Happy Halloween!

We have two pumpkins this year.

My boyfriend carved this one:

This one's mine:

You know we have best candy.

(You knew that without me having to tell you, right?)

UPDATE: So far the costumes are boring and not cute. The kids are more courteous than last year tho'. Lots of "thank you" and such. My boyfriend has amusingly awkward interactions with the trick-or-treators. He says "Hello, how are you?" to each one. (He did this last year too, and I know doesn't like to be teased about it, but I can tell you because he doesn't read the blog.)

UPDATE: Still boring costumes. About half aren't even wearing costumes. And there have been no slutty little girl costumes I've been reading about. The bf reminds me the peak comes between 7:30 and 8, and it's only 6:40 right now. We're waiting for some friends to come over, then we're ordering pizza.

And I'm up to my usual lameness with the camera, but this one's cool. Plus, the 'rents complimented my plants.

And this one's cool too.

UPDATE: Updates suspended. I have to socialize now. More later.

Final update: We live a few blocks away from a little business district that apparently organized a *huuuge* Halloween party (we weren't invited), so this year was kind of a dud for us. We actually had to stand on our front steps to unload the candy.

Last year here. Due to better planning we have way better pumpkins this year. Oh, I made a comment about the plants in that planter:

What's growing in that planter? Purple lantana, a native Ceanothus ("Diamond Heights"), and a very young climbing hydrangea (hydrangea petiolaris).

The Ceanothus and lantana are still there, but the climbing hydrangea is long gone. That plant was a dud. I bought two more of better stock, but put them both in the backyard. It's too hot and sunny on my front steps for any hydrangea. And climbing hydrangea in a container? WTF was I thinking? I wasn't. I didn't know. I replaced it with a sturdy manzanita, Arctostaphylos rudis var. Vandenberg.

The freaks come out at night.

Altars to the dead lined the basketball court at Kezar Pavilion: One was a shrine to pets, another memorialized fetuses that didn't come to term, and a third, with photographs of the first thousand U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq, mourned the war dead.

They set the stage for a ceremony where a thousand witches, druids and pagans prepared to meet the dead. It opened with a procession of goddesses, including the Virgin of Guadalupe and Demeter, the Greek goddess of fertility, who wore a mask decorated with wheat. A procession of six gods played out a cycle of death and reincarnation.

With emotions building, those in the crowd shook their bodies, flapped their arms and stomped their feet in an ecstatic, pulsing release of energy.

"We feel the ancestors longing for us," trance leader Beverly Frederick told the gathering in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district.

Link.

About that displeasing truck commercial...

"When it comes to selling bars, trucks or even politicians, you can wave the flag or you can drape one over a coffin. You can’t do both."

Says David Carr in his NYT column The Media Equation. This is an interesting little article full of revealing little observations. And you don't have to agree or disagree with Karr to be interested in his observations.

He's upset about the new commercial for GM trucks featuring John Mellencamp singing "Our Country". Apparently, so are a lot of other people. I've only seen the commercial once, and I thought, "So maudlin. Does this really work?" (Karr reacts much more elaborately.)

Truck commercials aren't known for subtlety or, ahem, nuance. But it seems experts feel this one has a lot of particularly offensive nuance, ranging from John Mellencamp to Rosa Parks and somehow sweeping up Rudy Giuliani too.

National travail obviously touches the heartstrings and it’s hardly surprising that Sept. 11 became a theme in political advertising. At the Republican National Convention in 2004, Rudolph W. Giuliani, whose finest hour occurred during those attacks, recalled in his speech that he confided to Bernard B. Kerik as the towers fell, “Thank God George Bush is our president.”

I expect we'll be reminded of that statement often next year. Will Giuliani have to live it down, or let it ride?

Whitney Houston

It was the singer's first step back into the spotlight since seeking treatment for substance abuse and leaving longtime husband Bobby Brown.

"I feel great," said a blond Houston, wearing diamonds and black Armani. Sounding more calm and focused than she has in years, Houston clearly was touched by the outpouring of love.

"She's looking at the light, instead of darkness," said Houston's pal and the evening's honoree, Quincy Jones, who has known the singer since she was 16.

Link and link. Via Drudge.

I'll be interested to hear what Houston's music sounds like after her long day's journey into night, and back. I have no history as a Whitney Houston fan, but I'm a big admirer of the black divas of yore, like Dinah Washington and Billie Holiday, even going back to Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith. I think Houston's part of a rich American tradition, even if her work so far feels too polished and over-produced for my taste. Perhaps she will take this opportunity to step outside the pop context of her Top 40 hits and tap into some deeper currents.

