June Gardening Bug

It's the June gardening bug, and I've got it bad.

Since my return from Seattle less than a week ago I've been to the garden center four times and I've never come out empty handed. In fact, I've always come out carrying a lot of plants.

My latest trip was this morning and my excuse for going there at 8:30 am was that there was a sale and I needed a new pruner. Right. I walked 16 blocks to get there and came home by bus and on foot carrying a box full of plants and dangling a small bag with the pruners.

Annuals, perennials, natives and non-natives. You name it, I got it. Well, that's obviously a huge exaggeration, but that's how it feels. I also have to keep buying bags of something called Organic Bay Area Forest Mulch Plus, which I love, because I live in one of the foggier parts of San Francisco and the "soil" is sand. I do, however, feel lucky to have any dirt at all in which to garden. It's not loam, but it will do. Until I can move to Seattle anyway.

Seattle and my brother's and his girlfriend's garden there, with the beautiful peonies I went on about in my last post, are what got me gardening crazed. Before going there for vacation I was a bit despondent about my foggy, sandy backyard. By the time I got back I was plant-obsessed. From the photos below, taken in their garden, you can see why I went a little crazy.