While exploring Golden Gate Park, I came upon a heavenly sea of nasturtiums edged by Mexican primrose (why I love San Francisco)

P.S. I've turned comments off because I want you to simply enjoy the photo. No words required.

If you'd like to see more of my photographs,

please visit CindyGarberIverson.com

A yellow rose is the promise of a new beginning

Years of Septembers starting out with
new grades,
new teachers
and new learning horizons
embedded in my mind
that August is the month that teeters on the precipice of new beginnings.

My heart often yearns for
the beginning of a new school year--
to feel the excitement of anticipating the frontiers that held
new knowledge,
new insights,
and learning new skills.

It seems fitting that the yellow rose should be the symbol of the promise of new beginnings.

August is the month of sunny yellows and bright oranges--
colors that radiate the warmth of an August sun
shining on beachgoers as they enjoy the last few weeks of
a summer no one wants to end.

August finds my heart torn between two worlds...
that of the endless-summer-seeking beachgoer
and that of the anticipatory student.

At once
holding on to every sun-filled moment to savor it and hope it never ends
while
looking to the horizon wondering what adventures lie beyond.

The roses featured in this post are 'Golden Showers' climbing roses

When you were a kid, did you ever make a wish and blow on a puffy dandelion? Do you still?

 When you were a kid, did you ever make a wish and blow on a puffy dandelion? Do you still? I'm always tempted whenever I see one.

As I post-processed the photo above, one of my favorite Disney songs came floating into my head:

A dream is a wish your heart makes

When you're fast asleep.

In dreams you lose your heartaches

Whatever you wish for, you keep.

Have faith in your dreams and someday

Your rainbow will come smiling through.

No matter how your heart is grieving...

If you keep on believing...

The dream that you wish will come true.

song written and composed by 

Mack David, Al Hoffman and Jerry Livingston 

for the Walt Disney film Cinderella (1950)

The color of August in the Bay Area

It's August already. 
And around here where summer rain is rare...
this is the color of August. 
Grass is the color of spun gold 
on hills dotted with the deep olive green 
of stands of California Live Oak.

The view from up here? It's lovely.

 A rare summer rain comes down gently
Perched high in this room that feels like the treehouse I always wanted as a kid
My long lens sometimes sees more than what my eyes can see.

Sunshine yellow tops of blooming fennel as high as an elephant's eye...
A blossom on the 'Tahitian Sunset' rosebush that's grown into a hedge...
The curve of the wing of a turkey vulture soaring overhead.

If I open all the windows
The warm moist summer air will blow gently through my treehouse
Fluttering the curtains that conceal me so nature doesn't know I'm here.
I'll leave the windows closed
And remain hidden from her view.

Dreaming of carousel horses and the wind in my hair

An excited kid sitting atop a carousel horse

With the wind in my hair...

It was my steed

And we were racing bravely 

Through the wild fields

Of places far away

The perplexities of explaining gardening in our Meditterranean climate

Plumbago

September around here means at least another full month of summer temps (we hit 95F/35C yesterday) so the garden is still blooming away and putting on a lovely show. Even though I don't normally share so many photos in one post, I couldn't settle on featuring just one of the many types of flowers that are showing off in the garden. So think of this as a "photo bouquet" of sorts.

"Our Lady of Guadalupe" rose

Trying to explain living in a Mediterranean climate to someone who hasn't ever lived in one for a full year is kind of difficult. Have you ever read Under the Tuscan Sun by Frances Mayes? All the plants she describes in this memoir are plants that thrive here. The seasons are much the same too (although our winters are a bit milder). The best way I've been able to describe it is that our spring starts about 2 months earlier than you'd expect and autumn comes about 2 months later than in other gardens in the northern hemisphere. Our climate isn't tropical, but it isn't the typical "four season" climate either. See... I said it was difficult to explain.

"Janice Kellogg" rose

The light is changing so we know that autumn is officially only a few weeks away. However, we know that our garden won't look autumnal until late October or even November. Many trees won't display their fall leaves until then unless we get some chilly nights.