Another visit to Golden Gate Park

My plant ID class got a special tour of the Conservatory of Flowers this morning. I parked across the street, next to the AIDS Memorial Grove.

I really like the white yarrow in front of the redwoods.



Another shot of the same thing.











I've never taken a good picture of the Conservatory itself. Visit the official site, or (better) look at some Flickr sets.

When California land baron and philanthropist James Lick died, they found the building itself packed in crates in his estate. Noone really knows where it came from. It could have been built in England with redwood sent from California and then sent back to California.

It looks like this inside:





(That philodendron high up in the background is over a 100 years old.)

An epiphytic rhododendron (is there a plant family with more variation than the Ericaceae?)



Lots of other kinds of ephiphytes.





And tropical flowers.



Hmmm, hibiscus anyone?



Anyone?



I love this heptagonal travertine planter.



See the flower on top?



It's spiny and apparently smells terrible. I managed to refrain from smelling it myself.



Caudex of the famous yam, Dioscorea macrostachya.



The docent related the story about how scientists discovered progeterone in yams and used it for birth control pills. False! Scientists found an inexpensive synthetic precursor of progesterone in yams called diosgenin. She even lamented how everything is synthetic now when natural alternatives exist. Oi.

Diosgenin:


Progesterone:

'Lavinia Maggi'

"To import plants [to the USA], you need three documents: an import permit, shipping labels and a phytosanitary certificate. A phone call or letter to the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Riverdale, Md., or a download from its Web site will generate the 'Import Permit for Plants and Plant Products,' also known as PPQ Form 597."

This lady went to a lot of trouble for a camellia hedge. Good for her!

Link.

Whoreticulture as an HTML-visualized graph:



Thanks, Xris!

More information here.

Okay, making up for yesterday.

Some pictures of my friend's garden in Menlo Park.





Arctostaphylos pajaroensis (Pajaro Manzanita). There are three cultivars that I know of, but I don't know how to identify any of them (Lester Rountree, Brett's Beauty, Roger's Bronze):



The Phormium was sold to her as a dwarf variety. Ha!



Some people hate hibiscus.





Coreopsis gigantea together with Eriogonum arborescens. I just bought E. arborescens seed. I gave her the Coreopsis.



And we went to Roger Reynolds Nursery in Atherton to look at Japanese maples for me; they've got this kiwi vine going on:



With just a few kiwis growing on it.



(The maples in one gallon pots had already dropped their leaves, so no deal.)

My friend showed me some guerilla gardening, Menlo Park-style











And we went to see the redwoods on Teague Hill.





Looking uphill at a drainage. This would be a scary place to be during a heavy rain.





And these are from today, at the San Francisco Botanical Garden.

The entry garden:



Geese:



Plectranthus, my favorite low shrub for shade. Not really a shrub, I guess. A perennial.

Just heard at my house:

"What's this on the stove?"

"Rocks!"

"I think we could have a Running With Scissors movie about some strange person."

I was boiling decorative rocks to sterilize them before using them to dress a potted Amaryllis. I hate seeing soil in my houseplants--don't you? I last used those rocks to support a Paperwhite narcissus; I don't want some fungus to kill my Amaryllis bulb. I grew it from seed.

Don't you hate it when you go to someone's blog and there are no new posts? Drives me nuts.

Just so you know, there will be a new post later today. Today's hike on Teague Hill should provide grist for the mill.

But Monday I start a new job and blogging will become much lighter. Sigh.

(You must have assumed I'm currently unemployed, right?)

The first known organisms that live totally independently of the sun have been discovered deep in a South African gold mine.

The bacteria exist without the benefit of photosynthesis by harvesting the energy of natural radioactivity to create food for themselves. Similar life forms may exist on other planets, experts speculate.

Link.

Flying kites

At Ocean Beach.







I especially liked it when he flew the kite in tight circular formations



and then launched it straight up while the tail continued tracing out the circular path.



Graffiti on the sea wall done in...burnt campfire wood? Sure looked like it up close. Charcoal and chalk, I guess.





Across the street, the Park Chalet. On a nice day, this would be a fine place to have several drinks. And fish tacos.

Glen Canyon Park

Most people I know call this place Glen Park Canyon. It's in a neighborhood called Glen Park. I used to call it Glen Park Park and I thought that was funny. But people I know say Glen Park Canyon when they speak of it now, so it's odd to learn its correct name is Glen Canyon Park. I will have to adjust. (This is what it looks like from above during the summer.)





