A Growing Obsession

The front garden is developing the low-growing, evergreen shrubby chops capable of withstanding the windy rainstorms of winter. We had a fine example of such a storm just a few days ago.

Planted much later than the back garden, even so the front garden has filled out quickly. In fact, a lot of its plants are largesse from the back garden, either in cuttings or from moving entire plants.

We’ve tentatively settled on this Thursday for a departure date to head to Southern California. Our old fleet of cars is getting cranky, so we may make the drive in the 2011 Honda Element or my old Mini Cooper, whichever seems the best bet for the 1,000 mile trip. Billie has sprained her other (nonsurgical) back leg, but an X-ray today looks promising. Complications abound! The skies are filled with V’s of geese, the farm fields with herons and elk down from the hills. We’ll catch up in Los Angeles — more soon, AGO.

The morning routine in October is now two-fisted, coffee in one hand, fly swatter in the other to dispatch the spider webs that proliferate overnight. I appreciate their predatory contributions and only knock down webs directly across paths, which seems fair. And their webslinging brings undeniably sublime effects.

Dodging spider webs in October brought home the realization that the small paths had shrunk even more as a result of OEP (overly exuberant planting).

Two beloved shrubs were sacrificed to widen the main path, casualties of OEP. Admittedly, there wasn’t even space for one 3×3′ shrub, let alone two, and the bupleurum seemed to be aiming more for 5×5′.

I’ve rooted cuttings of Senecio monroi and have it growing in the front garden, so no real loss there. And though I’ll only have memories of the bupleurum, at least I got a long-anticipated opportunity to grow this fine evergreen and make it somewhat happy. Pruning it to fit was in no way doing it justice.

A rinse of autumn has washed over the garden. No frost yet and none predicted until possibly the end of the month. We had a few days of rain early last week. A very different October from our first in 2021, when it rained every day.

This longer east view of sunrise-haloed Chionochloa rubra was not available two days ago. Stipa gigantea spilled onto the rock at the west end making the path impassable, comprising overall about 5′ in circumference with half of that path obstruction. And the stipa sat directly opposite the big arching restio Rhodocoma capensis, so obstruction was built into the planting. A typical design problem for me. (Thankfully I had started to come to terms with the problem by removing the tetrapanax growing next to the restio earlier this spring.)

Still I was convinced the grass was worth every bit of difficulty to ensure those oatsy panicles danced high over the summer garden while being sheer enough to allow sunlight to penetrate the plantings underneath.

But unexpectedly the Wonder Garden plant sale included Stipa gigantea ‘Little Giant.’ And so unexpectedly I began to contemplate the garden without the giant Golden Oats grass and sizing down to the little version.

Dividing the grass was already at the top of the list of tasks for next spring. Being an evergreen grass, this stipa doesn’t need cutting back but does require extensive grooming. Its strengths are a very early flowering and then the long-lasting, light-catching golden seedheads that follow spring through winter, sailing well above the base of leaves. The big open question with the dwarf version concerns that ratio of height between the flowering stems and the grassy clump. It might be an inelegant congestion of form without the tall and transparent silhouette of the species. I asked around at the sale, and no one had experience growing ‘Little Giant.’

With ‘Little Giant’ in hand, the back-benched spring job of division became an immediate fall job of removal. Love for the Golden Oats grass was outmatched by needing to reclaim an east view in autumn light and easy access along the path. ‘Little Giant’ was not planted in the same area near the rock path but behind Lobelia tupa, in the berm that’s almost a foot higher, and hopefully the elevation will give the smaller grass a high enough profile to shine.

That there was an opening in the berm to plant the stipa only came about by removing Persicaria polymorpha, whose girth was claiming 6 feet. And it’s such a good plant, also early to show in spring and impressive all season. Height is never a problem, only girth. If only there was a little version of this persicaria! A small piece of the persicaria is growing in a narrow bed along the east fence, not a future-proof site but it can always be moved again. I’m hearing some positive buzz on Koenigia divaricata, which has a similar effect as the persicaria.

