Gardening for nature, walks with my dogs and the books I’m reading.

[MarkD]

Oh my gosh Mark I'm so sorry that you had that terrible accident! It's amazing that no one got hurt. Are you sure that you and Lia don't have some neck pain like the day after? Well I hope you get a new car soon and everything goes well with the insurance Take care.

Thank you. I intend to ask Lis that when she wakes up. But I’m fine this morning though I did feel a little disoriented immediately after the impact.

 

[MarciKS]

I’m feeling inspired by #Gary's diary about building his cabin in retirement to share what I’m doing in retirement.

Until the pandemic hit working out at the YMCA was a big part of retirement and made a huge difference in how I felt. Even before that I decided to lose the extra weight I’d put on as the teaching I used to love became more stressful and less fulfilling after No Child Left Behind. I lost more than 20 pounds as part of a New Year’s resolution in my first year of retirement seven years ago. I joined a Healthy Eating class at Kaiser which met ten times, once a week. I did another class in the fall and one last one the following January losing 50 pounds in all. But quitting the Y has resulted in gaining back 15.

Anyhow the best parts of retirement has been more time to develop my garden, walk my dogs and read great books.

Here are a couple of plot plans I once made of my garden before it was as finished as it is now. (No garden is ever truly finished.) I didn’t make a plan at the beginning and then stick with it. The garden and my vision for it evolved together unhurriedly.

I started making the back garden soon after I started teaching, more than thirty years ago. Our back fence abuts a city park to the east. To the south is a community orchard and on the north a year around creek separates our parcel from our neighbor. Our place is a a little cracker box of a warehouse, 40 by 80 feet situated in the southwest corner of our 100 feet wide by 120 feet deep lot. It isn’t large by rural standards but is unusually large by suburban standards and we have far more open ground than neighboring commercial buildings.

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The second one is centered on the back garden and the first drawing, showing the side garden m, has been rotated 90 degrees from its orientation in the other drawing.

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To give you a feel for it now here is a short video I took two years ago walking out the side doors, heading out to the back garden as far as to the pond where a hummingbird working over a red flowering Salvia wagneriana and a mostly orange colored Lobelia aguana seemed like a natural place to end it.

beautiful garden! the peach colored flowers at the beginning were pretty. i've always enjoyed humming birds. awesome job!

 

[MarkD]

beautiful garden! the peach colored flowers at the beginning were pretty. i've always enjoyed humming birds. awesome job!

Thank you. I think those would have been the climbing rose Royal Sunset on the side of the gazebo.

 

[MarkD]

Anyone looking for some amazingly creative art in the garden? Not mine. For me it's all about the plants but there is someone near me who is colorist with plants, with paints and a creative designer. Keela Meadows. Here is her website: landscape Artist – Keelya Meadows Gardens & Art

And here are 50 photos I've taken in her own garden over the years. We're not buddies but I love her work. https://flic.kr/s/aHsjru8HJR

 

[MarkD]

Here is a new place I'll likely never visit. But as a plant nerd I can only be happy that it exists.

 

[MarkD]

Here is a quick tour of my garden starting just inside the side garden and then around the gazebo, through the back gate and on around most of the back garden taken in April of 2024.

 

[MountainRa]

Wonderful! I’m so envious.

 

[MarkD]

Wonderful! I’m so envious.

Of course it is just too big for one person. I’m concentrating on just the back garden now.

 

[MarkD]

Wonderful! I’m so envious.

I just noticed you're in SC. Somehow I'd had the idea you were in Australia. I stayed with relatives in Greer and visited a cousin in Spartanburg a few years back to see the total eclipse in August of 2017 from there.

 

[MountainRa]

The eclipse was really a big deal in our area. We had a good view of it from our home. Greer and Spartanburg are about 2 hours from us.
I enjoy your garden pictures because I see plants I don’t normally encounter in upstate SC unless in a public botanical garden.

 

[MarkD]

The eclipse was really a big deal in our area. We had a good view of it from our home. Greer and Spartanburg are about 2 hours from us.
I enjoy your garden pictures because I see plants I don’t normally encounter in upstate SC unless in a public botanical garden.

My cousin near Greer has wonderful garden near a lake with lots of plants for butterflies. But we stayed with my aunt in Greer because she could easily accommodate my wife and I along with my youngest brother, his wife and two kids. Huge house also on a lake. That's the one I took the most photos of.

 

[MarkD]

I recently posted pictures of Adirondack chairs taken at Chanticleer in Wayne, Pennsylvania. Then this morning I just discovered some lovely videos taken there this year, just about one per week. Here is one that includes an Adirondack or two along with views of my favorite part, the Ruins Garden which was created in the artfully curated and enhanced remains of one of the original houses.

My own photos from the Ruins garden there in July of 2005. So very hot that day!

In addition to these heads in the fountain there are other items sculpted from stone in this garden by Marcia Donahue including these.

I recently posted a picture of one of my wife's weavings framed by Marcia Donahue on the left and garden designer Cevan Forrest on the right.

It might seem weird that they are dressed so eccentrically for the opening of Lia's show in 2018 but these two approach their wardrobe as artistically as everything else they do, wherever they go.

 

[MarkD]

Some of these photos have been shared before but thinking about my friend @hawkdon and reminiscing about my more active times makes me want to go here again.

It has been a while but it used to be a common occurrence for me to drive to Fort Funston beach in San Francisco, early enough to see sunrise there. I find that time of day very special though pictures of sunset here are more spectacular.

