A California day in January that is perfect in its beauty. Well, at least in my garden. The day feels tranquil and lazy, very quiet and peaceful causing me to feel unmotivated to do anything although I did walk earlier in the day.
With the recent rains we have had in California, the options of enjoying my garden have been limited although I am always surveying it every morning, looking for anything that may need my attention. Such as the recent gopher and mole invasion. A “first” for the garden but they didn’t do any damage other than eating a few of the poppies that have sprung up.
Given the nature of poppies to proliferate, I wasn’t particularly concerned about losing a few of them to these annoying pests but I certainly didn’t want them to take over the garden, either and cause any further damage.
My method to make it unattractive, is to take several portions of cat pee clumps from the gang’s litter box and drop them down into the marauder’s hole. Within hours the hole is back filled and they seen to disappear. I haven’t had any more intrusions from them since I delivered their smelly gifts and hopefully, they will not return.
I don’t consider myself a “cat lady”, although some of my friends my disagree behind my back. But I somehow managed to end up with four cats, the most recent one being Theo. You would think with this many cats, there wouldn’t be a gopher around but they are all too lazy and fat and more concerned about having their “tuna time” than catching any gophers or moles.
Theo was abandoned, dumped, thrown away and he is really amazing. He’s very much like a person, a total love and that means he is enormously friendly with everyone he meets. That is not necessarily a good thing, as I saw him trailing behind a woman who had stopped to admire my garden.
Theo napping in the warm sun.
I had to intervene to prevent him wandering off because I think he would have kept following her. The upshot of this, was that she and I had a very nice conversation about my landscaping and the use of native plants and she has signed up at my new social networking site for lovers of nature.
http://naturalgreenlandscaping.com
She said that she takes walks on her lunch break and loves to come by my house to admire the garden. I had to chuckle when she said to me how often she has felt, that someone very special must live there! What a lovely compliment that was so unexpected and totally surprised me!
She doesn’t know the “real” me….I’m only kidding. I think I am a pretty decent person. Who else would put up with four cats and no vacations?
She continued her walk and Theo remained with me and I returned back to working inside the house. Now, about that! I finally have a laptop and I can sit outside in the garden and not miss a thing going on. Such as right now. There’s some glare on the screen, so there are some disadvantages but I’m so much happier being outside then confined to the interior of the house.
The Ceanothus is starting to bloom with beautiful royal blue flowers and so is the Bush Daisy and many of the WoollyCurls/Trichostema lanatum, one of my favorite plants. The Channel Island Poppy has bloomed continuously by putting out brilliant yellow disks of flowers all winter long.
Its a peaceful and hypnotic day in the garden. Just another lovely January in California and enjoying my native plants.
