(The rubber chicken fit right in with the foxglove plants in Golden Gate Park. The plants don't cringe at the climate in San Francisco).

It’s nice to get away for a while. It’s also nice to be home.
Driving the back roads from Chico always reminds me of why I choose to live in Northern California. It’s nice to live in an area where you can see the mountains in the background (when we’re not bombarded by wildfire smoke) and see food growing 360 degrees around you.
One can feel smug hitting the traffic where Highways 505 and 80 converge, wondering how some drivers on the road ever passed their driver’s test and equally befuddled by why some folks are in such a hurry on a Saturday afternoon.

I grew up in the east Bay, and even within my lifetime, farms along 680 have been replaced by housing developments. My parents can remember when Walnut Creek was an area dominated by orchards.
In addition to a Giant’s game in San Francisco, we spent most of one day in and around Golden Gate Park.
The eucalyptus trees that line the bike and walking paths are a sharp contrast to the angular buildings of the city.

I glanced over at my partner, Tommy, with a sad look.

"We forgot the rubber chicken."

We looked at each other with a sort of shocked expression.

The sad part about this is that we weren't that far from home and neither of us suggested that we turn around and retrieve our traveling companion.

After the significance of what had happened sunk in, I felt really bad. It's not as bad as driving away from a rest stop and realizing the dog was tied to the bumper or leaving the plane tickets at home, but it was definitely a sign of thoughtlessness with serious repercussions.

This is especially true since the chicken has given us so much. We have photos from so many road trips with chicken chatting with park rangers and soaking up the mist from waterfalls.

How could we forget? Had something changed in "us" that we would forget the chicken?

Sad, sad, sad.

We enjoyed the time with my mother, but there was a noticeable void when we posed for photos in Mom's lush backyard.

Leaving the chicken behind reminded me of friendships. Summer is a busy time, and usually when we catch up with friends we haven't seen over the winter. But this year I haven't made enough time to hang out with friends.

It seems like when my life gets busy, I am most likely to chat with friends when one of them has an emotional setback or when I have a problem I need to talk through.

And recently I have realized I should make an effort to call a friend when I have an unbearable need to crack up.

And that goes for the chicken as well. Chicken is a tangible, rubber, yellow, open-mouthed and wide-eyed example that sometimes you have to remember to bring along your own fun.

When we got home, the rubber chicken was still on his perch on the ceiling fan in the living room, gathering dust.

This weekend is another adventure on the road, this time to include a trip to the Braves playing at AT&T Park. I think that would be a lot more fun with the chicken.

Do greenhouses equal cheating?

Last Saturday my best friend since 8th grade and I wandered down to the farmers market, which was packed.

Not being an early riser, we arrived near the end, just as they were running out of salsa samples at the Tomato Weigh-in.

We still managed to catch the tail end of the fun, including checking out the tomato artwork. My favorite contribution was the person who took the skin of a tomato and carefully assembled it in layers to form roses.

TOMATOE WEIGH IN

That's thinking outside the orb.

Tomatoes are dirt cheap at the market right now and we've been enjoying fresh salsa a few times a week. However, I have yet to get much bounty from the 15 plants in my yard.

This really rubs me raw.

I felt so smug in mid-January when I planted tomatoes from seed in the windowsill. I was content that this summer I would have a boatload of tomatoes and freeze salsa and spaghetti sauce to eat through next February.

And while the plants are bursting with green tomatoes, we have yet to only harvest two.

There are several sources of inspiration for planting tomatoes in January. Likely the strongest motivator is that I'm extremely anxious for winter to be over. Also, it's much cheaper to plant dozens of tomatoes by seed than to buy them for $2.99 each at the store.

During early spring I was praising myself for my foresight as I heard about my friend Chanin who filled up her family's minivan with plants, only to lose them in a rare frost.

When we passed by the large tomato plants at the store, I thought it was unfair that those plants were so much larger than mine, as if growing something in a greenhouse is a serious form of cheating.

