In the wake of the death of my parents, I created a new garden on the shaded side of our house. This is a mostly ignored narrow strip between our house and the fence that separates us from the sidewalk on the San Ramon side. I anchored this “memorial garden” with three camellia bushes. The central camellia is an espaliered Camellia “Nuncio’s Pearl” (a full blossom is shown at the bottom of this story). 

I surrounded the camellias with anemones and campanulas, all flowering plants that should thrive in this part shade environment. Hopefully, they will eventually carpet the area with blossoms.

We have several hummingbird feeders in this area, and I plan to add a birdbath.

Topography of Camellia is an abstraction created from one of the first blossoms from this garden. As with a Rorschach, what you see in this image may depend more on you than on me.