I haven't visited Glen Canyon Park in over a decade. Probably almost two decades. I'm not sure what time of year it was when I last visited, but this has never been a particularly beautiful place to me. A major investment of volunteer labor to remove the Hedera canariensis (Algerian Ivy) and Rubus discolor (Himalayan Blackberry) could go a long way toward turning that around. I think the western fence lizard and meadow mouse might appreciate it too, but I can't say for sure.

The canyon floor is dark and swampy with low limbs and fallen trees that make hiking it a chore. Which is fine in some respects. (The overall situation is much worse than what you see in this picture.)



Is this what San Francisco looked like before the Spanish arrived, minus the vines? (California--including the Bay Area--has only a few native vines; some Clematis and an Aristolochia.)



I like it better along the canyon walls and ridgeline.







This park suffers more urban damage than a lot of other parks too, which is a surprise because it's in a decent neighborhood. Some OCD patient must have visited here. This made me laugh out loud. WTF?

HTML visualizer for whoreticulture.

Very cool. I could get high and stare at this for...days.

Via.

Get your own here.

How do I get a screenshot of it? It doesn't seem to ever come to a conclusion with mine...it gets very slow. Does it need to stop before I can get a screenshot?

The Valencia Street corridor

We went out to dinner with friends tonight and saw Amy Sedaris promote her new book at Herbst Theater as part of the City Arts & Lectures series. (Very entertaining.)

I decided to walk to the theater. Here are some pictures I took along Valencia Street. I lived in this neighborhood for five years but I rarely go there anymore even though it's just a short walk from my house. I don't miss it at all. The hipster quotient is painful and the in-your-face misanthropy of it all bores the frack out of me. Still, there are some nice visuals.

And I've wanted some pictures of this gigantic Ficus elastica (Rubber Tree) planted next to St. Luke's Hospital for a long time.





Someone must have thought he was very clever wheatpasting this all over the place.



The woman running for Congress sued the San Francisco Ballet School when they wouldn't admit her daughter because she was too short and fat to be a ballerina. Or whatever. Link if you care.











Clarion Alley:











Crossing Market Street...



At dinner a woman seated at the table next to us dropped her fork. When I reached down to pick it up, she said, "Just leave it. I took one from the empty table next to me." How rude is that to leave your fork on the floor? I was stupefied and didn't know what to say. People in San Francisco think they're so progressive and benevolent, but they can be just as trashy and rude as the people they think they're superior to. Ruder.

Today's field trip, about 30 minutes south of San Francisco.







Buckeye fruit. I forget the name... Poisonous to some animals (like other Hippocastanaceae), but I hear they recover easily enough.



Hedera canariensis, cut to kill.



Toxicodendron. In all my life, I've never had a reaction to poison oak. Either I've been very lucky, or I'm insensitive to it. Nice fall color!



Into the woods...



Arbutus menziesii, Madrone. One of my favorite trees. If they stayed that small, I'd have planted one in my yard by now. Sigh. (A. menziesii, named for Archibald Menzies, the famous Scottish plantsman. The mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Newsom, descends from the Menzies. Newsom's grandfather, Arthur Menzies, planted the California garden in the San Francisco Botancial Garden in Golden Gate Park. FYI.)









This is a middle-aged Madrone.



Up on the ridge, the oaks give way to manzanita, coyote bush, toyon...







and views of expensive California mini-mansions built on a seismic fault in a high fire zone inhabited by mountain lions.





Tough ferns growing in hot part-sun.



This chick had a nagging cough. I let her pass me so I didn't have to listen to her anymore.



Eucalyptus globulus. There's only a half dozen of them up here, and I'm surprised they weren't chopped down. Not that I mind; I generally like Eucalyptus but they're quite the invasive tree here. You can go for hundreds of miles in California without losing sight of a eucalyptus. They were brought over as a source of fast-growing wood for building, but they brought the wrong species and the wood is mostly useless. They should bring over koala bears too, to eat the leaves.





It's a hazy day but I can see all the way to Moffett Field in Santa Clara.

It's like some fall color colossus bestriding the chaparral.

Acer macrophyllum? I don't know. It looks a bit out of place.



Back at the trail head.



Aww...



The short drive home.



Hwy 280 north, and south.



One of the things that makes the Bay Area what it is, are the dramatic changes in microclimate. Ten minutes and fifteen miles ago it was sunny. Now look at the fog. This is how it will look all day in this part of town.



