We were driving home from something, and passed a parking strip full of plants including some still in their nursery pots. I exclaimed with some joy, "There's a plant addict!" and made a mental note to return to investigate further. My mental note taking isn't what it used to be. These days it seems like I'm writing on an upside-down Etch-a-sketch. By some miracle, I remembered the location and went back for a closer look.
A garden after my own heart! Every space stuffed and planted way to close together, potted plants plunked in the beds and even more plants waiting to find a place.
Dracunculus vulgaris was blooming in the parking strip but the lovely fragrance was not present.
Some potted edibles out on the sidewalk.
Plants that look like they came from recent nursery visits and are waiting to be planted. Gosh this looks familiar!
Out in the parking strip was this cool cracked pot with a heap of sempervivum starts. Wonder what the eventual plan is?
Here's a view down the sidewalk between the front yard and the parking strip. Heaven!
A view from the street. Finding this garden of plant passion encouraged me to do some further exploration in the hood.
I've admired this tetrapanax grove from the car for several months but until today didn't stop.
There's a nice rock walkway through the big leaf forest.
Persicarias and grasses... Does Scott have a place in Tacoma that he's not telling us about? No, couldn't be as there's some bare soil here.
Another view of the Tetrapanax. I love those big leaves alongside grasses and the acer palmatum that echoes the Tetrapanax leaf shape but on a much smaller, finer, and purpler level.
Also catching my eye while Alison and I were on our way out of my neighborhood headed toward one of our adventures was a large bed of poppies. While I was out exploring, I thought I'd check that out too!
I love Papaver somniferum and have grown them in my parking strip for years but people steal all of the seed heads when they're still green. Clearly they aren't interested in seed or they'd wait until they naturally dried. No, the freaks in my neighborhood pick the green heads to make some concoction. I wouldn't so much mind except that they've taken every head for so long that I no longer have the plants as this is a reseeding annual. One summer there was a young woman who regularly visited with a plastic bag and harvested. I asked her to stop and she said that she knew the owners of the house and they said that she could. On another occasion, when asked to cease she informed me that she wasn't hurting the plants at all but just taking the seed pods and besides, they're on the street so anyone can take them. I tried to explain the concept of reseeding annuals but this didn't seem to make a dent. Ignorance and crust, what a lovely combination. She simply thought she had the right to take whatever she wanted. She never quit and it turns out that she lived not far from our house. A year or so later we were at a gathering in our neighborhood and she was introduced as the best friend of someone I knew. They delighted in telling me in giggly tones about how they practiced witchcraft. I wanted to inform them that stealing and lying are not consistent with the practice of Wicca but that might have gone over the heads of these particular twenty-somethings.
Sorry for the rant but I'm a curmudgeon, it's what I do. I've heard from other gardeners that the stealing of the green seed heads is a problem whenever this is planted in public view. Have you had any experience with growing these and having them pilfered, filched, lifted, appropriated, snatched, plundered, stolen?
Anyway, bright sunny day and who should stop by for a visit but a happy honey bee or two.
There are several folks in the hood who keep honey bees and it always makes me happy to see them buzzing around.
All done here, gotta fly!
Hope you enjoyed these random visits!
To think ! I had my eye on some Purple poppy seed heads on my walk the other day...no I won't
ReplyDeleteOh Linda, I'd be perfectly happy if someone came along and shook a few hundred seeds into an envelope as these create so many! It was simply the wholesale harvesting of every single green seed head which didn't allow for any seed production necessary for the poppies to continue that bothered me. If you found some cool poppies and the heads are left long enough to ripen, I say go for it!
DeleteThis is one of many things that so far has deterred me from redoing my front expanse of grass. I would love to put in a long flower/shrub bed by the street, but we get a lot of walkers and children on their way to the school at the end of the street. I would be so annoyed if people just started pilfering. Maybe those girls thought they could make opium? You need acres and acres of poppies for that.
ReplyDeleteI did enjoy these random visits, and I remember you commenting on the poppies. I do have some annual poppies growing this year in the front, but far enough from the street that someone would have to feel they were invading my privacy to come and take them. They are Hungarian blue poppies, and have just started opening. Want some seeds?
There are recipes online for a tea made from the pods (1/2 cup) and some other common ingredients that is supposed to have some effect on the consumer. I have enough trouble figuring out reality without drugs so it's not my cup of tea, literally. We know that it requires acres of these to make opium but some people clearly don't. I remember some years before when the seed heads were cut lightly with a razor so that they would drip sap. Folks are strange.
DeleteI'm thinking that your bed by the street would be a great place to put a raised bed full of agaves, cacti, and other prickly plants. Or maybe you could edge the street side with berberis like we saw on Saturday. That would sure keep hands on the correct side of your garden!
Thank for the offer of seeds but I've got them since I keep buying new poppies to put inside my garden and they have the happy habit of reseeding.
Oh that "but I know the owners" comment still makes me angry!
ReplyDeleteThere are some fabulous poppy seed pods (green) across the street, I'll be watching to see how long they last.
That comment makes me laugh. Truly, she was that stupid to say to someone who just emerged from the house that she knew the owners? Funny and gutsy!
DeletePortland may be a different story altogether but I'll be interested to hear what happens or doesn't with the poppies across your street!
Drat...I knew there was an empty spot of soil somewhere!!! For some reason, even when I scatter the seeds myself, I never get re-seeded Poppies the following year :-( I do love letting them stand as long as possible, I think they look amazing in a garden...even if the foliage can look a bit tatty until things fill in.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, gardening within arms-reach of people is playing with fire...but when your space is so limited, you take the risk :-) Whenever I spy someone nabbing a flower or two, I want to walk outside and tell them to help themselves, and that I'll be over to their place later to make myself a nice meal from whatever they have in their fridge.
