1309 - Amaryllis

I suspect our very dry winter and spring led to the best display of amaryllis in the gardens since we moved into the house.

120830 - Amaryllis

While in some years we only see a few plants in bloom, the amaryllis have put on a spectacular show across the top of the terraces this summer.

1012 - Amaryllis

The amaryllis did not bloom as profusely in 2010 as they had over the last few years, most likely due to the unusually cool, foggy summer.

However, in December, 2010, just at the top of the staircase, these put on a spectacular show, their perfume filling the air around the steps.

07 Late Fall - Waterfall Views

These are three photographs I took of the waterfall on the same day late last fall.

Phil thought growing nasturtiums over the waterfall would look nice, especially when they were in bloom. But he's recently pulled up whole sections, since the plants grew very densely, blocking the view from the stairs of much of the terraced gardens.

I think the cacti were especially happy to say Bon voyage! to the nasturtiums, which had grown over them and blocked their afternoon sunlight.

In January, 2008, we had a terrific winter storm with hurricane-strength gusts. The wind shoved through that fence at the top of the terraces the huge cactus in its container, shattering both fence and container. It also bent upward the copper sconce draining water into the waterfall's blue basin.

We transplanted the cactus into a larger container and put it to the far left of the stairs, but left the shattered fence where it dropped. We're going to build a trellis there later this year.

The copper sconce hasn't worked properly since the storm, so Phil recently took it apart and is re-foaming it later this spring, when he plans to rework one section of the waterfall that has had a slow leak.

06 Spring - Larkspur and Sweet Peas

Several weeks ago, I scattered larkspur seeds across the garden alongside the fence you can see in this photograph.

They should be coming up very soon.

You can see here that we had sweet peas and larkspur blooming together in the spring, 2006.

I hope this year looks as nice.

080306 - Terraced Gardens

I took this short video of the gardens this afternoon, when the sun was descending behind the evergreens southwest of our house.

I'll do a similar video in a month or so to show how rapidly the gardens change, as spring approaches.

06 Summer - Garden Unfinished

Here is the garden in the summer, 2006, before the terraces were in place.

You can see lots of sweet peas, larkspur, and nasturtiums. At the top left are pink ladies coming up out of the ground like long, pink arms.

Phil is a huge fan of nasturtiums. In fact, he said aloud one day in the gardens how much he loved them, and the god of nasturtiums must have heard him, as that cascade of flowers seemed to appear from no where.

Charlie the owl sits at the top of the stairs. He's supposed to scare away birds, but no one has yet told the birds.

07 Late Winter - Top of the Hill Built At Last

Here is how the top of the hill looked after we finished building the terraces to the right of the staircase and across the top of the backyard. You can see they were constructed with boards, rebar and fence posts.

We spent a very long day hauling buckets of dirt up the hill to create the trail I'm standing on to take the photograph, and to create the little space in the distance, which is a nice place to sit and relax in the garden and gaze out at the Pacific Ocean on a non-foggy San Francisco day.

To make sure all the dirt didn't settle during our winter rainy season, we jumped up and down on it for quite some time - long enough, in fact, for a curious neighbor to ask what we were up to.

In this photograph, you can see pink ladies (amaryllis) and Mexican salvia, both of which were flourishing in the backyard long before we moved into the house.

To create the trail in the foreground, we had to dig up and move several pink lady bulbs, which were larger than your hands clasped together in prayer. The bulbs didn't like being disturbed, so we had very few flowers in the summer, 2007.

06 Late Winter - Earliest Garden Picture

Welcome to Mike and Phil on the Hill!

Here you will see photographs we've taken of our gardens, since we moved into our house on the hill in late winter, 2006.

This is the earliest photograph I have of the backyard. You can see we started shoring up the hillside with boards and rebar.

Before this photograph was taken, the backyard was nothing but a jungle of blackberry, strangle vine and Scotch broom. A neighbor told us that no one had done anything to the backyard since at least the early 1980's, when she moved into the neighborhood.