Strawflowers for Warhol | 2024

Golden Columbine, or Aquilegia chrysantha, continues its life cycle inside a green pot in my container garden. Perennially thriving from seeds I planted in 2020, cutting them back in winter has ensured spring, summer, and fall blooms each year.

Up on Twin Peaks facing Southeast, my pale-yellow columbines are at home despite their southwest origins in Arizona and New Mexico. While columbines do take their time to establish before blooming, four of the seeds I planted acclimated firmly on my deck and continue to live on.

During their first winter, all of them completely dried up, leaving behind a mound of straw-like stems, which I cut back. In spring 2023, after several La Niña storms, they returned—taller, larger, and with more blooms than ever, continuing their death/rebirth cycle attuned with one of nature’s supreme tenets prompted by an evolution of habit rather than instinct to survive.

Zinnias and Strawflowers from the deck – August 2023

Nasturtiums (above) & Calendulas (below) — both edible, nasturtiums can be used in salads for an extra peppery bite; calendula petals not only can be dried & used as a saffron substitute but their oil is said to possess antifungal, antibacterial, & anti-inflammatory properties, i.e. possibly a good thing for the skin!

AUGUST GLADIOLI

Orchid or lily? No, a “Mardi Gras” gladiolus from the summer collection on the deck (August 2019) offering quite the display w/ some surprises: yellow, red, & this one to the left resembling a giant pansy.

Thankful for the gladioli corms I found at my local hardware store in 2019 (Cole Hardware over the hill where I also find my succulents, among many other things –this store is awesome!)

SUMMER COLLAGE

Summer blossoms from the deck; clockwise: mission bell California poppy, tulip, cosmos, mission bell California poppy, calendula, viola, rose (not from the deck), cornflower, mardi gras gladiolus (2019)

SUCCULENTS

At UCSF, I led a succulent terrarium making tutorial for a staff enrichment event with co-workers. Our HR coordinator asked if I would share my interest in succulent terrarium making. I said yes! and brought in some river & beach stones from my collection, while our department provided the succulents, soil & moss — off we went!

My co-workers’ terrarium choices reflect their individuality.

URBAN GARDENING

In 2012, I co-founded Urban Pastoral Gardens (UPG), an edible container-garden company, with Julie Gesin. Our business took its name from “Urban Pastoral,” a poem in my chapbook Heliotropes. Though the California drought challenged our business and new goals pushed us into different directions, we maintain the UPG motto: grow your own in whatever space you can! Our Facebook page remains a homage to our urban gardening project.