Pulled off the road a bit south of Paso Robles, into the town of San Miguel. Not a prosperous place, dusty streets and a sad downtown,but the mission !
Having helped a middle-schooler make a replica CA mission out of foam board makes all the features in your photos vividly alive to me. Oh, the miniature bells, the tiny arcaded cloisters! Seriously, what a haunting place!
I admit I love a well done cramscape and the Berk-Kessler garden in Seattle is a great addition to my Cramscape Hall of Fame. In case you are wondering about previous entries to the CHOF , well there aren't any because I have only recently (i.e. yesterday) invented it. I fancy myself to be a cramscaper but have come to the realization in the last year that I am a Cramscape Imposter particularly when it comes to the edges of my garden. The Berk Kessler garden exposed my tepid attempts at packing the plants in. It wasn't long after returning from Puget Sound Fling that I started acquiring, dividing, and moving plants to correct my cramscape failures. Lets take a look at what inspired me in this abundant PNW garden. I've visited a fair number of gardens public and private in the US. It took me many years to realize that some plants -though perfectly cold hardy-just don't care for my summers here in Northern California wine country. We can grow Cabernet all day but many...
Garden Fling 2024 Puget Sound has wrapped up and after spending a few days on post trip garden clean up and watering I have started to work though the hundreds of photos I took visiting the lineup of splendid gardens into which we were welcomed. My posts here on the blog will appear in no particular order and reflect no hierarchy of preference. Day two of the Fling began with a visit to Rhododendron Species Botanical Garden in Federal Way Washington. This garden was founded in 1974 on 27 acres of property donated to the RSF by Weyerhauser Company. Currently the garden comprises 22 acres in a classic PNW forested woodland and boasts the largest collection of Rhododendron species worldwide. The Rhodies flowering is long past-in my area of Northern California it's an April/May event depending on the location and proximity to the coast and the Redwood forests. But if you are in the right climate, up in the PNW the foliage gifts us another season. I can't ...
May is one of my favorite months in the garden in spite of the fact that watering tasks typically begin at some point in the month. Sometimes we get lucky and are gifted with some measurable precipitation but the paltry 1/10th of an inch so far did not prove helpful. Hose dragging has commenced . The spring bulbs are all done for the year but the spring annuals are still pumping out blooms -I've pulled about half of the pansies up to make room for all the summer color I started from seed. By far the most impactful flowers of the last several weeks have been the Foxglove. Mostly in the Camelot series from Johnnys Seeds and started indoors in late September and planted out in late November. I started a total of 24 and shoehorned them in among the dozen or so I planted last spring. There are 2 more clumps besides the two I've shown here. I haven't grown Digitalis in at least a decade and this is the first time I've ever grown them from seed . Ach...
Having helped a middle-schooler make a replica CA mission out of foam board makes all the features in your photos vividly alive to me. Oh, the miniature bells, the tiny arcaded cloisters! Seriously, what a haunting place!
ReplyDeleteYou have to hand it to those 18th century Spaniards, they knew how to architect achingly beautiful buildings. Beautiful photos.
ReplyDeleteI love road trip posts!
My late uncle Ronald used to provide old railroad bells to Mexican missions. A fond reminder of a special guy. Thanks KS!
ReplyDeleteGreat post. I recently did one on Carmel Mission. It is fun to find someone who likes some of the same things as I do :)
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