Who hasn't smiled inside on a windblown February day at the unsubtle yellow of upturned daffodils. Their promised cheer is so compelling that I've spent many rainy Novembers on my hands and wet knees plugging the mud with dozens of bulbs. A few have popped up this February, after a nearly rainless January. They are scarce though and the slugs make short work of them. But it is worth it to have a few to cut and bring in the house where their perfume can be appreciated. In my heavy soil daffodils seldom multiply and gradually disappear. Tulips are impossible--they need a different climate entirely. The "dutch" iris do better and produce a semblance of that quintessential "springness' to the garden--though not until April.
I have discovered there is a more subtle bloom that brings a smile to my face without fail each February--never much later than Groundhog Day. Whether rain has fallen for weeks, or not at all. Walking past the waist-high manzanita shrub this week I saw that it was all bedecked suddenly. I never seem to notice the buds they are so small. But now the pearly clusters hang in masses under the California lilac tree which itself is beginning a slow turn from pale to electric blue.
These two are true compatriots, Arctostaphylos and Ceanothus, natives of the treeless hills and windblown coasts of the Pacific west. Nearly invisible most of the year, they are a surprising spectacle in the coastal winterscape. Even blind you'd know the plants by the scent of myrrh and sound of bees--where they come from at this time of year I can't figure. This morning a spate of bushtits came to perch and twitter in the bloom-laden branches.
The little manzanita plant already existed in the front yard when we moved in more than ten years ago. The ceanothus I planted a few years later. The two have thrived in their slope along the sidewalk with no special soil and just seasonal rainfall. They inspired me to plant their brethren--indigenous perennials of the Pacific coast ranges: wild buckwheat (eriogonum), flannel bush (fremontodendrun), more and varied manzanitas, and smaller, ground creeping ceanothus, as well as coffeeberry (rhamnus), and sage (Salvia leucophyla).
The birds and squirrels have contributed some plants of their own to this plot. A coast live oak is making its way under the canopy of the ceanothus. And several coyote brush appeared just last year as if the birds thought something was missing. This half natural garden looks somewhat out of place among the sidewalks and lawns and severely pruned trees of my neighborhood. Much of the year it looks rangy and unkempt and a curious person might wonder what gardener would plant such a ragtag lot. But today, and for a brief season, there can be no doubt of this gardener's taste--or of these natives' beauty.