How Does My Garden Grow?

 Just back from my trip to SLO for Dave's Heavenly Birthday Celebration and found the yard ablaze with color and variety...This is the second spring for the new landscaping in front and nearly 50 years of caring for the backyard. Can that be true???

I'm starting with the backyard...this is a pretty fuschia my friend Marie gave me about 4 years ago. It is under the heavenly bamboo and so pretty much gets only shade..seems to be happy.

This Clivia is about 50 years old. It blooms at Easter and only at Easter.

Dave and I planted it together. It grows under the awning next to the house. 

Shade area.

Another 50 year old species...bottle brush. The bees go crazy for this plant as well as do the hummingbirds. Oh, and the squirrels get in and make a mess picking off the blossoms...grrr. But I love the view across the yard from under the tree.

Calabrachoa and Johnny Jump-up enjoying each others company...pretty much sunny growing area. I got into purples and lavenders for some reason so I keep repeating this color scheme.

In the same planter box the Johnnies wrap around the succulents (Aeonium?) ...I like the contrast of the purple with chartreuse. I did that in the front yard too.

Below...Another shady area under the awning...my particular favorite is the Japanese Sedge Grass "Eversheen' at the bottom of the photo...a bi-colored grassy plant. It completely dies back in the winter. I just pull off the dead leaves and then it fleshes out quite quickly. It will get 2-3 x this size by the end of summer. Dave planted the umbrella plant years and years ago. I asked, "Can a house plant grow outside?" He said, "Honey, all house plants used to grow outside." Hmmm.

Now, the rhododendron...not sure why we planted this right next to the RED bottle brush because they clash. But this plant is again, 40-50 years old. It is under the pine tree in shade but I think the pine roots are encroaching on its ability to spread its own roots and so it suffers. Still it puts out an annual spring display of prettiness.

Finally, another grouping of Aeonium...I show these because they were suffering from not enough water. I learned succulents need water too! They have tripled in size with loving water. I may need to decapitate or separate them before long due to massive growth.

Now, to the front....Happy Heavenly Birthday card to Dave..under the olive.

Sorry about the glare, but doesn't he look happy?

Here we are April 6, 2026..just 2 years old is my front garden. 

I mean Dave's garden because he was the inspiration.

Close up of Penstamon Betty Boop

Stunning color! The rain pretty much has beaten them down so I will need to trim them down...boo hoo. I don't want to!

Ornamental Oregano Kent Beauty...this died back completely and now the new growth is really coming out. The flowers will not start for a month or two and last until fall.

Scabiosa...this variety called blue but looks purple. It is next to the Penstamon. Problems with mildew in early spring. I prayed with fungicide and it went away.

I love seeing this view walking up the street...the kaleidascope abelia lights up the whole yard.

That's it for now.

Ode to Dave: A Beautiful New Garden

Then and now...

Dave and I found our Pleasanton home in 1981 and have loved living here, especially enjoying the art of gardening...in the back yard. Early on, Dave laid 2 tons of flagstone, created a rock garden with steps, built brick planter boxes, and replaced gravel with new irrigation and grass (all for our dog Buddy!). In the back yard, Dave created an oasis for us, a place of peace we enjoyed every day. I wanted to transplant all this into the front yard.

The backyard on the day of Dave's celebration of life, June 10, 2023. 

I love the color and sense of peace Dave's design provides us.

Dave redid this round planter box 3 times before it matched his expectations. I love the flagstone and would use it in the front yard as a major element for a new walkway and steps.

I knew I wanted to use flagstone in the front for a new walkway 

with the same shape as the one in the backyard.

I also knew I wanted lots of color out front, just like in the back yard.

We had talked about redoing the front yard for a few years. 

But he reminded me, "You know, if you take out those junipers you are going to have to put in water". Yes, I knew it would be a very big undertaking to pull out the junipers and start all over, but it just seemed like time to try.

When he passed from mesothelioma in 2023, I decided to take the leap and create something beautiful to honor him by bringing elements of his unique backyard design into the front. In addition, I had the house repainted in 2024 and choosing new plants and hardscape out front would be a chance to make a total transformation and highlight the new paint color.

The almost 50 year old juniper-filled front landscape had outgrown its welcome. I know, it didn't need water, but man it was ugly and getting so overgrown you couldn't even appreciate that a home was behind the evergreen junipers.

The most notable feature in the front yard really is the huge ball shaped olive tree! Dave used to get up on a ladder and trim it himself. This caused me great anguish as you could imagine. He did it to prevent the olives from setting and dropping. But when he reached 75 years old, we both agreed...no more ladders or wielding a heavy trimmer overhead. 

So we said...let it go natural. 

In the summer of 2023, I hired a company to trim it and get it

started on its path and to 

"natural beauty"....

The tree was opened up and provided the theme for a new Mediterranean Garden

I found an urn from Giannini Garden Supply in SF. I chose this one because it is called "Etrusco" and reminds me of the wonderful Etruscan art Dave and I admired in Italy.

Our new flagstone walkway in the similar shape as our back yard walkway.

