Yes We Have No House Plants

The only indoor plants I grow are cat trees!

Since I have such great love and fascination for greenery, flowers, and vegetables, many of my friends ask me why I have no plants inside my home. I must sheepishly admit to having a black thumb when it comes to house plants. I forget to water them and I over water them. My perfectly situated garden gets the perfect amount of sun. The interior, however, not so much. The plants either get too much sun or not enough depending on where I place them. Its not like I can place them just anywhere, for I have to contend with the mischief of four playful (and often naughty) cats: Wingus, Dingus, Clingus, and Jingus.

Before adopting Wingus, I had a lovely spider plant that moved with me from apartment to apartment, then to our first home, a condo south of our current address. Once given the run of the condo, Wingus decided to make a snack of my poor plant. Thankfully, it was not poisonous. Three more cats and countless chewed petals, blooms, and leaves later convinced me that indoor plants were not a good idea. Besides, anything not nailed down or placed on a super high shelf just ended up broken on the floor anyway thanks to Dingus. Missing your keys, glasses, phone? Chances are Dingus knocked them off the counter, table, or other furniture and pushed it out of your eye's immediate gaze. I have contemplated hanging a fern from the ceiling, but thought better of it. The last thing I need is Dingus's 20 pound frame swinging from the rafters.

Why fight nature? Perhaps I could place intentionally cat friendly plants in the house for some extra greenery and texture. So, I planted some cat grass in a couple pots on the patio. Once they had gained a good five inches in height, I brought them in and placed them in a sunny spot by the sliding door. Clingus was immediately intrigued. But instead of a few bites, he ate the whole salad bowel! He barfed up a stringy mess - YUCK - and I banished the poor damaged plant to the safety of the outdoor elements.

Clingus demands catnip!

Ergo, no more plants. The kitteh hoards occasionally get some catnip when Hubby and I want to watch them go batshit crazy - always a good time! All joking aside, many household plants are very poisonous to cats, including but not limited to multiple kinds of lilies (including amaryllis and star gazers), begonias, cyclamen, hyacinth, and geraniums. For a full list of plants poisonous to cats and dogs, please go to the ASPCA website. Don't let that pretty flower kill your furry best friend!

Dingus attempts to break my camera.

Jingus in dreamland

Wingus sits on my gardening hat.

Flowers feed the Soul (April Bloomday)

Every work-day I return home and make a bee-line for my patio flower garden. I inhale the wondrous mix of scents, rose, sweet pea, lavender and I am rejuvenated. This small meditation helps my troubles dissipate. I’d like to think that the bees carry them away with harvested pollen. It is so easy to get caught up in the rat race of modern life; the flowers entreat me to slow down and recognize that the sun continues to shine, the rain continues to fall, plants sprout, and animals grow. My petty cares are vanity and a chase after the wind.

 

Nasturtiums growing under and around the roses - happy accidents!

 Lavender for the bees

Detail of Blue (well, purple) Hibiscus

Extending the Pretty

It is hard not to become overwhelmed by the sheer amount of work my garden needs to produce vegetables and maintain a beautiful appearance. The winter weeds are still insidious, the slugs are munching my tender sprouts, and rain threatens to flatten my tomato seedlings. When it comes to dealing with cleaning up the garden, I have adopted a new philosophy called Extending the Pretty. I have separated my garden into zones, starting first with the patio area, and focus on making that zone pretty. Each time I work in the garden, I extend that zone. When I feel frustrated I go back to the pretty patio zone, have a glass of water, relax and smell the roses and sweet peas. (All pictures are of my beautiful, relaxing patio.)

Using this strategy, I have cleaned up the patio, the butterfly flower garden, and the first of three of seven vegetable beds, starting on the west side of the yard and moving toward the east. The west side is beauty, vibrant and fragrant roses and sweet peas, happy accident nasturtiums blooming red, orange, and yellow, lavender blowing in the breeze.  The east side is beast, ugly, seedy weeds growing wild and some half dying in an ill conceiving poisoning attempt, piles of yard refuse waiting to be tossed in the garbage, and multiple scattered tools in need of a new home in a tool shed.

Since Hubby spend last weekend playing with hot rods, he agreed to help me in the garden this weekend. I plan to send him to the east side with a flat head shovel to slice weeds. (If he needs a machete, we do have one!)  I will continue to clean up the remaining four of the seven vegetable beds and will renew my weed poisoning campaign against the weeds breaking through my brick hardscape. Sometimes you just have to resort to chemical support.

