Lovely yard, dicot! Everything is in bloom, so pretty.

Patty S.

Fantastic garden! First photo, what is the silvery plant on the left side, and are the purple blooms part of this plant? Is that an echium in the back? I lost mine a couple of years ago and am planning on getting another one.

Thanks. The silvery plant in the foreground is Artemisia californica (CA sage brush) and that is indeed echium in the back -- my second planting of it. I learned the hard way I can't have any standing water in that corner, so there's a long drainage ditch along that wall that seems to be working so far.

I'm just excited that after years of adding compost to the soil and seeing middling results, the twice-monthly waterings with soluble compost tea and sugars seem to have really done the job of stimulating the soil microbes & fungi and I'm building some actual fertility into a yard that had been badly neglected.

I don't have any wide shots of the yard that came out in the recent pics, but here's the front in May 2011. The gaura and the annuals hide the fact than many perennials - like most of the native sages - barely bloomed that spring/summer.

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I love those watsonias! What a color.
Renee

Very nice!