Our Stylish Rain Barrel

Our town periodically offers rain barrels for sale, which is a great way to encourage water conservation. There's no sense in sending rainwater down the storm drains and then watering one's plants with potable water. Still, the barrels they sell are a blue color that could only in good conscience be hidden in a back yard. Even our trash cans aren't so hard on the eye.

But Chris and I were both longing for a rain barrel, so we did some research, and he found these: a stacking pair of plastic containers that are both more stable than a conventional barrel (and thus safer in a yard with a curious toddler), and that came in a color which matches our house. They were Chris's Christmas gift a year ago, and this past growing season, they made a surprisingly tasteful addition to our front flower bed.


Can you see the container, there in front of the house, on the right? My mother, whose aesthetic sensibilities surrounding homes will cause her to go on red alert in the presence of an over-full compost bucket waiting on the kitchen counter to be taken to the garden, walked right past these barrels and didn't see them.



You may notice that the barrels bulge a bit on the bottom right. That's our fault; we did not do a good enough job of levelling the ground where they sit. The barrels are tucked into the garage for the winter now, and in the spring we will rebuild the foundation.

Also our fault: when assembling the barrels, we neglected to follow the instructions and screwed the two containers together much too tight, ruining the connecting piece. But I got in touch with Arid Solutions Inc., the manufacturer, and I'll be damned if they weren't the most exceptionally helpful company I've ever worked with. They went above and beyond the call of duty in assisting us get the barrel fixed.


Here's what the barrels look like from the side. The right-hand hose is for watering the raspberries, but we ended up more often just filling the watering can at the spigot in the front. The short hose on the left is the overflow. When it rains and the barrel is full, the extra water pours into the birdbath, which is a far more tasteful and safe way to offer water to the wildlife than our previous orange bucket.

The water management in this spot needs more work, because during heavy rains the hose sometimes can't manage all the water, and we end up with a puddle in the garage. Again, something to fix in the spring.

I never did see any animals at the birdbath, but obviously the chipmunks like the location, because that's where all of my strawberry tops ended up. I have also seen snake-skins here, and wasps live in the sand between the rocks. Given how active the wildlife is in this little corner, I may have to overcome my tendency to kill potted plants, and include some here again next season.

Winter Garden at The Vintage Lady

Welcome. I am so glad that you stopped by. With snow on the ground in all fifty states you are just in time to take a break from the weather and join me. My friend Kathy, who owns the Vintage Lady in Old Town Tustin, CA, invited us to have tea with her and take a tour of her Winter Vintage Garden. We are having a break in our very rainy weather in Southern California today . . . . I don't know about you, but I am anxious for Spring and Spring garden planting and need to get outside. Kathy has a way of adding color to her garden even in the winter.

Let's get Bentley, my Studio Assistant, and go for a visit.

Bentley is ready to go - he loves going in the car and exploring Kathy's garden.

Old Town Tustin is like going back in time. The mail man picks up the Vintage Lady's mail in a basket left by the front door .

Let's take a peek inside before we go out in the back to her charming little garden filled with old Vintage finds.

Kathy does such a great job "bringing the outside inside" by decorating her shop with old vintage garden furniture.

Every room in her little cottage is painted a different color.

Let's go outside into the garden. Her vintage garden is charming year round - even in the Winter when very few flowers are in bloom.

Kathy adds color with charming signs and vintage figurines .

Love her red winter primroses.

The addition of adorable blue birds to a simple ivy plant is a great way to brighten winter garden plants.

A sweet little ferry with a wicker heart supporting the green plant is adorable and not a bloom in sight.

Looks like a few blooms are starting to peek out inspired by all of our rain.

Kathy designs her darling signs and has a local artist paint them. The red brings so much life and color to her winter garden.

The darling little blue birds are going to go home with me to live in my winter garden.

I love how bright and cheerful the red settee looks in the garden. Hmm - I may have to take this home with me.

