How Do You Spell Relief? F-O-G!

After several days of temperatures hovering around 100 degrees, we finally got a little relief late this afternoon when the fog rolled in through the Golden Gate and over the bay. Skies are still clear here, but just having the fog offshore sends in cooling breezes that are more welcome than I can say.

During the heat wave I did nothing in the garden except try to keep things watered enough. I can usually get by watering every third day. When things get warm, I need to kick it up to every other day. But between the extreme heat and the sandy soil here, even that wasn't enough. On Saturday in an effort to be a little more environmentally friendly, I tried to redirect the water outflow from my washing machine into a few 5-gallon buckets to water the yard with. I learned two things by doing this: 1) My tiny, supposedly water-efficient washing machine still uses more water than I thought (somewhere around 25 gallons for one load); and 2) it's really easy to flood my laundry room. I'll need to rig up something a little more error-proof if I want to do this again.

One garden-related thing that I did do recently is join a few friends from my landscape-hort class to tour a couple gardens created by Keeyla Meadows, a landscape designer and artist in nearby Albany. The gardens were amazing--lush and colorful, lots of different textures and layers of planting, and some really fun sculptures tucked in for added zing. Seeing her gardens, I was reminded that I need to plant more densely and use more of each plant for greater impact. My tendency is to just put one plant here and another plant there and the result is that nothing really stands out. I wish I could post pictures from the tour but I forgot my camera (doh!). But do click the link above to check out Keeyla's web site and see some samples of her garden design. Thanks to Keeyla for graciously allowing us to visit, and thanks to Yuriko for setting it up!