Alstroemeria

The good thing about living in this climate is that we have an extra long growing season for veggies. It's so long, in fact, that many veggie gardeners put in a crop in March or April to be harvested in mid-summer. Then another crop is put in around July for an October or pre-Thanksgiving harvest. With indeterminate crops like some tomato varieties, in past years I've been harvesting tomatoes all the way up to the morning of Thanksgiving the third week in November. It's pretty cool.

Four O'Clock

Lest you think this is all too good to be true, there are downsides to this climate. Trust me... there are.

One downside is we can't expect any rain throughout the summer. The rain stops sometime in May and doesn't typically come back until October or November. It means that our rolling hills are a pale golden color all summer and green during the winter and spring. It's the exact opposite of someplace in the midwest of North America.

Another downside is that we can't grow certain vegetables in the summer garden because the temps are too intensely hot. Veggies like lettuce, cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, peas, spinach, kale and some onions don't do well. So those crops get planted sometime in the autumn or winter and are grown as winter crops. When everyone else is enjoying fresh lettuce for summer salads we are dreaming of our winter salads. Yeah... it's kind of weird.

Strawberry blossom

After over a decade of learning the rhythms of this climate, I think I'm finally used to what to expect and what not to expect. It still doesn't prevent me from feeling a yearning ache inside when garden bloggers in other climates are posting gorgeous autumn leaves. Autumn is a favorite season for both Hubby and me. It's hard to have to wait a whole 2 months for our climate to catch up. Especially when all we want to do is surround ourselves with the rich tones of the autumnal palette, snuggle up in warmer clothes and enjoy evenings with kitties curled up on our laps.

Gerbera daisy

One really good upside to living in this climate is that once October rolls around, it will still be temperate enough to start working on large garden projects. Hubby and I are looking forward to working on a long-planned pergola in the unfinished portion of the back garden.

In the meantime, I'm still hunkered down inside with the A/C on daydreaming of autumn.

From a problem spot in the garden to a brilliantly colored canna lily collection

My favorite color of all my canna lilies, "Apricot Dream"

When I first started gardening here at Rosehaven Cottage, I was faced with a conundrum. Due to weird drainage issues in the back garden, I decided to work with the problem instead of against it and dug a pond. These drainage issues and the pond created a unique situation... an area with clay soil, boggy conditions and full sun. I went on a hunt for what would grow in these conditions, but found that not many bog plants love full sun... at least the kind of full sun we get around here in the height summer--intense blistering sun and rarely any summer rain.

That's when I discovered canna lilies. I knew of them as some really common varieties are grown a lot around the Bay Area in mass plantings. Most of those varieties are planted for their variegated or burgundy-tinged foliage. The variegated ones usually produce a bright orange flower. The burgundy-tinged foliage produce a brilliant scarlet flower. As I often do, I went on a hunt to see if there were other varieties besides what was always in stock at the big box and home improvement stores.

I first searched at our local nursery center and found the common varieties I was used to seeing. I bought some of the burgundy-tinged cannas with their brilliant scarlet red blooms to put in the area right by the pond and give it a go.

The cannas LOVED it! They liked have soggy feet and sun-scorched heads. In fact, they began propagating on their own rather quickly through an underground reproduction system similar to rhizome plants like iris. I was very pleased. I have really good luck with bulbs and rhizomes (not so much with seeds) so this seemed to be a good fit.

But I wanted more variety. And I wanted lush looking bright green foliage that looked like it came straight off a tropical island.

The color of watermelon!

I went to the trusty internet to find out what other colors canna lilies came in and to see if I could procure some. Hunting around I was in a tropical-lover's paradise. I felt like I'd been transported to my beloved Hawaiian island of O'ahu.

It was then that I knew I needed to have a canna lily garden with all my favorite varieties I was finding. I didn't want all the colors... just the ones that made me smile the moment I saw their photograph.

This color also reminds me of ripe juicy melon

This year is the first year that the canna lilies have really filled in the beds I created and they've put on the tropical color show I'd been envisioning when I ordered them over the internet.

