{"id":105972,"date":"2025-03-29T17:46:58","date_gmt":"2025-03-29T21:46:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/?p=105972"},"modified":"2025-03-29T17:46:58","modified_gmt":"2025-03-29T21:46:58","slug":"abandonment-issues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/?p=105972","title":{"rendered":"abandonment issues"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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With just one week until we depart for Oregon, the Long Beach garden has finally taken a shape that feels horticulturally logical to me, according to my tastes and the slim resources it will have available in my absence. A neighbor has promised to look in and water containers in exchange for use of our driveway for parking. (Many of the houses in this early 1900 neighborhood do not have driveways. The situation is so dire, police have stopped ticketing red-zone parking). Thanks to the spring surge in growth, the ground is covered where intended and winter-ascendant weeds are at last in remission. Paths are clear and weeded…for now. The bare minimum. All my more-is-more garden energy will be absorbed by the Oregon garden, where the colder rainy winter won’t give in to spring until at least mid-May. The Long Beach garden will roughly hold this shape all year; the Oregon garden dramatically shape-shifts, going from bust to boom in a span of 5-6 months, an exhilarating spectacle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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with winter aloes out of bloom, next big event will come from a few clumps of anigozanthos\/kangaroo paws<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Neither garden is large, and the Long Beach garden strikes me as having more in common with a spacious greenhouse — if only I could transport it in its entirety north!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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self-sown Papaver setigerum, a smaller version of the breadseed poppy<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Familiar reseeders like orlaya won’t be in bloom for a couple. more weeks. (There may be some orlaya reseeding in Oregon too, but bloom time will be closer to summer.) I wasn’t sure if I’d catch the Poppy of Troy in flower before we left, but the first bloom opened today — very bland words to describe that transfixing moment of seasonal excitement. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Gladiolus communis ssp. byzantinus<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

There’s lots of grassy bulb foliage popping up. Instinctively I want to simplify and pull it out. Which is when I remind myself: When did I ever plant anything I wasn’t intensely curious about or infatuated with — like, currently, Verbascum roripifolium, whose seeds I’ve been shuttling up and down the West Coast? If it’s in the garden, I planted it for a reason, even if I’ve forgotten the where and when, and I should trust that initial impulse. So I leave the grassy blades alone and wait…and am rewarded with the flowers of the Byzantine Gladiolus. (See note on bulb strain here<\/a>.) There’s also a lot of ixia in the garden, a deep pink ‘Venus’ and a creamy yellow variety ‘Buttercup.’<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Also in bloom are pieces of the Cotyledon oblongota moved from the front garden. I was hoping it would prove robust enough to compete with bromeliads and sedges, and so far that appears to be the case. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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strong golds from Sonchus palmensis and a dwarf Tagetes lemonii. Lower left leaves from the Pewter plant, Strobilanthes lanata (previously S. gossypinus), which tolerates a hard cutback. Flickers of magenta are from Salvia chiapensis — lots of salvias come and go in the garden, but this fallback sage suits my zone 10 garden best<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Most of the hanging plants have been taken down from the pergola, including the big tractor funnels, just as a precaution in case of high winds<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Rescued from the front garden where it had been weed-whacked into near oblivion, Cussonia paniculata thankfully has a fresh flush of leaves<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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this spring is my first encounter with the crazy orb flowers of trevesia <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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new addition Leucadendron ‘Cloudbank Ginny’<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

My no-new-plants rule seems to have some flexibility — a few leucadendrons and a pincushion\/leucospermum. A few hesperaloe, tulbaghia. Couple of ‘Pacific Night’ coprosma, dark as the ‘Ebony’ leucadendron but better able to handle my absence. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Erodium pelargoniflorum with Mangave ‘Navajo Princess’<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

So many constraints on gardens: soil, climate, size, resources; adding absence to that list shouldn’t be a big deal…I’m hoping to shuttle between gardens every few months this go-round.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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late afternoon on a very quiet spring day in the zone 10 garden, ready to carry on without me<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Happy spring! <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With just one week until we depart for Oregon, the Long Beach garden has finally taken a shape that feels horticulturally logical to me, according to my tastes and the slim resources it will have available in my absence. A … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[28,25,2807,550,5120,898,27],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paNJ2E-rze","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105972"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=105972"}],"version-history":[{"count":76,"href":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105972\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":106116,"href":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105972\/revisions\/106116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=105972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=105972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=105972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}