Garden Club: November 2017 Update

On October 16, a beautiful warm clear day, 16 members of our club carpooled to the Tree of Life Nursery off of Ortega Highway adjacent to Caspers Wilderness Park. Our president, Gunjan Annand, provided granola bars, string cheese, and water for everyone to enjoy.
The Tree of Life Nursery was started 40 years ago, and the original owner, Mike Evans, gave us the tour. As those who attended can attest, the visit was very informative, especially seeing the many varieties of plants and trees being propagated there.
Instead of writing my own narrative (very poorly I’m sure) about what we learned, I am reproducing gardening information that was distributed on the tour:
October in the Natural Garden: Cool nights, pleasant days, and beautiful gardens in the forecast.
Seasonal Care: The fall equinox (equi=same, nox-night)
is several days behind us, and that means that the earth’s axis just tilted in our favor. The pattern for California’s wet season is clearly in view now (we hope) and this means that all our activities, including new plantings, will soon be blessed by rain. Remember all those tasks we conveniently postponed during the summer months? Now we can do them! Jobs such as pruning, weeding, mulching, feeding, and troubleshooting varmints, pests and diseases—they are all waiting for us. So go outside and play in the garden.
At the conclusion of the tour many members drove to the Sea and Sage Restaurant in the harbor to lunch on fresh seaweed and those sorts of ocean garden delicacies.
Our November club meeting on Monday, November 20, will again be our Garden Therapy Forget-Me-Not Project where we assemble holiday gift bags to be distributed to local homebound seniors.
—Karl Kuhn