Homeward bound
Frank’s Californian sojourn reaches its end, at the same time as California’s drought, showing just what might have been achieved had the rains come sooner
The drought is over. We counted the inches as they fell in the first months of the year until the magic number of 24 was reached and surpassed. The landscape is suddenly a living thing and frogs can be heard at night and birds in the morning. Drought measures are being held in place for now and, if the authorities have any sense, they should be permanent. But you know it is only a matter of time before the hiss of sprinklers will return. Here, consumption is all consuming and the past easily forgotten.
But that is nothing to me now since, with fantastic irony, just as there is enough water to make a garden viable, it is time to go home. I can’t say that with any regret. Three years is plenty in an alien place; a landscape that you feel the likes of us should never have been imposed on in the first instance. Of course you could say of anywhere that the wilderness is paradise and the malls are hell, but I have never been anywhere else where the contrast was so great and immediate.
So, before I turn my back and wipe my feet on Southern California, it is time to record what was interesting in the experience. I learned more about succulents: chiefly that you don’t need to live in a hot climate to make them happy. The only advantage of being here was that you could leave them in the ground all year and let them get really large, eventually. Some things, like aeoniums, needed shade and water over here and were far happier when I grew them at home.
I was fascinated by what could come back to life after desiccation and baking. Gazanias are phenomenal in this regard. Withered clumps lying on dust spring into action at the first hint of winter moisture, and expand and flower in all their brazen, elaborate patterns. At home I used to leave them to die of frostbite at the end of the summer. Now I can’t wait to see what happens if I dry them off and keep them so over the winter. If it works there are so many delectable named varieties to try.
Leucojums were even more of a surprise. We know them for being amphibious and I put them in the wettest parts of the English borders to thrive. But who would have thought that at the top of a dry slope, among the roots of a great oak, in a place that defied all attempts at planting, a clump of Leucojum aestivum would appear out of nowhere after the heavy rains? There may have been a few leaves in other springs that I honestly can’t remember or didn’t bother to identify. So try that in the lee of your yew hedges and give the cyclamen a rest.
I had given up on expecting flowers from the camellia, having been told that if they were allowed to dry out in the summer, when the buds were forming, none would come. The irrigation put in place by the previous owner had been ripped out with more sustainable practices in mind so this poor thing was left to fend for itself, in the shade of larger and thirstier trees. Mild wonder that it was surviving at all was replaced by total astonishment at it being smothered in blossom within ten weeks of the rain starting. I have yet to think of an explanation.
It may be that, in the dullness of time, I think back to having had a Californian garden with fondness. It could be that, had my stay here not coincided with such a terrible drought, the experience would have been a lot more fulfilling. I did once have the odd fantasy, as most gardeners must, of being frost-free and having a lot more sunshine. But, at the moment, mostly there is an ache to be home that watching the rain here only makes stronger. My own black earth is calling.
Now, with fantastic irony, just as there is enough water to make a garden viable, it is time to go home