The calla lilies

When we moved to this house, there were many calla lilies around. They're called arums in French. We moved many of them around, but we obviously don't have a knack for them. They're not as nice as they could be.

One of our surviving calla lilies doing its thing.

I should tell you that I have a certain philosophy about gardening. I plant it. If it grows, great. If it doesn't, I figure it wasn't meant to be. I only really fuss about the garden vegetables. And probably not enough. I think it was Billy Joel who said, "I don't want to work that hard. Whoa-ooo-whoa-whoa-whoa." Yeah, that's it.

Some neighbors down at the bottom of the hill have gorgeous calla lilies every year full of blooms. I noticed this year that they actually dig up the bulbs in the fall and re-plant them in the spring. They over-winter in some protected place. And I'll bet those people fertilize them like crazy.

So, all this is to say that we get a few calla lilies and they're nice. We could have more if we really wanted to work that hard.

This is the color

I've mentioned that I want a red wall in the house. I don't have it yet, but it won't be long. The wall is in the stairwell that goes from the ground floor up to the main floor of the house. At right angles to that wall is an exterior wall with two glass-block windows that flood the space with light.

This is the red color I want on the wall.

We have a batik hanging on this particular wall. Ken and I found it at a shop in Half Moon Bay, California, many years ago. I want the red wall to be the terracotta color in that batik. I'm printing a photo of it (and will probably have to adjust it to get the color right) to take to the hardware store so I can get a good match. I might have to have it mixed special, we'll see.

When I get the paint, I'll do a before and after photo set for you.

What's in your cold frame?

A few years ago we invested in a couple of portable cold frames. They were billed as mini serres (mini greenhouses). They have served us well. I use one up on the deck for spring seedlings. It gets great morning sun and stays warm all day. The other we use out back in the garden to grow early crops. The great thing about them is their portability; they're quite versatile.

Marigolds on the bottom, eggplant on the right, tomatoes on the upper left.

The one on the deck is nurturing our future garden vegetables. In it are many varieties of tomato, some cucumbers, some little pumpkins, parsley, squash, a bunch of marigolds, some chard, and eggplant. In fact, I just re-potted the eggplant and realized there are thirty of them! Since we love eggplant, I figure that we can't have too many. Everything in this cold frame was grown from seed. I'm always amazed when the seeds actually sprout and turn into mature plants. The wonders of nature!

The cold frame on the deck.

I'm slowly letting the plants get more and more direct sun, hardening them for their transplantation into the garden. That will happen at some point in mid-May, when the danger of frost is over in our region. I'll also plant corn at that point and maybe some beans and a zucchini or two. I'm hopeful, as always, that this will be a good garden year.

Blooming acacia

This week's image of the week is the acacia blooming out on the edges of the vineyard. The flowers are heavily perfumed and smell very nice when I walk by the trees. Our neighbor came by the other day to tell us to be sure and pick the flowers for making beignets de fleurs d'acacia (deep-fried acacia flowers). That sounds good, but also sounds like an awful lot of work for very little nutrition. We may try it sometime.

Looking westward through the vineyard at the first line of acacia (and other) trees.

This is a long shot of the big row of acacias that grow along one of the many stream beds that drain the vineyards. You can see the white flowers among the green leaves. You can also see how green the vines themselves are getting. As the tendrils and leaves grow, they will eventually hide all the wooden posts beneath a blanket of green.

The grape flowers are there now and will bloom in the coming days. After that, little grape bunches will form and grow. The leaf canopy will shade the little grapes from the sun, keeping them from becoming raisins before their time.

Swept away

This plant is called broom, or scotch broom. It's genêt in French, and I've talked about it before. Right now the broom all around us is flowering. It seems that every year there's more of it. That's not good because it's one of the plants that Ken is allergic to, although it's not the main culprit. That would be cypress, mostly found in the Mediterranean climate, not here.

The flower of the genêt, or broom, plant.

Thunderstorms were predicted for most of Monday afternoon, but they never really materialized. We had a little rain, and there were one or two flashes of lightning in the late evening, but nothing like what was predicted. We're expecting some more rain this morning, then a clearing and warming trend for the rest of the week.

The rain is good because it's been so dry and the garden and plants really need it.

I'm looking over

This flower is on what I think is a variety of trèfle (clover) out in the vineyard. These plants come in many shapes and sizes in addition to the iconic shamrock shape we associate with clover. I think all varieties of clover have a three-lobed leaf since its Latin name is trifolium, meaning "three" and "leaf." In French, les trèfles is what Americans call the suit of clubs in a deck of playing cards.

I'm not sure this is trèfle, so I'll go back out and take a closer look*.
Those are not trees in the background, they're grape vines.

The vineyard, as you may know, is a patchwork of parcels owned and worked by a number of different growers and winemakers. Each grower uses different methods. Some use pesticides, others use none. Some have employees that prune in the winter, others are out there by themselves or with their wives doing the pruning. Some mulch the pruned canes, others burn them. And some use herbicides to keep weeds down while others mow between the rows.

Just Friday I saw one of the growers out on his tractor spreading herbicide in his parcels, including the one near where I took this picture. I'll soon see whether or not this patch of trèfle was spared; it's just outside of the vine parcel.

* I did. It is.

Artichoke row

Our artichokes are coming back beautifully this year. I wonder if it has to do with the early spring? But it's been relatively dry, so I'm not so sure. These are the remaining three of five plants that we put in in 2007. They produce chokes, but they're not very big and we don't eat them. Still, they look pretty in the yard, especially when they flower.

Artichokes along our garden walkway. I wonder how much longer they'll last?

In addition to the weeds, there are chives, parsley, and mint growing in between the artichokes. At the end of the row you can see one of the clumps of red peonies that's now flowering. Callie's checking out the smells before we head out the back gate for our morning walk.

That dark pile of wood in the path next to Callie are some of the dead grape vine trunks that she brings back from her walks. Each day she'll pick one up (the vineyard workers pull the dead ones and pile them up out there) and carry it home. It's her job.