G is For Gazania

Gazanias are simple but lovely flowers. Because they are so common here in California, it's easy to not notice the flowers much during the seasons when taller and more spectacular flowers are in bloom. In winter, though, they shine, and bring bright color to gloomy landscapes. That's why I've chosen it over other flowers to represent the letter "G" in this AtoZchallenge

As you see in the photo above, the bright color of the gazania attracts spiders and insects. In the photo below you see a visiting butterfly. 

There are two types of gazanias -- clumping and trailing. They will both cover the ground and they are about the same height. They both spread, but the trailing spread more quickly with their long running stems. Here's a photo where you can see some of my clumping gazanias growing under a goldenrain tree in my side yard. They are gradually spreading, but still have some space to fill. I'm hoping to get the weeds out and plant some root divisions soon. It's April, and the weeds have sprung up with the recent rains. 

Gazanias are used most often as groundcover and border plants. They are also used as fillers around new perennial shrubs until the shrubs grow enough to be attractions on their own. In the photo below, the gazanias are acting as groundcover in the space beside my driveway up to the boundary of my neighbor's yard. The kale you see on the edge spouted on its own, probably planted by the wind from the mother plant last year. 

In the photo above, you will notice that the flowers are not open. That's because today is cloudy. Gazanias only open in the sun. They close at night and when it is overcast. 

Below you see gazanias filling the space between the edge of the flower bed, surrounding the carnations, and extending almost to the rosemary in the center back. Without the gazanias, which I do need to divide now,  their space would be taken by the weeds like the ones now surrounding the irises. I hope I have time to get at those weeds soon. 

Gazanias don't need much care. They thrive in full sun and can tolerate poor soil. They don't need much water so we can consider them drought-resistant plants. What they can't handle is hard frost. One year almost all my gazanias died when we had an abnormally cold winter and the temperature got down to 12 F. This next photo shows what happened that year. The tops may die back, but most roots survive and revive the plants in warmer weather. 

If it doesn't get that cold in winter, the gazanias just bring a bit of sunshine to mostly dormant flower beds. 

Most of my gazanias have the  coloring of the ones below. Gazanias are available in many colors. I like the sunny ones. 

Sometimes gazanias spread in ways only nature understands. I have told my gardener to just mow around this one.  I just may take out the lawn and replace it with gazanias that don't need mowing or much water. I don't water the lawn anymore anyway now that brown lawns are fashionable during the drought. I will replace it with drought-resistant plants and bark chips as soon as I have the time and money. 

Are you growing gazanias yet? If not, why not pick up some seeds and get them in the ground so they can brighten your garden? Here are some of the available colors. 

 Outsidepride Gazania Red Shades - 100 seeds Outsidepride Gazania Garden Leader Striped Mix - 100 seeds Outsidepride Gazania Kiss Orange - 100 seeds

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This is my seventh post for the 2016 AtoZchallenge, a Blogging Challenge for the month of April, 2016. My theme is plants, since this is a gardening blog.  Here are links to the other posts if you missed them.

A is for Apple Blossoms
B is for Bottlebrush
C is for Carnations
D is for Daisy

E is for Elderberry
F is for Flowers

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• What Blooms in November?

F is for Flowers

Borage , catmint, calendula, and
 chocolate cosmos in bloom, © B. Radisavljevic

As I pondered what kind of flower or other plant started with the letter "F" for the AtoZchallenge, I couldn't think one. I could not find any plants that started with "f" for which I had photos. It suddenly dawned on me that "flowers" itself would work. I have hundreds of flower photos to choose from, so F is for Flowers. 

I'll start in my own garden. The photo above was taken in my front flowerbed. The small purple flowers at the top left are borage flowers from a plant that reseeded. The smaller white flower spikes are from a catmint plant which was overshadowed by the borage. I love to throw the borage flowers and the petals of the calendula flower (left, yellow) into my salads to add color. I can make tea with catmint, and the neighbor's cat sometimes comes over to steal a bit. You can barely see the chocolate cosmos, above the calendula next to a borage leaf. For some reason, the chocolate cosmos did not last past its first year. Maybe I only thought it was perennial.

Logan looking at hornworm on borage plant in front of catmint, borage flowers, catmint,
 calendula, and chocolate cosmos in bloom, © B. Radisavljevic

Above you see Logan watching a hornworm on the borage behind the catmint. Later I gave him a leaf, and he became quite intoxicated. You can see the photos of that in a related link at the end of the post. The yellow flowers that look like buttons are santolina. I planted that in a pot from a root division from a mother plant in Templeton. It did really well in this pot until it somehow got too much water. That killed it. The mother santolina plant gets almost no water and lives on. 

By now you have figured out I use a lot of herbs in my flowerbeds. I love them. I got most of my herbs from the now out-of-business Fat Cat Farm and the Sycamore Herb Farm which preceded it. I really miss having them right down the street. I then propagated those perennial herbs with cuttings or root divisions, and some just reseeded year after year. The flowers add color in their season and provide forage for the bees I like to befriend. They love my rosemary and black sage. So do the butterflies.

