Late Summer

As the number of visitors to our garden winds down, we shift our attention. The vegetable garden needs a little love and we need to get cracking with harvest and preservation of all that food. So it begins. A few other small chores that were put off during the height of summer can now be addressed and we can sink into autumn a little easier.

It never really ends on two acres. I keep telling myself the work will become less someday. The reality is that the nature of the work changes, but not the time. We're not doing so much heavy labor such as spreading two units of gravel every other summer . . . compost too, building chicken coops and paths and planting trees. Rather it's more maintenance and assessing, removing, harvesting, watering, mulching and mowing. Easier but just as time-consuming.

Oh, I do go on, don't I? Let's get into the photos of the garden as the last of the summer sun warms us.

The veggie garden I thought was off to a good start in the greenhouse, but the cruciferous veg (broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage) seedlings weren't vigorous. I was so frustrated. They eventually caught up and are just now giving us food, but it took a long long time. It's been up and down this year, now it's definitely up and looking amazing with all that food. I won't list it all here, you'll have to trust that it's quite a variety.

Almost every bit of ground is covered. Plus, flowers - the cuphea and some sweet peas are going strong.

A frustrating part of the raised bed area is that the gravel, while it looks great when fresh, was such a successful vehicle for seedlings of all types including weeds. Rather than swimming upstream trying to remove weeds every year by hand, we decided to just mulch the whole thing with wood chips.

Kind of scrappy looking.

Much nicer. FM fixed the raised bed boards that were falling apart and everything got a good, deep layer of wood chips that will help very much with weed suppression.

One of three large-ish grapes, this one over what was the gate to the eastern half of our property. There used to be a fence that ran north/south put in by the former owners, we removed it but left the gate for fun which became the arch for this grape vine, the "entrance" to the veggie garden.

A lot of moody August skies this year.

Speaking of projects and processing food, we'd better get on that applesauce making. This is from one tree, there are several more.

Moving on to other observations and projects. One of two very large Ceanothus cuneatus 'Adair Village' is failing. I am so baffled by this - it's like verticillium wilt but I don't know if ceanothus are impacted by this. It happened quickly. At first the instinct was to take the whole thing out, but I remember once years ago I gave this a good prune as it was leaning after a heavy snow storm. It responded well so we decided to give it a good prune first and if it doesn't respond then we'll remove it.

Pretty outright dead branches. The cambium had a bit of green but it looked really pale and not so healthy.

FM (mostly) and I worked on it for a good long time.

Shown with the aftermath of the prune job.

At least the Arctostaphylos pumila on the right will be a little less crowded. Fingers crossed the ceanothus pulls through.

A trio of groundcover-type plants. Grevillea 'Coastal Gem' far left, then Phedimus spurius (a dark-leaved cultivar) and Epilobium canum (syn. Zauschneria californica) knit together to form a weed-free bit of color at the base of our deck. It is all also very low-water. As the Epilobium is a late summer bloomer, this scene fits right in to this week's theme.

This time of the year the meadow garden takes on blonde and green tones, soon to turn to bright orange from the changing of the Amsonia hubrichtii.

A couple of years ago I grew dahlias from a seed mix with single flowers. I love them, they stay in the raised bed year round (I don't lift them for winter, just leave them there) and they come back stronger every year. The fact that they are singles rather than doubles means there is access to pollinators such as this yellow-faced bumble bee.

One of many birdbaths in the garden, this is a favorite. I caught a flock of pine siskins taking in a bath and a drink. 

An odd thing happened to my Eriodictyon californicum, yerba santa plant. This is an evergreen plant native to much of California and parts of Oregon. It seemingly died overnight which is odd as it hadn't received any different treatment (more water, less water, weird weather), it just went brown and crunchy. I left it to see what would happen. It continued its brown crunchy death then this:

A few feet away from the parent plant two separate shoots emerge fresh and green. I realize this is a plant that can regenerate from rhizomes after wildfires, so perhaps this adaptation was in play somehow. In any case, I'm thrilled to see it's still going.

While I love this scene, there is a bit of a messy bit that has bothered me for a few years - the Chasmanthium latifolium, northern sea oats, felt floppy and congested. It's in front of the Arctostaphylos pumila on the right and kind of blocks the view of the pretty trunk on the arcto. I can't believe I had a Berberis darwinii in there for years, it was so crowded. This is a good example of removing plants as the garden matures - I can't keep everything as there's a finite amount of space.

After - the grass removed. Much better.

Our new neighbors recently had seven mature Douglas firs removed, we were the recipients of yet another pile of wood chips, easily two units. Many of these went into the raised bed area of the veggie garden. FM also picked out this slice of one of the trees for our garden. I thought maybe a rustic table but it's much taller than what I imagined - it's nearly 4' tall so will just be a table for the birds. Maybe I'll make it into a sunflower seed platform for them.

Closing out this post with the setting sun over the veggie garden where we often sit in the evening after dinner. It's moments like this that make it all worthwhile so we can do it all over again next year.

The summer overall has been incredibly busy with tours, open gardens, visitors, my mural-making and preparing for being gone the entire month of September. FM has been watering a lot which is so appreciated as so much of my time went into painting the kitty mural. FM really carried the load for several weeks and I am very grateful. Plus he's single-handedly caring for it all while I'm in the U.K. 

That's a wrap for this week at Chickadee Gardens. As always, thank you so much for reading and commenting, we do love hearing from you! Goodbye summer, hello autumn!