The Tempest and the Tinsmith
I guess I haven’t yet really figured out the seasons here on this hillside. Back east there was a higher degree of familiarity about what February, March or April meant when it came to the events of nature. It would be hard to say that there is more variability out here, but I guess I would say that the stability of the weather out here makes what little variability we have seem unpredictable. After a very wet and gloomy December, I don’t think we have had rain once yet this month or last. When I say rain, I mean a day with lots of precipitation, not just a sprinkling to wash off the streets, as my mother would say based on her time spent in the tropics. While its been mostly sunny for the last weeks, it hasn’t always been warm. When the sun shines and the temperature gets up to the mid-60’s, that feels warm enough to work outside without a coat, but the chill of the morning and the cool when the sun starts to set are noticeable and not the warmth everyone always thinks we have here in San Diego all year long.
If you’ve dedicated a lot of your time to gardening, as I have lately, you are expected to understand the nature of your climactic zone (we are in what is called 9b … or perhaps 10a, we are right on the borderline, and with constant climate change I suspect we could be either zone), but all that really tells me is that I can grow almost anything at any time of the year and expect them to bloom almost any time. The problem is that every individual plant has its own cycle that may or may not be attuned to the gardening industry’s Koppen-Geiger Climate Zone standards. You can look up a plant species and its habits and you can check out your local weather and figure out at what temperature and with what sort of moisture that plant should be doing what its doing (hibernating, germinating, growing vigorously, propagating or slowing down to prepare to sleep). Only the plant itself knows that. I have bougainvillea in one part of my property and the exact same variety on another part and they do different things and are anything but in synch. I know that some will say that its about light, temperature and moisture, but I have tried accounting for all of that and still can’t make perfect sense of it. All I can assume is that every plant has a certain amount of self-determination as to when it chooses to go through its cycles.
Some plants really fool me and I have to ask my gardener what’s up. Joventino seems to understand plants better than me and he certainly accepts their vagaries better than I do. He makes very few presumptions based on superficial clues. I am always ready to declare a plant a goner when Joventino tells me it will be fine. And after one rain the plant is fine in a way that no amount of my watering would seem to help it. And then there are my Crepe Myrtle tree and my Ocatillo, both planted in 2020. They have very different watering requirements and they are both plentiful in this area (I would say Crepe Myrtles flourish in 10a where Ocatillo do better in the more arid 9b…or even better in 9a). Both of them like to play dead right up until I start thinking I should just replace them and then they start to show some life and some color. The Crepe Myrtle is a particular mystery to me since I bought the tree because it looks so nice and flowerful all year around. only mine doesn’t. When I seek advice I get alternately told that it needs more or less water. How I’m supposed to know is a mystery. As for the Ocatillo, well, it does well by the side of the road in the heat of the Anza Borego desert, just not so much at my entry gate.
For the most part, my garden flourishes and my irrigation system, with its 24 zones and its smart watering system that measures and even anticipates local precipitation, helps keep it that way, despite the stubbornness of some of these plants. If the plants are close enough for me to get up close and personal with them, I’m willing to take risks with them. Yet there are some plants, especially on my front rock outcropping (which goes up about thirty feet), where Joventino tells me a very large rattlesnake lives, which I do not get close to and prefer to keep it that way. Those areas need special consideration. Meanwhile, I guess you might say that I am less than a purist when it comes to gardening. I like to mix it up and blend 90% plants with 10% of what I will generically call whimsy. That whimsy consists of metal yard art (my massive Boulder Bison, an 8-foot colorful metal rooster, my Leaping Ram, my metal ten foot Joshua Tree, the 6-foot wood stump and copper stately eagle, my copper sculpture), wind sculptures (I now have eight), Boulder Art (Agave, Moon, Hawk, California Bear, Zebra Plant, Baying Coyote, and miscellaneous Kokopellis), Driftwood of various sizes (I have eight), cobalt blue potted succulents (eight again), succulent basins (six), seven benches, what will soon be a Hobbit House with a succulent-planted green roof, an a new 150-pound hand-hammered 7-foot high copper finial from the roof of a Hindu temple in San Francisco (long story).
What this list of whimsy does not include is that I have randomly added metal succulents and cacti all over the property. We have three on the deck, two on the guest room deck, one on the front stoop, nine in the play area and something in the range of 5-10 spread out in various places in the yard. Sometimes I use them to spice up the scene and sometimes I use them prophylactically where a plant isn’t likely to do well or be able to be attended to properly. In fact, I just today purchased three more colorful 27” agaves to put up on the massive front rock area where Mr. Rattlesnake resides.
My gardening world would seem from the books I keep next to my seat in the living room, to be centered around succulents, cacti and other native draught-tolerant plants. But as much as I admire succulents and their kissing cousins the cacti, I am equally interested in wildflowers, so I spread another 5 pounds of native California wildflower seeds around two distinct areas where I know they will get enough water to prosper. I like the splash of random color they provide.
Then again, my gardening efforts are really more driven by the vagaries of climate and the latest finds I encounter in metal yard art. You might say my property is at the whim of a combination of the tempest and the tinsmith.