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I don’t know the first thing about planting a flower garden. But it
can’t be THAT hard. You go buy some nice flowers (especially fragrant
ones that the deer don’t like), dig a hole in the ground, put in the
flowers, water and fertilize. Then watch your flowers take over the yard
and do a little jig around the plastic garden gnomes, right?
Well, I THOUGHT that’s what it was all about. And then I started reading
gardening books and magazines. And I transformed from a smug gardener to
a paranoid freak of nature. Why? Because I didn’t check my soil. That’s
why! I live in Northern California, and I don’t even know what kind of
soil I’m planting stuff in. Is it acidic, clay, sandy? It’s hard to say.
It’s dry, weed-root filled dirt. I read somewhere that you need to find
out what kind of soil you have and then add amendments to the soil like
mulch, peat moss, bone meal and lime. There are plenty of leaves and
pine needles on the ground. Does that count as mulch?
Plus I’m not sure which Zone I’m in. Northern California can’t possibly
fall into one single Zone. There’s different weather for each
neighborhood in San Francisco alone: the Mission district is sunny,
Castro is partially shady, Sunset is covered in fog all the time. And
Santa Cruz has drastically different weather than all of San Francisco.
And the mountains seem to feel like another planet as well. So you mean
to tell me one Zone is going to cover all the needs of gardeners in
Northern California? Ugh.
 I thought I’d take on planting some Mexican sage bush, rosemary and
various deer-repelling plants this weekend. I dug the usual holes and
plopped them in. They look fine to me. But like I said, I started to
read and got worried. It’s not like I’m planting something high
maintenance like roses or orchids. It’s rosemary for crying out loud!
That will grow in anything, right?
 And now I’m thinking instead of planting nice grown flowers, I should
have been planting bulbs. But I know the deer will eat most of the
plants that come in bulb form, except for maybe garlic. Also, we don’t
get snow up here, just buckets and buckets of rain all winter long:
which usually adds up to three months. And then it’s “typical” Northern
California weather. So do I have to mess with bulbs? Can’t I just plant
grown flowers?
I want to plant some cactus and succulents outside too. But I’m
beginning to think I’m a total nutcase for planting stuff without really
knowing what I’m doing. Maybe I think I can get away with slipping
through the cracks and my plants will survive being planted this late in
the game. I guess we’ll just have to see. Hmmm, maybe I should pick up
some peat moss just in case.
A new collage of my plants.
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