I needed a way to gain access to the plants on the sloping yard so I asked the contractor to build me some steps, again similar to Dave's plan in the back yard. The poppy was a volunteer!

WOW! Heavenly Glories stream from the James Webb Telescope

Last night, I tuned into a TV program on Fox discussing the building of NASA's James Webb Telescope...totally new to me. So I searched online to find some of the images captured by this amazing piece of engineering. I simply could not believe the beauty of the universe and wondered at those in heaven...do they have a front row seat to this kind of jaw dropping scenery? I don't know but the thought of it makes me deliriously happy! 

"With Webb, the science team can now see where stars formed and how they are distributed, in a similar way to how the Hubble Space Telescope is used to study local galaxies. Webb’s view provides a unique opportunity to study star formation and the inner workings of infant galaxies at such an unprecedented distance." Rob Landers, Florida Today January 28, 2025

Here are some of the images I found in Landers' article (link below) for more images and information about current NASA ventures into galaxies as far as 35 billion light years away. 

NGC 1559 resides approximately 35 million light-years away in the
little-observed southern constellation Reticulum (The Reticule).

This image from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope features an H II region in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way. ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, O. Nayak, M. Meixner

The Crab Nebula 

NASA, ESA, CSA, Tea Temim (Princeton); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI)

I am no expert in the science of telescopes and the cosmos, 

just a huge admirer. 

So once again, this is where I captured today's information and images. Enjoy!

https://www.floridatoday.com/picture-gallery/tech/science/space/2025/01/28/james-webb-telescope-unveils-awe-of-the-heavens/77995309007/

47

It is Friday January 17th. In three days, Donald J. Trump will be sworn in as the 47th President of the United States. Although in his farewell speech, Joe Biden said "Democracy is fragile", the Constitution--to which President Trump will swear allegiance to defend and protect-- is not based on fragile precepts. The United States is not a direct democracy in the true sense where each person dictates the rule of law. The framers believed such a system would be subject to tyranny of the majority. Rather, they gave us a Constitutional republic with a representative government, with the good people electing good legislators to represent us in Congress.

The framers knew we would struggle to keep balance in our country, that we would tangle with foreign entities and be threatened from within and without. The document they left us in enduring. It has endured for 237 years despite internal and external forces trying to render it null and void. And so, America endures. The Constitution. The Constitution of the United States. It is a beautiful and God inspired document providing the citizens of the United States with the freedoms needed to live life to the fullest. 

The preamble illustrates the wisdom and strength of the founders' vision for this great country:

"We the people of the United States of America, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of freedom to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States."

These beautiful beginning words, should lead all Americans to the point of pride in our founders' work and create in us the diligence to encourage each other in the wisdom of the document they forged. We need to know and understand our Constitutional rights. We need to teach each other kindly in these rights. 

May the days of division come to an end as we unite, truly unite as one people under God living in a land governed for the people and by the people. Donald Trump is a fighter, a bigger than life leader who has not given up his belief in the people or "the nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." Neither should we.

Now he is to become President of the United States, again. Only the second man in history to serve non-consecutive terms.  May God bless Donald J. Trump, 45 and 47th President of the United States. And may God bless America.

Now that's a RED WAVE!

  Here's how a picture paints a million words.

 

                                                                   

                                                       

It's Veterans Day 2024...God bless the USA

I don't care how many times I hear this song, it brings tears to my eyes. Thank you Lee Greenwood for capturing the heart and soul of America in this anthem. Listen to it on Veterans Day 2024. An historic year for the USA brought about by the people who wanted a President for the ages.

Please take a listen...and remember the Veterans all over America who deserve our praise and help.

Good Morning Everyone In Heaven!

That is how I wake up each day now. "Good morning everyone in heaven! Good morning sweet Jesus. Good morning Heavenly Father. Good morning Holy Spirit. Good morning Dave." Sigh.

It feels good to connect right away with the most important people in my life. It makes me smile. It sets my heart on the right path. I love my mornings reading Dave's Bible and thinking of the things he thought about thanks to all his handwritten notes and dots connecting themes on each page. Happy.

Sooo....I am in the midst of relandscaping the front yard...old junipers have been removed and now all you see is dirt...and the house! The house actually looks beautiful with so much potential for a lovely front yard. I want to put in a flagstone walkway in place of the old funky brick one that was poorly laid and replicate the rock garden Dave did in the backyard along with a few large flagstone steps to help manage maintenance on a sloped yard.

I see the olive tree as the main "speaker" of the job...Mediterranean style plants should prevail and colors that complement the silver green leaves of the olive. I have contacted a couple people about the job but no bids are in yet.

Here are a few things I like:

More later, after I hear from the landscaper.

"You should not be surprised at my saying 'You must be born again.' The wind blows where it wills. You hear its sound, but you cannot see where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the spirit." John 3:7

I see these words of Jesus meaning that the wind changes the landscape, everything it touches but you really cannot see a molecule of wind...only the sound and the effect of the wind. It is the same when mysteriously and miraculously God touches our hearts with the Holy Spirit...the spirit changes the landscape of our heart. We cannot see a molecule of the Holy Spirit. We can only be amazed at its effect.

I love you Jesus. Amen