Which option would you pick...

...if you were me?

Option A:

San Francisco vegetable gardening guru Pam Peirce's Fall Vegetables & Herbs. Five Saturday mornings in a row, Sep-8 through Oct-13 from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Vegetable and plant families suitable for San Francisco fall gardening, organic IPM, best practices, lecture and lab. (To make your decision, consider that this is the last time I'll be able to take this class for the foreseeable future. Consider also that I've already taken Summer vegetables, and that if I take winter and spring, I'll have a whole year [but there is no guarantee that I will be able to take winter and spring]. Consider too that some people who take this class go on to start their own garden and/or vegetable growing businesses. But I doubt I'll ever do that.)

--OR--

Option B:

Native Salvias With Native Plant Partners - selections for sweet success in a healthy garden. Sep-8, 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. "Noted salvia expert, Betsy Clebsch, author of the New Book of Salvias, shows us a fresh approach for combining interesting salvia species with California native plants requiring similar conditions. The synergy from creative combinations is not only beautiful in all seasons, but a wonderful way to ensure a healthy garden and bountiful wildlife habitat. Slides and fresh plant material will be used."

and

Seed Saving Workshop. Saturday 9/15, 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.
"Learn to gather your garden's bounty in this hands-on workshop for foolproof seed saving. San Francisco Botanical Garden's Horticultural Manager, Don Mahoney will share his wealth of experience as he takes the mystery out of this age-old practice. Learn how to recognize different types of seeds, determine the best time to collect, and how to properly harvest and store your seeds for successful germination."

and

Ecology of Point Reyes. "This is a one weekend field class, beginning Sep-29 and ending Sep-30. A mandatory orientation session meets on campus Thursday 9/20 from 6 p.m. until 9 p.m. No transportation is provided to field sites." Full details not yet available. (Consider that I would have to miss my Thursday night Plants and Animals of California class to attend the orientation.)

--OR--

Option C:

Native Salvias from option B,

and

Ecology of San Francisco Bay. "This is a one weekend field class, beginning Sep-15 and ending Sep-16. A mandatory orientation session meets on campus Friday Sep-7 from 5:30 p.m. until 8:30 p.m. No transportation is provided to field sites." Full details not yet available.

--OR--

Option D:

Fall vegetables from Option A, but absent for one Saturday day to attend Ecology of Point Reyes from Option B.


--OR--

Option E:

Fall vegetables from Option A, but absent for one day to attend Ecology of San Francisco Bay from Option C.

"With more submerged acreage than Minnesota, Texas has just 166 bodies of water commonly considered lakes. All but one of them, according to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, are artificial reservoirs, most created in the 1950s to fend off drought.

Now that one, Caddo Lake, a mystical preserve of centuries-old mossy cypress breaks, teeming fisheries and waterfowl habitats, is under siege by a fast-spreading, Velcro-like aquatic fern, Salvinia molesta, also known as Giant Salvinia."

Pictures at the link.

Go look at this.

Why am I in the closet?

Because I want to show you my garden library.



As you may know, we're doing a remodel. We decided halfway through to get new carpet upstairs (because when everything is already chaos, why not invite more, right?) Well, today we got new carpet installed, and here it is.



It feels nice under my bare feet.

Yesterday we moved everything out of upstairs, and today we're moving it all back in. Part of the remodel involved some redecorating, and that freed up this Ikea Billy. I'm putting it in my closet to contain my growing collection of garden reference material.



The rumors are true. I have a Barbie switchplate.



I got this at an arts festival in Charleston, South Carolina in 1997. I honestly have no idea why I have this. I'm not into Barbie. Even as a flaming little gayboy, I wasn't that in to dolls.

My ex-boyfriend who is from Canada (Newfoundland--"the Texas of Canada" in his words) gave me the moose. The Return of the Jedi cup I found in my grandmother's basement, and my dad made the box.



My dad likes to make pine boxes and I have a couple of them. I keep miscellaneous crap in this one.



This isn't staying here. It's just starting out here.

I think I promised you a bug-eyed vagina soft sculpture. Here you go.



It can hang on the wall, but I like it on the shelf.

Okay, so I want to show you my garden library.

My favorite books are specific to California.



This is the book for vegetable gardening in San Francisco. Honestly, I can't imagine how anyone would even begin to grow vegetables in weird, foggy San Francisco without this vital book (well, there is a newer edition but I have this one).



