Planting 2013 - part 1

 Map of the Back Yard:

 The area I am focusing on for now is the side flower bed on the left side of the yard between the lawn and the brick walkway.  The eucalyptus tree to the left of the side flower bed was removed this last fall.
 
My side flower bed never quite gets enough water in the summer as its current plants would like.  Talk about good drainage, the water just seems to seep down to the path level and comes out there.  Last year when we were on our 40 day "Slice of America 2" trip, I decided I was going to go succulents and other plants that don't really need summer water in that area.  As we are getting older I am trying to simplify gardening, especially thinking about getting plants that really cover territory so weeds can't grow so easily.  It takes all of Spring to weed the yard and with some aches and pains in the hips now when weeding I'm thinking of the future.  So......I did a little succulent hunting in the fall to see if I would really like it and my daughter got me a few from Annies earlier this spring.  They are doing well and I am really getting braver about this.

My Jen has beautiful front and back yards requiring very little water and she lives where is is very hot in the summer.  And she has gone really wild with these strange and wonderful forms. 

 This is her front yard where the forms are more conservative.  You should see her "Mr. Happy" and other echiums!
 
I am borrowing ideas from her and I have some new textures and sizes to add to my flower bed!  Hopefully I won't kill them and they will love my garden.

First job -
A bit of history, we had two dogs that required fencing around the flowerbeds.  We had to say goodby to our last dog last year so all the fencing came down and the flowerbeds could breath again.  And now we have two chickens and we let them run in the back yard during the day.  They are so cute, BUT, they do like to find areas of dirt and have a ball scratching and sending up a dust storm while having a dust bath!

It is hard to tell in the photo but you are looking at a chicken dust bathtub, right in the middle of the picture.

If a baby plant is in their way it will be sent flying, so.... up went the little fences again.  I thought I would never see them again but didn't throw the best of them away.  They're baaack!

So tomorrow morning I can start planting without worrying about my new little plants getting pulled out.  I'm hoping that the fencing will be able to be removed in a year when the plants are nice and big!

These are a few of the plants I bought yesterday:


These are Giant House Leeks - they are large for succulents but they aren't huge like palm trees, more like 3 feet tall at the tallest.


I already have one of these and they are really great for the lack of care needs and long blooming time.



It took me two years to gather enough courage to get the Tower of Jewels!  They ought to cover a bit of area where weeds can't grow.


I really love this one.  They get 18" wide and up to 1 foot tall and are great in rock gardens.


This one gets tall, up to 30" tall,  I love the orange on the leaves.  Unfortunately it will die after it blooms.


Great for rock gardens and only about 15" tall.  I'll be showing you what I have in mind with rocks.


Another of my favorites!  I love the color and texture.  See how it grows in the rocks....


And this is one I am counting on for covering the ground for weed control.  And, again see the rocks!

ROCKS!
My dearest hubby, many years ago, came home with a bunch of sandstone rocks with interesting holes in them.  He thought I could use them somewhere and mainly I have hidden them.  But, I am going to bring them out into my new succulent garden and hope everybody, rocks and plants, get along.  I will love it if I can have one of those rock gardens with plants just wandering and peeking between the rock cracks.

Off to Annies Annuals!!!!

Today is our yearly pilgrimage to Annies Annuals in Richmond, CA.  Annies has the most unusual plants, not the same old boring stuff at the regular nurseries.

You have to have a shopping list all ready to go, alphabetically sorted of course!  You have to look your plants in their book to find out where the pots are located.

These are a few of the plants on my list:

UPDATE!!
We're back!  We were up there at 9:45 and they had already a bunch of people there and the gates were open!!  Everything was so pretty and we were soooo excited,  of course the coffee didn't help settle us down!

Finally we got down to the business of SHOPPING!  First we had to hit the books with our lists....so we knew were all our plants were located.  Then we are ready, start with all the Es, as in 1E, 2E, 3E and so on.  Wow, when we hit the succulents we kind of went crazy and off-list!  Well, we were in there from 10 am to 2pm and we did pretty well.  We had our gift certificates from each other in hand and managed to still have some $ left on the certificates when we left!  I filled the whole bottom tray of my cart and Jen did pretty good with the top tray of my cart.  Cathy, well lets say she did really well since she was working a whole cart by herself!  What fun!

And now we have to plant them............darn, that is not quite as much fun!

