Central Valley Spring 2022 1: Home

    In this post we take you not on a trek but to our yard. Hope you enjoy the tour.

Kayaking through the poppies a few springs ago. Our former Ford Traverse Poptop in the drive.

    Two years ago, almost to the day, we posted Certain Spring in Uncertain Times. Now, two years later, our uncertain times are compounded. Yet, we are privileged to live where we do and to be able to enjoy our yard so much.  

    This year began with some big rains and good snows in the Sierras. Unfortunately the storms did not continue, and the Sierras do not have the snow pack needed to help get us out of a years-long drought.

Rain water overflows the rain chain. by our back patio. 

    Our back yard patch of lawn gets smaller each year. But when the grandkids come, they have to have some lawn to play on, right? A few years ago we took out the lawn in our front and side yards completely and went xeriscape in an attempt to save water.  

Rain, glorious rain poured a couple of times this winter.

Clouds, glorious clouds.

    We also had a lot of cold—for us—frosty mornings this winter. Many plants seem to be thriving as a result.

Brrrr—frost on our front yard!

Orientation map. Visalia (in red) is our home town. It's in California's Central Valley. Our section is the San Joaquin Valley. To the north is the Sacramento Valley.

    Now, Marilyn's plants. This is her joy throughout the year. 

Tulip trees are early bloomers, in February.

Tulip tree blossom. I love to take close-ups of flowers.

    Freesias are February bloomers, also.

Creamy white freesia with yellow.

The scent of freesias is lovely, each color slightly different.

Lemon yellow freesia.

    We have early miniature daffodils, then traditional daffodils, then a later daffodil. These are the later ones.

Our later daffodils are smaller and more open than traditional daffodils.

Later daffodil. 

    Violas arrived with a potted plant from my sister and have spread around the yard. We kept the clay pot but passed the plant on to a friend, somewhat to my sister's chagrin.

Violas, aka Johnny jump-ups.

Violas look like miniature pansies, which blooms later in spring. I love that "pansy" comes from the French "pensée," a thought. Don't they just look like they are offering thoughts?

Viola: three petal shapes with yellow and aubergine stripes on just one.

    We have a variety of lavender throughout our yard. They bloom off and on throughout the year. The bees, to our joy, seem to love them, and so far have allowed me to cut flowers and prune branches among them at will.

Lavender Hill with its variety of lavenders fills the street corner of our front yard.

I think this is Spanish lavender, but wouldn't swear to it.

    Dianthus returned from last year. In the carnation family, they have a spicy, cinnamon-like scent.

Dianthus.

    Van Gogh's painting of purple bearded iris from an ant's eye view mesmerized me when I saw it years ago at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. 

Bearded Iris.

Bearded iris remind me of my mom, too, and her purple and yellow bearded iris at the end of our driveway turnaround in Western Pennsylvania. Doug is quick to smile and add that it reminds him of his mom and grandmother, also. Just great memories.

Bearded Iris close-up.

Sutton's Iris Gardens in Boise is the place to buy iris. They can be ordered online. Sutton's used to be in our area and had an Iris Festival each spring with just an astonishing variety of colors. The structure variety of bearded iris is fascinating. We have two bearded iris from them that are reblooming iris and seem to bloom year round!

Reblooming bearded iris. Its petals are much more ruffled than the purple one above.

Sutton's Iris Gardens Spring Festival in nearby Porterville.

Sutton's Iris Gardens Festival

    Quite a few years ago, we planted an ivy geranium by one of our front yard Japanese maples. We have to keep an eye on it so it doesn't take over the rest of our drought tolerant front yard.

Ivy geranium.

Such a sassy curl to the ivy geranium petals.

    Hummingbird sage, one of our numerous sages, also spreads voraciously. Doug worries that it will overrun his Pi sculpture. 

Hummingbird sage and Pi. No, it is not held together by glue or nails. Doug is a master rock sculpture creator, until it falls down.

Hummingbird sage. 

    We bought our first strawberries of the season on March 17 from the Hmong family plot down the street. We are now on our second six boxes. The Hmong, hill people who lived in Laos and assisted the Americans during the Vietnam War, began moving to the Central Valley in the 1970s. I was fortunate to have many Hmong students in my high school classes in the 1990s-2000s. A book for beginning to understand Hmong history and culture is The Spirit Catches and You Fall Down. I absolutely recommend it.

