We're having sun today for the first time in a long while. It feels great. I moved Adam's homemade Adirondack chair into the sun, and you can find me there pretty much any time I'm not doing homework (the school kind) or home work (the cooking and cleaning and errand-ing kind).
There, I chat with the chickens about the still-brown garden and watch the sparrows and chickadees dart from tree to tree. The bees tell me spring is coming, as they fly home with their leg panniers full of bright orange pollen. If you look with a honeybee's eyes, you can see spring arriving.
Westringia fruticosa or Coast Rosemary - an Australian plant that does well here in full sun with little water.
Pea blossom. I had to look back to see which peas these might be as I was expecting white flowers. Turns out they are an heirloom called 'Blush Tendril' and I planted them in September of last year. They are vigorously blooming in purple, pink, and rose colors - and apparently the pods will be green blushed with pink.
Ipheion uniflorum 'Wisley Blue', or Spring Star Flower. An Argentinian bulb that requires very little water and has a nice clumping, spreading habitat. Often the first flower out in spring, although it's usually a race between this and my manzanita bushes.
Ceanothus thyrsiflorus 'Snow Flurry' - this ceanothus requires a little shade inland and gets quite big - mine is way over my head, as you can see in from this photo. It has beautiful white blossoms (unusual for a ceanothus) that bees love. I do not irrigate it at all - it survives on winter water alone.
This is a blueberry cultivar I got from Stark Bros. called Bushel and Berry Pink Icing. It was made for use in zone 9 and has done well here after being transplanted THREE times (my fault, not the plant's). Because of that it is still small, but it is clearly plucky. I bed my blueberries in deep organic matter that is not so fertile - leaves, sawdust. This cultivar is self-pollinating but I do have several other varieties of blueberry in the yard which might mean it gets cross-pollinated somehow.
Vaccinium ovatum, or California Huckleberry. This is our native species and it does well in a mostly shady location in our yard, protected from wind (in the wild it would be in a riparian, woodland area). The flowers are lovely and the hummingbirds go mad for them.
Claytonia sibirica or Peppermint Candy Flower, this is a native Californian related to the other Claytonia we know well, Miner's Lettuce. It likes shade and damp conditions and is a perennial.
Lewisia longipetala var. 'Little Plum' - another CA native and one that likes dry spaces or rock walls. I have it in my pallet planter in bright shade. Isn't that flower something?
Our Santa Rosa plum is blooming heavily this year! Very exciting, as this means we will likely get a good fruit set. Santa Rosa plum is a cultivar developed by Luther Burbank in Santa Rosa CA in 1906. It's a very popular plum tree here.
I have Chinese Forget-me-Not all over the garden, as it readily self-sows. This is Cynoglossum and is also often called Chinese Hound's Tongue. I also have a purple variety growing - check out the next photo -
I don't remember planting a specifically purple variety, so I'm not sure where this came from! But it's charming.
This is a Heuchera or Coral Bell or Alumroot. I have so many in my garden, I can't remember the which one is which - there are some with white flowers, some with pink, and they all start to bloom in early spring, in the shady parts of my garden.
This is some sort of geranium - perhaps Geranium pratense? Not entirely sure. I have it in the woodland garden and it blooms reliably and has a lovely, rounded clumping form.
Fuchsia thymifolia - or Thyme-leaved Fuchsia, this one hails from Mexico. The entire plant is compact and a beautiful green, and the flowers simply cover the plant. Bees love this. I have it in the woodland section of my garden, so it gets dappled shade and infrequent water.
I think this is a salvia? I have so many salvias and sages all over my garden, in both shade and sun, water and no water. They all perform spectacularly. This one has been blooming all winter, and in fact I don't think I've ever seen it OUT of bloom. The Salvia iodantha is also blooming now and is really something, I've posted a picture of that one recently.
And of course lavender and rosemary are blooming too, and a native nightshade that I forgot to take a picture of.
Indoors, the tomatoes have begun sprouting - the first one out was 'Black Krim,' an heirloom variety, followed closely by 'Sungold,' an F1 cultivar. Now more and more are starting to poke up.
I hear spring is happening all over the midwest, so here's to sun!