However, now I'm outright jealous. It's August, and I've only had two tomatoes.

I'm going to have to have some serious thought about my philosophy on tomatoes. I might just have to join the cheaters and ask Santa for a mini-greenhouse at Christmas.

Photo of my paltry producers. The tomatoes in my yard are green, as of July 29.

Fair-trade gardening

Last week a reader named Claudia brought in some mystery plants. She divides the bulbs every couple of years and this year decided to divide them by bringing them to me.

My joy was heartfelt.

Claudia said she did not know the name of the plants, and I asked if any readers had some clues.

The mystery is pretty much solved, thanks to Butte County's profound knowledge base.

The majority of the e-mails said the plant is Zephyranthes. One of the common names is "rain lily," another is "storm lilies," because they often bloom after it rains.

The Web site www.easytogrowbulbs.com suggests using rain lilies to fill in bare spots in the garden. They need good drainage (never waterlogged) and the bulbs should be planted about 2 inches deep.

Because the plant grows from bulbs, don't cut back the foliage after bloom because the bulb uses the energy from the leaves to refuel for next spring.

Over the last week, I thanked Claudia for giving me such a fun column topic. It turns out that the plants can be divided soon after they bloom.

When it comes to gardening, I am an extremely selfish person. So, although it is against my nature, sharing the foxglove seeds with readers this summer was a big step toward a change in patterns.

I know it's the right thing to do to divide the Zephyranthes plants and give them away to friends and readers, but I'm just not ready to commit to that.

Baby steps.

When I divide the plants later this summer, I'm willing to trade. I'm especially interested in trading for some shade plants that do OK in Chico's hot weather. Preferably flowering perennials, but I've already had bad luck with hostas.

Most of the irises in my yard came from divisions about 10 years ago from Style editor Laurie Kavenaugh’s yard.
I’ve planted numerous geranium plants from cuttings from friends.
And on and on it goes ...
Several weeks ago I harvested foxglove seeds from the yard and offered them to readers who sent me a note with their address.
I was delighted to receive nine requests. It’s fun to have a project in the evening and I monopolized the coffee table with my bag of foxglove flower debris.

I think there must be some sort of rule with gardening, that if you share your bounty you are almost guaranteed that some wonderful garden surprise will come your way.
This same concept seems to work with a variety of other small life details.
For example, guaranteed that if someone stops to help you with some minor car need, such as a jump-start or calling a tow truck, the opportunity will arise for you to help someone else.
On this same note, if you start giving compliments to co-workers when you find a particular outfit looks good on them, people will start telling you when you wear something particularly fetching.
Almost immediately after packaging up my foxglove seeds and sending them off to the nine readers, I received an e-mail from Claudia, who lives near Bangor.

She sent some photos of a delightful lily-type plant. Claudia said the plants came from a friend who originally brought them back from Japan in the 1940s after his war-time occupation tour ended.
Every time the guy moved, which was all over the United States, the plants moved with him.
The plants, which grow from bulbs, can be divided every few years and given to friends (or newspaper reporters).

I e-mailed Claudia and said I was up for the challenge of a plant that manages to thrive throughout the United States, needs little more than watering and can be divided every several years.
The plants were at the front desk of the office when I came into work one day this week. I carried the big box of six one-gallon plants back to my desk, drawing the curiosity of several plant-curious co-workers.
Clearly, I had a predicament here. The really, really nice thing would have been to offer several of the six plants to my co-workers.
How could I not? After all, there were six.

But instead I heard that greedy voice in my head.
Clearly I had the right to look around my yard first and decide if I had the appropriate spot for all these plants. After I had a chance to put the pots around my yard, I would decide if I would offer them up to others.
As I was attempting to soften the Gollum voice in my head (the one that makes you cling to belongings and hiss “my precious”), Claudia sent a follow-up note with instructions on care and feeding of the plants.

