I'm not going to have a vegetable garden

So I've finally said the words.

No vegetable garden here. Probably ever.

Which, if I'm being honest, I knew when we bought the place.

Despite my wild out loud fantasies of tractoring and row crop growing and getting goats for the manure-making (and obviously face cuddling), I knew.

Because this place is on a seriously not fucking around slope and the only sunny space I have that's flat is right annoyingly out at the front of our property where we have to have space to deal with the solar panels and for, say, the corralling of 402 goats during their 5 annual days of glory eating the poison oak.

I can have a vegetable garden or I can have a goat corral for five days of the year. I went goats. Doy. 

As though there are people that DON'T want this on their property.

Also deer.

Deer, cottontails, ground squirrels, jackrabbits, skunks, opossum, rats, field mice...there are a lot of creatures here that love to eat/make a nest of/fuck up a vegetable garden.

Dudes - even the succulents I planted in a pot on the top level of my deck within five feet of Jada The Predator's jaws weren't safe. Something fucking ate them, too.

Sidenote: Name that movie. Hint: That is not a complete quote.

So yeah, despite whatever delusions I may have vaguely entertained when we bought the place of the vegetable garden I *might* have *one day* once we don't need that flat spot for necessary maintenance activities of our main power source and the hungry naughty wildlife has left their native habitat of our property because they decide they want their kids going to the good schools in Los Altos rather than this bumpkin shit (honestly, I have no idea of school systems. I don't have kids. But you get it.) - maybe then.

But until then, no.

And that's totally 100% OK.

Seriously. I'm fine with it.

Because...natives.

California natives and an essentially untouched 5 acre oak woodland that has almost every Sunset Zone 16 exposure imaginable.

Ok, go.

Like full sun, part sun, part shade, shade, deep shade, dry shade, wet weather creeks, slope, flat, well draining, clay, sand, under oaks, fog drip line, east/west/north/south facing whatever - all the exposures and conditions.

The same Zone 16 that Sunset deems "one of Northern California’s finest horticultural climates."

And the same house where the previous residents decided to plant vinca and let it run amok in the front and then never did a shitting thing about the poison oak choking out the Coast Live Oak (Quercus agrifolia for my plant nerds! Woo!) in the back and then put in a bunch of tragically tight-spaced non-native water hungry Poplars and surrounded it all, including the oaks, with drip and sprinkler irrigation.

For the win.

Ugh.

But to bring it back. To make it right, plant-wise. That's the fun now.

So, sorry tomatoes, but our field grower is perfectly excellent at growing tangy rich dry farmed Early Girls and drunkeningly luscious heirloom cantaloupe and more frilly perfect dill than I ever knew even existed in a single crop anywhere. And I grow basil and cucumbers year round, so we have that and all the other shit that comes off the farm. So no one needs a vegetable garden then, too.

Instead, I'm growing lupines, Lupinus arboreus now.

These are some native annual lupines which are different but still awesome and they will stay.

They're there. In the dug out ruts in the side of the slope there. Promise.

And buckwheat, Erigonum grande rubescens

Obviously California poppies, Eschscholzia california

And Matijla poppies, Romneya coulteri

Next spring, this thing is going to be huge and gorgeous. Swear it.

And Bush Anenome, Carpenteria californica

Ok, kinda cheating here since this is one from our old house. But I still love this plant and I'm having LOTS here. 

And Flannel Bush, Fremontodendron

This was before the deer dined on it. It looks OK now and next spring BETTER and then in a few years UH-MAY-ZING.

And California Lilac, Ceanothus

Do you like the high contrast photo that I took at midday after I discovered the deer had gone to work on my new Ceanothus 'Joyce Coulter'? I don't. It's a shit photo and those deer are jerks but next spring I bet the "after" photo will look incredible.

And Mock Orange, Philadelphus lewisii

And Woolly Blue Curls, Trichostema lanatum

And Sticky Monkey Flower, Mimulus

This guy was supposed to be Mimulus bifidus 'White', but Annie's played a wee joke on me before sending me what I ordered so DAMNITALLTOHELLNOTREALLY I have a few of these Mimulus aurantiacus 'Cherry' in and amongst the 'Pt Molate' and the Mimulus bifidus 'White'. Worse things have happened, I assure you. 

And Hummingbird Sage, Salvia spathacea

I have an absolutely inappropriate love affair with this plant. I'm planting it everywhere. It's going to be glorious. If not a little showy.

This is one of the plantings. Of, I think five now. I swear this will look good one day. Probably.

And Giant Chain Fern, Woodwardia fimbriata

And what I thought was Western Sword Fern, Polystichum munitum, but on reflection is I'm not sure. Thoughts, my plant people? I'm going to check my plant tags.

It is impossibly green here in the spring.

And Maidenhair Fern, Adiantum capillus-veneris

And Showy Milkweed, Asclepias speciosa

And Douglas Iris, Iris douglasiana

And Penstemon

And Western Redbud, Cercis occidentalis

Yeah. She needs time.

To start with anyway.

And maybe one day, when we've cleared enough of the poison oak from the beautiful hillside to put in our little trail, I'll get to go out into the wild (but in a way where I don't meet a tragic end in an abandoned bus) to plant even more because I'M DRUNK WITH THE POWER OF FIVE WHOLE ACRES OF ZONE 16 OAK WOODLAND WOO!

So yeah, no vegetable garden probably, but, like, I'm fine with it.