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| Honey moon view from our home |
A the joys of summer! Alternating between periods of frantic busy-ness and delicious idleness. Oh that moon was amazing!
Yes, it's me, Country Mouse posting again finally! Just a lazy photo post with the wonderful flowers I'm enjoying in my garden - for more than a month now these stars of the dry native plant garden have been going strong!
This is to console Ms. Town Mouse for her lack of color, which she wrote about in
this post — and to complement her wonderful take on all the lovely greens in the California native garden in
this post.
I have no irrigation system and the blooms in this post get no water, or just a sprinkle.
I do have new plantings that I'm watering - but the hungry deer have saved me from watering many of them by eating them!
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| I don't mind you nibbling on this large coffee berry. But please! leave the new plants alone! |
The drought has reduced the amount of food available to them. Also - bunnies.
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| This cute bunny ate all my buckwheats! |
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| Clarkia rubicunda |
Local wild Clarkia - in the fenced garden. Deer do nibble it outside the fence.
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| Local wild monkey flower still blooming a bit |
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| Clarkia and salvia in early June |
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| Same Clarkia and Salvia in early July |
Clarkia rubicunda with
Salvia 'Winifred Gilman' - I love love love them! On foggy mornings especially the air is just filled with that lovely smoky kind of - dry - musky? how would
you describe the scent of salvia?
The clarkia reseeded from seeds I planted a couple or three years ago now, gathered from local wild.
Just yesterday I took out a few plants that looked like they had hybridized with a few Clarkia lewisii that came back - I planted them about five years ago and this year they decided it was a good time to make an appearance.
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| Is this a hybrid plant - or some sort of "sport?" |
I'm not sure if it was a hybrid, or if so, of what - but I have my suspicions. I have that bolting the door after the horse got out feeling. I am now a little uncertain how much of the seed to come will be true
Clarkia rubicunda.
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| Pretty sure these are all straight species but… |
I think a small percentage of the seeds may grow to have that pale streaky petal. It's not bad as such - happens in nature - but I want to be able to share the local wild species.
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| Fence lizards in love! |
The male is doing his pushups and I think the other is a female. It's such fun having a garden full of fence lizards. Not a great photo but anyway, I liked the pose.
In various parts of the garden I've been enjoying the soap lily, local wild native, whose ethereal white blooms open around four or five in the evening. I tried to get native bees in the photo but they are shy and all went away when I hovered near with my peering lens. The honey bees don't care though. I think each flower blooms for a day. Slowly the white fire of blossoming burns down the stem, day by day.
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| Chlorogalum pomeridianum. Soap lily |
I also have a few natives from other parts of California in the pool garden (fenced garden). I'm not sure how they would fare outside the fence. I'd like to try some in our entrance garden in the fall.
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| Coast sunflower, Encelia californica A southern California native |
I had cut back the Encelia to nubs this spring and - well you wouldn't know it now. They are a thicket!
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| Keckiella cordifolia, heartleaf penstemon |
Keckiella does grow around here - on higher, dryer ridges. But not right where I live. Its range is central to southern California.
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| I love its arching growth habit. Good for back of border. Too bad I didn't plant it there! I still like its wild look. |
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| Native annual in pot near chalk dudleya. I am blanking out on what this little guy is! |
I've also been enjoying a few annuals I bought at the spring CNPS plant sale. Only those that are not locally native here in case of more hybridization. (So far the only annual I've found locally is the Clarkia). Some are still blooming.
The deer ate some - but NOT five-spot (
Nemophila maculata)! I'm going to plant more of those next year.
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