Suzy Says

I’ve been thinking about getting a vine-y plant to twine charmingly around the new-ish rustic window. Of course, I never have any idea what to get, and my plant dreams are about as realistic as my day dreams.

I wanted to grow a Kaffir lime tree and a Meyer lemon (after all, the mean old lady next door had a lemon tree when I lived in Oakland, and if a mean old lady can have one, I should, too) but apparently it’s too cold here in the winter. So I’d have to pot it, which would eventually kill it if I didn’t plant it outside, and keep it inside in the winter. That didn’t seem like an option. Same went for the fantasy of bougainvillea, preferably orange. I’ve loved it ever since I first saw it on the French Riviera thirty years ago, but alas, my life is fated to be non-Riviera in every possible aspect.

Megan brought me down to earth and helped me select a plant that may actually work.

It’s a purple honeysuckle. Rob came by and repotted it for me:

Clyde found this fascinating, even after Rob started watering it:

It took a long time before he realized that he was getting wet. Then he was out of there.

Roscoe was completely uninterested, and climbed a tree instead:

Later, Megan came by and said that the honeysuckle needed something trellis-like to climb on. She also doubts that it will drape picturesquely over the window, but we’ll see about that.

Rob found some tree branches and made a really cool trellis, which looks great with the window*:

While he was at it, he brought over a clipping from the passion flower vine which covers the back of their house. He also cut down a couple of trees which had partly fallen over from last winter’s storms (you can see some of that in the background of the picture) to give the vine more light:

Because more light = more flowers. And the flowers are fabulously outer space looking:

Bonus: they make that delicious orange passionfruit!

Now that I’ve got the house more or less in order (there’s still the hideous lime-green floor to deal with), I’m hoping that next year I can focus on the garden. I’ve mostly cleared out the garden of its weirdness and would like to get a table and chairs, as well as more plants. Right now, it’s mostly rhododendrons and huckleberries. I’d like to have a more inviting outdoor space.

*If you’re wondering what that corrugated panel is, it’s a heavy duty plastic-like thing which lets light into the sleeping loft. It’s behind my bed. You can see a little of it here, behind the sleeping Henry Etta. Those were the days.