GardenBook

 Travel has always been a season marker for me -the late winter business trip to Florida, my annual spring road trip, usually to Socal or the Central Coast,  Garden Bloggers Fling in summer and every couple of years a horticulture related trip to 'somewhere' with my east coast garden peeps.Add in an August business trip to Chicago, September business trip to Washington and a fall road trip to wrap up the year. Some years more business trips , some years more personal trips. In 2020 I took one brief August road trip to the coast during what turned out to be a temporary post surge loosening of Covid restrictions. It's pretty easy to avoid other humans on the Mendocino coast.  Other than that the year was one long exercise in life as a homebody -which was not necessarily a bad thing. I didn't miss the business travel at all-after 30+ years I don't care if I ever take another business trip. I missed my personal travel, but I was able to make some home repairs with the $...

 August is an iffy month in my garden. There has been no rain for months, summer color is starting to wane and it can be hot. We have had an extra dose of triple digit days this year and I am not a fan. My trip to the coast at the beginning of the month was a most welcome journey into cool weather. At Mendocino Coast Botanical gardens the borders are not in the least weary- the pacific is just down the path , and it never gets hot-not weatherwise. The heat radiating  from the exhuberant high summer perennial beds was of the most agreeable sort. Lest you think I went a bit mad with the saturation and vibrance  sliders in Lightroom, other than toning down some highlights and a bit of cropping, these images are barely edited.  The combination in this bed of Helenium, Teucrium 'Purple Tails', Verbena bonariensis, and  Rudbeckia with a backdrop of Cotinus 'Grace' was anything but subtle. This Persicaria lives in the bed on the backside of the ...

 August Bloomday did not come to fruition for me-3 days in a row of temperatures north of 105 even crisped up the zonal Geraniums. A rude awakening after spending a few days at a quiet inn on the north coast where temps stayed in the pleasant mid-60's . Now that it's not 105 anymore I could actually go outside and trim up the torched plants however now we have the smoke, the ash, the grey and gold horizons all around. Fires are in my county and all counties adjacent so the breeze that blows the smoke away from one direction  blows it in from another.   My Dahlias did not fare well in the c-note temps. And prior to the the heat wave they have been beset with leaf miners that have made a hot mess of their foliage. I have been spending a fair amount of time researching options for control for next year-at this point in the summer the damage is done and I just have to live with the unsightly result. One bit of advice was to pick off and destroy any leaves as soon as they s...

When I received notification that one of my preferred inns on the coast was opening I jumped on it right away. This lodging consists of several stand-alone cottages with no indoor common area, and check in and out were contact free. Funny to think that 6 months ago the concept of contact-free anything was  was unfamiliar. I felt comfortable with the protocols in place and booked a three night stay. The Innkeeper called me two days in advance to ask what my needs would be i.e coffee (hell yes) extra blankets, hair dryer etc. Cottages are left fallow for a day after each guest departure. Guests are provided with a mask, hand sanitizer and disinfecting spray cleaner if you wish to double clean what has already been addressed by the housekeeping staff. Happily the crappy Mr Coffee brewer was replaced with a French Press which was a coffee experience I hadn't had in many years. I might rethink my brewing equipment at home.  Along with the lodging, Mendocino Coast Botanical Garden...