Look how cute the old red wagon looks with hearty green plants .

Another sweet cherub brightens a green plant.

I hope you enjoyed your visit to the Vintage Lady. Kathy has a website where you can see more of her adorable shop and garden:

http://thevintagelady.com/

The Vintage Lady

434 El Camino Real

Old Town Tustin, CA 92780

714 731-0422

Thank you for stopping by. I love hearing from you and sincerely appreciate your visits, comments and those who follow my blog. Please let me know if you would like to see me paint something special or have any questions.

Have a lovely week. Blessings, Erin

Pussytoes

Today the car said it was 15 degrees outside in the sun, but the car usually thinks it is warmer out than it actually is.

Let this be a lesson to me to keep better records. I have fallen in love with a plant and I am not sure what plant it is. It might be Antennaria neglecta, which is native to Massachusetts; but then again it might be Antennaria parvifolia, which isn't native quite this far to the east. Both go by the name "pussytoes", and there might be other varieties out there.

I started these from seed the spring before last. The seed came from Garden in the Woods. I would check their catalog (and buy more seeds), but it seems they aren't selling seeds this winter. Gasp!



The plant in question is the silver-blue groundcover around the feet of those irises. (Please ignore the unswept walk and the alyssum growing in between the bricks.)



This plant may not precisely be native to Massachusetts, but it thrives in the cooked, sandy desert of my front yard, and has survived and flourished after one bitter winter, so I say close enough!



I am toying with the idea of digging up half of this bed in the spring, and splitting it up into individual rosettes, which I will grow all around the yard.

Ground Cherry

Last night I watched as a half inch of snow fell in ten minutes. It was like someone flipped the blizzard switch on and then off again.

I'm a bit relieved at having the ground put safely under its cover of snow. When I can see the dirt, I long to grow things. Such mid-winter lust is impractical and leads to dangerously impromptu seed and plant orders.

So, back to reminiscing about the last growing season.

This plant is manna from the gods. It's a type of ground cherry. Specifically "clammy ground cherry, a.k.a. Physalis heterophylla. Clammy ground cherry is in the nightshade family; i.e. tomatoes, potatoes, deadly nightshade. . . did I say deadly nightshade? Surprisingly, many of our standard garden veggies are related to deadly nightshade (which incidentally is a non-native weed around here). The plants in this family are all poisonous, with the edible parts of the garden varieties being the exception. (So folks, don't make a salad from tomato leaves.)

Clammy ground cherry is most closely related to tomatillo, and like tomatillo, the fruit is a berry that grows inside of a papery husk.

This is what the plant looked like in early October, when laden with fruit.

The plant itself grows no higher than knee-high. It has fuzzy potato-like leaves. It is unclear whether the patch in our yard was planted by a previous owner, or whether it volunteered.



Did I forget to mention that this plant is native? It is one of the few veggie-garden-worthy native plants I have yet encountered. *And* it is perennial! In that narrow place where ecosystem gardeners and permaculturists can agree, this plant is a winner.

For fear that I might be overblowing the awesomeness of this plant, let me point out the downsides. The biggie is that clammy ground cherry is a perennial. Once it it planted, it is hard to be rid of. It spreads far and wide, and no matter how much you yank it, it'll keep popping up, even dozens of feet away. In addition to that, it's not the sort of pretty plant that you would likely want among your showy flowers. I planted some in a front flower bed experimentally, and I'm sure I'll be yanking them for years to come. But I will also be transplanting some to my lawn-meadow, where their unkillability will be an asset.

Lastly, the fruit may be poisonous when unripe, so you should take care to eat them only when they are yellow.

But back to the good stuff! Here is my late-October harvest:

Did I mention that this plant is hard to kill? This harvest was picked after a summer of yanking up ground cherry plants. I had assumed that, like last year, the whole crop would be withered and rotten inside of their husks. I had given up on ground cherries and was instead trying to keep these plants from waging war with the asparagus and tomatoes. The above harvest came from a surprisingly small number of plants.

