May 1st is International Sunflower Guerrilla Gardening Day. Since I'm determined to be a CA native gardener, I'm thrilled to say that the Sunflower family (Asteraceae) Helianthus annuus, is native. It is a huge family. Will I be a guerrilla? I'm not telling, but it could be unavoidable. It might be genetic.
The Los Angeles Guerrilla Gardeners have a great website. It reminds me of the Improv Everywhere group, only more stealth. The picture gallery is inspiring.
So what's a guerrilla gardener? Some one who gardens with or without permission on public land.
My parents, Wisconsinites, don't take long walks down the railroad track turned nature trail anymore, but when they were able, they always took a bag of seeds or bulbs or little seedlings to plant along the way. They didn't know they were guerrilla gardeners. They were just having fun. Little by little they beautified the walks they took with Wisconsin natives.
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One woman's journey to a beautiful garden 52 weeks of the year.
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Reference
- Audubon Society - Ventura County Chapter
- Botany Dictionary
- CA Invasive Plant Council
- CA Native Plant Society - Channel Islands Chapter
- CA State Symbols
- Camarillo Bird Museum
- Conejo Valley Adult Schools
- Integrated Pest Management
- Los Padres Forest Watch
- National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
- Nopalito Nursery
- S&S Seed
- The Santa Barbara Botanic Gardens
- Ventura Co Wildlife Rescue
- Ventura County Master Gardeners
- Venture College Community Education
- Weed Identification Tool
Quotes
Earth is here so kind, that just tickle her with a hoe and she laughs with a harvest. -Douglas William Jerrold, playwright and humorist (1803-1857)
Every day I walk out into the world / to be dazzled, then to be reflective. Mary Oliver, Poet (b. 1935)
A lawn is nature under totalitarian rule. -Michael Pollan, author, journalism professor (b. 1955)
Knowing trees, I understand the meaning of patience. Knowing grass, I can appreciate persistence. -Hal Borland, journalist (1900-1978)
Nature is ever at work building and pulling down, creating and destroying, keeping everything whirling and flowing, allowing no rest but in rhythmical motion, chasing everything in endless song out of one beautiful form into another. -John Muir, Naturalist and explorer (1838-1914)
If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe the man would only have 4 years of life left.
NO MORE BEES
NO MORE POLLINATION
NO MORE PLANTSNO MORE ANIMALS
NO MORE MAN."
Albert Einstein
Self-sown my stately garden grows;
The winds and windblown seed,
Cold April rain and colder snows
My hedges plant and feed.
From mountains far and valleys near
The harvest brought to-day
Thrives in all weathers without fear,—
Wild planters, plant away!
Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Natura enim non imperatur, nisi parendo."-- Sir Francis Bacon
(Nature cannot be ordered about, except by obeying her.)
"Like snow, dandelions enchant children but dismay adults." Barbara Pond
"Until you dig a hole, you plant a tree, you water it and make it survive, you haven't done a thing. You are just talking." -Wangari Muta Maathai, activist and Nobel laureate (b. 1940)
"A stricken tree, a living thing, so beautiful, so dignified, so admirable in its potential longevity, is, next to man, perhaps the most touching of wounded objects."
Edna Ferber
"My hoe as it bites the ground revenges my wrongs....In smoothing the rough hillocks, I soothe my temper."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The cure for this ill is not to sit still or frowst with a book by the fire; But to take a large hoe and a shovel also, and dig till you gently perspire."
Rudyard Kipling
"The Norwegians have a pretty and significant word, 'Opelske,' that they use in speaking of the lure of flowers. It means literally 'loving up,' or cherishing them into healthy vigor."
Celia Thaxter
"I'll trace this garden oer & oer. Meditate on each sweet flower, thinking of each happy hour."
Walt Whitman
"It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see."
Henry David Thoreau
"What is a weed? A weed is a plant whose virtues have no yet been discovered."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
"When I go into the garden with a spade, and dig a bed, I feel such an exhilaration and health that I discover that I have been defrauding myself all this time in letting others do for me what I should have done with my own hands. "
Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882)
"The garden is the poor man's apothecary." ~German Proverb
"I am not a lover of lawns. Rather would I see daisies in their thousands, ground ivy, hawkweed, and even the hated plantain with tall stems, and dandelions with splendid flowers and fairy down, than the too-well-tended lawn."
William Henry Hudson, author and naturalist (1841-1922)
Every day I walk out into the world / to be dazzled, then to be reflective. Mary Oliver, Poet (b. 1935)
A lawn is nature under totalitarian rule. -Michael Pollan, author, journalism professor (b. 1955)
Knowing trees, I understand the meaning of patience. Knowing grass, I can appreciate persistence. -Hal Borland, journalist (1900-1978)
Nature is ever at work building and pulling down, creating and destroying, keeping everything whirling and flowing, allowing no rest but in rhythmical motion, chasing everything in endless song out of one beautiful form into another. -John Muir, Naturalist and explorer (1838-1914)
If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe the man would only have 4 years of life left.
NO MORE BEES
NO MORE POLLINATION
NO MORE PLANTSNO MORE ANIMALS
NO MORE MAN."
Albert Einstein
Self-sown my stately garden grows;
The winds and windblown seed,
Cold April rain and colder snows
My hedges plant and feed.
From mountains far and valleys near
The harvest brought to-day
Thrives in all weathers without fear,—
Wild planters, plant away!
Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Natura enim non imperatur, nisi parendo."-- Sir Francis Bacon
(Nature cannot be ordered about, except by obeying her.)
"Like snow, dandelions enchant children but dismay adults." Barbara Pond
"Until you dig a hole, you plant a tree, you water it and make it survive, you haven't done a thing. You are just talking." -Wangari Muta Maathai, activist and Nobel laureate (b. 1940)
"A stricken tree, a living thing, so beautiful, so dignified, so admirable in its potential longevity, is, next to man, perhaps the most touching of wounded objects."
Edna Ferber
"My hoe as it bites the ground revenges my wrongs....In smoothing the rough hillocks, I soothe my temper."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The cure for this ill is not to sit still or frowst with a book by the fire; But to take a large hoe and a shovel also, and dig till you gently perspire."
Rudyard Kipling
"The Norwegians have a pretty and significant word, 'Opelske,' that they use in speaking of the lure of flowers. It means literally 'loving up,' or cherishing them into healthy vigor."
Celia Thaxter
"I'll trace this garden oer & oer. Meditate on each sweet flower, thinking of each happy hour."
Walt Whitman
"It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see."
Henry David Thoreau
"What is a weed? A weed is a plant whose virtues have no yet been discovered."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
"When I go into the garden with a spade, and dig a bed, I feel such an exhilaration and health that I discover that I have been defrauding myself all this time in letting others do for me what I should have done with my own hands. "
Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882)
"The garden is the poor man's apothecary." ~German Proverb
"I am not a lover of lawns. Rather would I see daisies in their thousands, ground ivy, hawkweed, and even the hated plantain with tall stems, and dandelions with splendid flowers and fairy down, than the too-well-tended lawn."
William Henry Hudson, author and naturalist (1841-1922)
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About Me
- C. D. Gardener
- Ventura County
- Going native does not mean to let nature take it's course. If that were true my neglected yard would surely qualify. Neglect promotes weeds, those clever plants that have been transported to CA from around the world and discovered that they love it here. Going native is planning and thinking and changing my mind and research and dreaming. It's a journey I am embracing.
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