Here I am in Southern California

Camellia Espalier on the Front Patio

Much progress has been made around the homestead since my last entry: we finished Dan's studio; the three bedrooms were divested of their mold and two of them got new flooring; we installed new interior doors and some crown molding, and most of the painting is done. I also started a small garden in the back corner of the yard that I see from my office window.

We still have a couple of good-sized projects ahead of us - new sinks and counters in the large bathroom and kitchen, lots of yard cleanup, and eventually some new landscaping in the back yard. And while I'm on sabbatical, I'm working on some of the smaller projects: finishing up the painting inside, a couple of refinishing projects, sorting and decluttering of the last of the garage contents, and organizing our kitchen and garage storage.

I've got my work cut out for me! While i get going on that, here's a photo of a recently completed project.

For some time now, we have wanted to have something on the back wall of the patio as a focal point. It's what we look out on from our kitchen table, so it really affects the feel indoors as well. I hit upon the idea of a small tree on an espalier a while ago, and the plan has finally come together. I found the right camellia variety at a local nursery late last winter, then had to find a planter that worked. That took a while, and we had just about given up on the container we had special ordered when we got the call that it had come in.

It was worth the wait. The planter is a great fit for the space, and the look of it is just what I wanted Once we had it in place, transplanting the camellia and starting the espalier was pretty easy. It's pretty young now, but should fill this space nicely when it's mature.

Flowers and Veggies Coming Along

Oooh boy. I started this post two weeks ago and forgot to finish it. Now I need to get out and take some more photos since the side garden has been coming along.

Some perennials: salvia chiapensis and a couple of lavenders.

California poppies just starting to come out:

Garlic, Brussels sprouts, and lacinato kale are getting started:

And the side yard from the other side. I've got alyssum along the foot of the raised bed, to keep down the weeds and also for the lovely fragrance:

And finally, the blueberries. Two bushes were planted last year, and two more back in March. I think I will actually get a handful or two of blueberries this year, and the plants are starting to put on some good growth.

Front Yard in Bloom

Dan's Mom had our front yard redone before we moved in. This is the third year it's been in, and it's really coming into it's own. It was designed to use mainly perennial, native or drought-tolerant plants. There are some plants and aspects of the design that don't quite work, but overall it's a nice, low-water, low-maintenance alternative to a traditional lawn.

And at this time of year, it's really pretty spectacular with everything in bloom.

This shot is taken at the foot of the driveway, looking across the main part of the yard. The shrub all the way to the right, with the white flowers is a rockrose (cistus). We have a lot of these in the front yard. They did not bloom at all last spring, but this year they have been covered with lovely white flowers. In front of the rockrose is a lavender (Goodwin Creek, I think) that we put in to replace a failing penstemon. To the left of the rockrose is a mound of Santa Barbara daisies (erigeron).

The second shot is on the other side of the driveway, looking at the narrow strip under the magnolia tree. You can see more of the rockroses and the daisies.

And this last shot is from the other corner of the front yard, looking over the main part of. Eventually, we'll probably take out the two ceanothus (in the let corner) that are too big to be at the front of the yard, and the line of scraggly jade plants right up next to the house. I'd like to add another smallish tree on this side of the yard, maybe a Western redbud or a coffeeberry, to add some balance to the overall effect. But that's a plan for this fall, I think. We'll be focusing on a new deck and the back yard this summer.

 

Flowerbeds

Apparently, 'tis the season for the flowers to start exploding. These shots are from last weekend, and there are even more things coming out since then. I can't keep up!

The lobelias are still happy in the front border. This is the second batch I planted with the multicolored assortment.

The scarlet flax is coming along, but no buds yet.

And this makes me very proud. This is one of the fernleaf lavenders I planted from seeds. That's a bud! They're not even supposed to flower in the first year.

Lastly, these California poppies are thriving on this parched strip of clay right outside the garage door.

More pics soon!

L.A. Story

The patio is finished, and furnished! The last piece was the chairs to go with the table. Well, OK, the very last piece is finding cushions for the chairs so that our backsides don't go to sleep instantly. But I'm gonna call it close enough.

As you can see, we got some nice bistro-style iron chairs, just what we wanted. Simple, right? No. Evidently, bistro chairs are not in style at the moment. We had a heck of a time finding any that didn't look rickety and/or cheap. That's where this becomes an L.A. story. When Donna was here, one of the things she wanted to do was go to L.A. to see some of the museums.