And a few minutes later, and a few miles on, the fog gives back the blue sky.



In San Francisco, it's all about location, location, location.

The $40 entree

But what makes the rise of the $40 entree so significant is not just the price creep, it’s the sophisticated calculation behind it. A new breed of menu “engineers” have proved that highly priced entrees increase revenue even if no one orders them. A $43 entree makes a $36 one look like a deal.

“Just putting one high price on the menu will take your average check up,” said Gregg Rapp, one such consultant. “My mom taught me to never order the most expensive thing on the menu, but you’ll order the second.”

Link.

Sounds glamorous to me.

"Every single night -- and I don't want this to sound like some therapy session -- but I sit there at bars and restaurants doing homework and getting food to go. That's not what I wanted to sign up for in my late 30s -- I want a little more balance."

Link.

Honey, come on over. I'll fix you a drink and cook your dinner.

Alleys: the new urban rehabilitation project.

"Most people's perception of alleys is that they are scary," said architect David Winslow. "Part of my goal is to get people past that fear."

Those narrow forgotten streets behind buildings in large cities are undiscovered gold to Winslow...

Alleys were essential as delivery and service conduits in cities as ancient as Olynthus, Pompeii and Rome. However in 19th century cities like Sacramento, San Francisco, Chicago and Savannah, Ga., where service and deliveries were gradually engineered to go underground, unused 15-foot-wide alleys often become havens for drug deals and crime.

"They are the ultimate pedestrian environment," said Winslow. Hidden from view, alleys are conducive to criminal activity, but they can be retrieved for a host of good uses.

Link.

Corner of Lawton and 7th Avenue

I drive by this garden all the time. Let's visit.

I stop at this light on Stanyan Street and turn left on Frederick several times a week.

Stanyan Street, where Haight Street ends and Golden Gate Park begins.

Well, after [the day before] yesterday's fiasco where I discovered a community garden that I didn't even know existed (even though I walk past it quite often), I decided to go visit a community garden in my neighborhood that I do know about, but haven't been to yet. Ladies and gentlemen, the Miller Memorial Garden at the intersection of Brewster and Rutledge.

My pictures aren't very good and the garden's not that interesting right now.

But here is a beehive,


and an artichoke,


and a Redbud,


and a Norfolk Pine, with another pine.


Another yard photo,


and a garden chair.



Usually I walk, but today I drove.

It's, like, war!

"A Lighthouse Point man is in critical condition this morning, a day after authorities say a stingray jumped onto his boat and stabbed him in the chest, leaving a foot-long barb stuck in him."


Link.

When a case testing whether Oregon should allow same-sex marriages came before the state's Supreme Court in 2004, one of the court's seven justices quietly wrestled with a vexing question:

Should he, a gay man, take part in the case? Or did part of Rives Kistler's identity — his sexual orientation — mean that he should sit it out, to avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest?

Kistler, a former Oregon assistant attorney general and the first openly gay member of the state's highest court, consulted an ethics book to decide "whether it was permissible for me to sit on the case." Then he checked with a judicial ethics panel, which told him it would not be a conflict.

When Oregon's high court heard the dispute, Kistler was on the bench. Four months later, he joined a unanimous decision as the court ruled that same-sex marriages were not allowed under Oregon law. He says his sexual orientation wasn't a factor in his decision, and he agreed with the other justices that any changes in Oregon's marriage laws had to come from legislators, not judges.

Link.

Heh.

"George approached them, screamed that he hated 'homos,' told them to get out of his park, called them 'faggots' and gave the sergeant the middle finger, according to a Criminal Court complaint. Minutes later, George circled back and continued his anti-gay rant, threatened to assault them and spat on the sergeant's foot, authorities said. With that, the cops arrested George, who struggled and said he didn't want 'faggots touching him,' court papers state."

Link.

Funny/sad

During my stay [in Iran] I picked up a few issues of some western magazines at the university bookshop, and found to my surprise that they were censored by the Iranian regime!

They had simply gone through the magazines and used black ink and white stickers to cover up any offending material - most notably images, in both articles and advertisements, of women with a little less clothes than prescribed by local laws.

Link.

"One recent development in the growing localism movement is the 100-Mile Diet, originated by a Canadian couple who spent a full year eating only foods grown or raised within 100 miles of their home."

Lots of links at the link.

San Francisco Botanical Garden

In the California garden.

