Flowers

When I was a little girl growing up in Los Angeles my mother tended her flowers with care. Nothing elaborate or exotic but a very large rose garden with white Sweet Alyssim in between the bushes. She had plump red and purple Fuchsias. A palm tree, some pansies, and large grassy lawns. I think she loved to plant and weed when my brothers and I became too much to deal with. We moved to Redlands when I was 13 and Mom was too busy with teenagers to garden much.

When my girls were small we lived on one and one half acres right in town and usually had huge vegetable gardens. Most of the flowers had been planted 80-100 years before when the large Victorian house we lived in was new. Bulbs---daffodils, naked lady lilies and tulips had multiplied for decades and there was one Cecil Bruner Climbing Rose that took over one long side of the drive. When we moved a few miles away in 1985 we took a small rooted piece of the rose with us. It has flourished over the years and these pictures I took today don't begin to do it justice. You can only see a small portion. The yard smells heavenly!

Most of the yard at the NEW house (funny even after 23 years we call it the NEW house) is nearly in complete shade due to the towering Redwood Trees. We have some solar lights lining the driveway and only two of them will shine all night as the others don't get enough sun to power them for more than an hour or two. So you have to get creative if you want color. Mostly we have rhododendrons, azaleas and ferns. I have a Camellia bush, a couple of holly bushes, more and more ferns. Primroses and forget-me-nots do well too. I like perennials as I really don't have a lot of time to keep the garden up.

Years ago Liz and Bill put in a goldfish pond with some nice ground covers---Irish Moss, Baby Tears and Blue Star Creeper. You can hardly find the pond it is so overgrown these days....after several tries with the goldfish we found that the raccoons ate them with relish! I like to feed the birds, but feeding the raccoons is ridiculous. So the pond sort of went back to nature. Last Spring I noticed that most of the moss and baby tears are gone and the Blue Star Creeper has crept over them....and over into the grass and now a good many feet into the grass are the tiny blue stars. The mower misses them and I'm glad. I like the cheerfulness of their blooms and Sydney delights in picking these teeny tiny blossoms.

I don't really garden these days, I just leave it up to God! He does a great job. Oh, we prune and pull weeds sometimes, but mostly we just let it go. I like it. It's Natural...(keep telling yourself Brenda!).

How does your garden grow?????