more heat and little to no fog. The Chaparral community gets around 15 inches of rain per year, maybe slightly more than that.
Accordingly, I used Las Pilitas to find plants that do well in that environment. There’s some cross over between Coastal Sage Scrub and Chaparral among plants.
Some of my sages were good, Black sage and “Allen Chickering” sage for example. Ceanothus and many manzanitas are ok, too. Diplaucus monkey flowers are okay, but not Mimulus species. But there were some plants new to me that were suited to the Chaparral community such as Toyon, Coffeeberry, Lemondade berry, and flannel bush. I’m really looking forward to seeing those grow up. They are great for birds and we really enjoy having our winged friends in the yard. (We get visited by finches and sparrows (of course, probably the most common birds around here), but also mockingbirds, black phoebes, and hummingbirds. There’s also a big flock of pigeons. Recently, scrub jays have been coming around and I saw a Western Meadowlark.)
I tried hard to choose plants that deal well with heat and dry conditions. I made my list, considered where I would put such plants, and I picked out 47. It was a lot of plants. In fact, at checkout, I had no less than three people say, “Is this all one order?” Because it was unbelievable that one person would buy so many plants.
There seem to be two schools of thought, for planting California natives. One group says you should only plant when weather is cool as in Fall or Winter. Late fall is best. I agree with this. But Las Pilitas says you can plant all year long if you want to as long as you are willing to make accommodations for your plants, like watering them.
That being the case, I planted 19 last weekend. To me, it’s better to have a plant in the ground than in a plastic pot. But, disturbing the roots, as planting can do, is stressful to the plants. That’s why planting in the heat can be harder on them.
That weekend and the last week have been hot, though. Very hot. We went over 100 degrees a couple days in a row. And then the wind was awful, too. In fact, the weather was ugly all together. Heat, wind, and extremely low humidity. Also, the high pressure in the atmosphere kept the heat trapped. So, for several days in a row, the temperature didn’t drop below 85 degrees, even at night. Heat, low humidity, high wind, and no cooling at night? Brutal for new plants!
Summer Refuses to Leave
Last year, I watched as a beautiful Grinnell’s Penstemon withered and died over a timespan of about two weeks. It had spread to about 3 feet wide since I planted it, starting from 6 inches high and barely five inches wide. It had bloomed during Spring and looked completely healthy and happy.
Until it didn’t.
The leaves all curled and it took on a sickly purplish color. Then it shriveled and dried up. It was dead. Had I watered it too much? Not enough? Was it getting too much shade? Too much sun? Did it get a disease from the soil? I had lots of guesses but no way of knowing what killed my penstemon. So, I contacted a graduate student who was working over at the Rancho Santa Ana Botanical Garden Grow Native Nursery and asked him what happened. I sent pictures and described as much as I could. His answer? No idea. He said, “If you can figure out why any plant dies then you have answered the million dollar question.”
I guess it makes me feel a little bit better that even someone with a formal education in gardening/botany can be as mystified as I am. But, it’s also a little bit frustrating. How are we supposed to keep our plants alive if even experts aren’t sure how to do that?
I’ve lost several plants this summer. Heat? Gophers? Disease? Too much water? I just don’t know. The casualties (so far, the summer ain’t over…) as of today: two penstemons, three monkeyflowers, a desert willow, a black sage, a ceonothus (that I moved after it sprouted from a seed dropped from another plant), two other ceonothus that I bought, a Jeffery pine, a couple of dudleyas, and a manzanita.
The weather is supposed to be cooling off. Today the high temperature was supposed to be 95. It’s currently 102 degrees in my yard as I write this. That’s hardly cooling off! Then again, we live in the Inland Empire, a region of heat, wind, blue skies and sunshine. And, I just read on my favorite weather blog, Weather West, this has been the hottest summer ever on record. It shouldn’t surprise me, I guess, that the summer just refuses to go away.
It’s a Wet Heat: Unusual Weather This Week
There’s been a bit of exciting weather this last week. And by exciting I mean different from what we usually get during this time of year. Normally it’s hot with clear skies, little to no wind, and humidity around 20%. Hot, dry, clear. Weeks go by with little variation other than if it will be 100 degrees, 105 degrees, 110 degrees, or merely 95 degrees.
Last week we had a couple of thunderstorms pass through! We had actual rain and actual lightning right here. Thunderstorms are pretty unusual in this vicinity. Thunderheads will develop over the mountains 20 miles, or more, to the north, or even further away to the east. Storm cells often form and pass through Temecula, Lake Elsinore, and out near Baker and Needles. They very rarely pass over the Fontana/Rialto/Rancho Cucamonga area. But, this last week we had two days where storms passed right over us, drenching the yard with .07 inches of precipitation. Oh, frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!
Then, we had four or five days of heat with temperatures over 100. Ugh. I’m so done with the heat. It’s hell on the younger plants and I’m forced to water, even when I don’t want to.
My current plan is to water only the youngest plants that were installed this last Fall every other day. Once exception is my Gambel Oak tree. It isn’t a California Native, but rather is from the Utah/Colorado area. It’s drought tolerant once established but it’s used to much more rain than we get normally here. Well, for that matter, my other two oak trees also usually grow in areas that get more rain, too. So, I have been watering the Gambel about three times a week and watering deeply. The Chrysolepis oak and the Wislenzeni oak both are being watered deeply once per week. Lo! And Behold! The Wislenzeni (aka Interior Live Oak) has sprouted new growth of several inches on multiple branches. The Canyon Live Oak (Chrysolepis) also typically gets much more rain but it has not sprouted new growth much recently. It’s sleeping, I guess.
Then, once per week, because it is so hot, I’m spraying the plants down and watering the older plants, too. Well, not the ceanothus plants. They get sprayed but not watered. They hate water, apparently.
The other thing I’m doing is trying to confuse the gophers. I have at least one gopher active in the yard right now. I want to catch him but it has been too hot and I’ve been too tired from work to get in the garden and dig so I can set traps. I think that the gophers are attracted by the water in the soil. So, when I water just the foot or two around a plant, it tells the gopher where the tasty roots are. So, instead, I’m watering much more broadly. The mulch is doing a pretty good job of limiting the weeds so I can water more areas in the yard. This way the soil is wet in a lot of places, not just where the new plants are. It seems to work somewhat. Last year gophers would dig up right where the young plants were, killing them. But, this year I’ve seen gopher mounds where there were no plants at all.
But, I’ve still lost five or six plants to the heat/gophers. Two ceonothus plants are dead and three monkey flowers plus a couple penstemons. I don’t like that. But, maybe that’s just how it goes in a garden. I once counted over 120 plants in my yard, not counting the vegetables in the raised beds. In that case, less than 1% of my plants died. I guess that’s pretty good. I’m still done with all of this heat, though.
The Gurp Files 