two gardens in late May/early June

I spent two days at the end of May in Long Beach (garden USDA zone 10), readying the house for some friends’ upcoming stay. (The second day, May 30, topped 95F — what a homecoming!) The profligate weediness in the garden continues, with couch grass encroaching everywhere, and that’s after diligent weeding all winter. Neighbors ruefully report this new weedy state of affairs in their own gardens too, and we all lament wtf? Whatever the cause, the only hope is to stay on top of the weeds until the cycle hopefully breaks and the supply of weed seeds is exhausted.

The performance of self-sowing plants has also been incredibly robust — I’ve never seen so many Orlaya grandiflora in bloom here before. All the poppies were pulled and only a few orlaya left to bloom and reseed.

To those of you with hand-made gardens, you probably also know the where/when/how/why of every plant in your garden, why choices were made and how it comes to look as it does at this moment in time. It is a process unlike anything else, engaging parts of the brain and heart like no other endeavor I’ve pursued. So shuttling quickly between two hand-made gardens at the near-height of their seasonal expression is disconcerting to say the least. (Aloe lukeana’s elongating bloom spikes will flower in my absence!) Both gardens excite me in very different ways, and both are hard to leave.

Incredibly, a small collection of potted species pelargoniums survived months of neglect, so I decided to increase their odds of survival by planting them in the garden among succulents, whose water needs are most similar. P. multiradiatum and P. glaucifolium have both flourished and expanded into big clumps, with good leaves and tiny flowers that don’t steal any thunder from the succulents but just add some leafy richness (and smother weeds).

After a two-day train trip back to Oregon, Mitch took the following photos of the zone 8b garden:

P.S. Please don’t read further if you’d rather avoid politics. It just seems bizarre not to mention the latest outrages of these dangerous times. Take care! More soon, AGO

(Shout out to Oregon’s Attorney General for leading the lawsuit challenging emergency tariff powers, which was upheld by the U.S. Court of International Trade, though currently stayed on appeal. Back home, the Port of Los Angeles is at half capacity. My grandfather died on those docks, my father, uncles, cousins and Marty all worked their entire careers at the port. A million Los Angeles County jobs derive from port-related activity. It is the economic engine of both Los Angeles and Long Beach, and it is sputtering under the tariffs. And the federal assaults on Los Angeles don’t stop, with the latest being the excessive and illegal show of force over immigration protests — but California is apparently the wrong color, on so many levels, so an easy, vengeful target…)