Spring Preparations

My first sensory harbinger of spring is a scent, lifted softly on the evening wind. If I concentrate on localizing it, it dissipates like a ghost, but if I let the scent carry itself lazily across the moving landscape, I can detect its components: one part tangy sage brush, two parts early blooming jasmine, and one part citrus flower. Hubby and I drive through residential neighborhoods at night inhaling this glorious scent and knowing that spring is on the cusp, returning like an old friend too long separated. If I ever leave Southern California, I will dearly miss this glorious scent.

With this scent on the wind, I know it is time to take paper plans into the realm of garden reality. It is time to clear the vegetable beds of gone-to-seed winter vegetables and weeds, pull the tomato supports out of the garage rafters, and begin planting early vegetables and annual flowers.  I am making good use of my nitrogen fixing winter veggies. Hubby chops them up and tosses them in a nearby bed. We’re adopting a “let it rot” philosophy to re-enrich the soil and cut down on the amount of yard waste. We never have enough room in the garbage cans for the massive amounts of verdant green the garden can churn out.

I place the vegetable supports based on the now revised garden schematics, accounting for less room between plants than last year. The goal is to fill in the empty spaces with beneficial perennials in the hopes of choking out the weeds. At first glance, I have not been successful at growing perennials from seed. I am planning a more concentrated effort of starting them in small pots first, but that requires potting soil (I’m all out right now). I need to finish cleaning the old supports with a diluted bleach solution – good sanitation is the cornerstone of a disease free garden. I am excited to try out my new acquisitions in plant support from Gardener’s Supply Company, two more tomato towers, a set of large flower supports, and a cucumber trellis.

My early spring vegetable keyhole bed has radishes and nasturtiums, but I cannot yet tell if any of the other seeds have sprouted because the plants are still small. However, they look suspiciously like tomatoes instead of lettuces, carrots, leeks and broccoli. The tomatoes will have their day – specifically this weekend at Tomatomania! If you are a tomato-maniac in search of amazing heirloom plants, this is the hottest ticket in town.

In Memorium and Best Wishes

2010 was a rough year for my family due to illness and loss of loved ones. My grandmother’s health seriously deteriorated after the recurrence of her colon cancer. Throughout her convalescence, I would bring her beautiful and fragrant sweet peas hand-picked from my garden. In her honor, I have planted a new batch seeds, decedents of the plants that brought color from the world outside to her sick room. They are poking their green shoots out of the loamy ground; I hope to have blooms by late winter or early spring.

We also lost two faithful kitty companions, Lona and Mossy. Lona loved her ‘nip and for her memory I have let the gone-to-seed catnip infest the cracks in the patio and the vacant flower beds. The neighborhood cats love it and my kitty clan loves the herb as a special treat. Cats on catnip are always great for a laugh! My mind plays tricks on me in my parents’ garden and I think I see my sweet Mossy, my quiet ghost kitty. I continue to look for her even though I logically know she is not there.  In her memory I feed and watch the birds, but thankfully they have much less to fear from me.

Best Holiday wishes from the Victory Gardeners! May your soil be fertile, your sunshine and rain ample, and your harvest bountiful!

Season's End

I approach autumn with a degree of ambivalence that builds slowly into apprehension. On one hand, I am happy to have the opportunity to work on other projects and goals and not be so tied to tending garden. But as the golden sun spend less and less time in the sky, I grow uneasy with the coming winter: cloudy skies, shortened daylight, plant dormancy or (gasp!) plant death. As it currently stands, I only have an hour of light to tinker in the garden when I come home from work. When Daylight Savings Time officially ends in November, there will be no light left for garden tasks. Although I planned my garden’s winter dormancy ahead of time because of my foot surgery, I feel like the last 3 weeks of weather and light have been stolen from me. Tending garden is my meditation, my retreat from the world that both keeps me grounded and connects me to my roots.

Perhaps this is the time to refresh and renew, to seek out new inspirations and new vistas to help find next season’s purpose. Also, I have many other goals to complete; they cannot be neglected because they do not bring me as much pleasure as growing the perfect tomato.

Hubby contemplating the waves from Self-Realization Fellowship Garden in Encinitas, CA