Growing On

Japanese maple (Acer japonica) in my backyard.

I'm still feeling a lot like this seemingly vulnerable leaf on one of my Japanese maples, but as days have passed, and the leaves have all opened up, the leaf no longer sticks out. I'm taking this as a sign. As it lifted up its head to the sun it was enveloped by the support of other leaves around it. 

In the garden I am comforted.

Salmonberry (Rubus spectabilis) growing above the Pacific Ocean.

My trip the the Pacific a few weeks ago also had me viewing an understory of nearly nothing by salmonberry bushes and their blooms. I tried for far too long to get a nice shot of their hot pink blossoms but the wind was simply too much. Instead, I did capture this berry.

Morning glory vine (Ipomoea) on a tombstone in Oysterville, WA.

In my photos I also found this lovely rendition of a morning glory vine on a gravestone. I don't believe I've shared it yet. Eternal blooms fascinate me more and more as I age. What flower would I want on my headstone? Why? I am such a plant nerd it's impossible to choose just one. Besides, in the technological world we live in I'm much more likely to desire something akin to a slideshow. Oh! I am so ashamed at times to be so spoiled by the world around me. We're lucky I think.

Dudlyea brittonii seedlings. 

Many of the seeds I was unable to plant last year made it into production this year. Above you'll see one of my favorites. I cannot wait to see these grow up. They are such beautiful plants.

Unknown Agave I grew from seed.
I guess these little "friends" area telling me that it's time for the plant to be moved to a larger pot. 

It is time to repot older plants I've grown from seed. This is a plant that really spoke volumes to me when I looked closely at what it was saying to me. "Plant me. I need more space. If you don't, I promise to break this planter. It is weak. I am not." Ok, maybe I'm totally exaggerating.

Me last month pruning the willow arbor while waiting to be picked up to go out for the evening. I can prune in a linen dress. Wow, the things we learn when we wait impatiently...

Being able to climb up onto a ladder to prune was a huge undertaking for me. In the past I would have been too dizzy to do this but not anymore!

Hellebore plant (Helleborus orientalis) pregnant with seeds. 

Collecting seeds for my Etsy shop Milton's Garden Menagerie has started all over too. Even though I am still not 100% about where I'll be going next in my life, I do know with complete certainty that I want seeds to remain—and plants too!

Cuttings from my Begonia boliviensis I grew from seed. The propagation goes on and on...

To Chelsea on Her 21st Birthday

Chelsea is my eldest niece and she loves nature. 

Me, well, I love this kid—and the other two girls too. 

Before I had a garden to help me bury the pains caused by a rare illness, I found a lot of happiness and joy in these three beautiful creatures. 

These 3 are a creative triple threat, but most of the time, they just "are".

We've seen many of the wonders of the Pacific Northwest together, and as a child, she and her younger sister Lindsey and their best friend Emily went all over the place with me—looking at plants, and other stuff. 

You know, just normal nature stuff like this.

If I never have a child, it's ok since I've always had Chelsea. 

And she likes to think she's my only child. 

 And when I see pictures like this I know we are related to one another.

 We've always got Emily too.

 Chelsea has taken our relationship quite seriously for many years. 

 Sometimes, she reminds me a lot of my dad. 

I guess that's where our quirks originated. 

My brother (her dad) is pretty goofy too. 

 She likes animation. I used to watch a lot of it with her. I guess I taught her to value certain things in life too. 

 I think she's a bit more colorful than I am at times, but that's not an issue. She is her own garden. 

At heart she loves animals and nature. 

When I graduated from college I was so proud she was there to see me succeed. 

My friend Brendan, the guy with his eyes shut, well he later acted as college art instructor to the young woman who became Chelsea's high school art instructor. 

I am happy she grew up around art. I sure wish I had! Although I wish Chelsea was making more art right now. She is a very talented artist. 

She grew up around plants too and this image is from a Seattle trip to attend the Northwest Flower & Garden Show. (Sorry about the quality of this photo. It was rescued.)

Here first tattoo was of the much more common orange California poppy. 

Taking the girls on road trips to CA was a great deal of fun for me. 

And here we have Emily and Chelsea again. They were helping me to load pavers into the wagon after a friend our family had passed away. We wanted to use the pavers in my garden. 

So often when I see the beauty in the small details of flowers I think of Chelsea. She sees even more beauty in the world than I. Too often my brain and words get in my way.

As girls, both Chelsea and her sister Lindsey liked to be a bit different.

Of course I encouraged this kind of thing.

When I worked at Frank Lloyd Wright's Gordon House it was wonderful to see them all during visits. They were just kids and they enjoyed the house and absorbed its design.

I am not so sure they liked his Marin County building as much, but they saw it. 

