rosemary
Summer 1969 we moved into our new Windsor Park home in Chula Vista at San Diego, and immediately set about sprigging ice plant across the front garden, yard, a small patch of packed dirt that became mud with any amount of rain. We also brought in other plants, bougainvillea to spread over the latticed entryway from street to front door, spreading quickly and lovely in bloom, hanging down, making us feel very much at home. Tree, we planted a small eucalyptus tree; its leaves most fragrant, and the one time I drove by the house years later, must have been about 1982, I was gratified to see that it had grown quite large.
The ice plant also spread quickly, succulent leaves and always colorful with small, beautiful flowers of various colors, we sprigged because, with me at sea most of the time, and deployed to WestPac the last two months of 1969 and first six months or so of 1970, we did not want to spend time tending a lawn. It was a popular and pretty ground cover. What we soon found out was that it attracted snails by the thousands, snails with thin shells that crunched whenever one walked across the front yard. We knew what they were, every social gathering at the Officers Club in Yokosuka, Japan had served escargot, and we could have roasted and eaten them, we supposed, but did not.
My favorite San Diego garden memory may be the rosemary we planted along the edge of the front yard, from where the sidewalk started. A woody shrub with fragrant gray-green evergreen needles that are great for cooking on roast lamb, ros marinus, "mist of the sea", is native to the Mediterranean climate and well suited to the similar dry, warm climate of Southern California's Pacific coast. Growing prolifically, ours had light blue flowers that, as the ice plant drew snails, the rosemary attracted bees by the billions, such that during blooming season we just steered clear of it and enjoyed nature, knowing honey was being magically created somewhere.
So here we are fifty years on, living on the Florida Gulf Coast where both at the Old Place and at our late condo 7H we have, just for the memories, had and enjoyed the same rosemary, though it did not do anywhere near as well here as in Southern California. Fond memories of which, where, including going into the fish market, buying dungeness crabs and a bottle of wine and taking home supper-for-two every Friday evening, has often over the decades made me regret not returning in time and making my life there. Almost anyone who has lived in Southern California must have been there, mentally and in that mindset.
And so what calls all this back to mind? That today, later this morning, we are to check out of our second post-hurricane PCB condo and relocate further west and further in, down the highway and across the bridge and into the next, Walton County, to Rosemary Beach, where we are to have our third temporary home since October 10th. Haven't seen it yet, but understand it's not Gulf-front but back from the sea some blocks, a more spacious condo unit in a four-story building. Rosemary it is then, and with all the emotional baggage of memories, fragrance, beauty, bees and bloom.
T
The ice plant also spread quickly, succulent leaves and always colorful with small, beautiful flowers of various colors, we sprigged because, with me at sea most of the time, and deployed to WestPac the last two months of 1969 and first six months or so of 1970, we did not want to spend time tending a lawn. It was a popular and pretty ground cover. What we soon found out was that it attracted snails by the thousands, snails with thin shells that crunched whenever one walked across the front yard. We knew what they were, every social gathering at the Officers Club in Yokosuka, Japan had served escargot, and we could have roasted and eaten them, we supposed, but did not.
My favorite San Diego garden memory may be the rosemary we planted along the edge of the front yard, from where the sidewalk started. A woody shrub with fragrant gray-green evergreen needles that are great for cooking on roast lamb, ros marinus, "mist of the sea", is native to the Mediterranean climate and well suited to the similar dry, warm climate of Southern California's Pacific coast. Growing prolifically, ours had light blue flowers that, as the ice plant drew snails, the rosemary attracted bees by the billions, such that during blooming season we just steered clear of it and enjoyed nature, knowing honey was being magically created somewhere.
So here we are fifty years on, living on the Florida Gulf Coast where both at the Old Place and at our late condo 7H we have, just for the memories, had and enjoyed the same rosemary, though it did not do anywhere near as well here as in Southern California. Fond memories of which, where, including going into the fish market, buying dungeness crabs and a bottle of wine and taking home supper-for-two every Friday evening, has often over the decades made me regret not returning in time and making my life there. Almost anyone who has lived in Southern California must have been there, mentally and in that mindset.
And so what calls all this back to mind? That today, later this morning, we are to check out of our second post-hurricane PCB condo and relocate further west and further in, down the highway and across the bridge and into the next, Walton County, to Rosemary Beach, where we are to have our third temporary home since October 10th. Haven't seen it yet, but understand it's not Gulf-front but back from the sea some blocks, a more spacious condo unit in a four-story building. Rosemary it is then, and with all the emotional baggage of memories, fragrance, beauty, bees and bloom.
T