The Hmong grow amazing strawberries in plots all over the Valley. 

    I have my personal garden just outside my workroom—how lucky can one be to have both? Last year, I planted gazanias, which will spread.

I love the variety of petal patterns and shades of orange, yellow, and pink of gazanias.

    Also in the plot are nasturtiums and Transvaal daisies.

It's interesting that the old-fashioned nasturtiums come up each year, while the modern ones rarely appear.

Transvaal, aka, Gerbera, daisies, produce intense oranges, pinks, whites, yellows.

    Calla lilies in my plot came from my mom and dad's yard and also multiply at will.

Calla lilies.

    Our cold winter produced a few tulips this year. As for family connections, Doug seems to just smile each year we have a tulip show up—seems it was the favorite flower of his father. 

Those colors and notched petals! Tulips close at night.

We ordered tulips when we went to the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival in 2011. 

   

Skagit Valley Tulip Festival, April 2011.

Skagit Valley Tulip Festival.

I've heard that in order to survive our hot summers, tulips must be planted extra deep or dug up and refrigerated each year. Since my gardening philosophy is benign neglect (I don't ignore plants, but nor do I coddle them), when we received our order, I tried to plant the bulbs very deep. 

Tulip close-up.

So our tulips stay deep in the ground, and when we've had a cold winter, a few of them bloom.

I was determined to get a picture that shows the deep purple stamens.

    When I first moved to Visalia from Fresno, in 2007, I was dismayed by the lack of birds. I was accustomed to them being in the neighborhood year round, chirping, warbling, whistling, and singing. Doug promptly bought bird feeders.

A goldfinch visited this year.

We have a resident family of scrub jays each year. They provide endless entertainment: flying lessons, exploring for food on their own, playing king of the fence, discovering the bird bath.

The scrub jay contemplated the bird feeder for awhile before planning its attack. It landed successfully but didn't hang on long.

    Doves have nested in the eaves above the back patio fountain for years, despite our best efforts to dissuade them. They won a life-time pass the year Doug wedged a broom into their spot, upon which one of them got on the handle and dislodged it.

Life with scrub jays can be precarious for doves. You'd think they'd nest in a less obvious spot.

    These are not local birds but rather sandhill cranes we spotted in a field driving through an area north of us.

Sandhill Cranes.

    We are lucky that our neighborhood has two green spaces.

The neighborhood park also serves as a ponding basin to collect storm run-off.

    We also have ditches around the perimeter on two sides of the neighborhood that continue for a half mile or so each way. They are especially pleasant to walk along when there is water running.

Ditches carry storm run-off and water for farmers.

    We have three citrus trees in our back yard.

Regrettably this is a Valencia orange, best for juicing, not a navel, better for eating.

Our Eureka lemon tree produces prolifically, though Doug always says from the looks of some of its branches it should be dead.

We should get all the lemons off the tree before it blossoms.

We originally thought the mandarin was a naval orange. It was going to get a severe haircut this year—until it covered itself in blossoms. 

Mandarin blossom.

    A couple of years ago we bought a 6-pack of artichokes and planted 2. We thought the first year's astounding growth and surprising production were due to a nearby leaky irrigation valve.

Artichoke.

But it keeps putting out new plants and we have to keep hacking away gigantic leaves a couple of times a year. 

Doug doesn't eat artichokes at all and I can only eat so many, so they mostly go to our neighbors, who love to barbecue them.

    We had some volunteer sunflowers come up again this year. 

Last year's volunteer sunflowers had huge, traditional blooms. This year's are smaller...

...and sort of ruffly.

    It's a bit of a relief when the California poppies bloom, proving that those are not weeds surrounding the front yard's drought tolerant plants.

California poppies not yet open for the day...

I'm curious why the poppies in the foothills, where it is cooler, bloom long before ours.

...and open in the sun.

California poppy.

We also have a few white poppies this year, on the right in the picture above.

White poppy.

And finally this year we have a Texas Bluebonnet, one of Doug's favorites.

    There is much else that we enjoy in our region in the spring, so we'll be following up with more posts.

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