This Lavender Patch is Buzzing with Life In October
I found this bit of lavender growing in the almost deserted community garden in Templeton in mid-October. You cannot discover how full of life it is in this still photo. That's because the lively creatures active in it are so well camouflaged you can't see them very well unless they are moving
That's why I want you to see them moving in this video. I'm only sorry the hummingbird that was flitting around disappeared when I started shooting the video. It must have been camera-shy.
A Deserted Community Garden
As you can see from the following photos, it seems most gardeners in the Templeton Community Garden have quit for the season. You can see the patch of lavender from a different perspective as I enter the garden from the path. The lavender is on the right. The raised bed behind it seems to have been left to fend for itself, as have most of the others in the garden.
In the photo below, I'm standing behind the lavender looking back toward Main Street in Templeton. This gives you an overall view of the lavender patch and its environment.
The one raised bed that appeared to still be cared for is this one, full of ripening tomatoes. I can see why it has not been deserted. Look at those luscious tomatoes, many ready to be eaten. I'm sure the gardener who planted these will return to harvest his or her crop. Wouldn't you?
I love lupine. I used to have a lot of it on my Templeton property. The drought killed most of it up on the hill when there was no rain. The seeds I planted in my herb garden rarely grew. It's been years since lupine was there, even though the seeds for it have been in the ground. Today I went home, and although the property, including the herb garden was overrun with weeds, I saw lupine finally blooming again. I love surprises like that.
Here's a closer look at the photo above.
Lupine supposedly is a perennial plant, though I always considered this form of it annual. I've seen a shrub form in Cambria at Moonstone beach that I'm sure was perennial because it's always there. There are at least 82 species of lupine in California. All species are related to the pea, but the seeds are toxic. The plant's name Lupinus spp. means "wolf" because it was thought that lupine depleted nutrients from the soil. Instead, though, like other legumes, their root nodules add nitrogen to the soil that it needs.
The photo to the right shows a bit more of the overgrown garden on a slope. Behind the lupine, to the left of the title, is an overgrown clump of thyme I need to harvest and dry. It's already blooming, but it's flowers are too tiny to see in this photo. The lupine chose to emerge among the irises that have not bloomed yet. The large lavender, oregano, and sage plants are out of sight in this photo.
The lupine plants you see here came from seeds I collected one day from a vacant lot in San Luis Obispo while I was on a walk. The pods were ready to explode, and the timing was perfect. They have bloomed a couple of times before in wet years, and it's a joy to have them back this year.
Part of Sycamore Herb Farm Herb Garden after the fire before it reopened,
Fat Cat Farm used to be Sycamore Herb Farm, owned by Bruce and Sandy Shomler. When I first moved to Templeton, California in 1993, it was one of my first discoveries, only a mile east of my new home. I started my first garden with the herbs I bought from them. I loved the herb farm. There were animals to look at, a lush herb garden that let you know what the herbs you bought might grow into, and a marvelous gift shop full of fresh herbs, herbal gifts, books about herbs, and other wonderful things. There was also an antique car right in the gift shop. It was the kind of place I could easily get lost in. I often would go there on Sunday afternoons just to look around and relax because they had made it a beautiful place.
Then, in 2004, a terrible thing happened. A fire burned down the main building and I'm not sure what else, but Sycamore Farm closed. When it reopened, it had become a tasting room for Lone Madrone Winery, which radically changed the atmosphere of what used to be the old gift shop, but the herb farm also reopened in 2007. I was glad to see it back and continued my herb-buying trips. Then one day when I went in, I found that the herb farm had closed once again. I bought a couple of left-over plants for half price, sorry that they were no longer loved and cared for. In 2009 I returned to Lone Madrome to take pictures of what remained of the old Sycamore Herb Farm. I was delighted when Rhoda Chute revived the herb farm and renamed it Fat Cat Farm in 2010. Unfortunately, it, too, is now gone, but it was a beautiful place that deserves to be remembered as a part of Paso Robles history. We will tour it was it was in 2010.
Isn't this entrance inviting? My real tours of Fat Cat Farm will be in video a bit farther down, but here's an idea of what's ahead. As we enter, we will pass the goats to our right. You will probably hear them before you will see them. Then the restrooms are just a bit farther on. Look ahead and to the left and you will see the herb gardens and a picnic area nestled under the trees. Continue straight ahead past the tasting room and you will find the herb farm. Its long tables were beginning to fill up again with herbs of all kinds.
Fat Cat Farm did not just offer the usual herbs you might find at a regular nursery or large garden center. In those places you normally find the most common varieties of the most common herbs. You are able to come home with a lavender, a sage or two, oregano, curly parsley, flat leaf parsley, dill, basil, chives, thyme, basil, and maybe a couple of others I may have forgotten.
At Fat Cat Farm you could find many varieties of lavender, sage, oregano, mint, thyme, basil, scented geraniums, and maybe some I've forgotten. On this visit I came home with tansy, which I had wanted for years. I got some pink grapefruit yarrow and some bronze fennel. Rhoda Chute, the owner of Fat Cat Farm, also recommended some plants I'd never heard of before to meet some of my needs. These were a silver germander and variegated sweet myrtle. I was also able to get some German chamomile that I needed.
Rhoda herself is a treasure. When I go to places like Home Depot and other garden centers, I'm on my own. They have few people who can make recommendations on what will meet your needs. Rhoda knows her stuff and can answer questions even about what she doesn't have yet. She patiently helped me find what I needed. She was planning big things for the future of Fat Cat Farm. Once all the herb beds were full again, she planned to move on to providing fresh-cut flowers and newly harvested herbs. She also planned to have heirloom cottage flowers and vegetables and plants that are hard to find anywhere else.
