Gardening | Gardens For Goldens

The Gardener’s Shadow

July 12, 2020 by Ogee

We are sizzling this week. I have been giving the garden an extra evening drink when possible, and I am lucky to have a garden buddy to watch over things when I cannot be there. Rob is our primary dog photographer at the rescue, the author of Rob & Dog, and a recognized dog whisperer. He reintroduced me to photography years ago when I began working in the garden. I studied photography in art school but adopted the snobby bias […]

Categories: Gardening, Homeward Bound Memorial Garden, Nature Photography • Tags: Homeward Bound Golden Retriever Memorial Garden

Nature Will Improvise

October 20, 2019 by Ogee

We need new descriptors for gardening in our valley now. Thanks to climate change, “full sun” should be relabeled “scorch-resistant.” Beyond “drought tolerant” should be a new category: “desert-like.” Everything I thought I knew about the garden has changed. “Despite the gardener’s best intentions, Nature will improvise.” ~Michael P. Garofalo Nature will improvise. But our gardens, as we have known them may be forever altered. Plants that once sought daylong sun now shrink from the blazing afternoon heat and require […]

Categories: Gardening, Homeward Bound Memorial Garden, Nature, Nature Photography • Tags: Adapting, gardening, Gardening Climate Change

Absence

June 16, 2019 by Ogee

Often, the absence of something is felt as tangibly as its presence. Anyone who has ever lost a loved one—two-legged or four—knows this. The silence when returning home or the space in a room previously occupied by their being feels loud and hollow. The empty void as weighty as their once physical presence—leaving regret for ever having taken our time with them for granted. This spring, the garden was filled with swallowtails, painted ladies and cabbage butterflies. Now, there are […]

Categories: Gardening, Homeward Bound Memorial Garden, Nature, Nature Photography • Tags: butterfly disappearance, Climate Change, hummingbird disapperance, nature change

Taking the Hill

June 9, 2019 by Ogee

Originally, it was a mountain of tangled blackberries – home to snakes, thorns and the occasional bunny. The brambles were replaced with raised blueberry beds – that fried in the summer heat and invited Bermuda grass, morning glory weeds and few blueberries. Last fall, the bed frames were demolished to begin anew. The vision was an extension of the adjacent California-themed garden. The challenge: that bed sits near the top of the garden. When we get big winter rains, the […]

Categories: Gardening, Homeward Bound Golden Retriever Rescue, Homeward Bound Memorial Garden • Tags: California Native Plants in Garden, Mediterranean plants, Senior Dog Rescue

A Garden Is Not a Place

May 12, 2019 by Ogee

“A garden is not a place: it is a passage, a passion. We don’t know where we’re going; to pass through is enough; to pass through is to remain.” ~ Octavio Paz I am never alone in the garden. When all have left and I have it to myself, I am still surrounded by the memories of all that remain.

Categories: Gardening, Homeward Bound Memorial Garden • Tags: Clematis, gardening, Homeward Bound Memorial Garden, Jupiter's Beard, Love in a Mist, Octavio Paz

Fall Garden Project Number One

October 7, 2018 by Ogee

No, really, there are no remains in the Memorial Garden…although you might suspect otherwise if you saw this. While we were away, fall signaled its arrival. Just hints so far, but the creatures know. And with cooler days come a mountain of projects. First on the list: a complete demolition and re-do of the raised bed area of the garden. Once, these housed a mountain of overgrown and deadly blackberry brambles. They spread their spikes throughout the garden, so they […]

Categories: Gardening, Homeward Bound Memorial Garden, Nature • Tags: Fall Garden Project, gardening, Homeward Bound Memorial Garden Sacramento, new garden bed

The Lost World

June 10, 2018 by Ogee

The failing 40-year-old fence had to be taken down before it fell down. Shared with our 92-year-old neighbor of 20 years, it took some convincing, first – and then it took some major clearing. While our side was relatively clear of vegetation, her side had become a jungle of tangled, massive ivy that had swallowed what was once one of the most treasured and admired gardens in the neighborhood. I’m now sure exactly when her husband passed; I knew that […]

Categories: Gardening, Nature • Tags: #gardening, Lost Garden

To My Wayward Gardeners

May 8, 2018 by Ogee

The roses and I thank you for your pruning assistance last winter… they are repaying the effort in their magnificence. Please feel free to stop by to help deadhead them soon. Miss you! 🙂

Categories: Gardening, Homeward Bound Memorial Garden, Nature Photography • Tags: Garden Photography, Homeward Bound Memorial Garden Sacramento, Rose Garden, Roses First Bloom

Spring Tuning

March 25, 2018 by Ogee

There is a magical moment, just before the orchestra begins, when the oboe gives a note and the instruments are tuned in a chaotic staccato of strings, horns and reeds. A short, breathless pause follows as the conductor raises the wand – before a symphony explodes in synchronized waves of sound. The gardener knows this as early spring. A tulip appears, then an iris, an apple blossom, and tiny Clematis buds unwind – as if the whole garden is standing […]

Categories: Gardening, Homeward Bound Memorial Garden, Nature, Nature Photography • Tags: #gardening, Bronte Spring Quote, Early Spring Garden, Iris, Nature Photography, Tulips