Juncus patens growing under Ribes sp. I love this, and if I grew this combo in my garden, I'd leave it just like that. But in the Bot Garden, I want them to clean it up. Is that strange? Maybe you think I'd want my garden to be tidier than a public garden. No. I want my garden to look wild and untamed, so why do I want to see the juncus divided and the ribes pruned? (I don't know.)



Ribes is a good plant for winter interest because it drops 1-3 inch long pannicles of pink or white flowers from December through March which feed hummingbirds. The flowers become dark berries (said to taste "insipid") that birds love. Books also say the leaves smell "resinous". I've seen that word a lot, and I believe it's garden-speak for "smells like cat pee".

The Juncus is riparian and forms sharp tips that can poke your eye out, but won't hurt your skin with ordinary handling. You just have to be careful working with it so it doesn't poke your eye.

On of my favorite California trees, the buckeye (Aesculus californica). It's dormant most of the year. But in the spring and early summer, it has one of California's most wonderful, fragrant flowers. This is an uncommonly large specimen of buckeye, and it's very old for the species. A few days/weeks ago the Wall Street Journal had a front page article about an arborist who believed with proper care, any tree can live forever. In the wild, buckeyes usually peter out before the century mark. And as much as I love this particular tree (and I do--look at it!), it doesn't flower or leaf out as pleasingly as a younger tree would.



A late flower on Romneya coulteri, under Pinus ponderosa. Romneya is one of California's three most prominent members of the Papaveraceae (the poppy family). This one grows 5-8 feet tall and blooms all summer. It spreads underground and forms expanding thickets. It a home garden of ordinary size, it should be cut to the ground after its seasonal bloom. It will begin regrowing immediately.

Peter Graves, a spokesman for the Office of Personnel Management, which administers the congressional pension program, said same-sex partners are not recognized as spouses for any marriage benefits. He said [Gary] Studds' case was the first of its kind known to the agency.

Under federal law, pensions can be denied only to lawmakers' same-sex partners and people convicted of espionage or treason, Graves said.

Link.

Seen around the neighborhood today.









Okay, I didn't even know this community garden was here!





The land it's on must be worth a fortune.

I posted this rant in the comments at Garden Rant. The subject is Henry Mitchell's book, The Essential Earthman.

After the last discussion of garden books, I immediately bought Amy Stewart's From the Ground Up and H.M.'s The Essential Earthman, and in total honesty, with no kissing up intended, I enjoyed the former far more than the latter, although they are very different books and perhaps shouldn’t be directly compared.

Mitchell's haughty air revulsed me and his regular obsession with what I consider perfectly detestable ornamentals really turned me off. I thought if he said "peony" one more time I was going to hurl. (I know, who’s haughty now?)

Most importantly, Mitchell's ethic is very east coast centric. This makes it hard for me to internalize his message. I garden around a six-month summer drought, not a seasonal killing freeze. Dec-Feb are busy months in the garden for me. There is no shutting down. His plants are just not my plants. He has no business making pronouncements from Washington about the most preeminent tree or the most beautiful flower in all of America—which he does regularly. That kind of attitude really irks me.

Mitchell provides all kinds of contradictory advice, and the neverending run of superlatives makes it hard to pin down a central message. Don’t even get me started on his design ideas. And I have more important things to do than be concerned about the use of “garden rooms” or “plant material”. I can’t even relate to that complaint.

I appreciate Mitchell’s love for the garden, his emphasis on planting what makes sense, planting lots of plants, and I particularly relish his encouragement to ignore self-styled experts. I will start with him.

From the Ground Up revels exuberantly in the delight of experimentation and the emotional roller coaster of garden trial and error. I like that. That works for me. It also helps that she wrote it in Santa Cruz, where I went to school…perhaps passing by her house on the way to the bus station. I walked across that railroad trestle by the Boardwalk twice every day for a year.

ADDED: Annie in Austin adds some valuable context for reading Mitchell.

An interesting perspective:

I will be blunt: We need assembly line medicine, medicine that is routinized, marked and measured. As I have argued before I would much prefer to be diagnosed by a computerized expert system than by a physician.

Link.

Tomales Bay

It's rainy out and I have a bunch of stuff to do today, so not much blogging.

In the meantime, visit Tomales Bay for some oysters and kayaking.

From California Native Plants for the Garden, a book I thought I'd read cover to cover several times, in regard to Venegasia carpesiodes:

Leaf miners occasionally tunnel through the leaves, creating intricate whitish patterns. The damage they do is primarily cosmetic, so think of the tunnels as nature's doodles and don't worry about the plant's health.