Some grow in large pots that sit directly on the ground with a dripper in each connected to the entire drip-mist system that irrigates my drought-tolerent garden. Some are directly in the ground (with a dripper at the base of each) in a raised bed right next to the deck so when I lean over the railing I am met with an explosion of colors that rivals any crayola box. It amazes me because nothing else really wants to grow there. But the cannas do.

Canna lilies are sensitive to frost so they eventually wither up and turn brown some time in December. I leave the dead foliage on as frost protection until around early March. Then I gently cut it all back to find new green spears emerging from the old foliage. By May or June, I have beautiful green tropical foliage and the beginnings of the bloom that lasts all summer if I continue to deadhead them.

I couldn't be happier with the result. And each year the beds will get fuller and more beautiful because of the canna's propensity to self-propagate.

Not bad considering it all started out because I had a problem spot in the garden.

Making the most out of trimming up the garden

I was having to give a corner of the garden a "haircut" the other day in order to make the path passable. Under the huge (and I mean HUGE) buddleia bush, grow a bunch of plants that prefer less intense sun. They had all grown rather unruly  and needed shaping up. So the hydrangea, a fern and the David Austen "Abraham Darby" rose got trimmed up.

One reason I hate doing a mid-summer trim is that I often have to cut off blooms in their prime. That's what happened with the "Abraham Darby". There was a perfect rose blooming on a long branch encroaching in a not-so-subtle way onto the well-traveled garden path that sweeps in front of it. It had to come off. I felt so bad. Until I had an idea... I decided to bring the single bloom inside instead of throw it in with the rest of the green waste, and I would use it for a photo shoot.

Usually I can't bring cut flowers inside because I have a flower-eating-ginger-tabby that won't leave them alone unless the flowers are perched on the fireplace mantle. I put the "Abraham Darby" in a small bud vase on the mantle until I had the right natural light in my studio.

A couple of days later when the light was right and the flower-eating-ginger-tabby was napping, "Abraham Darby" and I had a photo shoot. And "Abraham Darby" was the perfect model.

~the above photograph is available here~

Observations from studying a sunflower

Have you ever looked at the center of a sunflower... really looked? It's made up of tiny little flowers--golden stars so small you can't see them unless you look closely. It takes so many to make up the center. And each one becomes a seed someday.

Have you taken the time to stroke a sunflower petal gently between your fingers? It's soft and thin but supple and alive. It feels warm yet cool at the same time. How is that possible?

Have you stopped to realize that even though a bug has chewed a hole in some of the petals of a sunflower it's still incredibly beautiful? It doesn't matter that technically it's "flawed". It's beautiful. It epitomizes an entire season of the year. It can brighten someone's day in an instant. And it can do all this even with slight imperfections.

This particular bloom grew up into the branches of the Eureka lemon tree. With the support of the tree, the giant head of the sunflower didn't weigh down the stem. It never leaned over under the weight and held it's head up high even as the bloom began to fade.

So many lessons I can learn from the sunflower.

It's a hot July day in the gardens of Rosehaven Cottage

Today is a the kind of day we often get in July. The temperature is hovering around 95F (35C). Even though I'm thankful the temps haven't gone up into the triple digits (above 38C), it's still hot with the sun baking everything.

The fennel's as high as an elephant's eye (to borrow a line from Oklahoma), and on days like this the pollinators are out in full force swarming around the blooms (above). If we cooked with fennel pollen like some of the chic chefs we've seen on the Food Network, we'd be set.

The air is often still without a breeze leaving the flag undisturbed--not even a flutter.

The rudbeckia that's been in bloom since January is showing some signs that it really preferred the cool weather to this heat.

When the days are hot and cloudless, the birds and bees are very thirsty. That means for frequent visitors to the bird fountains.

It also means there will be frequent fights at the bird fountains--even between the normally amiable Mr. and Mrs. Finch (and family).

There are places of respite like in the shade of the pomegranate, plum and lemon trees around the pond. Blue damselflies find places to light on the saucer-sized lily pads growing over the entire surface of the pond while naturalized mosquito fish and goldfish dart around in the water underneath.