For my money, this is absolutely the porniest plant book I know of--put out by the East Bay Municipal Utility District if you can believe that.



Here on page 210 is one of its hottest shots. This garden really turns my crank. Pictures of it show up in numerous books and I would love to see it IRL.



As much as I like that book, this would be the book I'd take home to mother.



Author Glenn Keator is a California hort god among men (and women), and this is a very, very good book that just came out this year. You could build several different types of native gardens with this book. And he makes bold endorsements for plants one might not think of as strong garden material, like bladder pod. I like that.


Ah, my first love. This book came a few years ago and did a lot to excite and renew interest in growing natives. Four or five excellent books on that subject have come out in the last couple years. But this was the first, and it set the bar high.



I think this is a good book for home gardeners, but I think it's even better for designers and landscape professionals. It has a slight bias toward southern California (the authors are from southern parts) and it has a lot of big trees. Torrey Pines and Sequoias are going to be too big for most people, even with 3/4 acre lots in the 'burbs (says the guy with a buckeye in his 450 sq ft garden--okay, well, whatever.)

Ceanothus reads like scholarship. I haven't really bonded with it yet.



And I haven't even cracked this one.



Strybing has a class on native grasses and bulbs this fall (taught by Glenn Keator, in fact). I would take it, but I'm taking "Plants and Animals of California" at City College on the same night. If that class gets canceled, I'll take the Strybing class instead.

Nevin Smith rounds out the list of recently published books I have on gardening with CA natives. This guy heads up a division at Suncrest Nursery, a huge wholesale operation in Watsonville I visited last year with some folks from the Botanical Garden. Good information about propagation in this book.



Some luscious pocket porn.



Author Scott Medbury moved to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden a couple years ago.

This out-of-print book sometimes turns up on Amazon for lots of money, but you can find it for less with a little bit of effort. (And you can always ask me to look something up for you.)



Judith Larner Lowry (Larner Seeds) wrote California's answer to Henry Mitchell. This thrilling book gave me goose bumps the first time I read it.



I rarely consult this massive tome, although the Soils chapter is excellent.



I love this old Sunset! This is the 7th printing (1964) of the 2nd edition (1954). So interesting to read the old Sunsets. Here, for example, is where I learned one grafts plum scions on peach stock, but not the other way around.



I have two Cynthia Westcott books, one on diseases, and one on bugs. She gives thorough lifecycle information and identification tips. Don't read these books for remedies tho'. It's all about horrible chemicals that were banned long ago.



I have a few books on trees. This one is my favorite for identification.



Elizabeth McClintock was an excellent writer and California horticulturist; she wrote this book about the trees of Golden Gate Park.



I just got this yesterday when I took some books in for trade at the used bookstore a few blocks away.



And this one too. There's a lot of stuff in here about good trees for container gardening which is something I'm interested in right now.



(My dad gave me that card.)

I don't have every issue of Pacific Horticulture, but I'm working on it.



I tried building my own pond a couple years ago; it was horrible. But this is a very good book if you want to try doing that but be careful because it makes it all look so easy. It's not. I have a plan for a smaller, simpler water feature project for next year, so I'm keeping this book for awhile.



I have a few design books for small gardens. I enjoyed this one even though I don't live in the northwest.



I thought this was very good for small gardens.



What else...



Rudy Rucker...love him. After all these years, I've only kept two chemistry books, boranes and mechanisms. I haven't read that A.M. Homes book. I bought it because Los Angeles fascinates me. The Thief Lord I borrowed from my friend's 8-year-old. He said it was really good (and so did his mother), but I just can't get in to it.

My dad took this picture in Maine. I broke the glass and haven't gotten it fixed because Guy doesn't like the picture. He doesn't approve of hunting, so he doesn't want to see the hunting decoys hanging on the wall.



Don't get between a gay man and his dumbbells.



I saw Rufus Wainwright twice in 1999, the second time at the Fillmore. Which is an especially cool place to see a concert because they give out free posters after the show.



I bought this painting of Spike on EBay. Guy's parents think it's James Dean and they think I'm really into James Dean and they're always giving me James Dean stuff.



We have some games, but mostly we pay rummy.



My dad likes to play Stratego, and he's very good at it. Every once in awhile I beat him, but not very often. Dark Shadows is Guy's game from childhood, based on the soap opera (the game, not Guy's childhood). It's like one or two steps up from Candyland, but it's fun and we play it when his parents are here. I love Scrabble but can't find anyone good to play with. Who doesn't like Monopoly. And we have Mad Libs and Uno and Yahtzee and dominoes and backgammon. And Chinese checkers.