She said the plants, now in one-gallon containers, should be divided this year, as soon as they stop blooming.
This helped clear up my dilemma. I could actually have it all — hoard the plants and give a few to much-deserving co-workers.
Also, I predict that Claudia will soon have some unexpected garden-related windfall. Perhaps a neighbor will deliver a giant box of tomatoes or give her some exotic new plant for her windowsill.
Also, if anyone knows anything else about this mystery lily, particularly the name, please let me and Claudia (and yet-to-be-named plant recipients) know.

For months we've had a fairly significant pile of mulch in the driveway. It was delivered by the nice tree workers who were in the neighborhood after the January storms.

We offered some mulch to our friends, but for reasons completely unknown to us, no one jumped at the offer to spread the joy of mulch in their yards.

This stuff sells for $6 a bag. I don't know what my friends were thinking.

So there it sat in the driveway.

However, I can partially understand. We let the mound sit there for months without doing anything with it.

Then one day Mom visited and became the mulch motivation. She helped spread the mulch around several of the flower beds. When my significant other Tommy came home and saw the mulch migration, he got more mulch moving throughout the yard.

Next, a reader sent an e-mail and said he'd be happy to pick up a truckload as well. The mulch mover said he'd leave us an ample amount of the mulch for whatever else we might need it for.

This was great news, but also led to mulch miser mode.

Knowing that much of the mulch would be moved, we wanted to really make sure we had enough to keep the yard covered until the next time the wood chipper was in the neighborhood.

Mulch gets a move-on

The evening before the guy was scheduled to come by, Tommy and I pretty much finished off the yard, spreading mulch around the 15 tomato plants, over the dip in the driveway that always causes a puddle, over the weeds that sprout in the alley and in a pile for future use by our neighbor Curious George.

My best friend next door officially announced that she was sick of hearing about how much I loved my new mulch look.

We managed to leave a fairly decent-sized load for our mystery mulch recipient (who arrived on a Saturday morning, loaded up his truck and left before we woke up. That qualifies as mulch moving magic).

I must say, laying down a blanket of mulch has made the yard look about 173 percent better.

My Internet research revealed that mulch should not be placed too close to the foundation of a house, to help prevent termites from finding the house. Also, mulch can rob the soil of nitrogen.

However, the Michigan State University Extension, http://web1.msue.msu.edu/imp/modzz/00001799.html, states that nitrogen deficiency occurs mostly at the soil's surface.

Just to be safe, I took the Osmocote (slow-release fertilizer) around the yard and shook the container over the garden beds like a salt shaker.

We'll now watch to see if any of the plants get yellow leaves, indicating a nitrogen deficiency.

Meanwhile, I am loving the new mulch look.

It's amazing how much more "finished" everything looks. Even those patches of dirt in the back of the yard, the area we always carefully omitted from photographs, now looks like somebody actually cares.

Now that I have had a chance to brag to friends that we've greatly improved the yard with mulch, one friend called and said she was bummed I gave away "her mulch."

Mulch isn't a cure-all and like all things, there are trade-offs. While mulch can prevent evaporation and keep down weeds, it also can harbor critters such as earwigs.

I've noted many more "roly-polies" or pill bugs, which love to hang out around decaying vegetation.

One Web site, www.pestcontrolcanada.com/INSECTS/pill_bugs_sow_bugs.htm, suggests placing a half a cantaloupe upside down in the area where pill bugs are a problem. This sounds like a really interesting experiment.

Send me an e-mail if you try this and have noteworthy results.

Also, with the mulch, the snails are a little more difficult to see with the flashlight during post-daylight snail hunts. But for now, I have found those issues far less disturbing than the pleasure of the new aesthetic.

