My son Zack Bivins wrote a haiku this Christmas about my garden:
Garden of Eden
Amidst the fogged, boggy yards
of San Francisco
Thinking about this haiku prompted me to just sit in my garden this afternoon and enjoy it a little bit instead of weeding, sweeping, pruning as usual.
As I started walking around taking photos with my phone, I discovered so many visual delights. Here are a few:
Here are three of my most spectacular shade plants right now. Two are in the cactus/succulent family, which I love. I mean, I love that there are cacti and succulents that love shade!
One of these has the surprising name of “Aloe latte” — at least, that’s what’s on the price sticker. I guess that makes it a good aloe for San Francisco!
Casper didn’t help, but he did pose for the camera.
We had a round sandpit built into our brick hardscape for our girls. We built our hardscape in 2001 and our girls are now 15 and 16. It’s been a long time since they played in the sandbox. There is a thin layer of soil on top of the sand, and things that grow on sand had taken hold — like beach strawberries. Not a lot really thrives in sand.
Late last summer, I saw an article in the San Francisco Chronicle Home & Garden section about using a straw wattle (those things you see on slopes to control erosion) to create a cheap, easy raised bed. They’d arranged the straw wattle in a spiral: http://goo.gl/qZzjZX. Something clicked.
I knew this was the answer to what to do with that old sand pit.
First, I had to get a straw wattle. This was cheap (about ($39) but not easy to find. The only Home Depot in the Bay area that had them was in San Leandro, on the other side of the Bay Bridge and quite a ways south. And it was even hard to find in the store. It is one of the least glamorous and bulkiest things they carry, so I had to get all kinds of special help to locate it back in the area with the forklifts. It totally filled the back of my car and left straw embedded in the carpet-like material back there. But when I got it into my back yard, my puli fell in love with it!
Casper enjoys hanging out in the straw wattle. It’s cozy.
Next, I had to clear out the sandpit. I started digging, and kept digging and digging, filling up every nearby pot and tub with sand, throwing sand into flowerbeds, etc. Then I realized I would have a lot of sand that needed to be hauled away, so I found some big plastic bags and started shoveling the sand into them. I recruited some help now and then, especially from my daughter Claire, but even when I didn’t have a helper, I always had an audience.
When the pit got deep enough to be fun to jump in and out of, my puli started getting more involved:
Casper didn’t help, but he did pose for the camera.
Finally, we got to the bottom of the sand. There was a black plastic cloth liner underneath. It was there to stop weeds from growing. I ended up with 10 x 2 cubic feet of sand to be hauled away and I tossed the black liner.
Then, I dragged the straw wattle over and wrapped it around the hole. It went around twice, perfectly.
Wrapping the straw wattle around the hole — it went around twice, perfectly.
Next, I poured 10 x 2 cu. feet of Sloat’s organic garden soil into the hole and the new raised bed. And voila!
Filling the pit and the raised part of the bed took about 10 bags of planting mix.
Early summer in Cow Hollow is all about plums, plums and more plums.
I didn’t even plant my plum tree — it just grew. I think it is the offspring of my neighbor’s plum tree.
These are cute little plums that grow all over the Bay area. They are soft and sweet, no more than 1″ in diameter. Some people use them in jam.
My puli has been sampling them, but he’s not a huge fan.
The birds passing through our neighborhood LOVE these plums, though. The big tree hangs over a parking space where we sometimes park a van. It gets bombed with ripe plums and with huge poops from the really large crows that hang around our neighborhood. This plum tree is their favorite spot when it’s bearing fruit.
— June 2012
The next order of business was getting lots of great ferns. I checked the website of the SF Botanical Garden Society and discovered that lo and behold! they were having a plant sale focusing specifically on ferns the following weekend. We marked our calendars and headed over the to SF Botanical Garden at the appointed time. We had to park quite a ways away but that was no problem because Liz has wheels. We brought and filled up two huge totebags with ferns and a lovely rose.
Liz hauling as many plants as she could carry
On our way of the SF Botanical Garden, loaded with ferns
One of our bags of new plants, safe at home
Bringing home such a small amount of slate was no problem. We simply loaded it into our minivan at the slate yard, then unloaded it piece by piece and stacked it in the yard at home, all under the expert supervision of Oscar.
The two white dogs love any opportunity to dig and roll around in dirt, as well as to watch people working. This project gave them an opportunity to do both. They enjoyed every minute that John True was here. The puppy especially enjoyed stealing John’s kneepads and playing keepaway with them!
Over the summer, we cleared a weedy, spidery patch of underused garden space at the back of the garden. We removed the last vestiges of an English stainless steel play structure that never got much use, dug up roots and flattened the lot. Then we redeemed a silent auction certificate for some stone at Echeguren Slate Co., hired wonderful stone mason John True, and, a few days later: viola!
Welcome to WordPress.com! This is your very first post. Click the Edit link to modify or delete it, or start a new post. If you like, use this post to tell readers why you started this blog and what you plan to do with it.
Happy blogging!
Cow Hollow Gardener 