Yes yes I will still take the Bishops! I have just noticed that last year's dahlia (a brilliant single red who's name I can't remember) has emerged from near the compost bin with fat reddish stalks. I accidentally speared its companions earlier with my compost fork. But, as Rich pointed out, the speared tubers weren't the actual sprouting part of the dahlia. Still, I haven't trimmed and replanted the poor things.
I haven't come up with a theme for this year's annuals garden. Last year it was silver and white plants. I put in a selection of grey-leaved things and several different types of thistle. Some bloomed and others appear to be biennials. One thistle turned an amazing metallic blue. Eryngium planum "blue caps."
This year the annual patch has a collection of last year's verbascums (my new obsession) only some of which bloomed. They've bulked up this spring and I anticipate a bloom fest later in the summer.
So...the tree guy came. It turns out the main issue was the City of Oakland's ordinance that does not allow a tree within 10 feet of a chimney. So the plum tree went. Actually, Gray (that's the tree guy) took pity on me and left one of the minor trunks that leans away from the chimney. So there will still be a branch of plum blossoms out my window next spring. The hideous Eugenias, however, remain. They now have bare trunks that shoot up above the roof where the remaining branches rain down fat purple fruit.
A few months ago I wrote about my budding obsession with dahlias. Now this obsession is taking root -- it's dahlia planting time.
So, I've dug out two large patches of my lawn.
I've made room between roses.
My son has expanded his garden plot with his very own hand-selected dahlias (no lesser peers than Creekside Volcano, Jessica, and Camano Pet).
Even my 3 year old daughter Lily planted a couple of dahlias this morning -- next to her oriental lilies, of course.
Once everything is in the ground, we'll be up to about 15 dahlias scattered around the property.
Plus I still have sprouts in their little plastic trays on the doorstep, tubers warming in potting soil filled milk cartons in the window sill, and babies under grow lamps in Martha's office.
And I still don't have room for all those Bishops. Briggs, I'm counting on you to take a few.
Trees are difficult. You either have them and don't want them or you want them and can't grow them, or you have them, want them, and the tree guy mutilates them. My parents had a tree guy a few years ago who turned their beautiful spreading albizia (silk tree or mimosa) into a quadraplegic lump. He cut off all the branches to within a foot of the massive trunk. Spindly new branches finally emerged from the top but the tree was never the same. We had a tree guy a few years ago who was also compelled to trim my albizia--not so big or beautiful as the one in my parent's garden but a cherished giver of summer shade to our west-facing house. He cut out the interior branches but left the big dead branch that had succumbed to that winter's hard frost.
Now there's another tree guy coming this Saturday to take out the 40-foot eugenias (technically a shrub) that have colonized the side of the house. They grow like Jack's beanstalk, straight up, and rain big purple berries down on roof and ground. The trunk-size branches are prone to splitting in half and ripping down the side of the tree. The tree guy was called to take them out. But he also eyed my other arborial specimens as he toured the yard: squirrel-planted oak seedlings that are attempting an oak woodland comeback (the probable native landscape of the site before homo suburbanus moved in); the 40-foot scarlet oak that sprang phoenix-like from beneath a half-buried paver a few years ago and is now the grande dame of the garden; a couple of "wild" plum trees that are a few of the prolific offspring from the neighbor's "gone native" backyard; and a cute little Japanese maple, also a gift from the back-fence neighbor's garden, that has grown up through the middle of the ancient lemon tree.
The trees I planted haven't been nearly so successful. Wind, birds, squirrels turn out to be much better propagators than the deluded gardener. I tried a Pacific dogwood, notoriously difficult to grow and, sure enough, it didn't. The former residents planted a Safeway avocado pit and it grew into a fruitless 20-foot tree, flourished for a few years then turned black and died. My Magnolia seiboldii still struggles and is only 4-feet high after 10 years. A Styrax odoratissima (Chinese snowbell), though lovely in bloom, looks the same as the day saw it in the nursery, in a 2-gallon pot except maybe it's now smaller.
The tree guy saw all these things. He was kind. Suggested pruning some lower branches off the massive scarlet oak (still hanging on to its brown leaves in March) and removing the renegade plums. I demurred. "But the oak is so beautiful in the summer," I pleaded. "And the plum trees have such pretty blossoms." He told me the city could make me cut all my trees down if they wanted. "The ordinance says all trees have to be 10 feet away from buildings," he warned. That would leave the house sitting in the middle of a desert, I thought. Maybe that's why my neighbors have only stunted shrubbery whacked into submission in their front yards. Our place appears as a sudden oasis in the treeless plain of our street. "Let's just take out the eugenias and I'll think about the other stuff" I said, getting ready to mourn the probable and eventual demise of the treelings. That ancient and persecuted race.