And an unseasonal California poppy volunteer, that would usually only be growing in February or March, finds a cool shady spot to put forth the tiniest of blossoms.

As for me, once I take my stroll around the garden to check on everything, I go back inside where the air conditioning keeps out the heat. I'll wait until evening before I venture back out again.

A slower pace of life under the white oleander bush

Whether it comes naturally to me or not, the pace of my life as of late has slowed way down. I've noticed that a lot of my day is very quiet without the sounds of music or television accompanying me--only the faint tinkling sound of a cat's bell as one of the kitties stirs between naps. A few years ago I used to fill my life with a lot of recorded music--usually very bouncy loud dance tunes with the bass turned up for optimal booming. But now... not so much.

When I first realized this shift in my habits I immediately thought, "Oh no! This is the first sign that I'm getting old!" I even asked Hubby, "What's wrong with me?!?!"

Then upon more reflection I've concluded that I've actually come around full circle to a pattern I had as a small child when we lived in a remote community of the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. When the weather was cooperative and warm enough, my life had a similar pace as it does now. And my days were spent in blissful solitude as I roamed around our wooded property or basked in the clear mountain sunshine in our wildflower meadow. In silence, I would sit with the high grasses around me and watch butterflies flit from blossom to blossom. Every rustle or movement caught my attention and I would quietly look in the direction of the sound to see what it was--an elk, a jay bird or another forest creature. It was only during the cold inclimate months that I came inside and occupied my time with music from scratchy records played on my portable record player.

With my health limitations changing my current pace of life, I'm finding myself feeling the same sense of freedom I had as a child and the permission to just simply be. Daily, I venture out into the garden but now it isn't to do some major garden installation. I wander around and note the slight nuances of change as the garden goes through its seasons. I notice where some critter has visited since I last strolled through. Every rustle or movement draws my attention, and I'll look in the direction of the sound and wait until I can identify what it was.

Did you know that creatures in nature have what I call a "time out period"? When they sense human presence they scatter and become very quiet. But if the human settles in and becomes still and quiet, in about ten minutes nature's creatures come back and resume their activities as if the human isn't there. It happens with skittish fish in the water as well as the birds in the trees. Ten minutes of quiet stillness is all it takes and suddenly it's as if you're not even there.

Sitting in my chaise lounge under the wisteria, I've noticed the branches of the 50+ year old white oleander bush have grown enough this year to create a lovely canopy over my head. Periodically, a dried white blossom flutters down on me as I sit enjoying the splashing sound of the pond waterfall.

So many magical moments have happened under the white oleander.

I've had the wonderful honor of encountering the grey fox two more times since the night of the summer solstice when I first saw it. One of the encounters last week was before the sun had set and it was still "golden hour" in the garden. The fox made eye contact with me as it trotted casually through the thicket created by the oleander bush and the cherry tree. Because it was light outside and the fox wasn't in much of a hurry, I could see the beautiful nuances of its ticked fur, its long fluffy tail and the details of its exquisite face and eyes.

I'm relearning the pace I loved as a child. I'm realizing that slower and quieter pace brings with it an innocence and simplicity that fosters a calmness of one's inner core. That calmness is somehow sensed by nature. And nature rewards that calmness with incredible moments that require no soundtrack and no words. They are heavenly moments when the Creator feels closer than ever.

Taking time to enjoy the summer solstice brought me an unexpected surprise

Hubby and I had late afternoon doctor's appointments so we found ourselves going out for a dinner at our favorite salad bar restaurant afterward. I realized while we were there that today would be the longest day of the year. We drove home the long way, enjoying some beautiful scenery as well as the quaint business district of our smallish town.

When we finally made our way home, I didn't want to go inside until it got completely dark. I wanted to enjoy every little bit of sunlight left in the sky. So we went into the back garden, and I got the idea to have a fire in our pretty "firepit" (handcrafted by a dear friend from a reclaimed propane tank).

I love to build open fires. It's my thing. I LOVE it! Probably too much.

