Recollections of Memorial Days Past

It is a gray cloudy morning with a chill in the air; we are having the typical beach weather called June Gloom. Today in the middle of Memorial Day Weekend 2018, I cannot help but remember Memorial Days that have gone before. Many times I'd gone down to Topanga Canyon Boulevard with my husband on Memorial Day morning to watch the Topanga Days Parade put on by local businesses.  (Topanga Canyon can be found in the Santa Monica Mountains, a town wedged in between Malibu and the San Fernando Valley, in the northwesterly part of Los Angeles County.)

On some years the weather would be just like it is today, cool and cloudy, while other years it would be very hot, with 90dg weather heating up early in the morning.  One year it was so hot that kids in the parade were throwing water-filled balloons at the audience - and no one minded!

Then there were years when we wouldn't bother to walk down to the boulevard to watch the Topanga Days Parade. Instead, we would watch from our own deck atop the hill as firetrucks announced the start of the parade. The deck was always very breezy, and truthfully we needed binoculars to see much of anything!

One year my girlfriend asked me to meet her at Green Thumb Nursery in Canoga Park, California.  That year the weather got up to 100 dgs in the San Fernando Valley.  I thought I would die! How can she be looking at plants in the blazing sun?  Sweat began to form on my neck, as I dashed for shade.

Nothing says Road Trip like the announcement that Memorial Day is just around the corner. I recall years when I was running a business, that it was impossible to reach customers on the phone. Everyone was so anxious to get away from their jobs that they would plan their vacations for the unofficial "Start of Summer."

May Wildflowers of Topanga Canyon, Photo by Kathy Vilim

In Topanga Canyon I was perfectly content to be a hermit on the "First Day of Summer." I did not mind staying away from the Topanga Days Fair, with its press of people. Likewise, I did not mind declining invites to barbecues, with some kind of meat sizzling on a grill.

Instead, I recall enjoying Memorial Days in the garden, listening to the live music from Topanga Days that would waft up from across the canyon, from the hillside beyond. Many happy times were spent with a wine glass in hand listening to varying degrees of good rock -n roll music or reggae from my garden bench. My gaze softening as my mind mellowed, I would follow the movements of lizards across rock walls and wait for hummingbirds to notice the newly-filled, ruby red feeder.

As long as I had my music-filled garden and my hummingbird friends, I was happy to welcome in the unofficial First Day of Summer~

April is the Month for Garden Tours

The Manzanita bush off to the right is my favorite native plant in this grouping.

April is the month for garden tours. All across North America spring has sprung, and the excitement over new blooms is evident by the number of garden tours and walks that can be found.  Here on the West Coast there certainly have been a plentiful group of gardens to visit.   Some tours charge an entrance fee and the fees vary widely, but others are FREE. I attended one such FREE garden tour on April 28th in Southern California, the 2018 Mar Vista Green Garden Showcase.

This year the focus of the 2018 Mar Vista Green Garden Showcase was on sustainability.  The garden tour in Mar Vista was a self-guided tour and included gardens that were made up of native plants and other drought tolerant plants.  Visitors were given a map of homes that are practicing water-wise techniques. On this user-friendly tour day, homeowners or their landscapers were available to answer questions at each garden.

Raised beds are a water wise way to grow vegetables after a lawn removal.

Besides native plant gardens, there were also vegetable gardens and succulent gardens to visit. Again, with the focus being on sustainability, some of the things folks wanted to know were: How can we reduce our water consumption, and in the case of a vegetable garden, how can we still create viable food gardens during a drought year? With the DWP offering incentives for water-guzzling lawn removals, homeowners must decide what they want to plant.  (This popular DWP program is being renewed in July.)  Raised beds in front yards are one answer to the lawn removal debate. 

Most gardens on the Native Plant Garden Tour seemed to make use of succulents for their drought-tolerance.  But succulents are NOT California natives.  Most come from places like Africa, Australia or China.  As a native plant enthusiast, I wish the tour organizers would have done more to inform visitors of the difference.  Yes, succulents will save water and so are applauded by the DWP.  But going a step further by planting things that BELONG here, that are native/local to Southern California, not the desert, would have been applauded by me.

Succulents are not native plants but are drought tolerant and create a distinctive look.

Most people would ask: What’s the difference between natives and succulents? If both are drought tolerant, who cares?  For an answer to that, I would urge people to pick up a book like Douglas Tallamy’s “Bringing Nature Home.”  In it he describes the intricate connection between the microbes in the soil, the insects, and the birds who eat the insects.  They are all part of an ecosystem, a food network that existed long before Los Angeles was developed and covered over in green lawns and gray asphalt.  Succulents, while adding a distinctive look, do not contribute to the healthy network of native wildlife like native plants do. 

Yet and still, the 2018 Mar Vista Green Garden Showcase offered a wonderful opportunity for folks to get out and enjoy the April sunshine, meet like-minded folks, and learn water-wise tips.  I only wish April came around more often.