Just in Time

This past Sunday I got off my butt and finished pulling all the weeds in one of my planting beds. (I also pulled a lot of other weeds, but that's not part of this story.) 

The planting bed in question is between a low fence and my driveway and gets FULL south and west exposure, plus reflection from the garage door (to the southeast), the concrete of the driveway (to the south), the sidewalk (to the west), and the low fence (to the north).  So, LOTS of sun and warmth. Being that the space is also very open to the north-south corridor of my street, it gets plenty of wind exposure from both the prevailing wind out of the north and the storm winds out of the south. On top of all that, it is most inconveniently placed with respect to easy irrigation.

A couple of years ago, that particular bed had to be at least partially torn out when I upgraded the plumbing in my house from completely clogged and corroded galvanized iron to copper. Most of the plants were fairly invasive and a challenge to keep in check. The good news was that they didn't actually need to be watered (once they were established). 

Since I've been interested in converting (albeit slowly) my yard to [mostly] plants that are native to California, I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to get rid of all those invasive, non-native plants and start replacing them with Calif. natives. However, life intervened and the bed went to weeds. I went through a few cycles of pull-the-weeds, let-em-grow, pull-the-weeds, ...

But last spring I bought a few plants and got them set out... with mixed success. One of the ceanothus died and one failed to thrive. But the Blue Elderberry went berzerk, the Western Redbud put on a lot of growth, one of the ceanothus put on a LOT of growth, the oak (from a squirrel-planted acorn) doubled in height, and the volunteer Sticky Monkeyflower (from Mom) put out wave after wave of flowers.

After that flush of success, I went out this past fall and got some more plants, all of which are thriving! They included a replacement ceanothus, a few blue Penstemon "Margarita BOP," and a few more Sticky Monkeyflowers. Now, as we are halfway through winter, all of these (including the originals) are thriving!  But so were the weeds!

So, I got out a few weeks ago and started on the weeds, but hurt myself weeding. :-( Finally, this last Sunday I got out and finished weeding. Later that day, I re-smoothed the soil and sowed the batch of California spring wildflower seeds. Yes, yes. Rather late in coming, but... Had I sown them last fall, they would have needed supplemental water and would have been completely overwhelmed by the weeds.

And I got them in JUST IN TIME for this last week of almost daily gentle rain! I'm hoping that much of the weed seed bank has been depleted and the wildflowers will jump up and make for a colorful spring and summer.

Oh! The collection includes two kinds of [blue] Lupines, California Bluebells, Tidy Tips, Goldfields, Clarkia (Farewell to Spring), and California Poppies (both the regular orange variety and mixed colors -- from cream colored to a mahogany color).