Garden Update: Sunday morning walk with Millie

My favorite time to walk my garden in Ojai, is the first thing in the morning...usually around 6:30-7:00 with Millie, my little lab and a cup of coffee. 

I actually should call it my cup of cream with a little splash of coffee.....so bad! 

Millie likes to walk/sniff  the property to let every creature know... she owns the place.  

I think it  works, if you know what I mean

We planted all of the beds along the front drive with things that would spread and spill out over the  gravel and soften the edges of the curves

We are at peak summer bloom in the perennial beds and each little niche and nook has brought some interesting things.  

This garden is just a year old yet it looks like it has been here much longer than that. Just what we were striving for.  I think having these 100 year old oaks helps too.

It is a little bit on the messy side with less structure than most gardens.

Many of the plants we chose are traditional  coastal California plants, used over and over...we just put them together in a very non-traditional way.  

Roses with cacti and succulents.  

Spiky  with soft and fluffy, light with dark .... and so on..

This is florabunda rose:  Tuscan Sun.  We used lots of roses in this yard and they pop up here and there with a shot of color.

Pink, orange and blues are the palette in this garden and the plants are really showing their stuff.

We have so many hummingbirds right now,  they could care less about the feeder we have on the front porch.

Along the ranch fencing we used blue Agapantha and white Ice Berg roses with yellow Daylillies

The bed above is the home to a huge Sycamore which is a protected tree species, here in Ojai, along with the coastal Oaks

I really like this little  little water feature adjacent to the front rock wall.  

I put some ice bergs around it  too and may add a trailing "something"...can't decide  yet... to soften the edges

Every one love this swing on the big oak in the front yard, right next to the orange orchard

Millie decides how much energy she will spend on each morning walk and as the temperature gets higher she has less interest  to be out in the yard with me, unless we get out the  frisbee!

I actually like these simple wine barrels in this yard and they don't really require too much water once planted with drought tolerant perennials, some sand and cactus mix.

Here is an example of using purple with orange

Spiky with soft  

More dark with light, lime, purple and orange

It was about 105 degrees up here this week end...not fun for too much gardening but it won't last...

My neighbor across the road, Mary, just had her 99th Birthday.  WOW
Things seem to live along time here....even people!

Here's to the start of a great week
~kelley~

A Girl with a dog in a Truck

One of the more interesting things that has happened to me since we purchased this little house in Ojai is that I spend a large amount of time by myself.  My husbands office is about two hours away and he comes up at the end of the week and leaves again on Sunday night to spend his week in Newport.

 My son is finishing up his last semester of college and he's not around much either. So... I have been up here alone for about two months and its been really different... but much to my surprise,  really fun.

First off,  I have been busy with the landscape project so I spend most of my days working, shovel in hand.  It also difficult to meet people because the homes are really spread out with large amounts of acreage.  I love vintage gardening tools, by the way.

I say hello and chat with neighbors when they walk their dogs and I love the people at Rains,  the local housewares store.  The farmers at the farmers market on Sundays are really nice as are the guys at ACE hardware;  who say every time I go in there "you're not from around here, are you". Essentially no one knows me.  I'm just a girl with a dog in a truck.

Here's where the truck comes in:  it's not a simple little truck.

It's a big, jacked up,  shiny black, flared out,  double muffler, lifted, stud muffin, country music song singing, Budwiser drinking, Prius eating, Ford F 150, special No Fear Edition from 2003.

 And  I love this truck.

 I have struck up more conversations with random people in parking lots  because of this truck.  They also like to pet my dog Millie who happens to also like the truck,  plus everyone loves a tail wagging lab.

I wanted a truck so bad when I was in my 20's, going to college and was working at a ski area in Utah.  Instead I was driving a Volkswagen beetle.  It got me around but I secretly wished for a big ol' redneck sort of a truck.  So here I am some 30 years later and I finally have my truck.

The truck was actually my son's during high school  but we got practical and put him in something that didn't guzzle so much gas.   We tried to sell the truck but nobody seemed to want a gas guzzler at the time as gas was up around $4.50 a gallon.  Then...we bought this little ranch house and low and behold we had the perfect spot for the truck.

So what is the point of this post exactly ?  Nothing very earth shattering but sometimes life is an amazing, perplexing, crazy journey. And when you least expect it, small interesting things come full circle and land in your lap.

 Plop

And there you are,  with the sentence ended, the t's crossed and the i's dotted as if it was ment to be.

Quite amazing I think and ya gotta love a great Truck

best~*~kelley

Is it the weekend yet?

Millie is here to say "its almost saturday....and the 4th of July, have a ball!...what do you mean I need a bath?"