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 This comfrey cultivar is fortunately less robust than the common green version, which is both large and difficult to dig up. But the color !  These are hard to find locally, and I finally scored a couple at Digging Dog , where it is still offered occasionally-get it when you can as they often sell out. I've seen these get much larger in garden that benefit from summer rains-mine have to live on the stingy irrigation allotment they receive in my summer-dry climate.  Visit   The Danger Garden to see more faves of the week..

 April is colorful month in my garden, thanks to the roses ..and I will always keep a few of them around , though they have been edited here in favor of spaces for other stuff. Always need other stuff. Brass Band, an excellent floribunda.. and excellent for me means no blackspot. Jean Giono.. Madame Issac Perrier...I finally figured out the only way to photograph this rose and get an image anywhere close to it's actual color is to avoid direct sun at all costs.This looks somewhat like the real thing. Mme Isaac is a Bourbon rose, introduced in 1881. Blackspot can be an issue here, but I don't care;I happily strip off  Mme Isaacs spotty foliage and wait for a clean set to grow. Gruss an Achen. This is the David Austin rose 'Prospero'. Impervious to everything..a cast iron rose. I don't gow Symphytum 'Axminster Gold' for it's flowers, but here they are , doing thier best to upstage the foliage--an exercise in futility I fea...

  A couple weeks back I performed my annual trek to the wilds of  San Mateo to attend the San Francisco Garden Show. Since the show moved it's venue from the spacious Cow Palace in South San Francisco several years ago to the long-in-the-tooth San Mateo Event Center, I have come back from the show each year faintly dissatisfied ..see my post from last year here. .last year the line up of speakers was particularly disturbing , featuring a whole bunch people I had never heard of . Not to imply that I am a competent speaker critic, but I know what I like, and TV people just don't do it for me.   In the ensuing year, the show has changed ownership , and we were promised a re energized event.  In spite of some freshman year issues (long lines at ticket sales, late arriving programs and poorly marked speaker venues)  I feel optimistic that the show is on the right path. The display gardens were segregated behind black curtains which gave them an air of importa...

 There is a lot of spring going on here in my garden at the present, and some rain at last. The rain accommodatingly watered in the new haul from the SF Garden show (a post on that is upcoming) and the numerous plants that were moved last weekend . This week, Rosa banksia lutea is peaking , and gets the nod as my favorite. This is a plant I really should not have, as it gets gargantuan and requires draconian cut backs twice a year to keep it from swallowing the house and anything else in it's path.    A couple of years ago I considered having it removed, but it has over the years become a bird habitat ..you can see how the thatch and sheltering branches mimic a thicket of sorts. The bird feeder is about 20 feet away off to the right .  In winter Lady Banks is bare and lets the western sun into the house, in summer her foliage provides shade. The sweet yellow flowers are fleeting but abundant , drooping over the patio.  Have a look-see over at Lor...

 Tuecrium crispum has made the cut this week. This plant is easily overlooked , nothing flashy at all. Grows close to the ground and just does it's job asking very little in return. It's job here is to live under a Crepe Myrtle on the hell strip and provide some sort of greenery in dry shade. This week I was weeding said hell strip, which involved sitting on the ground right there where Mr T. Crispum lives. Look how cute his foliage is !  Summer flowers on this Teucrium are white, and really pretty insignificant. It sailed through the 20 degree mania we had last winter , sailed through both summer and winter drought, and spreads politely to about a 2x2 carpet . Swing on over to the Danger Garden to check out more faves !

I enjoy March in  my garden; it seems like something new happens almost every day.Business trips, rain, and a collapsed fence have kept me so occupied in the last few weeks , I think this mornings bloom day camera stroll was the first opportunity I had in a while to slow down and 'see' what the garden was showing me. The long awaited rain followed by warm temperatures nearing 70 was just what those resting plants needed to wake up .Unfortunately the weeds woke up too. This tulip is 'Big Smile' , and unlike most of it's kinfolk, this is the third year it has returned for me , with just as much size and vigor as the first.  This ornamental Oxalis continues to tough it out in a bad location beneath a birch tree that likes to suck up all available water. Silene dioica My beloved Erysimum ..variegated with yellow blooms. Brunnera 'Jack Frost' The green section !    Euphorbias in bloom everywhere..this one is 'Blackbird...

 Winter has not been kind in many quarters of blog-dom, and though my climate is relatively mild , the persistant cold temperatures earlier in the season along with drought and a frenzy of renovation related shovel-pruning in fall has left me with  a pretty barren garden.  The Hellebores are about all I have going this month, and they started late at that . I'm enjoying them even more than usual now that they have become the solitary attraction here.  Thanks as always to Carol at May Dreams for her hostess-hood of this monthly event for garden bloggers world wide...