I'm giving a talk at the SF Flower & Garden Show

This Sunday, March 20th, I am giving a talk at the SF Flower & Garden Show (http://sfgardenshow.com/ohara-sean/), on the topic of gardening in a mediterranean climate.  I'm excited about the talk, a form of which I've given in past years, but this version has been reorganized and updated.  I am basically an introvert, but for some reason I've been able to teach myself to do presentation in front of crowds!  I have no idea how I managed, though I am sure I'll be nervous before I go on stage.  Here is a sample "slide":

Winter panies in a vegetable garden

Angelo's Facebook photo

An Italian friend's post on facebook reminds me of when we lived in the Temescal neighborhood of Oakland around 1980. There were still lots of Italian families living there any many of them had large vegetable gardens. Typically, the edging of their winter plantings (kale, cabbages, broccolini, etc.) would be something like these pansies, but they saved their own seed from year to year, so the flowers were a multiplicity of shades - more yellow than lavender in this garden, more white/purple in that garden. And these flowers are also edible!  It was a charming effect, making winter and early spring a special time to walk around the neighborhood.

A long term relationship with a Clivia

Clivia × cyrtanthiflora

I've been growing this Clivia for at least two decades, having gotten a division from a friend. A hybrid between Clivia miniata and C. nobilis - the pendant flowers come from the latter species. Usually it flowers in summer, but after last summer's dryness, it chose to bloom now.  I have a friend who lives in my neighborhood who reports the same unusual bloom time.  Curious.

In any case, this is a tough and dependable plant.  While it does well in the ground, it also thrives as a potted specimen.  A great plant for a shady mediterranean climate garden.

A weedy 'visitor'

Veronica persica

This little weed, Veronica persica, appeared one spring years ago in the little scruffy "lawn" on the property on which we live (in a shared space). It literally covered the turf that spring with a soft blue haze! I was delighted, loving a mixed bag of walk-on ground cover more than a mono-culture. Yet that was the only year. Nothing was done to irradiate it just as nothing was done to introduce it! We do, at time, have raccoons and possums come through (seeds caught on fur?), but I've never seen it here again.Hope someday it returns!