Garden Activities: October 7, 2025

Tuesday at 9am was gray and overcast, so it was good working weather. Plenty of volunteers were on site including: Steve Davis, Bill Dobner, Dale Harshberger, Beverly Kemmerling, Julie Moffat, Daryl Stutley, Nancy Taylor Walker, Janet Wall, Marna Wensil, Anna Wiktor-Becker, Ann Wright, and myself. Steve proposed that we focus on the Native Gardens and weed out the seedling oaks and toyons if they were destined to encroach on a path or on another more desirable plant. Seedlings and saplings more favorably located were left to grow.

Below is the size of many of the seedlings. Plucking them out at this stage limits the job of repeatedly cutting them down later.

It is also a good practice for identifying seedlings that often have leaves that are very different from those of the mature plant. In this case, the ID is simple as the young leaves resemble the adult form. Toyon is left and coast live oak right.

Speaking about oaks, last week we found a single acorn on the island oak. This week we relocated it and “bagged” it.

Janet showing Steve and me where it is.

Here is the protected acorn. If one lives in an area with squirrels (and/or other animals that feed on plant material), it is sometimes useful to bag seeds in a mesh gift bag allowing them to mature undisturbed. Also, if the seed drops to the ground it may never be found. This is a 4x6 inch organza bag. We’ll see how it holds up. 

Up in the rare fruit orchard we noticed a couple of CA Dept. of Agriculture workers.

Turns out that starting in 2004, the senior worker has been using the grove to train new staff on recognizing various exotic fruit trees.

There are lots of individual images of volunteers, but the one I’ll include is one of Daryl wielding her mattock or pick mattock.

This is a very old tool. Sometimes our antique tools are more fit-for-purpose than their modern counterparts.

Finally the Mexican sage along the service road is in full bloom at the moment, though is it in the no-man’s-land between the signs that warn visitors from using that road.

Salvia leucantha

Many thanks to Nancy, Beverly and Steve for their images.

Enjoy the garden….KMM