Weeding and wildflowers

Today was a Saturday and an absolutely beautiful, warm, sunny day. I spent as much of it as possible in my front garden, pulling weeds. For the past few years, I've been gradually pulling out the grass in front of our house and replacing it with native plants (both shrubs and wildflowers). The wonderful thing is that once a species get established, the plants grow and spread on their own. The perennial shrubs grow each year and the annuals multiply and spread. Since the plants are adapted to this climate they don't need to be watered, except for the first year if you plant in the dry season. Finding the plants is more effort than for your standard garden center plants; but once they are going, they aren't much work at all. They do benefit from weeding out the remaining lawn grass as well as removing the other weeds. This fits in well with my busy schedule because I can put in some hours of weeding when I have time; but if I go a few weeks without working in the garden, they do just fine.

The ones that have spread the most are California poppies and beach strawberry. California poppies are the state flower and in my garden they grow large and re-seed prolifically. Every time I'm weeding I find a few small poppy plants that I hadn't seen before and I clear the grass from around them. In a few months the flowers should be stunning. Beach strawberry spreads by runners and it likes my garden. It's very effective at replacing the grass. So far no strawberries to eat, but it makes a attractive, low-maintenance ground cover that stays green and doesn't need to be watered.

The first few flowers are appearing in the garden. The first flower heads are appearing on my two Ceanothus (wild lilac) plants. The red maids (Calandrinia ciliata) are also just starting. I have many of the these rapidly-spreading annuals. In a few weeks, it will look really nice. Perhaps, I post some pictures. That will be a good incentive to clear out the weeds around these plants so that they take better pictures.

It was a wonderful day, and it was sad when I had to come inside to do some work.