Botanical Highlights from Northern California

I will need a vacation when I return home from this vacation. As I write this it is raining outside here in the Bay Area and back home it is sunny and warm. When I return, I am guessing that I will have nothing but a lot of work to do. (How gardens can grow!) 

Rather than go on and on about the trip so far, I've instead chosen some highlights and I will fill in all the botanical garden and plant information in the coming days. I also want to add that having my AHS membership card has been wonderful because it has made viewing all of the gardens much easier and a whole lot less expensive. I think next time though I will have to get a card for my husband too. Now that he has seen more of the botanical gardens down here, he'd like to go back to them sometimes when he's traveling doing wine sales work. (AHS Reciprocal Admissions Program)

My husband enjoying one of my favorite little waysides in the redwoods. 

A mosquito sculpture beside a pond at the Mendocino Coast Botanical Garden, Fort Bragg, CA.

A Fuchsia hedge in the garden of a residence in Fort Bragg, CA. I was very jealous.

Discovering Sedum along the ocean at Salt Point State Park in Sonoma County, CA.

I know this is a special plant but I will have to look up the name later. We found it in the Kruse Rhododendron Reserve. near Salt Point State Park in Sonoma Co., CA.

Fancy chickens at Annie's Annuals. I CANNOT say enough about their nursery. We had a wonderful time and it was easy to find over in Richmond, CA.

This is a transmission repair show that I would trust in San Carlos, CA.

I cannot say enough about Prickly Pears. My other name, Ficurinia, means Prickly Pear in Sicilian dialect.  I would happily live with this lovely prickly friend in San Carlos, CA.

Bottlebrush plants are not for me but I do love their blooms, San Carlos, CA.

Really cool tree outside of the famous restaurant Chez Panisse in Berkeley, CA. 

Wall of Thunbergia at a wine shop in Berkeley, CA.

View of the Golden Gate Bridge (far in the distance) as seen from the Berkeley Botanical Gardens, CA.

Today is yet another adventure, and tomorrow too, but I am afraid we have finally been slowed down by one of my really amazing and sweet old college friends. Yesterday, much food was eaten and our last meal was so decadent it is embarrassing to mention. Let's just say that we ate Italian-style—for several hours—and each of the four courses had two to four different dishes. The meal was seriously heavenly. 

Plants from the California Redwoods near the Smith River

These are only brief shots of our drive up until this morning. A lot has happened since we left Portland and the sun is out down here in Fort Bragg, CA. Tonight we will sleep beside the ocean south of here, not far from the Kruse Rhododendron Reserve, and tomorrow we'll be in San Francisco taking in a nursery and two gardens. I just cannot get enough of this place and its amazing botanical bounty.

Sorry for the brevity, but campgrounds in California appear unequipped with plugs unlike my yurts back home. Blogging from cafés is so distracting too.

Sedum spathulifolium var spathulifolium.

Siskiyou iris Iris bracteata.

Rhododendron macrophyllum.

The campground is inside of a stand of old trees.

I  couldn't wait to see the river but was slowed down by all of the native plants along the path down to the river.

Aquilegia formosa.

Eschschozia californica. 

Mimulus.

Pacific Ninebark Physocarpus capitatus.

This is the lock on the bear locker. You have to have small paws to open it and you must keep all of your food in this when you are not around. The garbage cans have special looks too. 

The view from our campsite this morning as I had my coffee. 

Entertaining from the Garden (and the Heart) with the Hands and the Head

Whenever my husband drives up from California, I make plans with as many people as I can because when he was a cook—and then a chef—this was entirely impossible. Now that we care for foster children, and he works out of state at a vineyard in California, this becomes even more of a challenge at times. It seems we are getting a feel for it though and yesterday we had a smashing success when I invited over an old Italian friend from college who I hadn't seen in years!

The most difficult part for me is often just letting go of the menu completely. I want to do this, and I need to do this, and I can trust my husband completely, but it can be a difficult dance because it begins and ends quickly. This time, it went something like this, "Italian brunch to me means: frittata, leftover pasta from the night before, fruit and lots of veggies." We planned to go to the Farmer's Market on Saturday and that was the end of it. I turned to crafting with the foster respite and cleaning the house while additionally getting ready for our impending trip to California.

