The paperwhite bloom cheered me this morning as I worked in the perennial garden. Simple beauty for complicated times. With the cool season vegetable garden planted I can attend to perennials, natives and shrubs in the street side garden. Sun and fog intermingled as I moved from place to place, completing tasks that had been deferred. The first rain is expected this weekend so I’ll be working there again tomorrow.

Pleasantly warm days in the low 70’s and cool nights favor the winter crops and the citrus begins to turn orange and sweeten. Come walk with me through the garden.

I grew three different kinds of cauliflower from seed this year—Graffiti (purple), Amazing (white) and Romanesco (green). Eighteen plants are intensively planted in the rich soil of the two foot deep beds. They are thriving.

Premium Crop broccoli and a few Romanesco are interplanted with bunching onions in an adjacent bed.

Nearby, planted in the ground is a robust artichoke plant thriving in our cool and sometimes foggy days.

A thick band of arugula will give me baby arugula in a day or two. Black Magic kale will take over as the arugula wanes.

Some of the Tango celery plants with skewers inserted to deter the moles.

Five different kinds of seed-grown lettuces here. I usually direct seed more of the lettuce but moles have disrupted seedlings in other raised beds.

My heirloom Golden Sweet snow peas begin the trek up the trellis usually topping out at six feet.

One side of the beet patch with some reseeding due to suboptimal germination.

A section of carrot seedlings shows the disruption from moles and my attempt to discourage them with wooden skewers. Germination was better than expected with the intrusions.

I’m doing short rows of successively planted Easter Egg radishes this year. These are ready to be thinned and I’ll plant the next row in a few days. Skewers inserted at the time of planting prevented any disturbance from the moles.

Elsewhere, bi-color sweet peas begin to climb the trellis and Classic Magic bachelor buttons edge one of the beds. I’ve tucked extra lettuce transplants here and there and red onion sets are nestled into soil. Now I look forward to the weekend rain.