Chelsea loves her little sister Lindsey and I think this is one of my favorite pictures I've ever taken of her. 

Emily is a bird of a different feather. That's why we love her so much.

Like any aunt I prefer to think of them like this—tiptoeing through the tulips. 

Of course Chelsea had to shock us all a bit—especially her little sister. 

Not having had sisters it was a blessing to watch these little women grow.

They opened up a whole new world to me and I needed it. 

Chelsea will always be "so metal" when she rakes. 

She will always be a garden design sceptic. 

Happy Birthday Chelsea. 

Happy Birthday.

Happy. Happy.
Birthday.

Someday all three of you will be gardeners and I know it. It is in your blood on both sides. So get out there and keep doing what you do until you land and dig deeper to set down your own roots. Whatever you do, it will be beautiful like you. 

Happy Blogoversary! Amateur Bot-ann-ist Turns 5 and Ficurinia Celebrates with Some Prickly Pears

Usually I'd post a Wordless Wednesday post here but today is special so I will forgo that formality.

Today my blog turns 5 and I wanted to celebrate. The cheesecake is not yet complete, but the prickly pear sauce for it is, and now you can all hear about my relationship with the prickly pear...

First off, that's not Pepto-Bismol pink. This is no shy fruit color. It will stain you and stain you well. It's Barbie pink, hot pink, not understated pink, and it's loud and proud.

Tasting of apple and watermelon, it's really a strange fruit. Not sure if these were unripe or older fruits though since they happened to taste more of Aloe vera to me, but they tasted of prickly pear and that's all that matters. Tasting subtly of prickly pear is the way to go. (Yes, I eat Aloe vera too.)

I will have pics of the chèvre cheesecake that will be drizzled with this stuff up here tomorrow and I'll include a recipe with it. 

So for now, just enjoy the warmth your computer screen is giving off because you've stopped to look at my blog. I am happy you're here and grateful too.

Here's to the next 5 years!!!

*****

Ficurinia is Sicilian dialect for prickly pear and I chose it as an online name years ago because of a story my father used to tell me about my Sicilian-American grandfather. 

As a boy, his family had driven to CA to visit my Grandma Virginia's brothers. Once over the Oregon/California border my grandfather was looking for every opportunity to stop and eat prickly pear cactus fruits. My father told me that as he sat in the car, pulled over next to the highway, he watched as his dad chowed down and other cars passed them. It embarrassed him that his father was acting like such an "immigrant" and he was ashamed. Later in life, after he'd lost his father, he regretted having felt that way. 

I never knew my grandfather since I was born after he died. This story about him always fascinated me though and I wanted to eat the fruit myself to see what it was that drew him to it. During my 20s when I had the opportunity I fell in love with them too. Though I don't eat them often, when I do, I think of my Grandpa. I think of him eating them while stationed in Italy during WWII and I imagine him eating them along the highways of CA whenever I go in search of seeds. 

Through the prickly pear I am firmly connected to what I can only call the most mysterious and special part of myself. I am a gardener and I love plants and it is a gift that comes from somewhere deep inside of me. When I close my eyes to look into the still darkness it is the prickly pear I see and it is the image connected to the tie that binds me to the earth. I should add that it connects me to the kitchen too. But more on those activities later...

Salvatore Amato, soldier (October 31, 1944).

My Sicilian great-grandfather Frank Amato, my Grandma Virginia, my father as a baby, my Grandpa Sam. (Looks to me like someone might have been working in his garden that day.

A Few Blooms of Summer and the Plant Path Ahead

As summer begins to wind down here in the Pacific Northwest (and we enter into my favorite time of year), I thought it might be a nice time to review a few beautiful blooms of summer.

Many of these images are older ones—so forgive me if you've seen them before somewhere on here.

Love-in-a-mist after it's finished blooming (Nigella damascena).

The traditional school year begins soon. Maybe you've noticed all of the back-to-school fanfare and hoopla whenever you go shopping? I know I walk into stores wondering what back-to-school plants look like but I'm still not sure.

(Let me know if you have a clue. Somebody must have marketed something for just this occasion. I just know it.)

California Poppy, (Eschscholzia californica).

So, maybe this might be a good time to mention that I've finally taken into consideration how many folks I've been chatting with recently who've mentioned that I should stop acting like such an amateur and admit to the fact that maybe I could grow beyond where I've been making circles in the dirt with my fingers. (This is how I perceive their thoughts on the subject. I may have filtered their comments through some rather large tumblers of gin and tonic this past weekend so I'm a bit fuzzy on exactly what they said, but I got the gist of it.)

Large-leaved Lupine, (Lupinus polyphyllus). 

Ok, darling friends of mine, you win (and I know at least one of you regularly reads my posts so thank you C).