I do not like LA. When driving down the 101, my jaw starts tensing up just about when we get into Thousand Oaks. But I do like museums, and I'm game for almost anything that includes a road trip with Donna. It was our early road trips while we were in college that cemented our friendship, and we've had many adventures since then. We decide to go for it, planning to hit the Getty and LACMA, then Ikea on the way back. Dan won't set foot in an Ikea, but I needed to get some pieces for the new shelving for my office.

So we're planning our day in L.A. Dan says, "hey, since you'll be down there, maybe you can check out the Moroccan import store. They had a lot of chairs." Hmm, good idea. It's a great store, and we got a lot of our living room pieces from them. And it's about 1 mile from LACMA and 2 doors down from the La Brea Bakery. That started to sound like an itinerary: Getty, then  La Brea for lunch,  pop over to get some chairs, then LACMA and LA.

It was a good plan. We made it to the Getty pretty easily, though not very early, and enjoyed the setting and some of the exhibits. We stopped to have some lunch in the cafe because we were starving, then headed off toward the import store. Again, it was pretty easy to get there. But that's also where the day took a turn. We found excellent parking - it seemed too good to be true - right in front of the store. I rifled through the car to find enough change to make sure the meter was well-fed. At this point, it was maybe 3 pm. We weren't really paying attention to time.

We look around at the chairs they have, and I found some that I really liked. They were a little different than what Dan and I had talked about, but the price was fine. I told the shopkeeper that I needed to talk to Dan, but would probably want to take them home. I asked him about how to protect them from the weather, and he kindly offered to seal them for me, I could come back at the weekend to pick them up. Well, no, that wouldn't work, I tried to tell him - I can seal them myself, just let me talk to Dan and see what we want to do.

Donna and I head down to the bakery for tea and cookies, and I call Dan. We talk it over, and decide that I should go back and sit in them for a while to make sure that they're comfortable. Ok, good plan, except that  as I'm talking to Dan, Donna says, "Um, what are they doing to your car?!"

I look up and see my car getting hitched to a tow truck. What the heck? The meter can't be out already. But my first thought is, I've got to get them to take my car off the tow truck. So I go over to the guy from the towing company, and the parking enforcement agent and say, "OK, what can I do to keep you from towing my car away?" Figured that was a better strategy than starting by arguing about the violation, especially since I had no idea what I might have done wrong. The tow guy tells me that I can pay the fine on the spot, and get my car back. Great, so my next question is, "can you tell me what I did wrong?"

Apparently La Brea is one of the new anti-gridlock zones. No parking after 4, or you are subject to immediate towing. At this point, it was approximately 4:03. I ws kinda over a barrel, so I decided to pay the fine - $150. You have to pay the tow charge, even if the car does not in fact get towed. At least the tow guy and the parking enforcement agent were friendly. The tow guy took one look at my license and said "Santa Barbara? If you live in Santa Barbara, what the hell are you doing coming to L.A.? I hate it here. I live here and I don't want to come to L.A." I laughed and told him I wasn't very fond of it myself, and that the $150 fine was not raising my opinion of the place. Still, better that than pay the fine AND be stuck 100 miles from home with no easy way to get my car back. Lucky thing Donna saw what was happening!

We re-parked the car around the corner, and now I was determined to bring patio chairs home with me. We go back to the import store, where I see the shopkeeper painting sealer on the chairs that I wanted. Oy. So they weren't going to come home with me.  Not to worry, he can hold them for me until  Sunday. But of course, I had no intention of making another trip down there that week. And by the way, the foot is broken off one of them, there are no more in that style, and he's not sure if it can be fixed.

By now, I really felt like crying. We told him that we would have to think about what to do, and perhaps would take some other chairs. That's fine, he said, but he had to leave in 15 minutes for an appointment. Ack! More frantic calls to Dan, and we decided I would just take the two that you see above. They're not as unsual as the other ones, but they are pretty, more or less exactly what we had in mind originally, and not broken!

We got them into the back seat of my tiny little Nissan, and then just sat in the car for a few minutes. I finally got to drink my tepid tea and eat my cherry tart. It was delicious and also comforting. By now, it was too late to go to LACMA, and we decided to just head right to the Ikea.

By now, it was 5 p.m. - right smack in rush hour. It was a long, slow drive to Carson, but when we got there the Ikea was pretty much deserted. And the staff was helpful, and knew what I was talking about. This was a far cry from the Ikea in Emeryville.