My guess is that the enormous clump of stipa was also acting as a support to Lobelia tupa. The very wispy grass I planted instead, Schizachyrium scoparium ‘Little Red Fox,’ is unlikely to fill that supporting role. Meanwhile, Marty’s back is out today from pitching in to help remove Euphorbia stygiana, whose enormous growth and size was turning it into a cutback shrub to keep the back path along the fence clear (a recurring theme). Except imho euphorbias should never be considered cutback shrubs because…well, the irritating sap issues. There’s another of this euphorbia elsewhere in the garden that seems to be slower in growth.

The other “little” brought home is ‘Little Joe,’ the dwarf Joe-pye weed. I guess the garden and I are getting to that point where some down-sizing workarounds are needed. Fresh in my mind was a nice couple I met shopping at the WG plant sale. I asked if they were looking for plants for sun or shade, and they said they were in a predicament where their 30-year-old garden had no sun to give, and they wanted to take it all out and start over! A cautionary tale for my overplanting ways…

I met a small bright green frog in the garden last night, a first in either of my two gardens. Lizards are common in the Long Beach garden, and both are sensitive creatures whose presence generally bestows a clean bill of health on a garden. I hope the little frog gets his fill of slugs! And invites more frog friends to the garden too.

I took a hard fall on uneven pavement walking Billie earlier, so that’s the end of any more ambitious plans til spring. Fortunately, looking up more info on chionochloa, I discovered a wonderful New Zealand blog that somehow escaped my notice, Tikorangi The Jury Garden, to read while I ice the knee. Especially pertinent for zone 8, 9, 10 gardens.

Sometimes I get the sense from an offhand comment that gardens are considered escapist entertainment. My experience has been the opposite, and maybe this is what comes with small gardens in crowded neighborhoods. Because I’m constantly outside, I know to the minute when a neighbor on the west lights off the burn pile he keeps in the far corner of his lot, where the noxious smoke wafts over us, not him. A neighbor on the east yells “Shut up!!” at Billie in a tone so shudderingly ugly it must have taken a lifetime to perfect. (Admittedly, Billie has never heard a neighborhood dog chorus she didn’t want to embellish with her unique contribution, and we’re constantly admonishing her about this.) When conversations floating over the fence become loud and intense, I focus to discern whether it’s anger or raucous, back-slapping humor. When I step into the garden, front or back, it’s not an escape but an immersion in every aspect of local life.

As far as I can see, ours is the only house that uses a screen door in summer. I’ve never seen anyone sit on their front porch as we do daily in summer, sometimes when it’s still dark outside with the first coffee. But then front gardens are not part of the neighborhood culture here. From what I’ve seen, gardens foster engagement with the neighborhood, not retreat. Sitting on the porch in the early morning is where I met the daily walker Jerry and discovered he is the one who keeps the homing pigeons that occasionally wheel over the garden, such a gorgeous sight. (I learned a couple days ago that hawks got two of his pigeons, a rare but unfortunate occurrence Jerry feels is part of the deal and doesn’t begrudge the predators.) From the porch is where I became familiar with the small woman whose young grandchildren are nearly as tall is she is. They always hold hands and chatter away as they walk. The small woman walks home enormous loads from the grocery store in a backpack that bends her spine.

Standing in the garden to gauge the changing light, humidity, wind, to observe where water pools or cold air settles, to use my limited senses to give plants the best chance at life in a garden, it strikes me we act as proxies and surrogates for the plants, putting ourselves in plants’ shoes, so to speak. And that practice will always mean spending loads of time outdoors acting as a human gauge to measure the basics, air, soil, water, temperature, invertebrate life or lack of it. It means complete engagement with the essentials of life. I don’t know why I’m sensitive on this issue! But it does piss me off when it’s implied that making gardens is a a trivial, escapist hobby.

In the garden random thoughts wheel in and out like homing pigeons. Politics, family, the tyranny of one-party rule, the tithonia I want to remember to grow next summer. And where is my bulb order anyway?

This might be the last weekend I can score rabbit poop from the boy who brings buckets of it to the local farmers’ market, which only runs through September. Amazing stuff. Never burns like other manures.

Take care, AGO