Chuck's Garden

When I told Chuck B., the San Francisco garden/neighborhood blogger who inspired me to start this blog, that we were coming to the Bay Area for a few days and wanted to meet up with him, he insisted that we stay with him and his boyfriend at their exquisitely remodeled house in Bernal Heights. When I tried to resist, he told me that San Francisco hotels are infested with bedbugs and that I really did need to stay with them. So we did. They were excellent hosts, and my only regret about our stay is that everything about my own house and garden seems so totally wrong now. Anyway...

I spent yesterday morning tooling around Chuck's "My Back 40 (Feet)" garden, thinking I would be the envy of the entire American garden blogging community when I posted these photos proving I had been there. (And I am so unworthy of the honor that I can't even identify most of these plants, even though he told me their names a dozen times each.)











































After the garden tour, Chuck, who must have been quite sick of us by then, agreed to cart us around the city and take us to the airport.

First we went to the Golden Gate Park Botanical Gardens, where he knew the staff by name.







I'm tempted to try to grow Gunnera, but I don't think we have a good place for it -- our yard is too hot and sunny and windy.





The Julia Phelps Ceanothus is a few weeks ahead of ours in Seattle.



Then Chuck took us to Valencia/Mission, where he took a ton of photos and I just shot some street art.











Thanks for everything, Chuck and Guy!