In the button jar....

This is another interesting item in Grandma Daisy's button jar...

Interesting, huh.





























What is it for?  The pin that pushes into the end thingie is pretty thick so I thought it might have been a piece of decoration for a hat.  Pushing it through fabric would leave quite a hole.

On another topic...
If my garden had beautiful snails like this one I would raise them like flowers!

 Unfortunately, my snails are not as beautiful as the one above and worse still.....my chickens don't DO snails.  Excuse me!  What is your job here anyway!!!

 Isis says, "What?  You think I am a SNAIL eater? they are yuckie!  TiTi agrees completely with her. 

 They are having this conversation with me while I am weeding and they are scratching.....notice, they can't get much closer to where I am working.  They have to be right where the action is.  Oh, and by the way...they LOVE worms.  Hey! Aren't worms yuckie too?!

Political Pin - What Election?

This pin was in my Grandma Daisy's button jar.  It is an election pin for Grover Cleveland's second election.  He was elected to his first term, 1885-1889 as the 22nd President.   Thomas A. Hendricks was his first Vice President.
 
He later ran again and won as the 24th President, 1893-1897.  His Vice President was Adlai Stevenson I.  Cleveland is the only president that did not have consecutive presidencies.

This pin is a mechanical pin.  The wings on the eagle can be pulled down by pulling on the bottom ribbon.  When the wings are down they reveal photos of Cleveland and Stevenson.

The back of the pin.

The ribbons are not original to the pin.  I added them so I can wear the pin at Ardenwood Park, Fremont, CA  on 4th of Julys.

A bit of unusual history:
A habitual cigar-smoker, Cleveland developed cancer of the mouth that required immediate surgery in the summer of 1893. The president insisted that the surgery be kept secret to avoid another panic on Wall Street. While on a yacht in New York harbor that summer, Cleveland had his entire upper jaw removed and replaced with an artificial device, an operation that left no outward scar. The cancer surgery remained secret for another quarter century. Cleveland's aides explained that he had merely had dental work. His vice president little realized how close he came to the presidency that summer.
(From wikipedia.org)

Grandma Daisy

Since I've been talking about Grandma Daisy I thought I would post this photo of her as a young woman.

This photo was from a black and white.  Aunt Edna had it copied and colored in the 1960s.

School Awards

When my grandmother went to school it was common for the teacher to give out award for exceptional work.  I don't think they do as nice awards as in that time.  The certificates were really beautiful and special... I don't have photos of them right now but I will pull them out and post them.  Now days when they get certificates it is just a simple thing and doesn't look special at all.  

My Grandmother Daisy earned lots of awards from her teachers.  This is a photo of a mother-of-pearl ink pen she received.  The nib shown doesn't fit her pen and someday I should look one up on the internet and get it.  This was very special to her.  It has such a beautiful neck on it.

 

 This a an ink well I found years ago at a garage sale in Pennsylvania.

The penmanship in those days was so beautiful and they took pride in their writing.....now, some schools aren't even teaching cursive! 

Learning Process

Workshops are certainly learning processes.  Giving up old ways for new and remembering to keep aware of old ways trying to creep in are really mental work.  Keeping in mind all the new information and applying it is tiring.

I try to critique my work from a workshop with a light hand and keep in mind a lot of mental contortions were going on.... but then I always wish I had done better.  That's life!

We were at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco, an absolutely gorgeous place with beautiful views with Bryan Mark Taylor and about 10 other students.  We were going to tackle cityscapes, something our town doesn't have!

We started with a 2 hour lecture/demo with tons of information to keep in mind.  It was sprinkling off and on and threatening to really rain.  Thank heavens it didn't.  Lots of dramatic clouds though and changing shadows.  Plein Air painting is  a challenge with the weather sometimes!

We choose our view and started to work.  A whole new way to look at color and mixing colors.  A new way of laying down the paint.  Lots of perspective problem solving (something I don't usually have to deal much with in landscape painting compared to tons of buildings, on hills and crooked streets.  

I usually get impressed by something in my scene and have a hard time pulling away from it.
 
My view was from between two pillars of the Palace of Fine Arts looking across the water and into the city.  Can you tell I was scared of laying down the paint!!  It was foggy atmosphere, but REALLY!  And the skyscrapers look like NYC around Central Park...not!  Didn't really get to the details either.

