Devious Adventures in Gardening

April Showers bring Chive Flowers

Aging is a work of art. But every creation goes through that awkward phase.

Tacit sorrows: Is it weird that my onion made itself cry? Raindrops on an unopened chive's allium flower/seed pod.

Manic Magnolia -- Magnolia season is already at an end. Boo hoo. Like the cherry tree, their beauty and bloom are short and to be appreciated before you miss it--Mono No Aware!

Once upon a time, I was an adventurous gal, always outdoors, hiking or cycling mountains or traveling. Now that I'm not able to do those things, I find adventures in my back yard. We planted our garden last year filled with a variety of drought tolerant native plants and some exotic plants. A lot of the hillside we planted with simple ground cover of drought & heat-tolerant Myoporum and Wild Lilac (in this photo above). But then, adding new plants become addictive so I kept buying them, you know, to bring the adventure to me. Because, hello, a once-active person with Lyme disease who can't be active will always find something to occupy herself, maybe obsessively.

Mr. Wild Dingo tried to put his foot down, "No more plants! And no more pots!" "Yes dear," I told him.

When we planted last year, I preferred the look of the Myoporum over the Wild Lilac since it wasn't in bloom. But now that the Wild Lilac is blooming, it's hard not to love it. On a macro view, it's a complex, gorgeous bloom. Over the winter, it out paced the Myoporum, which did well growing in the cold, unusually heavy-rain winter, but half didn't make it in the short heat wave we had in March. So we ordered more Wild Lilac to replace it since it seems to do well in extreme hot or cold conditions. While planning replacement plants with our gardeners, I changed my mind about how the space should be used. Simple ground cover is just not adventurous enough for me. So I converted the hillside into a smörgåsbord for hummingbirds, bees and butterflies. I added 7 new species of flowering plants to the landscape to feed the pollinators and nectar eaters. I also added 2 new pots. Ssh! Don't tell Mr. Wild Dingo. I bet he won't even notice.

"I have no idea how those plants got there, dear."