11/11/2006

It's been slim pickins for whoreticulture visitors since I started me new job.

I worked the sale at the Botanical Garden this morning...last one of the year...so I got to be outside during the daylight for a change. Here are some random pictures. I have guests coming over for drinks and dinner in 15 minutes. No time to tell a story.

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Remind me to tell you the story of those stones.

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This is what I look like, btw. In the dark with no flash taking my own picture. I must have been drunk. (Psst! I often am!)

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Who says we don't have fall color in California?

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We offerred these Hedychium for four dollars. They're ten feet tall. White flowers, very fragrant. I work in natives, so I don't know the species name. No one bought any of them until the last five minutes, and then one woman bought all of them. Can you tell they're ten feet tall? I don't know where they were hiding in the nursery; I've never seen them before today.

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Some Pacific Coast Iris hybrid. Noone bought this for an hour. An hour! What kind of person walks by this plant...making free plants!...and doesn't buy it? That '8' you see is the price. $8! People! When you see something like that, you buy it! Okay? You buy it. I took this picture before the sale.

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I didn't mean to upload this picture, but here it is anyway.

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Eriogonum arborescens w/ Epilobium canum. I love it.

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Okay, gotta go. Sorry it's been so lame here lately. More later!

Added: a few more pictures.

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(whoops... I didn't notice the coupler in there.)

The Gunnera go down for the winter.

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R. laetum x lowii:

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I'm off on a roadtrip, between rainstorms.

7 comments:

Christopher C. NC said...

Had a flashback seeing the desert garden at the Arboretum.

Ten feet tall is pushing it for Hedychium. Are you sure it wasn't a Etlingera sp? The picture looks like Etlingera to a large degree. I would need to see the rhizomes to be sure.

Now about your self portrait, aside from the two horns that appear to be coming out of your head that is a pretty handsome mug. I think too that you were of a substantial age when vinyl records faded from music technology. Look whose talkin (:~)

christin m p in massachusetts said...

That fourth picture down from the top is the prettiest one so far. It's a good shot too -- you have very steady hands and an excellent aim, especially considering that you were inebriated.

chuck b. said...

I thought they were tall for Hedychium too, but that's what the woman who brought them out called them. She said the flowers are like the H. gardnerianum, but all white and more fragrant. Flowers at the top of a 10' stalk...great idea. Is this what Etlingera flowers look like? Interesting.

I indeed listened to vinyl all through the 80s. But in the 70s when you were rocking the Emmylou, I was more into Scooby Doo, Brady Bunch, Leave it to Beaver, Batman and the Donnie and Marie show.

About the picture, I always look better after a couple drinks. There were a surprising number of pictures on my camera when I downloaded them yeterday. I'll have to go look for some more nice ones.

nina said...

Nice! All of them. So, you're working in your favorite setting. How cool is that...

Jenn said...

Every picture tells a story!

What is the plant you have for 'fall color'? Is that dogwood?

christin m p in massachusetts said...

You said for us to remind you to tell us the story of those stones in the second photo down.

chuck b. said...

Okay, so those stones come from a Moorish temple in Europe bought by William Randolph Hearst who had the whole thing painstakingly deconstructed, crated up in labeled boxes identifying each stone and its relationship to every other, and shipped to California to be precisely reonstructed at San Simeon. All well and good until a fire burned down the werehouse and destroyed the wooden crates identifying the stones and leaving behind a pile of rocks for a temple whose design was then lost forever.

Long story short, the stones came to Strybing Arobretum in Golden Gate Park where they now serve as terracing structure in several gardens including the succulent, cloud forest, children's garden and Japanese garden.

My favorite use of them tho' is the entry garden where a master stonesmason built a wonderful hardscape I'll show you sometime.