After sharing his predicament (through a series of barely decipherable grumbles), he went back into the bathroom.
I could hear him cursing and was glad the bathroom door was shut.
I so wished he was in a better mood about the situation, because I wanted to break out the digital camera and document the moment.
Instead, I made potato salad and called up a friend to crack up about it.
For the next 20 minutes I heard the familiar buzz of the clippers.
Eventually, he emerged with a reluctant grin on his face.
Yes, it was funny, he agreed. He just had not immediately seen the humor in the situation.
The home hair clipper faux pas can't be an uncommon event. While we're at it there are likely many, many more inevitable mistakes, such as the home perm and self tanning.

I tried to give him soothing words including: “A lot of people actually get their hair cut like that on purpose,” and “Well, at least you have a nicely shaped head.”
That afternoon, a friend and I went shopping at a big-box store. Immediately when we walked in the door I saw an employee with the exact same haircut as Tommy. Either this employee had just returned from a tour in Iraq, or he actually liked his hair military-short.
During the next half hour of browsing merchandise, we counted four more men and boys with similar clips.
About a week has passed now and Tommy has “grown into” his new do.
He’s noted that he no longer needs to use shampoo, rather he can just drag a bar of soap across his head. The hairless globe is cooler with this hot weather and those patches of gray at his temples are less noticeably.
He still has a bit of adjustment to make, however. One night this week we were stepping out and out of habit he put a big glob of hair gel in his palm before remembering he didn’t have any hair to put it on.

New garden pest — ash
Gardening isn’t a total let-down right now, but it is far less fun to be poking around under these smoke-filled skies.
We’ve been madly tickling the tomato stems, which helps the flowers to pollinate for tomato production. The outlook is good.
However, on a recent tickling adventure I thought I might be getting white flies when a scurry of white showered down from the plants.
Upon closer inspection, I discovered it was ash that had inhabited the leaves.
One bright spot are the sunflowers I planted near a back wall of the yard. They were at their prime this week (when photos were taken).

Like puppies and fresh paint, sunflowers are only in their prime for a short time. A few days after this photo was taken, the stalk started to droop toward the soil.
Despite their relatively short life, sunflowers are some of the most rewarding plants to grow — especially in a place where nothing else is planned. They’re also a very easy seed to use to introduce small children to the joys of making things grow.

These dogs had that kind of lustrous hair you would see in the air-brushed Loreal hair colorant commercials.

The manes on these dogs looked soft and pet-able, as if they were all decked out in their Sunday best.

When we returned home, Tommy was inspired to give Gandalf a bath.

Gandalf is the big, loping, affable animal that lives next door with my best friend.

He has this sad, pitiful look he conjures up as if all in his world could be right if he could just have a dog biscuit.

I personally like to completely drive the dog crazy by calling his name in a baby-talk voice and wiggling my arms and legs. Gandalf gets really excited behind his fence barricade and will noodle dance with his entire body until he's in a heightened state of excitement.

We've given him so many treats over the years that if his front door or gate is open, he'll rush out, run into our kitchen and wag his tail near the table where we keep the dog treats.

We've been asked to rein in the attention because it upsets the natural order of the neighborhood and likely confuses the dog. And frankly, my best friend is right — if Tommy loves dogs so much, why doesn't he get one himself?

After seeing the sparkling-clean dogs at the park, Tommy was intent on washing Gandalf.

My best friend told us it was a big hassle. The dog would just get dirty again and track mud all through
kitchen. She wanted to wait for a time when she could do it right, brush out his hair and make sure he was all dry.

The guy said we had to take a whole truckload. He had to wait until he had a full load that didn't need to be delivered to someone else, and he would need to be in our neighborhood again.

Somehow, he remembered us, and the pile magically appeared sometime while I was at work.

The pile was enormous — bigger than my little Barbie-type car — and filled up a great portion of the driveway. This was not daunting because I knew that surely some of my friends would want large chunks of the enormous pile.

The friends didn't come to get the mulch. I even posted it on Chico's Freecycle, where people list things they are offering for free. One person said she and her husband wanted the mulch, but they never followed through.

And there the mulch sat.

(Mom poses briefly wearing the cover we use to keep flies off of the food when we have barbecues).