I found the shelves I needed, and a few other things (duh, it's Ikea!) and then it was time to get the stuff into the car. Most of the shelving and the other bits and pieces went into the trunk, but the side pieces had to go into the car. I was counting on them fitting vertically between the driver's and passenger seats. Not quite. But after some wiggling and jiggling, we got them in - only to discover that one of the two pieces was cracked. So it was wiggle and jiggle back out, back into Ikea to exchange it, then more wiggling to get the un-broken one in.

How did we make it fit? We got one of the gaps in the side piece to go over the passenger seat, and Donna crawled under it, so her head and arms were above it, and the opening was around her torso. That's the mark of a true friend  - being willing to sit that way for two hours back home. And also to squirm in and out a few times, because we had to stop at Target, and then at In & Out (Donna's first time) on the way home.

So here's the first round of staining on those shelves. I've spent the better part of the last two weekends on this. I'm enjoying it, but it sure is time consuming, mainly because of the wait time while things are drying.

On the tarp now is the 24 shelves for the long wall unit. They're just about ready be flipped over for to get the second side done. Here's hoping the office looks as good as I'm imagining it will when I'm done!

Paths & Beds

In addition to the front patio & walkway, Don has made great progress on the walkways on each side of the house. He laid the large saltillo tiles by soft-setting them when he was here in January. He ran out of time to finish off the path with the edgings and the stone dust in the spaces. Turns out that might have been for the best. With the rain we got at the end of the winter, everything settled quite a bit. It would have been a big pain to go back and re-level everything. So, sometimes what looks like a setback initially turns out to be an advantage.

This is the west side of the house, where the garden is. I can't get over how far this has come since we got here. This is more or less what the finished path will look like all the way along.

And  a close-up of the pathway:

I think the bricks look really good as an edging, and really finish off the path, like putting a frame on a picture. Don helped me build a soil sifter, with scrap lumber from one of the pallets we had around. Since he's a nice sort of brother, he spent a long time sifting the soil in the bed between the walkway and the fence before he laid the edging down. It's amazing what a difference it makes in the texture of the soil. Here you can see the sifted soil under the sifter, with the un-sifted clay on either side.

We picked up some Early Girl starts at the Farmer's Market, and my new favorite place*, Island Seed & Feed, because they're Dan's favorites. They're in the bed and seem to be happy.

Also got some roasting peppers at the market, just to hedge my bets since the ones I started from seed seem to be growing at a glacial pace.

The arugula is thriving:

And the herb garden, too. We found a nice tarragon plant at Island Seed (the one in the middle with the stake), and it's seeming happy, too.

* Sorry, Container Store. Come to Santa Barbara (or even Ventura), and we'll talk.

Happy Little Lobelias

These are not the lobelias. They're the sweetpeas I planted in front of the patio. They're reaching for the sky!

These are the lobelias:

The first ones I planted have grown a lot and are covered with these almost-fluorescent blue flowers. Purty. The other plants here are some California poppies, some random wild flowers, and some scarlet flax. And that nice curve of brick?

Don finished off the short path that connects the driveway to the side yard path (where the blackberries are) and defines the bed.

Blackberries and Apricots

The house has had blackberry brambles in the side yard and an apricot tree in the backyard since Dan was a kid. I just happen to love blackberries and apricots, so I am very, very excited to watch them grow in our yard.

The brambles are on the east side of the house. Don and I cleared the weeds from both sides of the walkway on Saturday. I'm thinking of adding some raspberries on the left side of the walk, against the fence (the brambles are against the house on the right).

The blackberry canes were cut way back in August when the house was tented for termites. They've made a pretty decent recovery, as blackberries are wont to do. They've had buds for a little while now, and the flowers started coming out last week.

And where there are flowers, soon there will be berries. They grow right out of the centers of the flowers.

The apricot tree, blooming last month, and showering down white petals a couple of weeks ago, is now covered in fuzzy wee apricots, about the size of small walnuts.

I've been reading up on canning and dehydrators, because there's going to be a lot of apricots to deal with!

Spring Flowers

Oops, I've been quiet on the blog again. Here are a few more flower photos from the last batch. Lots is going on in the garden since the last post. Must get out and take photos tomorrow...

The mixed-color dianthus across from the raised bed have very cute flowers:

And the bush poppies in the front and back yards are happy:

My Minty Nemesis

This is the sight that greeted my upon my return from New Jersey:

The raised bed, from  which I removed  a lot of mint in February, had been overtaken again. This longer shot shows its advance from the far end of the bed. The stake marks the end of what's cultivated/planted so far. At least I got back before it invaded the greens!