Hubby gathered small pieces of scrap off the nearby woodpile, and I built the fire on top of a pile of pine needles that had collected in the bottom of the "firepit" over the winter. It wasn't any time at all before we had a lovely fire blazing with its amber light flickering and dancing through the dragonfly silhouettes cut out of the sides of the former tank.

We sat and sat watching the sky grow dimmer as the flames burned lower. This is something I've never done before to enjoy the longest day of the year. It was all a new and fun spur-of-the-moment experience for us both.

As the last light was leaving the sky and the flames had burned down to almost nothing, we thought we should probably make our way inside. But we sat a little longer.

I'm glad I did.

I heard a rustle in the garden plants just 7-8 feet away from where I sat under the wisteria. I squinted into the dark thicket under the cherry tree to see if it was a skunk or an opossum. I could barely make out a furry form climbing onto the rocks that are stacked around a large horse trough I have filled with water and recirculating through a bio-filter for the wildlife to drink from.

I squinted harder and could see the form was much bigger and lighter than a skunk. And its tail was too bushy to be an opossum. Was it a raccoon? I couldn't see stripes on the tail and the body looked too lithe and lean.

Then my heart leapt in my chest with excitement. Could it really be what I thought it was?

All I had was my iPhone for light, so I turned on the screen and pointed it in the direction of the animal. It kept its head down drinking. The light was so weak it wasn't helping much. But I could see the long fluffy tail that looked too long to be a neighborhood cat.

Then the animal's head turned and the light reflected off of its beautiful eyes as it stood and stared trying to figure out what the iPhone was.

Yes. It was what I thought. It was a grey fox!!!!!

It stood there looking at me for quite a few seconds. Hubby couldn't see it from where he was sitting only a couple of feet farther away. I finally said, "Honey, it's a fox!" in a loud whisper.

As soon as I did, the fox turned its head and with a quiet rustle disappeared as if it had never been there.

I cannot begin to express in words how moving it was to see the fox and how grateful I am for the rare opportunity to see it in my own garden. They are rare anywhere in these parts, and rarely spotted by humans because of their stealthy shyness. Hubby spotted a fox two times in less than a week last year. It had been the only time in 12 years either of us have seen one. He wished so badly I would have seen it too. Now I have.

Welcoming in the summer solstice by being spontaneous and enjoying the moment brought me a gift I will never forget.

Click here to read more about the grey foxes that live in our area

The weatherman says the heat is coming... and the dragonflies have finally arrived

With temps expected to get to 100F (38C) over the next few days, I'll be trying to find cool places to duck into. And I probably won't venture out into the garden during the day... well, maybe for just a peek at the pond. If I sit under the pomegranate bush the heat isn't so bad.

And going out in the garden at twilight after a hot day is one of my favorite things to do.

It's "dragonfly weather" right now and as the sun sinks in the sky the dragonflies begin their evening hunt--darting back and forth in an aerial display forming a canopy 8-12 feet over the garden. "Dragonfly weather" is magical.

Hubby and I were out working in the back garden at twilight today and got to witness the first time the dragonflies have been out en masse. Hubby finished installing a trellis on the fence for some climbing roses I'll be putting into the ground, while I dug a hole and transplanted a rose that was in the wrong spot for us to complete the garden plans we've been working on the past couple of weeks. We've been fighting mosquitos when we go out to work in the evening, but this evening the dragonfly squadron helped considerably. It was wonderful.

So if I have to put up with the mid-day heat to get "dragonfly weather", then so be it.

Lemons... like summer hanging on a tree

Letting go of old notions makes room for new ideas to hop on board

As I post-processed this photo from the archives, this idiom formed in my mind. It sums up a lot of what I've been processing over the past few months. My second blog post I wrote on this blog 4 years ago was about the ferris wheel of my brain where I said:

"I have this process in my brain that I like to envision as a ferris wheel--each bucket of the ferris wheel containing an idea that I need to process and mull over."

The wheel rotates around so I can mentally work on each bucket for a time and then move on to the next. Each bucket in this ferris wheel in my head holds on to its "occupant" until I've revisited the idea enough to find a solution sufficient enough in my estimation to let the idea disembark and go into the area of my brain where things of those nature reside.

