Dear Viewers,

I am starting a new section devoted to the gardens I am putting in at the property. I won’t be updating these pages as often as the house pages, perhaps on a monthly or twice monthly basis. I anticipate moving many plants from my current garden to the new ones and so it is another process to chronicle. I hope you enjoy following this progress as well as the house construction.

The Garden—November, 2007
November 30, 2007  
Here is a better view of the Coast Live Oaks planted below the house. They were remarkably large trees for 15 gallon trees and I hope they do well now that they are in the ground. The largest one had only about half a container of dirt, so I was compelled to buy it from pity so I could get it in the ground right away. I hope this act of charity wasn't a waste of money!

Here is a more complete view of what will soon be our plane tree allee. (Sycamores are called plane trees in Europe because of their latin name: Platanus.) They are all over Paris and the south of France as well as being native to California.

I got the European variety rather than the California native because the native is more prone to red spider mite infestation and other diseases where there is fog. On expert told me that it wouldn't matter because they weren't crowded and another disagreed. I decided to err on the safe side.

 

The mound on the right is the neighbors' dirt—now mine and the mound on the left is more compost to be distributed over the rest of the plowed area this weekend.

I went to the company that delivered the dirt to see what they wanted to do about it. I was willing to pay for it at a discount, but when I explained what happened, it took them forever to understand. They seemed to think I was complaining about where the driver left it. When they finally understood, they just said to keep it—so I do get a load of free dirt.

I was distracted by what I thought was a very large spider. It really was a piece of plastic left over from one of the erosion control silt fences that were on the property for so long. We have been taking them out all summer, but the plastic has deteriorated due to the sun.

Evidently this scrap flew free until it got caught on a grass blade and, blowing in the wind, looked remarkably like a spider.

Here is the beginning of the cardboard cover over the section of garden which has compost on it. Evenutally, it will all be covered with cardboard and then we will put straw on top of that.

However before we put the straw on, I will spray paint all my beds on the cardboard. I got a gizmo which holds a can of spray paint on a wand. It has a trigger so you can walk along and operate the can of paint to spray the ground. I will first mark with white paint as a scratch color, and once I get everything the way I want it, I will go over it again with bright pink. Then we will know where to plant and where to make paths. I am not sure what I am going to put down for paths. I may test several ideas before I decide on one.

November 28, 2007  
Here are my redwoods, all staked up. I hope they all survive. We are having angst about getting irrigation out to them, but will jury-rig something from the cottage for now.
Here is a shot of the cardboard rolls we will use to cover the rose garden. I went to Petaluma today to get them from a great paper company.

We brought all the sycamores down to the pond to determine if the flags were in the right places. Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture when they were all lined up, so you will just have to wait until they are planted to see how it looked.

Hint: it looked terrific—very French—a plane tree allee!

Anyway, until they can be planted, we have tied four to the dock and the other 4 in a huddle near where they will be planted.

Here is the huddle of trees. They don't look too impressive but they are actually about 10' to 12' tall. (The huddle is to keep them from blowing over if it gets windy.)
Here is a closer look at the cardboard, soon to be on the ground.
In this shot you can just see the 3 coast live oaks now planted below the house. They are not too close because of fire danger, but I promised the county that I would plant these, so in they went.
November 23, 2007  
Here is a view of my redwood grove from the pond. The tree in the gully is a volunteer bay tree.

The compost was distributed over the far end of the rose garden area, but did not cover the whole thing. I will have to order more.

If you look closely at this end of the rose garden, you will see a pile of dirt. This dirt was ordered by our neighbors and delivered here in error. I talked to the neighbors about it and they had already called the company and gotten a load delivered. I understand that the company sent someone to pick it up, but I guess they did not feel like shoveling 11 yards of dirt back into the truck by hand and so they left it. (A pick-up bed holds about 1 yard, so you can imagine how long that would have taken.)

November 16, 2007  
Here are my Costco redwood trees as they are being planted. When I bought the first batch, I didn’t realize that there were two varieties and so I bought some of each, so I have a mixed bunch, some Aptos and some Santa Cruz.
Here is my load of compost. It was a warm day, but as you can see, the compost is still steaming. Part of the process of the break-down of the material releases heat and compost gets quite hot as it decomposes. This compost had not quite finished the process, hence the steam. (Also, it still smelled a little like manure.) It is supposed to be distributed over the whole plowed area.
November 14, 2007  

Here is a photo of my newly ripped future rose garden taken looking down from the west side of the house.

In the late spring, I rented a heavy duty roto-tiller—which was so large, it had to be towed behind a vehicle on its own trailer—with the idea that I would have a worker till up the area I wanted to use for a rose garden. My helper tried to do it, but the roto-tiller was just not effective against the thick root mat. I really needed to get a tractor and plow it, but did not have the time to figure out where to get one before the ground got too hard to work.

Recently, I had the grading contractor, who was doing the finish grading around the house, rip up the field for me. Finally, we can start on the rose garden!

I love this photo because it is so artistic, although I wish I had managed to get the wheelbarrow out from behind the rock.

Anyway, what we were doing with these tools was distributing organic amendments over the tilled area. I had had a soils report done last spring and they had recommended what amendments would help make the soil good for roses.

It was one of our above-the-fog mornings and I took this shot of the plowed field next to the fog. The fog was really just a little bit lower than this little knoll and when you looked down the hill toward it, it seemed as if you were on the edge of the world.

Once we have the amendments spread out over the raw dirt, we will put a layer of compost on top of that. Then we will cover the whole field with cardboard. I am going to get rolls of cardboard from a company in Petaluma and use that rather than trying to salvage enough cardboard from boxes. We will roll it out and tack it down with jute stakes, which are U-shaped wire stakes used for anchoring the jute erosion control fabric, as well as sprinkler pipe and many other items.

Here is a helper, working above the fog. I can’t wait to have a huge rose garden here and sit in the sun looking at the fog in the morning.

I am planning to put in an arbor for the climbing roses. It will curve gently around the field on the east side; which, if you look back at the first picture, is the long side of the triangle, closest to the foreground.

If you want to see a gorgeous arbor, go to: http://rosesfromatoz.com/anne to view Anne Belovich’s fabulous rose garden. Her arbor, which she and her husband built themselves, is just splendid. Of course, they are in Washington, where the weeds are prettier than here.

Meanwhile, this rose, which I planted in a tub for my big party, is blooming like crazy. (You also notice the lovely weeds in front of it. I will have to plant something there to discourage them.)

The rose, which is called Floral Carpet, is a shrub rose which is impervious to everything. Don’t plant one of these unless you are sure you want one, because they are extremely difficult to kill. To prune them, you need to cut them down to about 3" above the ground once every couple of years.

This rose will bloom year-round if don’t prune it. It is also very stickery! If you have to clamber over it to get to something else, watch out!

My sister-in-law took me to a local tree nursery to buy trees. In order to get our permit, I had to agree to plant a few trees for screening. I do not want to plant too many trees because of fire danger, but they will be planted far enough away from the house—and each other—to be fire safe.

The nursery delivered all these trees for $35, a huge bargain! My helper had become ill and gone home, so it was up to me and the delivery driver to move the trees up by the cottage. A couple of them are actually taller than the cottage—despite the fact that they are in 15 gallon pots. Here is the tree list: 3 Coast Live Oaks, 5 Valley Oaks, 8 Sycamores, 1 Fuyu Persimmon.

The 2 kinds of oaks will be planted for screening and the sycamores will be planted down by the pond for shade and style. I am hoping that they will give the area by the dock a very south-of-France look once I have them combined with gravel and other landscaping.

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