Just as Sycamore Herb Farm before it, Fat Cat used organic methods. I knew that the plants I bought would not have seen chemicals or poisons. Since I also avoid those things, I was very pleased to buy anything I could at Fat Cat Farm. I really miss having it a mile east of me.
That's Rhoda you see walking across the screen as we enter Fat Cat Farm. We'll pay a brief visit to the goat and her kid and then look around the herbs near the entrance for a bit. As we approach the Lone Madrone Tasting Room on the way to the Fat Cat Farm, Rhoda walks by again and I threaten to come back and interview her someday soon. We walk past the tasting room and out to the area where the herbs are sold and take a brief look at the butterfly garden behind that area, the growing beds for the herbs, and a new planting area. Another video will take a closer look at the butterfly garden.
A closer look at the Butterfly Garden at Fat Cat Farm, June 15, 2010
This video focuses on just the Butterfly Garden and a more extensive look at the herb store area as they were in 2010.
A Closer Look at Fat Cat Farm's Growing Beds
This very short video records my conversation with Rhoda, the owner, about the plants in this bed and her history with the farm.
Ok. I like to watch animals because I don't have any. This video is just goats talking to each other and me talking to the goats. These are the animals your children might like to watch if you visit. You met them briefly on the way in on the first video.
We all know that an organic farm needs a lot of manure, and it has to come from somewhere. I suspect that the chickens and goats helped provide it. So let's meet the chickens that lived at Fat Cat Farm. Your children might also like to watch them.
It breaks my heart that the gardens are gone. You can click any photo to make it larger for a more detailed view.
Since Fat Cat Farm closed, I now rely on Serena Wyatt at Grown from the Heart to supply me with herb and vegetable seedlings. She is very helpful and I like doing business with her at the Templeton Farmers Market.
Do you remember Sycamore Herb Farm or Fat Cat Farm? Do you miss having a local herb farm as much as I do? Do you have a local herb farm where you live?
I had always wanted to grow tansy because it was said to repel ants. I tried to grow it in Templeton in my herb garden, but the one plant I tried died. When I wanted to redo my Paso Robles front flower beds in June 2013, I managed to get a small tansy plant at the going-out-of-business sale at Fat Cat Farm. This photo shows that plant.
There were actually two plants in the same pot. I planted the smaller one at the very end of this pointed flower bed and the larger one on the other side of the Fruity Germander.
In the past, tansy was used medicinally, but it can be harmful, even fatal. Historically they used it to induce abortions. It can cause poisoning.
It has also been used to repel ants and many kinds of harmful garden beetles, but I've not personally found it very effective against ants. People have also used it in the kitchen as a culinary herb in small amounts, but, again, it can be toxic to ingest too much. I'm not chancing it.
My tansy first flowered a year after I planted it. It normally flowers from July to September. Mine has already stopped blooming this year. How long it blooms may depend on the temperature. This shows my tansy in bloom July 30, 2014. As you can see, some of the leaves are dying back.
This year the plants have had little water. This is how they looked on August 25, 2015. Last September the plants grew tall and then started to die back, leaving a lot of unattractive brown stems that needed to be cut way back. I'm waiting to see if that will also happen this year. I expect it will.
As you can see by following these photos, tansy can be an invasive plant. That's why many people restrain it by planting it in pots. I actually want it to be invasive because I prefer it to the weeds that would otherwise grow in the same place. Nature doesn't like bare ground.
In Paso Robles I have a pot of catmint in my front flower bed. Every year I cut it back, and in spring the new growth starts. This is how it looks at the beginning of June when the catmint begins to leaf out again. For a closer look at photos, please click to enlarge them.
Once the plant begins to leaf out, it grows fast again. This photo was taken a month later in the first week of July. If you look carefully, you will see the buds for the flowers to come beginning to form.
By the end of July, the flower spikes have formed and you see the small blue or lavender flowers appear. The color of this plant's flowers is lighter than in some other catmint plants, but you can see the faint lavender tinge. It may be that soil conditions are preventing the color from being deeper. It is very dry here and I've not added much to the soil in the pot in a couple of years.
Our neighbor's cat Logan does not care how deep the color is. He comes over to steal or beg for the leaves to chew so that he can get drunk on them. He is chewing on a leaf now.
In the photo below, Logan has finished a leaf or two and is definitely under the influence. He will recover and wander home in a few minutes. He will return again. If I'm not here, he knows how to help himself.
About this time last year, we still had neighbor cats visiting us every day. Usually they hung out on our porch. On this particular day, Garfield was taking his nap in one of our herb gardens, between the irises and the rosemary. It was almost exactly a year ago.
A lot has happened since then. Our butterfly bush was blown down by the wind and now blooms from a horizontal position. Unfortunately, it doesn't photograph well in that position. The branches now grow upright from the ground, but the flower spikes still bloom in all directions as they did when the plant was a tree taller than I am.
Much worse than that, though, is that Garfield also disappeared this spring. Our neighbors started with four cats. One of them had a kitten. Now the kitten is all they have left. I hate to think what happened to the others. I miss them all.
This photo came from my front flower bed about a month ago, in June. Two of the herbs are in bloom. The pale pink flower clusters are on the clary sage. To the left of it you see tricolor sage. Between that and the kale in back is oregano, which is now in bloom, but it wasn't then. The small purple flowers are hyssop blossoms. For a closer look, just click the photo to enlarge it.
The sages and oregano are in pots to keep them confined. I like growing these perennial herbs because they require almost no care and little water. I harvest and use the oregano. I grow the other herbs for their ornamental value. The bees use them for forage, and they add color in season. Herbs give me the most value for my money when water is rationed.
The photo on the card below comes from another of my herb gardens in Templeton. It shows the tricolor sage in bloom. To its right is common sage, which has finished blooming. The rosemary, which has also finished blooming, is behind.