Bee Foraging on Rosemary, © B. Radisavljevic

Bee Foraging on Black Sage, © B. Radisavljevic

Butterfly on Black Sage, © B. Radisavljevic

Two other flowers that butterflies like are scabiosa (pincushion flower) and gazanias.

Butterfly on Gazanias,  © B. Radisavljevic

Swallowtail Butterfly on Scabiosa,  © B. Radisavljevic

One of my favorite flowers is this yellow rose. My mom used to live in this house, and she had a landscaper plant the rose garden in the back yard. I enjoy the roses, and although they are beautiful, I get more satisfaction from flowers I plant myself and watch grow.

Yellow Rose from my Garden,  © B. Radisavljevic

Below are two plants I've come to love -- Lamb's Ears and Sweet William. I have no idea how the Sweet William got here. One day I discovered it in my flower bed by the garage and I liked it. It took quite a while for me to identify it. It dies down every year in winter and pops up again in spring. It's trying to grow through the spreading Lamb's Ears, which I'm in the process of thinning. The Lamb's Ears have a tendency to spread. It all came from one root division from a plant in Templeton and it is now trying to take over every flower bed I have. I love it, but it needs boundaries. As you can see, it's just starting to bloom this year. 

Lamb's Ears and Sweet Williams Growing Together,  © B. Radisavljevic

In 2013 I planted a lot of daffodil bulbs. Some were very close to the black sage which is now trying to make a canopy over them. Black sage really needs to be pruned every year if you don't want it to grow to six feet wide. I will probably have to move any of the daffodils near it before next season. This daffodil is peeking out from the black sage. 

Daffodil Emerging from under Black Sage,  © B. Radisavljevic

The rest of the flowers are from my neighborhood or in public places. Just below is lantana that was growing in a planter in front of the Park Cinemas in downtown Paso Robles. I love lantana, but haven't had good luck growing it. I'd never seen its berries before. Birds eat lantana berries, but they can be toxic to people and pets.

Lantana Flowers and Berries,  © B. Radisavljevic

I love my neighbor's garden. She grows many plants I love. She and I both like to mix them up. Here she has irises, roses, Jupiter's beard, California poppies, and a red sage. I featured much more of her garden in "Earth Laughs In Flowers." 

My Neighbor's Garden,  © B. Radisavljevic

This is my sixth post for the 2016 AtoZchallenge, a Blogging Challenge for the month of April, 2016. My theme is plants, since this is a gardening blog.  Here are links to the other posts if you missed them.

A is for Apple Blossoms
B is for Bottlebrush
C is for Carnations
D is for Daisy
E is for Elderberry

You can buy these greeting cards made from photos of the flowers in my garden by clicking the images below. You can see my blank floral card collection here. 

 Thinking of You Today Thinking of You Delicate Poppy Friendship

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Elderberry: A Useful California Native Tree

Elderberry is a California Native

Elderberry is often seen growing wherever it has found ideal conditions to sprout. That's how I got this tree. I didn't plant it. I just noticed it one day and decided to find out what it was.

Elderberry and Milk Thistle, © B. Radisavljevic

Once it takes up residence on your property, it grows quickly. You could even use the old expression "grows like a weed" because it applies to the elderberry. It may also be growing right next to your other weeds, as the photo above shows.

Elderberry Grows all over San Luis Obispo County

Elderberry in Bloom and Forming Fruit, © B. Radisavljevic

Many do consider it a weed. I never planted mine. I just allowed it to grow in peace. It would not surprise me to learn that birds plant most of our elderberry trees. They love elderberries, and I'll leave the rest to your imagination. Although the gardening books indicate the elderberry tree thrives in moist soil in full sun, mine has only the full sun. I have never watered it and we don't get much rain.

 My property came with a number of fruit trees already growing in a small home orchard. I think I had been there a few years when I was walking through the orchard and discovered a shrub I had never noticed before. It was covered with light yellow star-shaped flowers. By the time I had been able to identify it, it had turned into a tree. Once I knew what it was, I started noticing elderberry trees along the sides of roads, in vacant places, at Larry Moore Park, and even beside a parking structure in San Luis Obispo. (See photo below.) I was surprised to learn the elderberry is a relative of the honeysuckle.

Elderberry Tree Beside Parking Structure in San Luis Obispo, © B. Radisavljevic

Blue Elderberries Are Edible and Are Sometimes Used Medicinally

Once I discovered I had elderberries, I remembered hearing on the Organic Gardening email list I once subscribed to that members had used used the berries to make elderberry wine and the flowers to make elderberry tea. I've seen recipes for elderberry pie, elderberry jam, and more. Members also shared their medicinal uses for elderberry. At that time, I still didn't know I had an elderberry tree. Once I  found out, I still decided to leave the berries for the birds unless the time came when I really needed to eat the berries, since most recipes use a lot of sugar to sweeten them and I'm supposed to refrain from sugar. Here is a closer look at the berries in various stages of ripeness.