Now personal epiphany time...

My mental ferris wheel is almost always full, but if it's always full, where do new ideas go? Like eager kids at a carnival, do these new ideas stand in a proverbial line waiting and waiting for their turn on the ferris wheel... a turn that never comes because I'm holding on to riders in the buckets after they've occupied them for far too long when said "occupants" really need to get off the ride and move on?

If I expand my view this goes far beyond old notions and ideas. It can also include gripes, resentments and even views of myself. In the real world, a ticket to ride a ferris wheel is for a specified and finite period of time. So why do these mental riders get to ride on my ferris wheel longer than their tickets should allow?

Hmm... It makes me want to free up some buckets.

Watching goldfish play on an August afternoon

Today I stood at the pond's edge
Under the shade of the lemon tree
Watching orange fish dart in the water
From the shade of one lily pad to the next.

As the waterfall burbled
The fish at play kept me transfixed.
Standing still
The hot August day didn't feel quite so hot.

A sleepy garden kitty spotted me,
Left her shady slumber spot
Traversing each patch of shade between her and me
To greet me and welcome me to her world for today.

I lost track of time.
I don't know how long I watched the fish
From my shady vantage point.
But as I left it to walk back to the house
I could smell the heat of summer
Radiating from my skin and clothes.

The heat of summer has finally arrived

I think it's finally decided to be summer around here. We've had an unseasonably wet and cool May and June. Finally, the heat decided to arrive this week with temps hovering around 85-91F (29-32C).

The only problem is that with the heat comes the western sun shining in my southwest facing studio windows in the late afternoon and evening. Since I don't have air conditioning this becomes a problem. Like every summer, I'm having to find a way to shift my creative clock so I feel inspired at different times of the day other than when the sun is streaming in my window.

It seems counter intuitive really. Artists and photographers love natural light. But when heat comes with that light it changes my priorities.

Thankfully, it cools off after the sun sets when gentle breezes blow in off the water of the San Francisco Bay. Then I can open my studio windows, air out the stuffiness and start creating again.

The dance of the skippers and the romance of butterflies

The sun is finally out after seemingly endless days of unseasonal cool rain and grey skies. The critters in the garden aren't wasting any time enjoying the warm rays.

I took a stroll through the mid-afternoon garden with my camera (and new lens) to see what serendipitous moments I could discover. I always stop at the potted lavender that attracts so many pollinators to its blossoms.

I spotted the female Skipper butterfly first (above). Then she began to flutter her wings while remaining on her perch (below).

A frantic flapping male quickly fluttered into the scene (above).

She kept gently fluttering her wings while he flitted all over. He was so fast and fleeting, it was hard to track where he was.

She would flutter to another stalk and the dance would commence. Then she would move again, and it would continue once more. Sometimes she would take flight and the two would dance in mid-air around me, performing a high-speed reel. I stood in one place and turned to see where they would sashay to next... to the mandarin tree... to the lavender... to a nearby stalk of milkweed... and back to the lavender.

So intrigued was I in the frenetic pace of their courtship. Romance seemed quite exhausting from my vantage point.

I have to chuckle. It's much the same with people in love. The frenetic pace of romance, particularly young love, seems so exhausting to those on the outside of the gyrations of courtship... yet many onlookers wish they could join the dance with their own partner nonetheless.

The colors of August

I've written before about the different colors I associate with the seasons and months of the year (like the color of January). August is one of those months that doesn't really have any American holiday attached to it that serves as a good iconic representation of the month the way one can draw a cute little jack-o-lantern in orange and black to represent the month of October. As a child I decided that the perfect representation of August was a big yellow sunshine wearing sunglasses with a smile. Any iconic representation of the beach seemed fitting too. Then I expanded to include sunflowers and black-eyed susan's as well. Over the years bright yellows and oranges have become the colors of August for me--not the more muted russet tones of autumn, but bright glowing oranges that seem to radiate heat. Yes, those are the colors of August for me.

Available as fine art canvas and prints by clicking here