Garden Activities: August 5, 2025

At the garden today volunteers Irem Bayrak Dingle, Bill Dobner, Wesley Hare, Dale Harshberger, Katie Shank, Daryl Stutley, Nancy Taylor Walker, Zack Taylor, Marna Wensil, Anna Wiktor-Becker, and myself comprised the Tuesday Crew.

The tasks we tackled today were varied. Zack watered the service area Sycamore and checked the Mediterranean area carob tree (which did not appear to need additional water). Bill worked with the compost. The group first worked on cleaning up the piles of leaves from the flame tree.

Irem, Daryl, Dale, Zack and Marna filling pots. 

Dale and Wes doing the same.

The quantity of leaves required trips to the green waste dumpster. The leaves were so elastic, they filled the pots quickly. When you pressed them down to create more room, they bounced back like a memory foam mattress!

Part of the group then worked in the area around the waterfall deadheading penstemons.

Marna with a clump of penstemons.

Irem with Zack. Zack was very careful around the sharp leaf tips having worn shorts and a tee shirt!

Anna, Wes and Katie filling pots with the chopped up stems.

Yours truly, Katie, Wes and Anna.

For the remaining half hour about half the group stayed to remove star thistle seed heads and the rest when down the hill to unload the several filled pots. It didn’t occur to me until it was too late that yucca, palm and succulent debris are not to go into the green waste bin. So Wes and I fished out that category of waste and refilled the empty pots that had contained that category of green waste.

Finally, there isn’t much blooming in the garden at the moment. The natives have entered their dormant period and many of them as well as the non-natives flowered in the spring and early summer. The one current stand out is the common CA buckwheat (Eriogonum fasciculatum) that, when happy, rivals the more dramatic St. Catherine’s Lace (Eriogonum giganteum) that is native to the CA Channel Islands.

CA buckwheat (on the service road at CVBG).

St. Catherines Lace (from my garden).

Not much difference, right? According to Calscape, both support wildlife including birds, bees, bats, butterflies and caterpillars. They both look attractive when in bloom with masses of white flowers that last for weeks, and again when in seed with the masses of brown seed heads that also last for weeks.. 

Thanks to Irem, Katie, and Nancy for their images.

Enjoy the garden…KMM