I've never put that spin on leaf miner damage before. Nature's doodles.

"A group of ethnic Tibetans trying to flee Tibet were shot dead by Chinese troops on September 30, at a Himalayan pass near the border of China and Nepal (Tibet is an 'autonomous region' of China, having been taken over by the PRC in the 1950s). Reports are emerging that Communist party officials have attempted to silence witnesses, including Western trekkers who were in the area when the killing occurred."

Link.

"Please close the browser to protect your privacy."

It's not really my privacy I'm protecting; it's my security.

I wish they'd call it that.

"In a 'debt for nature' swap, the United States has agreed to forgive about 20 percent of the 108 million dollars owed by Guatemala. In exchange, the Central American country will invest 24.4 million dollars to protect species-rich subtropical and tropical ecosystems....[Conservationists] hope the swap will help protect coastal mangrove swamps, high-altitude cloud forests, and rain forests in Guatemala."

Link.

I want this.

Via.

warning: rated PG-13

A return to the Blake Garden. (I visited a few months ago, here.)

ADDED: I want to make a note for any locals who might want to visit the Blake Garden. The website won't give you directions, so unless you have a navigation system your car, you'll probably need to use Yahoo or Google. Here's the thing: the machine will tell you to turn right on to Terrace Drive from Moeser Lane. Well, there are two Terrace Drives to turn right on! The second is 50 yards after the first! You must turn right on the second Terrace Drive.

Starting in the cutting and vegetable garden...





This patch of land is doing double duty growing pumpkins and amaranth.



Amaranth is good source of red/brown.



Is this Liquidambar?



I've never seen it with a trunk like this before.



The remnants of a dead bush bleached white. Very nice.



Maybe it's not bleached; maybe it's slowly rotting.



It's still nice--assuming the mold won't spread to a living plant.

The hedge encircling the pond area is Pittosporum undulatum.





It's nice to walk under Magnolia limbed up high and thinned out in the crown. They let in the light so nicely when they're pruned open like this.



I like the narrow passageways through the privet.



And I like the paths mulched with redwood leaves. Good, easy use of color.



The privet encloses a Chinese-style garden populated with California native and exotic plants that may or may not be Chinese.

Mahonia lomariifolia



Lots of manzanita.



and white Agapanthus. I usually dislike Agapanthus, but the white flowers (these have uncommonly large ubmels) work surprisingly well with the manzanita. It's an unlikely combination, imo.



And, again--I think it's excellent to combine the square regularity of the boxwood with the wild unmanageability of the manzanita like this.



I really like this simple and elegant pond. Just a 6' diameter poured concrete enclosure with a curved lip.





Its only ornamentation (if you want to call it that) are these notches at every 90 degrees. I suspect they mark out the cardinal directions--N, S, E, W. What a cool thing to do!



Another good combination.





More Amaranth, and coreopsis?



I'm still enchanted by the wisteria tree, with its legumes dangling like ornaments. I see now that it's been staked. Having to stake a mature plant is a big drawback for me.





I must remember to come back and see this specimen in bloom.

I like the swollen basal burl (if I can call it that).



This is Magnolia liliflora. I don't know anything about this tree, except that it's small...



has a nice form...



and appears deciduous.




I'm reminded of one reason why I don't like boxwood. It harbors spiders! Look at those cobwebs. I am intensely arachnophobic. I'm not even going to walk over there.



Two trees in love?



It looks like they're spooning.



I like how the Echium echoes the texture of the flax, but higher up. I'm not sure whether that's E. wildprettii or E. piniana. They both send up a towering spike of flowers...the wildprettii's are red and the piniana's are blue (there are other differences too, but I'm not sure what they are--height maybe). Another thing I will have to come back for next year.



Art?



Behind it you can see there's a sheet hung around the trunk of Maytenus boaria like a skirt.



I step inside, but I don't linger.



(There was obviously some kind of installation of artwork like Christo and Jeanne-Claude's recently; there are remnants everywhere in the garden today.)

Mediterranean gardening.



Restio, euphorbia, purple fountain grass. Sounds good on paper, but I didn't like it in person anymore than I like it in this picture. Maybe if there was something else behind it all besides that long hedge.



I do like this smoke bush, Berberis thunbergii and Ginkgo biloba combo.



And another...



Eriogonom giganteum and Arctostaphylos.



Red streamers and thread hanging down from the grape and oak--it's art!