Elderberry Tree with Fruit in Various stages of Ripeness, © B. Radisavljevic

If you aren't growing any elderberries, but would like to use them for food, you can often find them in public places, ready to harvest. Just be sure you have properly identified them.  You can find help with this in my favorite go-to book for herbs and their uses, Rodale's Illustrated Encyclopedia of herbs. My 1997 edition devotes four pages of over 500 to just the identification, history, and uses of elderberry. It is equally useful in providing the information you might need on other herbs. No one who loves herbs should be without it.  it appears the book is out of print, but used copies are available at reasonable prices.

The two best books I own that include elderberry recipes are Edible and Useful Plants of California by Charlotte Clarke and Feasting Free on Wild Edibles by Bradford Angier. Unfortunately, neither has color illustrations like the books below do, but they do tell you what to do with your wild edible plants once you have identified and harvested them. Most books say you can get sick if you eat too many of them raw, so cook most of what you pick.There are some other wonderful books for foraging, identifying, and using California wild edible plants listed on Amazon that tempt me to buy more than I can afford. For elderberries, I'd probably start with the books below.

The Elderberry Supplement: Alternative Medicine for a Healthy BodyElderberries: The Beginner's Guide to Foraging, Preserving and Using Elderberries for Health Remedies, Recipes, Drinks & MoreElderberries: The Amazing Elderberry, Its Secret Healing Capabilities & DIY Recipes For Improving Your Wellness (Elderberries - Elderberry Syrup)Elderberry Croft: The Complete Collection

If you enjoyed the information in this post, please share it using the buttons just above the comment box. The photo below is just right for pinning.

Elderberries play an important role in this set of inspirational novels. Read my review of the Elderberry Croft Complete Set. 

Elderberries help the Immune System. Read my review of medicinal elderberry tea.

Do you have an elderberry tree? If so, did you plant it? Have you found uses for elderberries?

D is for Daisy

“Daisies infinite Uplift in praise their little growing hands, O'er every hill that under heaven expands.”By Ebenezer Elliott, English Poet

Daisy is simply a nickname for the Shasta daisy, a member of the diverse family of chrysanthemums. But why make it complicated? For my purposes in this AtoZchallenge, D is for daisy.  

I remember daisies growing in the garden of my childhood home. I used to add their petals to mudpies for a reason that now escapes my grown-up mind. The daisies in these photos grow next to the pumphouse on our Templeton property. I know I grew them from dividing a daisy somewhere else, so I must have brought the cutting from our previous home. Later, I divided an oregano plant and put it next to the Shasta daisy. The oregano is in bloom, but the daisy is just starting to bud. The photo was taken in July.

Daisy Buds in Midst of Blooming Oregano, © B. Radisavljevic, #AtoZchallenge

In the photo below, the daisy is just opening. This photo was also taken in early July, the day after the photo above.

Daisy Opening, © B. Radisavljevic, #AtoZchallenge

The next photo taken about ten days later shows the mature daisy, It has already attracted a visit from a crab spider who may take up residence there. 

Crab Spider on Shasta Daisy, © B. Radisavljevic, #AtoZchallenge

These daisies may not be prize specimens, but considering that they've had little care and have never been fed, they do pretty well. I had to laugh when I read that Shasta daisies thrive in fairly rich, moist, well-drained soil in a sunny spot. I guess mine aren't thriving, since the soil is far from rich. They do have a sunny spot and, although they may not be thriving, they are certainly surviving. 

Are you growing any daisies? If not, they are easy to grow. Try it. You can find many seed varieties at Amazon if you can't find what you want locally, or you can see if a friend growing daisies will share a root division.

Root divisions will be blooming before you know it if planted in spring. It's better, though, to plant them in fall so they can get established before it's time for the flowers to bloom.

Root divisions are easy to get. All you need to do is find a mature plant, get a shovel, dig deep under enough of the plant to get some roots, and pull out what's in your shovel. Keep the roots in water and the plant shaded until you get to where you will plant your root division. Do it before the day ends if you can. Have your planting place in full sun ready ahead of time.

It's best to plant at dusk or dawn rather than when the sun is bright and hot. Once planted, water well. Keep soil moist for a couple of weeks and then water as necessary. The gardening books on plant propagation will tell you to do a lot more than this, but this has worked for me. I've read the plant propagation books, and own many, but I don't always follow their expert advice to the letter. I've learned a lot just from other gardeners, and I also like to experiment to see what works for me. 

Do you love daisies but aren't  a gardener? There are some very realistic artificial daisies available now on Amazon with very reasonable prices. See some below. And if you would like daisies to light up your nights, check out the hand-sculpted daisy night light, complete with visiting ladybug, below.  I'm one of those people who needs a faint night light at night in my hallway and in my room. 

 Ladybug Daisies Sculpted Hand-Painted Night Light 6 pieces of 3 inch english daisy, soft yellow bristle in center with plastic stem, short plastic cap at back, color white. Decorative Potted Artificial White Silk Gerbera Daisy Flowers / Faux Floral Decor w/ Round Pot - MyGift® Topix 100x Gerbera Daisy Flowers Heads for DIY Wedding Party (White)

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