Posts by Don

This past Monday the shadow of the moon moved swiftly West to East across the North American continent. In our home just North of San Francisco, we experienced a partial solar eclipse, with 78% of the sun's central disk blocked by the moon at 10:15am local time. Cloud cover blocked our view, still the light generated by the solar eclipse was interesting in itself. The quality of the light was soft and warm, and shadows cast were unusually sharp. In the Swallowtail Garden Seeds test garden, flowers seemed...

It was unseasonably hot here in Sonoma County last week. We had many days in the high 90s, and one day was a record 106 degrees. The gardener (yours truly) certainly suffered during the heat wave, but fortunately the garden did not. Let’s look at one plant in particular that not only made it through the heat wave, but thrived for it. Cosmos Rubinato Above is Rubinato cosmos as it appeared on June 8th of this year. I sowed the seeds in mid April, and by early June, plants were shapely but not fully...

Last Saturday I was sitting on the back patio reading. Next to me were six Riviera Mix lobelia plants that I had started indoors, blooming nicely. While flipping through the pages of my book, I heard a distinct hummingbird-like sound, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw a bumble bee-shaped insect hovering. Upon getting a closer look, the insect was a good distance from the flowers and was feeding by way of a long proboscis. The insect’s wings were beating fast, moving similarly to the manner of a...