 We were so tired by the time we went back to our room at the Youth Hostel at Fort Mason.  We debated where to go for dinner and decided to check out Chestnut Street for a restaurant.  Found a great meal, a book store and went back for a girls sleep-over!  Lots of laughs!

Next day - met at Marina Green, picked a view (very easy, there are views at every 360 degrees).  Again rain threatening day and breezy.  A couple of us painted on a hill with a view of the Palace of Fine Arts dome.  The clouds kept changing the scene, the dome would go from pure white to a translucent pink.  The fog would be rolling in over the trees behind the Exploratorium.

And a turn to the right of this scene was a view of the Golden Gate....in between billows of fog.

We spent a couple hours in the afternoon watching a demo and worked more on our paintings....more problem solving.  Cars....I never thought about painting cars before.  I usually avoid man-made objects if I can.  We went back to our room to regroup with tired feet from standing all day.  We hadn't gotten much exercise so we decided to walk down to Fisherman's Wharf and find a place to eat.  They were getting ready for the Marathon taking place on Sunday. 

Saturday morning we got up early and headed across the Golden Gate for  the Vianza Winery near Napa.  We watched Brian paint another demo and had lunch at the winery.  Great sandwiches!

Several of us painted the valley.  It felt MUCH easier that the cityscapes because it is much more familiar. Even at that though, the sky kept changing which made the scene so different, sunny bright to cloudy dark, rainy...bring out the umbrellas!

That afternoon we left for home.  Tired but our brains full of different ways of seeing everything.
I was so wiped out Sunday I didn't really get much done but I did practice mixing paints. 

 So there you go... you've seen my workshop paintings.  My cityscapes are so unfinished and uncorrected of all the errors but that is part of the learning process!

 Can you see her?

Simone painting to the very end!

I'm Back!

I'm back from the plein air workshop, tired but so much information crammed in my head it is going to take a while to assimilate it all.  Our teacher was Bryan Mark Taylor.  He gave the best workshop I've been to so far, which numbers about 8 or so.  He gives great demos and explains what he is thinking as he is painting.  He makes it look so easy but for us trying new ways of doing things it was very trying.  But, considering it was a learning process, we all came away with a lot learned and paintings that may need a bit more work but nice anyway. 

Our heads had a lot to contain and it was very tiring concentrating for so long.  I was mixing colors in my sleep the first night.  On the way home we are seeing the world with refreshed color sense.

We spent Thursday and Friday in San Francisco, Watching demos and painting at the Palace of Fine Arts and the Marina.  A bit of sprinkles, clouds and sun through out that time.  Today, Saturday, we met up at the Vianza Winery, watched a demo, had lunch and painted.

And we had lots of fun.  Three friends having sleep overs and fun painting 3 days in a row.  We stayed at the Youth Hostel in San Francisco in a room with a bunk bed consisting of a double bed on bottom and twin on top.  What a giggling time we had.  I certainly would recommend the hostel.  It was clean and efficient, quiet (we did hear the fog horn, bit it didn't bother us), there is a free breakfast of 1 piece of fruit, 1bagel or 2 waffles, coffee and orange juice and you can buy several other items that are premade.

If I can get some good pics of my paintings I will post them here tomorrow afternoon, just for fun.

Another Watch!

This watch was given to my Aunt Edna by a German gentleman.  It was made in Germany.  I don't know just how old it is.  It has a really cute watch fob with it.

The gold bow to hang it is not part of this watch.  This watch does work and I was using it at Ardenwood for tours last season.

The gentleman and his wife were close friends and neighbors of my aunt and when his wife died he gave my aunt the watch and these pieces of costume jewelry.  They are not expensive items but his wife loved them because he had given them to her.

There are a few more pieces but I will add them Sunday when I am home again

Before Kleenex

Today I am off to San Francisco on a rainy morning to attend a Plein Aire Workshop.  I did want to continue with a bit of the family history items though.....So, today, handkerchiefs.  Every lady had to have one at all times pre-Kleenex.  They were often given as gifts and keep as little memories.  Grandma Eberly had kept these:
 

This one has a butterfly motif.

It is hard to see but the design is all cut-work.

This one also has cutwork.

This one is lace and cutwork.

And this one is embroidery and lace.

All of these are hand done and I know the newest one (the embroidered one) is over 60 years old.