Plant Collage

I get my coffee from the Painted Lady Coffeehouse because they carry beans roasted by my good friend Justin of Badbeard’s Microroastery, who I met years ago through music – he’s an excellent cellist and boy does he know how to roast coffee! I went down early because I was completely out of beans (for […]

Specifically, the succulent garden, which was among the largest by area of the “themed” sections.  Danger Garden, this is for you. The entire succulent garden is in raised beds and large planters made of what appears to be Cor-Ten steel or similar. That dark rusty color of course does wonders for the lovely silvery blues […]

We’ve all had these situations where a special plant almost dies, and then … something happens… and you get soooo very excited, it feels like falling in love again and to borrow a phrase from a favorite friend, you love the thing so much it makes your teeth hurt. This happened years ago with my […]

Frankly, most of my backyard is sort of painful to me at the moment.  I’ll show you some of it and try to explain what my goals are for these areas.  Then in a couple of years or so we can come back to this post and feel like something good has happened, I hope… […]

Last year I sent a tromboncino squash vine right over this fence into my neighbors’ backyard.  Yes, on purpose.  This year, the luffas got into their lilac and made three or four fruits (technically berries! but let’s not get into that now).  At one point, he said, through the fence because he knew I was […]

(Of however many parts it takes) This is my third year gardening at my current house. The first year, the focus was on establishing vegetable gardening beds.  The second year, we did a little more of that, and started the process of eliminating lawn.  Now we have a total of 11 rectangular vegetable beds (4′ […]

This year’s overwintering area has experienced a revamp/relocation.  In previous years, I’ve simply moved tropical houseplants outdoors (where possible) for their summer vacations and then put them back in my house wherever they can fit — hopefully with a reasonable amount of window-light.  But this year, I decided to kick it up a notch.  Yes, […]

I love this plant.  Especially this time of year, because it makes all the other things look fantastic.       This is one of a handful of plants I am really happy to have inherited with this house.  It reminds me that I don’t need to worry all that much about where I plant […]

I have two specimen trees that were planted right about when my house was built (1968).  They’re in absolutely primo spots in the front yard, visible to all, seen and felt multiple times daily by us and everyone who drives by.  They influence my gardening decisions and options very heavily in the front yard.  They […]

Years ago if you’d asked me, “What’s your favorite garden aesthetic?” I probably would have said something about lush, tropicalesque, big foliage, dramatic plants, etc.  Over the course of the last couple years that has all changed, in part because of lovely things I’ve seen on the internet, three years of experience and observation in […]