Country Mouse September First Views

Ah, a Town Mouse in my garden! Huge coffeeberry on the right is looking great and is covered with berries. Small spreading ceanothus at her feet. Coyote brush to the left and neighbor fence behind.

Time for the First Views blogger's meme again - where we show views of the garden rather than close-ups, around the first of the month. 

Ms Town Mouse's strong garden design really holds her garden together. Do check out her First Views post. She visited me a few days ago, and as we walked through my dry and neglected summer garden, I really felt the difference as never before, between our two gardens. I've just not been out there so much this summer - been pulled in different directions. And my bent is towards exploring and restoring our local flora - I'm not so strong on design, I freely admit. Vive la difference -- it's what makes us great blogging partners.

But the masses of yellow Madia elegans are stunning - and the plants that are fading, although they look terrible, are providing a lot of seeds and bugs for the flocks of sparrows and bushtits that pass through daily for some food and a drink from the bird bath.

Madia elegans, common media, sprawling

And Winifred Gilman sage scents the air in the morning...

Salvia clevelandii 'Winifred Gilman' on the upper right - our Allen's hummingbird jealously guards this territory from the oaks behind the fence!

The naked buckwheat, a local wild native, looks marvellous to the naked eye but not so much to the camera's eye. Its multiple branching stems are too long and thin for me to catch the lovely effect they have of holding together a vase of space, as they lift up their little pink and white globes to the pollinators. Where it is growing in masses, I couldn't get a good picture because there are a lot of other plants behind it, obscuring its form.

Naked buckwheat, Eriogonum nudum, local native with a delicate form and masses of little white-pink pompoms

The succulent bed is doing really well, but with all the bunch grasses going to seed and falling over under the weight of sparrows who feast on the seeds, you just can't get a good picture.

Succulents obscured by many young needlegrass plants I put in this year, now flopping over as the birds are feeding on them. I will look to see which are the strongest to leave as accents, maybe. But the birds just feast on the seeds.

 So, I'll just take a walk in the woods....

One good thing - not so many weeds at this time of year. View down the north slope path towards the corral

Please do join in - I'd love to see how your garden is looking at the beginning of September... And link to the list on Ms Town Mouse's lovely First Views post.