More art. This time to explicitly define the boundary between the dry garden and the redwood grove. I like.



This doesn't look like much, but the twiggy stuff with spare leaves and white berries is Symphorocarpus, and it's one of my favorite native shade plants.



I've never thought of Cyclamen as a plant to put in the ground.



Small drifts of it, with Oxalis oregana.



On my way out.



Nice threesome...tree, bench and pot.



The plant whore himself, under Pinus canariensis.



Later.

A carnivorous plant at the Botanical Garden in Lyon, France, ate a mouse.

Link, with pictures.

"It's illegal to offer compensation for a transplantable human organ. As a result of the price control there is a shortage of organs and thousands of unnecessary deaths."

Link.

Everything you really need to know about the protesters is contained in this sentence: "Shame on the College Republicans for inviting this fascist thug and provoking such outrage on our campus." In other words, the act of inviting a controversial speaker is worse than violence against that speaker . . . oh, and the speaker must be a "fascist thug" because he doesn't agree with the writer's left-wing sensibilities which are typical of Columbia students.

Her protests that "this is not an issue of free speech" makes it all that much clearer that that is exactly what the issue is. The protesters do not have an "equal right" to shout down a speaker, much less to assault him or his entourage. The right answer . . . the only answer acceptable in our country . . . is to let him speak and then set up your own event to tell everyone why he was wrong.

Link.

A poignant moment for those who have followed Ms. Streisand’s career from the beginning was her rendition of (“Have I Stayed) Too Long at the Fair?” a Billy Barnes ballad that she recorded in 1964. Way back then, it was the reflection of an insecure ingénue feeling her first intimations of ennui after too much partying.

That's from the New York Times review of a Barbra Streisand concert. Do you think the open quote for the song title belongs inside the open paranthese? I would have put it outside.

I'm no grammarian, but I tend to notice things like that and wonder.

Another grammar post here.

Public Enemy #1

Oxalis corniculata, or more commonly Oxalis sp. The worst perennial weed in my garden. I could say it's the only weed in my garden because I have a small garden, and it's easy to weed. Easy to weed, except for Oxalis. Here's a bulb I just plucked from the beets and broccoli.



(Sorry the picture's blurry. I haven't learned to focus manually w/ my camera yet. As soon as I put the ruler in the shot, the auto-focus doesn't know what to do. Here is a shot without the ruler in better focus.)

Fortunately, in my garden Oxalis behaves more like a winter annual than a perennial. It starts coming up now, and by January I'll have it everywhere. And then one day in March or April, it will vanish without a trace. Almost without a trace. According to the California Master Gardener Handbook, oxalis ejects its seeds 10-13 feet! No matter--I will be out there from now until March hopelessly, futilely digging it up and throwing it out knowing full well it will just blow in again from the neighbor's yard next year.

Here's an Oxalis we like. It's the native Redwood Sorrel, Oxalis oregana, growing in this shot with Heuchera maxima and Vaccinium ovatum.



For comparison, each of the leaves on O. oregana are about one inch across.

Dark Lady

This song came on while we were driving home today (yes, because it was on the CD we were listening to) and my boyfriend told me there was an animated video to go with it.

Sure enough, it's on YouTube.



Of course, there's a "live" version too.

Mid-term

I have a mid-term in my Plant ID class on Tuesday. It will be easy because we've only had 35 plants so far, and most of them I already knew.

These are my sample cards.



With the samples on the back.



This is one of my favorites that I didn't already know.



But I doubt I would ever grow it in my garden. Not with those thorns.

Like a lot of people who grew up in one place, I identify strongly with the local terrain of my childhood. Here it is, the dry oak woodlands of Northern California. To me, there is no place more beautiful.




















ADDED: In the comments, Christopher C. in Hawaii has some interesting things to say and takes us to see his childhood terrain.

Pictures of side yards, continued.



















The purple flowering bush on the left is Salvia leucantha, Mexican Bush Sage. A workhorse landscape plant in San Francisco if ever there was one. I mark it down in the "love" column, but I wish more people would give the native Wooly Blue Curls a whirl.



A lot of people have that super-coiled hose. Is there some advantage to that hose? Or is it cheaper than the usual hose?



This is English boxwood (Buxus sempervirens), which I was recently told is rarely used on the west coast. The Japanese boxwood (Buxus microphylla cv. Japonica) is more common here, but it cannot be grown into trees like in these two pictures. Not that you'd necessarily want to...







Do you see something odd in this picture? (Scroll right if the whole picture doesn't fit in your browser.)