Western Columbine, (Aquilegia formosa) along the Smith River in CA.

I'm going to admit to having an aptitude for the sport, but with some reservations. As I write this, straddling my words loosely between images of an Aquilegia and Mimulus I shot while visiting the Smith River in Northern California last year, I should mention that right after I took these pictures I fell and gave myself severe whiplash.

Just sayin'.

Common Monkey-flower, (Mimulus guttatus) along the Smith River in CA. 

But let's get back to some of those summer blooms [insert awkward transition here].

There are so many amazing little plants and blooms for our sentimental green souls to treasure and like so many others, I have that insanely nerdy desire to know how, where, and why they grow. That's why many of the plants you see here I've grown from seed at some point, or else I had plans to play with that process this past year, but it had to be postponed until now. 

Yes, I can "announce" too that I will be back to my old routine soon and the basement will be filled with light and life this winter and I will stratify outside and I will be so happy about it. 

Yes, it's these subtle little touches in the natural world which matter and are important. It's these blooms that often have idiots like me coming back over and over. 

Calico Monkey-flower, (Mimulus pictus) at Annie's Annuals & Perennials.

Some of them are just amazing and you know of few other sights quite like them.

Sticky Phacelia (Phacelia viscida) at Annie's Annuals & Perennials.

I don't think I even need to mention what blue blooms do for a lot of people—myself included.

Rose Snapdragon, (Antirrhinum multiflorum) at Annie's Annuals & Perennials.

Some flowers you just want to touch and caress, and you wonder if you should purchase a whole new wardrobe based upon their merits—or at least a new pair of boots or some nail polish. (OK, maybe it's just me who thinks like this but I am becoming more and more convinced by messages I receive that a lot more oddballs are out there. Raise your hands! I know you're reading this right now.) 

Sticky Monkey-flower, (Mimulus aurantiacus) at UC Botanical Garden at Berkeley. 

But then there are the glowing blooms that brighten your way and shine a light down that plant path we must all wander down.

Mexican Prickly Poppy, (Argemone mexicana) at UC Botanical Garden at Berkeley.

I remember visiting the UC Botanical Garden at Berkeley for the first time and remembering how funny I used to think it was that my friend Sean Hogan worked as a curator there. As someone who'd studied art history, I'd never thought of curation taking place outside of an art museum or gallery. So I looked around and thought about how much visual literacy mattered in both of these arenas. 

I knew that I fit in when I thought about having compared hundreds of Christ images as an undergraduate and how that ability could easily overlap with a survey, say, of Agave—or any other group of plants. So similar to most, yet some of us just have a knack for discerning subtle differences—and these differences often matter a great deal and they tell us a lot. 

I'm not great at that game but I can spot and identify seed heads at great distances in their natural environment—sometimes while driving a car. It's a skill—a very strange one, but it's part of this whole process. 

Prickly Pear, or Opuntia bloom. 

I remember walking around, looking at the students and employees, and I thought about how sad I was that I'd been unable to complete the plant path long ago. I had to turn around defeated before I'd even really gone very far. 

My illness made physical activity and a lot of technical work too difficult. I had to slow down and at times I just didn't make much progress at all. My mind didn't work as well and I no longer had near perfect grades. It took years to discover I had swelling in my brain that was impeding me and inhibiting my growth as a person. I was trapped inside and I struggled for years to find the words to describe what I was experiencing. 

I turned to art to soothe and stimulate my mind. 

I moved indoors, inside of myself. Later I moved indoors because I had no choice. My immune reactions disallowed me from being outside. I had to look out the window and I started to play with seeds to keep the hope alive. 

Life circumstances prevented me from being able to return to any of these green dreams until these last few months. Now they surround me again and I am surround by green friends too who've made me feel so welcome despite my typically stylish and late arrival. Just when I wanted to give up hope after nearly 18 years things started to unravel in very mysterious ways. 

What matters is that I've arrived and I know why I'm here now and what I want to be doing. After a really long time, I feel like I've finally grown and that at long last I truly bloomed this summer. I've never felt like this before but I'm getting used to it. 

Elegant Clarkia, (Clarkia unguiculata). 

It's one foot in front of the other once again but this time I get to laugh and walk because I want to do so—not because I have to or need to do so. My load is so much lighter now—literally too. 

My mind is calm and silent now and I'm open to what's ahead of me. I have the mental space again and have found my old quiet personal nature waiting there for me. It was there all along waiting for me to be well enough to come by and pick it up and wear it again as my second skin. It's warmed me to the core to be myself again, and as time goes on, and I keep at this, I hope to better understand and explain my dormancy. 

Until that time, I will revel in the simplest of things, the blooms of summer and the magic they bring to gardeners and plant lovers around the world. I'm a believer and if you're here reading this, you probably are too.