The poppies always do well when they scatter themselves but I've tried shaking seed I places where I wanted them to grow and nothing. Linda Cochran says that she also has little luck with scattering seeds but recommends buying a plant or two of ones that you like and letting them seed about themselves.
DeleteAnn Lovejoy used to have a sign in her Seattle garden that read, "Please leave the flowers for everyone to enjoy." I don't mind folks gathering a few seeds but when they take flowers or other ornamental bits from the garden, they are stealing not only the flowers but the enjoyment of both the gardener who has tended the plants and every other person who may pass by. Last summer, every bloom from my Lobelia tupa was taken! Maybe I should go hang a sign by them now while they're still there this year.
I think the world needs a few more curmudgeons! Where is common decency and what happened to good manners?
ReplyDeleteI do SO enjoy full & overflowing yards. The more, the merrier!
Gentle reader,
DeleteCommon decency is no longer common and good manners are as rare as hens teeth. We have a world of people whose heads are buried in their digital devices which keep them informed about every minute detail of the private lives of others. (Remember when private things were private and public things were public?) Oops, there I go again in a totally different direction.
I share your enjoyment of overflowing yards that invite us all to enjoy them!
So anything that is reachable from the street is free for the taking? You were so nice, I don't think I could have resisted at least mentioning the previous meetings even if she does seem to be beyond embarrassment.
ReplyDeleteWe don't have sidewalks in my neighborhood and whenever I think it would be nice, I'll remember this story. I use easily replaced plants out by the street just in case a car or the skateboarders up the hill miss a turn someday.
Well, the gathering was at another person's home and one wouldn't want to be an ungracious guest. I also can chalk it up to youthful foolishness. I can remember being young and foolish myself a few eons ago and fortunately, my own indiscretions have not had horrible repercussions. Really, in the grand scheme of things, a lack of poppies I my parking strip isn't that big a deal. Still, what a b***h!
DeleteYou are wise to pot easily replaced plants out by the street. I'm thinking that a lovely Concertina wire obstacle planted with native vines might also do the trick!
I think you have some soul-mates in your neighborhood. You should get together. If it's a "murder" of crows, how about a "grump" of curmudgeons? If you can't put a stop to the clueless young things, nothing can.
ReplyDeleteOh yes, a grump of curmudgeons! I love it! We'll complain about the all of the changes in the world and will selectively remember what the past was like, forgetting all the bad parts. We'll raise our canes in protest of all the newfangled ideas and people who drive so fast! I can see it now, we'll be like a group of superheroes for nostalgia!
DeleteIt does make you wonder who's behind the planting, the character behind the front door. Definitely a plantsman that's given :) love those steps too!
ReplyDeleteThe mystery is fun but I've decided to make a point of walking by some of these places in the evening just to see if I can meet the gardeners.
DeleteI looove plant addicts!! that´s a nice garden and I like that is all planted too close together too!! Dracunculus flowers look really nice.
ReplyDeleteI thought people in the States were well educated and didn´t do things like steal poppy seed heads. Here in Spain everything would dissapear fast. I laugh a lot too with the "I know the owners" comment.
By the way!! I love your new blog illustration! at first I thought you had drawn it!
Dracunculus flowers are beautiful but for the first day or two after they open, they smell like rotting flesh to attract flies to pollinate them. Fortunately the smell goes away. More than once I've been out working in my garden, have smelled something odd and have searched to find perhaps a dead raccoon, possum or rat and have found instead that these flowers had just opened.
DeleteIt's funny, I thought that people in Spain would be less likely to take things. I guess that people are the same everywhere.
Glad you liked the illustration!
I love your new header, how disturbing to live near such weirdo's, unfortunately we have an over abundance of idiots around here too.
ReplyDeleteGlad you like the header! I laughed when I saw it and wanted to share. People are strange everywhere; we're really an odd species, especially in large groups!
DeleteWhat a great drive-by, or walk-by landscape to see. I find a few, here and there, that I keep forgetting to post on. With more bare ground, especially than Scott PDX would permit...I almost thought that was his secret place, too! I think of such intense packing of plants more as layering, something you have and we only do on in a sparse manner.
ReplyDeleteLayering is such a nice term! I also sometimes use exuberantly planted to describe what some might call crowded. It's o.k. some things survive, others die, sometimes trees serve their purpose and get weeded out, etc. I know it's not a wise approach for large or commercial gardens but for postage-stamp-sized urban gardens of plant geeks it works.
DeleteThese young people today. Although I might steal poppy seeds if I knew someone would make them into poppy seed strudel. Just what were they doing with the seed heads? Hey, I look forward to meeting you at the fling!
ReplyDeleteI look forward to meeting you and Judy as well. Just look for the guy who's as round as the one I the header image only with facial hair and you'll find me!
DeletePeter, this rock walkway looks very nice, and many pots with plants as well.
ReplyDeleteHave a nice week and weather!
These were fun things to find in my neighborhood. I wish you a nice week for gardening too, Nadezda!
DeleteWhat a great garden, choc full of plants and interest. Shame on those people stealing your poppy seed heads. Makes you wonder why they don't grow some of their own if they need them that badly!
ReplyDeleteAlways fun to see the gardens of other plant obsessed people.
DeleteI was thinking the same thing about people growing their own but there are those who love the urban foraging idea. This is great as long as the foraging doesn't take place in gardens!
A fantastic garden indeed! I always get excited when I come across other gardens whose occupants are clearly as enthusiastic - and perhaps as overly ambitious and chaotic - as I am.
ReplyDeleteI agree! It makes me feel better about own plant chaos!
Delete