I've learned from experience that there are some tasks that, if done out of frustration, can insult the man in my life. These include lighting the barbecue, asking another man to watch the barbecue, checking the oil, moving an extraordinarily large object, etc.

Mowing the lawn ranks in the "big" category of things not to do.

Sometimes a wait-and-see attitude can pay off in the garden.
Many of the predictable weeds in my yard I will recognize from a young sprout and can quickly eradicate. Funny how if you hate something enough, you’ll remember it for the rest of your life.
But occasionally I’ll wait until I can decipher what is a weed and what is a magical surprise.

For plants that are dying in my yard, my theory is that unless I have something else to put into the ground, I’ll give a plant that last fighting chance to see if it survives.
I’d hope someone would do the same for me someday.
With this approach, I’ve had some primrose plants that looked like they were dead, but after the summer months passed, they revived and bloomed again in winter.

The same story goes for a Vinca rosea on the doorstep. It “died” this winter, but now the veteran plant is in full bloom.
My latest victory was a tiny sprig of a fern-like plant. I thought it might be an Australian fern and asked my partner Tommy not to touch it.
Months passed and the mystery plant grew.

(Oregano can grow big and bushy after a few years. Too bad friends aren't more eager to take giant clumps home with them).

In my reality, harvesting herbs happened on a hot afternoon. I needed to make some room in the garden bed and hacked off giant clumps of lavender, sage and oregano and unceremoniously dumped them into plastic crates.
Some of the clumps I brought into the house for a few days for a sweet smell inside. This works really well with spearmint and lemon verbena as well.
The lavender is nice to tie into a clump and add to the top of a spring birthday present.

Dr. Doolittle
When we take evening walks in the avenues, Tommy makes certain clicks with his tongue that make the kitties run from their porches to the curb. When we’re ready to move on, the cats will run in front of us and lay down on the pavement to expose their bellies to him.
I’m not making this stuff up. This really happens.

We were a little competitive after we saw my best friend next door have success with her hummingbird feeder. I felt compelled to buy my own and then brag about whose feeder was getting more traffic.

(Here's one of the dozen digital photos I took of our neighbor's dog Marnie. Marnie stayed at our house for a week and was in several photos shoots with the infamous rubber chicken).

We also bought one of those mesh bags filled with tiny seeds for the finches. We must have hung it in a bad location because that offering to nature has been virtually ignored.

However, something new and exciting has been buzzing around the yard with regular frequency.
Last summer I planted foxglove (Digitalis purpurea) in peat pots and slowly grew them over the winter in the windowsill.

Foxglove, http://en. wikipedia.org/wiki/Digitalis_purpurea, is poisonous. Rather than go into some deep murder mystery plot possibilities, I’ll just say that no part of the plant should be ingested by humans or animals.
Now the plants are as tall as a medium-sized professional basketball player.

Mom's Day is Sunday.

If you're out and about this weekend, a good thing to do with Mom is check out Carolyn Melf's iris garden in Paradise.

Carolyn recently sent me the above photo of her garden, which is incredibly beautiful but, according to Melf, is even more fantabulous than the photo depicts.

While her garden is in her prime, she'll be open to visitors daily from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., except Sundays.

To offset some of the cost of her iris passion she offers the plants for sale for $3-$5. People pick them out now, and she divides them in July or August.

Many visitors have made a visit to her garden a family Mother's Day tradition.

She lives at 122 Valley View Drive. Take Skyway past the park and take a left on Oliver.
The “first serious left” will be Valley View Drive.
She’ll have signs up, but in case you lose your way, her phone number is 872-7771.

I was feeling fairly smug the past couple of weeks about my gardening prowess.
The newly-planted section of the lawn is looking luscious. Tommy was proud when he mowed it for the first time right before our first barbecue of the season.
While some of the early-blooming plants are waning, such as the lavender and, sage and snapdragon, other plants are taking their place as the show-stoppers.