I bought this from an artist on Market Street hawking his wares to tourists. Of course, I paid way too much money for it. I used to like tacky art more than I do now.



Nowadays, I mostly just like to garden.

Friday Night Garden

I'm planting a small drift of echeveria in a small corner of the garden (inspired by something I saw last month at UC Davis). It will fill in eventually. In the meantime, it looks nice with Sisyrinchium bellum.







I thought I pulled out all the sweet pea. This was a nice little surprise coming up in the tomato.



I think tomatoes like this come from flowers like these.



New lemon blossoms--yay!



Next to it, Datura wrightii. I had to pull the one I showed you so many pictures of because it was getting out of line. This one should be fine here.



It hasn't flowered yet, but once it starts this will be a nice place to sit.



The other solanum?



Yeah, I'm going to let the brugmansia do whatever it wants this year. But next year, I prune.



I thought I might have to reconsider my shade plants when the neighbor nuked his yard a month ago. I had planted in consideration of the shade his forest cast over my garden.

But I know some plants that need shade inland will do fine in full sun on the coast. So, it's a question of exactly how coastal am I, here in south central San Francisco. I really don't know. I'm going to wait a while and see what happens. I don't want to move anything unless I have to.

So far, the only thing that had to go was some Clivia miniata that I could see was suffering. I potted them up and replaced them with these cymbidium I got from a friend last year. These are actually two of three divisions I took from a single plant.



Now I think Cymbidium is a better choice than Clivia all around.



I added some Stachys byzantina from a clump that wants to swallow the path at the bottom of the stairs.



Here, by the way, is the neighbor's yard. It's no surprise some of those bamboo shoots are already taller than I am. In another year or two, I'll have his bamboo on my side of the fence. Sigh.



Back to my garden, this is Mimulus cardinalis; it will take sun or shade. This one's in shade.



Cute!



I'm trying to grow some cuttings.

I planted a buckeye this year. Aesculus californica. Here it is.



I'll have to prune this every year, or it will become an enormous tree and destroy the garden. It can take a lot of pruning tho, and I will be happy to do it. I love this tree and I have no concerns at all about its quick, sudden summer dormancy that turns the whole thing brown for a month in the middle of the summer. No problem.

I picked a fabulous specimen. Look at the branching!




Okay, gotta go. More later.

It's Froggy Friday...

Lisa's got lotsa frogs. Carol's trying to [avoid] squish[ing] them. Lost Roses recalls a rain of frogs. (But I don't believe it.)

Sustainable Farming...at Disney's Epcot Center

omfg!

You have to go see "the amazing giant tomato tree" at the link.

Can't Bust This

Former narcotics officer Barry Cooper says he feels guilty for making over 800 drug arrests in his career: "The war on drugs is an utterly losing proposition," he tells Radar. "We caused more harm breaking up families to put non-violent drug offenders in jail than the drugs ever did. And for what? To eradicate 1/10th of a percent of drugs on the street."

Now he has made an instructional video called Never Get Busted Again. Radar Online has printed some of Cooper's tips.

Link.

My favorite: "If you are driving with large quantities of narcotics, do so in the rain. Cops hate pulling people over when it's wet out. Traveling during rush hour and other times of heavy traffic is also a good tactic."

Heh!

Added: A different view.

Day 67 and 72

Day 67 looked good!





But this is wrong.



The countertop is supposed to be extend over the top of the undermounted sink so it's a straight drop off the counter with no lip. It's all there in the plans, but the sub didn't understand that, so the contractor has to eat this. Too bad!

Day 72:

They've papered over the counter top in preparation for tiling the backsplash.



The floating shelves are new.





The countertop on this wall has been removed.



Site of future refrigerator.



Pantry plus wine rack. Guy thinks all our food can fit in here. We'll see.



Paint swatches. We're going with the the very pale one on the left.








Link to Day 65.

Other Golden Gate Park news.

In today's paper:

Forget the coyotes. Do you really think your biggest concern is getting bitten by a wild animal?

Frankly, if you are in Golden Gate Park, a far greater danger is that you, or your child, or your pet, will step on a dirty hypodermic needle. Step off the paths, and you'll have plenty of chances...

"Needles?" said homeless park resident Christopher Ash when we asked him if there were any syringes at his camp site near the 25th Avenue-Park Presidio Boulevard split. "Sure. I stuck one in a tree right over here."