This is Mount Davidson, the highest point in San Francisco, as seen from the East, facing the ocean.

And here is my view of it at dawn from Fort Funston beach facing East one June morning in 2017.

I find dawn to be a somber time but also a time when one can feel more connected to the rest of nature. It starts in darkness and then the light comes on. But here where the beach is to the West and much lower than the bluffs above it, the light sunrise seen to the East will be a while arriving down along the beach.

This next one was taken in September of the previous year. As you can see the light hits the clouds above the beach long before it makes it to the bottom.

There were a few times we made it to the beach before there was much light at all down there but here is Heidi and Smokey running on the beach before much sun made it down that far. And then other early morning light on the beach.

The land sloping down to the beach could cast long shadows with dramatic contrast between what was directly lit and what was not.

Later in the day was still a fine time to walk at the beach but there is just something special about the dawn.

Of course Lia used to come with us on many trips to Fort Funston. If she succeeds with her knee replacement in October maybe she will again.

 

[MarkD]

Well yesterday I dug out one of the nicest flowering shrubs in my garden after it suddenly died. The pincushion flower or leptospermum had been blooming almost non stop since soon after I planted it in 2013 in a raised bed I erected over the place where I buried Fletcher when he passed. In digging it out I found the plant tag which identified it as the cultivar "Sunrise", fitting since I'm so fond of sun-ups.

The place where the I buried Fletcher is where the black bamboo is growing here in this photo back when Fletcher often hung out around the pond.

This is how the plant was looking just this past June.

But it died soon after. This was it in just before I dug it out yesterday ..

.. and after it was removed. Obviously the soil settled out quite a bit. I'd amended it with perlite and other ingredients to assure drainage. My now deceased garden designing friend had advised me on what to use and also warned to heap it high.

But I have a plant standing buy to provide dear old Fletcher another plant in which his spirit can frolic. Here are some other pictures of him around the pond some with our other dogs.

Dear old Sophie who preceded Fletcher.

 

[MarkD]

Walked Ember with Lia at Point Isabel Dog Park which is located on the east side of the San Francisco Bay on what used to be a landfill. Didn't take any of the dog or us today but the clouds over the bay and the city to the left and Golden Gate Bridge to the right made me pull out my phone to get this picture.

 

[MarkD]

Been a while here are some pics I took a week before Christmas when Lia was filmed for an interview in her studio and in my garden. Gave me a reason rake and sweep up all the downfall of the season, a sizable amount with all the wind and storms which aren't through yet.

Stairs leading up to the corner look-out deck in the NE corner.

Looking out from up on the corner deck to the park and stream below with the very tall growing Cloud Forest Daisy in bloom.

This split leaf vine grows beside our back door. Coming down from the corner deck, I came through under this arching arbor..

Continuing down this path beside our building past the back door Back door leads back to the pond.

The pond toward the SE corner.

Continuing back toward that center arching arbor.

Looking over our Fuji apple tree and the crescent bed to the gravel entry garden and the driveway beyond.

The gazebo and a table with tea for our guests doing filming Lia.[

Part of the old deck was replaced with an accessible bathroom for studio or garden guests, taken from what I call the butterfly garden. (But all are welcome.

 

[palides2021]

Been a while here are some pics I took a week before Christmas when Lia was filmed for an interview in her studio and in my garden. Gave me a reason rake and sweep up all the downfall of the season, a sizable amount with all the wind and storms which aren't through yet.

Stairs leading up to the corner look-out deck in the NE corner.

Looking out from up on the corner deck to the park and stream below with the very tall growing Cloud Forest Daisy in bloom.

This split leaf vine grows beside our back door. Coming down from the corner deck, I came through under this arching arbor..

Continuing down this path beside our building past the back door Back door leads back to the pond.

The pond toward the SE corner.

Continuing back toward that center arching arbor.

Looking over our Fuji apple tree and the crescent bed to the gravel entry garden and the driveway beyond.

The gazebo and a table with tea for our guests doing filming Lia.[

Part of the old deck was replaced with an accessible bathroom for studio or garden guests, taken from what I call the butterfly garden. (But all are welcome.

Beautiful garden! There was a lot going on here, with luscious gardens, a pond, a walking trail, etc. Thank you for sharing!

 

[MarkD]

Beautiful garden! There was a lot going on here, with luscious gardens, a pond, a walking trail, etc. Thank you for sharing!

It is always a pleasure to share what we love. Thanks for looking in. I've been less active on this diary thread.

 

[MarkD]

One of my best neighbors is Strawberry Creek Park just over our back fence. I came across this good little history of it in our local little newspaper the Berkeleyside: Strawberry Creek Park is West Berkeley’s hidden gem to picnic, sunbathe and splash. I especially liked this aerial photo of it. Our little warehouse is the one just past the first large warehouse complex and Strawberry Creek flows between our place and that first large warehouse after passing through the park.

It looks as if we are practically in the park and it kind of feels that way too. The downside is proximity to the blood curdling screams of little girls and occasional live music. My other favorite neighbor Osaka runs the Hidden Caffe in the center of that first large warehouse complex. Not sure how many others tried and failed there before she came along.

Earlier in this thread I shared photos which came from this Flickr gallery: https://flic.kr/y/3DiVZA8
Occasionally I get up on our roof and when I do I often shoot some photos. Here is one showing the park side of the first large warehouse complex followed by one looking toward the park immediately beside us. .

Then just this morning I took a shot from within the garden, behind the pond and then another from the corner deck to show the park.