Oh, those fruits make my mouth water now! They have a flavor that is somewhere between tomato and pineapple. The outside of the yellow berry is a little sticky to the touch, which is where it gets the name "clammy". The fruits stayed fresh in their husks for weeks after I picked them, and indeed, the unripe ones seemed to ripen up over that time.

Rumor has it that these berries make an excellent pie. But I wouldn't know, because I ate them all.

A Passion for Growing

The ground was bare and frozen stiff this morning. I am worried about the strawberries, which I neglected to cover in straw for the winter. It was hard to get inspired to take care of them at the end of the season after the animals had eaten every last strawberry.

But now the snow is falling again. Hopefully it'll keep up enough to give the strawberries some protection.

But back to fond memories of the past growing season! Here's a little plant that really grew on me:



It's some sort of passionflower. I bought it, of all places, at the grocery store, on a silly whim. I hope I left the tag on it, because it looks like there are several varieties of passionflower, at least one of which are native. Hopefully it's Passiflora incarnata, purple passionflower.

So I was seduced into buying a $10 plant I knew nothing about. I then plunked it unceremoniously into a corner of the veggie garden and proceeded to neglect it through the heat of the summer. It failed to do anything of interest, so I ignored it. Then in September or October, I did a double-take at the six-foot vine that seemed to have shot up the fence overnight. That one branch of green continued to grow as other plants in the yard were going dormant. And the deep green color stayed until I was forced indoors by cold weather.



These plants have amazing, colorful flowers, and they are rumored to have edible fruit, but at this point I'm in love with it's hand-shaped leaves and elegant coiling tendrils.

I hope it won't be too massive for the fence to support.

"Earthships"

I have heard of homesteading in the modern sense, i.e. living off-the-grid. Now a friend has introduced me to the term "earthship", which as far as I can tell is one company's fancy word for "a passive solar home made of natural and recycled materials". I have a soft spot in my heart for hand-made houses, and handmade houses that are both aesthetically pleasing and particularly green just make me giddy.

The company that makes these particular seventies-sounding houses is Earthship Biotechture of Teos, New Mexico. They have a website full of nifty stuff, including earthships that are available for purchase, and (for the rest of us) available for short-term vacation rentals. They are also gearing up to do some relief work in Haiti. There is no quick internet way of making a donation, but they've got a snail-mail address. I think I'll be mailing them a check shortly. . .

Winter Pansey Garden

Welcome. I am so happy that you stopped by. We are having a break from all of the rain in Southern California. In spite of our unusually cold weather the sun is shining and the sky is blue - a perfect day for me to invite you to join me in my little garden to see what is blooming. I usually drink tea, however, when the weather is in the low 50's I like to make hot chocolate - I made a cup just for you.

Looks like Bentley found a pot of Inpatients that survived the frost.

I planted Winter pansies last month and they are blooming in spite of the cold - they loved all of the rain. We plant them in the Winter as they do not do well in the Summer heat in Southern California.

I love painting outside in " en Plein Air" (French word for in open air) and want to paint pansies in Terra cotta pots. Let's look for inspiration.

Finding inspiration . . . . .

Looks like Bentley, my helpful studio assistant, found some terra cotta pots.

Here . . . . .

There . . . .

Everywhere . . . . . .

I ended up painting on a very small canvas since it was getting cold and the clouds started blowing in off the ocean. Looks like we are in for more welcome rain. Everyone hopes it will help end our bad drought. I hope those of you who are in really cold climates or snowed in enjoyed getting out with me enjoying the pansies.

Thank you for visiting. I love hearing from you and sincerely appreciate everyone who visits me, leaves me a comment and follows my blog. Please leave me a comment if you would like to see me paint something special or have any questions.

Have a lovely week. Blessings, Erin