This kind of garden maintenance is depressingly common.















Here's an aerial shot of that garden so you can see the layout:





And here's a good place to wind it up--on the freakier side of San Francisco:









(Sorry in advance for the nightmares.)

The rest of them here.

Small side yards

are the rule in my neighborhood for front-of-the-house planting areas. Here are some I saw on my morning stroll.

It was raining so I had to cut it short.



I get a lot of visitors searching on "Princess Plant" (Tibouchina urvilleana). That's Princess Plant with the purple flowers. Another common name for Princess Plant is supposed to be Glory Bush. Heh, heh. It's definitely a workhorse landscape plant here. (And I would put it in the "love" column; I have one in my own garden.)











"I woke up at six, peed, my water broke."

Just reporting what she said.



Some houses have no side yard at all.



Kitties!







A much longer walk around the neighborhood here.

UPDATE: More side yards here. I don't know why I'm calling them "side yards". I made that term up.

The first fall rain...

fell in San Francisco tonight. What a relief! Summer is over and I can let Mother Nature have control of the garden for a few months. No more supplemental waterings! No more room left to plant.

I'm digging in bulbs once a month from now until December. By Thanksgiving, I'll have sown seed for all next spring's annuals; it's lupine, poppy, and flax for 2007. Summertime cuttings of Mimulus, now potted up to one-gallon, await January's inevitable warm spell. The winter vegetables are in and on their way: strawberry, beets, lettuce, broccoli and lots and lots of beans. And I planted an artichoke, inspired by Nina's sojourn in Sicily.

I'll head back the Tibouchina when the last flowers fall, and I can't wait to see the Dahlia imperialis bloom this winter. The white ribes is already beginning to make flowers!

The Mandevilla and wild grape have just begun to turn colors in my garden, but the vine maple is already dormant. Spicebush, elderberry and climbing hydrangea show no sign of slowing down. Flowers on St. Catherine's Lace have only just begun to open, and one Salvia spathacea just sent up another flower stalk. Crazy.

I'll add pictures tomorrow.

Maxon Crumb.

I've been without a car for a week, but the mechanic says it's ready to go and I'm off to pick it up. That'll be $1249, ladies and gentleman. New timing belt, new tensioner, radiator something, oil change. "Way to score those rewards points!" The mechanic's near Golden Gate Park, so this is the perfect opportunity for me to stroll through the Panhandle, one of my favorite places in San Francisco. I lived near here in 1990. I wished I'd come more often.

Memorials to unmemorable presidents...



Big trees...



and medium-big trees...



Playgrounds...



Some pick-up...



Old hippies making music...



Young hippies making art...



And portals to other dimensions.



Moving in to Golden Gate Park now.

Hmmm...



I've actually never been to the fuchsia garden. October's a little late for fuchsia in San Francisco.



And it's the end of the road for Cosmos too.



See you next year.



How about some dahlias instead? We've got these for the rest of October, at least.

















Dahlias are nice, but sometimes I feel they feel a little... overdetermined.

You know what I'm saying?



The merry-go-round closes after Labor Day.







Okay, this became a serious diversion. The car is ready and I need to pick it up.

But first some cool oak trees,



A pink house,



and some old folks lawn bowling.





Another short walk in Golden Gate Park here. Short walks in different San Francisco parks here and here.

Do you know what this is?



(I'm asking because I don't know and it's coming up in my garden.)

In Nature:

There have long been stories about declining aspen numbers, but you've now realised things have been much worse over the past few years. What is happening?

Aspen here in the western United States regenerate by sprouting from the root system of existing trees, rather than growing from seeds. Normally if a parent tree dies you would expect to see thousands of sprouts coming back up immediately from the roots. But what we're seeing now is that the roots appear to be dead and we're not getting any new sprouts.

This hasn't been reported before in the literature. It's a very quick thing — I've never seen anything quite like it.

More at the link.

"I noticed today that the trees are turning as well. Going all golden but the lovers' quarrel is coming soon and the red blood of summer will soon be smearing the trees. Just about the only good thing from the past two weeks of rainy, cold weather is that it should make for one hell of a good fight."

Link.

"Organic food travels farther than industrial food, so to put 1 calorie of California organic lettuce on a plate in New York City, he said, requires 56 calories of fossil-fuel energy. Such food may be 'technically organic but not really' because the method of its production and distribution is not sustainable.

If he had to make a choice, [Michael] Pollan said, he would therefore put locally grown over organic as a priority for food."

Link.