The Farmer's Market was amazing and I just pointed at a few green items and I honestly had no idea what the plan was and I didn't ask. The chef likes some mystery.

Yesterday, before our guest arrived, I looked around in the garden for some flowers to harvest for the table. I knew we had what I refer to as "bread and butter" Dutch irises in the Hell Strip by the street so I picked one of them first. It went swimmingly from there: long-spurred Aquilegia, Aucuba Gold Dust, and then some orange Buddleja globosa for some umph!

Then our foster respite asked me if I was going to use the other cool black Japanese vase and I thought about what to add to it. The Green Rose Rosa viridiflora immediately dove into the vase with a low wrap of Coleus and I didn't even have to think about it.

Our guest arrived, and with his help, our table was lovingly set reminding me in so many ways of the rituals done almost without thought but with great reverence during the Mass. Again, I am not a seriously devout Catholic nowadays, but I will always be Catholic by culture and I am proud of that as an Italian-American. 

We brunched upon a spring beet salad with fresh greens and a horseradish and walnut oil dressing, a spring asparagus frittata with a splash of white truffle oil, dragonfruit, honeydew melon, and mango, and lastly, there was a peanut soup with spring peas and a splash of whipped coconut cream. (This last course was added due to gluten and dairy intolerances and it was a perfect surprise!)

In addition to the fruit, our guest also brought carnations and I immediately thought of something I had read last week about the American singer Katy Perry. How could she demand that there be no carnations in her trailer? Sure we all have issues with some kind of flower for some kind of personal reason, but these little dolls were just so cute yesterday I just adored them. (These are for you Katy Perry XOXO.)

In less than a day, we will be departing for another whirlwind plant and garden tour from Portland, to the Bay Area of San Francisco, and then back again along the southern Oregon Coast. This time there will be more gardens, more plants, and who knows what kind of shenanigans! 

Hopefully I will not be soaking wet and shivering like I was last time when I did this about two months ago. Our rain totals so far this year are seriously off the charts. ¡Gracias La Niña! Now pleeeeaaaaase go away!

Marin County Open Gardens 2011

When Gardeners Can't Sleep I Prescribe This Book

Pumpkin, Bartolomeo Bimbi, c. 1711, Florence, Museo Botanico. (The rectangular stone at the bottom reads: Pumpkin grown in Pisa in the garden of His Royal Highness in the year 1711. It weighed 45 kilograms or about 100 pounds.)

Last night when I went to bed I wasn't feeling well. In a hurried rush to get out the door next week—and back on the road to California—I have been doing far too much. Since reading complicated material is often very difficult when I feel unwell, I turn to imagery. Seed catalogs and garden magazines work most of the time, but I am often left with that icky I-can't-afford-all-of-this taste in my mouth. In comparison, this art history book is the quiet calm that always soothes any little storm inside of me that I throw at it.

My steady bedside grab is called Gardens in Art by Lucia Impelluso. It's part of a series of books put out by The J. Paul Getty Museum simply called: Guide to Imagery. I don't think you have to be an art history expert to enjoy this book, but I am fairly certain it is a must if you love gardens. Following current curatorial style, the book is arranged thematically and it is not chronological. There are tons of paintings, and not too much text. The painting above was in the brief Still Lifes section.

Gardens in Art by Lucia Impelluso

The reason I picked this painting is that it was the work most emblazoned on my mind last night when I finally turned into a pumpkin myself. Still lifes are a favorite genre of mine to begin with, but this one really struck me because it reminded me so much of the photographs, come autumn, in so many magazines. This image resonates much more strongly with me than many of the others I've seen, both in books and museums domestically and abroad, and if you garden, I think you know what I mean. We've all wanted a painting like this of something from our own garden bounty writ large like a trophy. This painting could replace the huge mirror above my fireplace any day.

More about California next time...