Mother's Day Belated

On Mothers day this year we planted some more annuals around a couple of the trees that the grumple hit earlier. We had hoped to grow some wild flowers here but it just was not to be. Two times the grumple came by and pulled up a lot of the wild flower sprouts. :-)

We made a trip to 3 Bees Nursery and lodaed up on some fun plants and planted them on two of the trees. Things are growing well. Look for an update on the progress of my lilies soon!

Lilies, Shrooms and an Occaisional Grumple.

The bulbs we planted are doing FANTASTIC. They have grown a lot in just under a month. The question I just started asking myself is: How big do they get? Well I decided to actually look at the information about the bulbs we planted and came up with a shocking answer...


3 FEET!




I picked these because I wanted to try some bulbs and they were very cheap at the Garden Show. They had a "Plant now for summer blooms"sign on them and the orange color on the picture reminded me of my grandma's Tiger Lilies so I was sold. I never really looked a the tag. Jennifer is always telling me to "pay more attention" and this may turn out to be a time when I should head her advice. I think I am going to have to stake them down so they grow in a controlled manner. I looked them up online and they look like this!

They are really impressive. If we have four of these blooming this summer this tree is going to look amazing. I really hope they make it.





In other news we had a quasi-Grumple visit. Someone pulled out all of the wildflower sprouts on one tree and about half of them on another. Jennifer thinks they were "weeding" and then realized they were flowers but who knows. Just another set back. When you plant on the street you take your chances.



I am very much into the idea of trying out some pots on the sidewalk and seeing if they make it. I am going to write our city supervisor to see if there are any city regulations against it. I would really like to make Fillmore look like Noe. I was talking to a neighbor at Fillmore and Waller and they have done some amazing things on the street. They have really shown me what is possible. I now have a goal in mind. Lets hope I have the follow through. I did manage to get off my butt and offer to do some more trees near the church on the corner. I hope they are into it. I can really sense that more and more people around the neighborhood are into planting!





We also have a mushroom growing on one tree .

It is pretty cute. Nice to look at but we sure are not gonna eat it!

Bulbus Eruptus

2 of the bulbs we got at the garden show have start to sprout.

We are really happy! Now we have to control the slugs that have already started eating them. :-(

Another Beautiful Sunday

We had another wonderful weekend spending time working on plants. On Saturday I put up a new windowbox. On Sunday we went out to Sloat Garden Center and picked up lots of new plants. We got enough to fill the new window box and even had a few left to add to one of the trees out front. Things are looking good. We also got a bunch of impatiens. Jennifer made a couple containers and placed them on our back porch. We are trying out some copper tape on these new containers to see if they will stop those darn slugs.

One down point... I walked by some young street type kid urinating all over one of the trees where we had just reseeded and planted some bulbs. Urban guerrilla gardening presents more challenges then you can imagine! I told him I did not appreciate it, he could give a damn about my opinion. Hopefully I have not "baited the Grumple". I want people to respect our beautiful city. I know this is a crazy dream and we are crazy dreamers. Hopefully the flowers we put encourage people to care just a little more about their surroundings. That is what we really want to do.

Our Big Plant Weekend

This weekend we spent a lot of time on the plants. On Saturday we went to the Flower and Garden Show at the Cow Palace.

We scored a lot of loot!


We got four bulbs that I planted on one of our trees. They were Jolanda Asiatic Lilys. I hope I forget all about them and then in the summer we will have some wonderfully Lilys. If all goes well they should come back every year. One of our goals is to have at least one plant that is fixed on each tree. We can fill in the others will perennials.

We also got a Pelargonium Shanti that we planted out side and it is beautiful. Lots of little red and white flowers.

In additon to all of our new plants we also rebuilt the last of the fences that the Grumple distroyed, reseeded that tree with some fun new seeds. Things are looking up. We are very excited to see what all of the new sprouts turn into.

Meet the Grumple, the #1 enemy of neighborhood beautification

Meet The Grumple. I first saw him on the Simpsons Christmas special this year but I realized he has been living in our neighborhood for some time.

The problem with street gardening is the complete lack of control one has over the outside world. When planting flowers on the street you have to be ready to loose it all at an instant. This was a very hard lesson for us to learn. When we first scattered wildflower seeds in 2005 they grew amazingly well.

Up until someone decided to pull them all up one night We made a nice bouquet from the remains we found on the street. Despite this we vowed to keep planting. The positive effect flowers have on the neighborhood is AMAZING! People stop me all the time and tell me how wonderful the block looks and how much they enjoy walking by every day and seeing what pops up.

This morning was especially hard for me. The grumple came by at about 1:30 am last night and decided to do his thing

This one was hard to handle. I have two Saturdays building these fences not to mention cleaning up the trees. But the Mr Grumple can not keep us down. For every act of vandalism he does we are coming back with double the amount of love. WE WE REBUILD and the flowers will THRIVE. Some days are harder than other. If you are going to do this you have to stay strong. The amount of good the flowers do far out weighs the pain caused by Mr. Grumple.

Sprouts!

It has been less than a week since we put down seeds and thank to some unexpected San Francisco sunshine WE HAVE SPROUTS! I can't wait to see what the turn out to be!