environment

One of the many pleasures of having a native plant garden, is the amount of wildlife it attracts to it.   Not only does it provide habitat for the many birds and butterflies but it also provides food and nesting sites as well for birds that live in the area and those that may be migrating through on their way to other areas.

It has been four years since I completed the installation of my garden in my front yard, after removing the lawn that was nothing more than ugly Bermuda grass with various sorts of weeds.   I hated it, it was boring, took too much water and lacked anything attractive about it and I made the decision to turn it into a chaparral garden, primarily made up of plants from the Coastal Sage Scrub community.

There has never been one moment of regret, I don’t miss the “grass” ( If you could call a variation of weeds, “grass”) at all and the best part is my water bill is incredibly low and I have a beautiful garden filled color, scent and wildlife.

Here in southern California, just in from the coastline, we are in the Chaparral plant community.   It extends from San Diego in the south end of the state up to parts of northern California and into the low hills as you enter the Sierra Nevada mountains.   And it also includes the northern end of Mexico and into southwestern Oregon as well but I’m mainly referring to California’s plant community.

It’s a large community of plants that covers approximately 7 million acres in California and that also includes my garden.   Although it is so small that it certainly wouldn’t show up on any native plant guides and you couldn’t find it using Google Earth but it is mainly made of of chaparral plants that I love.

I have several different varieties of Salvias, such as Whirly Blue, Bees Bliss, salvia mellifera and others.   And then there are some Eriogonums otherwise known as Buckwheat which there are more than 125 species in the state but I happen to have some that are low growing variety called Saffron or Eriogonum crocatum that has beautiful soft, gray leaves and brilliant yellow flowers that gradually turn to a “chocolate” brown shade as they dry out.

This post is getting to be a bit too long, so I will share more about what plants I’m using in my garden a bit later on.

Okay, so the weather forecast for mid to southern California was for thunder storms, lightening, rain, humidity, drama and flash floods.   None of which happened around here, although I don’t know if these events transpired in other parts of the state.   But the weather turned out to be beautiful with fantastic blue skies, some clouds and lots of humidity.

Sometimes  I can be spontaneous and I got the urge to (well just a little bit), do some trimming in the garden yesterday.   Naturally, being me…this became an event that lasted about three hours as I cut back some of the Salvias, trimmed the Desert Lavender/Hyptis emoryi and knocking myself out for any future events that might require my energy.

I have two Desert Lavender bushes and both of the are up against the house and easily over 8′ and tend to want to become bushy.   So once in a while I have to do some trimming as one of them is right next to my sitting area in the garden and if I didn’t trim it, I’d be sitting in it’s branches.

They are covered in bees, collecting nectar and spreading their good cheer and work and Hummingbirds like them as well.   Although, lately I haven’t seen too many Hummers, since most of the plants are done blooming for the summer with the exception of Everett’s Choice fuchsias.

They do adore them and of course the fiery orange color, seduces the little birds to visit the bar quite often.  They love the fuchias and typically they are swooping in and out of the plants for most of the day.

So I got off my topic here…trimming.   Due to all the rain we had this past winter, the plants went “bonkers’ in their growth and ended up competing for space.   The Whirly Blue salvias, covered some of the Purple Three Awn grasses and a couple of Yarrows, too.   They are know behaving because I cut them back a bit, which should be done beginning this time of the year.

I soaked a Spreading Gum Plan/Grindelia stricta yesterday and yanked it out today because I think it’s ugly.   There’s another one that will be receiving the same fate as well but later on, not today.  I whacked back several Coyote Mints/Mondardella villosa too, as they were looking done in and no longer putting on a show but they sure have a strong, minty fragrance that is almost overwhelming but nice.

August is supposedly one of our hotter months in California and my plants have all but retreated to safety until the first rains of winter.   Then it will start all over again.

But what happened to today’s rain storms, flash floods, lightening and other exciting events?

In my last post, I talked about the Tamarisk bush that I found in the stream bed in the canyon behind my house.  I was and continue to be quite concerned about it’s appearance because it is an invasive species of plant that doesn’t belong there.   All I could think of at the time, was that there was nothing I could do about it plus I noticed that there were several smaller bushes that were growing in the area too.

I talked about my discovery on Facebook and also the membership site for the Southern California Native Plant Society.   Some of the responses and suggestions were interesting…couldn’t I simply dig it out?

No, it’s about 10′ tall and they have very deep tap roots besides and it would probably take a backhoe to dig it out.

Another suggestion was to use Ummmm,  RoundUp.   sigh…no, that couldn’t be done either beside it would expose the other plants in the area surrounding this evil intruder.

In the meanwhile, I contacted the Environmental department for the City of SimiValley by email.   Of course, they didn’t respond too quickly but after a lenghtly period of time,  they replied and  suggested I contact the California Fish and Game Department and thus, they gave me the local office.   This person at the City, felt that this was not their concern, even though the area is located within the city limits and that the Fish and Game Department would be this best contact for me.

Really?   The “Fish and Game” Department?

So, I called the individual that works there two weeks ago, left a message and have never heard back from him.   Sigh…again…I’m assuming that due to funding issues with the State of CA the guy is probably over extended in his responsibilities and my message is considered to be not important enough to reply to; a low priority of sorts.

I’m being kind here in my comments.

I don’t ever give up on anything, especially when it is something that I feel is very important.   This is the only time I have ever seen this invasive plant in the area and I think that it’s crucial to get it removed now before it spreads and then becomes impossible to remove.

I’m of the personality, that I never give up once I’ve made a decision to pursue something.  I am going to call this guy again tomorrow and I will also send him an email.   He can’t ignore forever….

In the meanwhile, I’m sure that some of you would also like to know how my garden is looking and any news that I have about it, right?   For now I can say it looks fabulous, beautiful and wild.