Ash found a needle in 30 seconds. A cheerful soul, he says he began taking LSD at the age of 13 and insists he has been living in the wilds of Golden Gate Park for five years...

"It's kind of like one big family," camper Valo Astonea said when he poked his head out of his sleeping bag. Among the 10 to 12 campers in the area, Astonea said, there were sometimes intravenous drug users, "but we kind of frown on that here."

That's not good enough. Inevitably when we write a story like this, there are complaints that we are unsympathetic to the homeless. But this isn't a homeless issue...

Volunteers like Bakewell and Stan Kaufman are doing their part cleaning up areas on their own. Now it is time for city government under this mayor to do its part.

"I am ... paying $8,500 a year in property taxes," says Kaufman. "In an ideal world, it wouldn't fall to volunteers to do this."

Of course, this is no ideal world. It's San Francisco.

Link.

Do you ever watch the television show Intervention? (We're hooked on it--heh, heh.) It's worth checking out just to see some of the interesting ways families and friends service their loved one's addiction. For example, parents frequently give their addict children money to buy drugs believing that it will keep them from resorting to prostitution or violent crime as means of funding a spiraling addiction. Eventually, something gives and they arrange an intervention. By that time, the damage is usually extensive and severe. (The 30-minute television format imposes some provocative limitations; the show is very watchable and easily engenders complex discussions that I won't get in to here. But you can if you want.)

Anyhow, I want to say San Francisco and its homeless (if those two things can be made separate) share a similarly co-dependent relationship. But where individual families can eventually come together and agree 1) that something must be done and 2) what that something is, it seems impossible that a whole city will ever be able to do that. Two contributing factors: a lack of strong leadership, San Francisco's deeply ingrained suspicion of strong leadership when it appears.

The result is variously comic, pathetic, frustrating, maddening and all kinds of other things.

Guerilla gardening

with Celosia in Toronto, here.

And then there's this.

Added: More GG in Toronto.

Some gardening.

Death came for the Mandevilla this week. This is the first time I've lost an established plant in my garden.



I know they're prone to lethal root rots. Sure enough. It's dead at the crown.



I liked having a vine here, trellised on the back steps, but for now I planted this Salvia coccinea 'Hummingbird Coral'.



Pretty, pretty.



The calla leaves drive me batshit.



Why won't they point down? They've been doing that for months now and I continue to feel annoyed every time I look over here. These plants are supposed to be content in shade, but this one acts like an abused child who never sees sunlight.

That ray growing at a painful diagonal is Cestrum nocturnum. One of these days, I'm going to cut it back.

I put the Japanese maple in here a few weeks ago when my neighbor cleaned out his yard and realigned the sun/shade axis in my garden. I hope to get some good texture mojo from the combination of Acer palmatum and Bartlettina sordida.

A constant gardening irritation. Non-neatly nesting 1-gallon pots.



Drives me nuts. I don't buy that many 1-g plants, but I do keep the containers for cuttings and transplants. They should all just nest without me having to nest them. (Do I sound like a crazy person?)



While I was at the nursery looking for something to replace the dead Mandevilla, I found Symphoricarpus albus for $8.99. I put it here next to the bird bath. It's loaded with flower buds. The snowberries I already had in my garden have teeny, tiny flower buds. This one's going to be in full bloom next week, and I'll have berries this winter for sure!



Climbing roses in a container...who knows. I have to put something on the retaining wall in back, and I want it to cover the fence a little bit. I figure it's worth a shot. I just moved this container here from another spot and tied down the verticals.



Novelty cucumbers doing good. I hope they taste good too.



I'm surprised to find Cerinthe coming up everywhere already. I know it self-sows, but I did not expect to see seedlings in July from plants I took out in May.





That's just some of them.

Anyone know what this plant is?



It must have come from seed too. Any ideas?

Friday Night Botanical Garden

Posted on Sunday because I was too tired when I got home on Friday, and I spent all day Saturday reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (which I was delighted to find at Red Hill Books a few blocks away from where I live. I picked up my copy Saturday around noon, but the bookstore had a party Friday night and stayed open until 1:30 a.m. Saturday morning. She told me they sold 150 Harry Potters. Two people in line in front of me and the woman behind me all bought the book, and they had three two-foot stacks of pre-ordered books wrapped in paper and ready for pick-up. Anyway the book was good and I enjoyed it very much. None of my predictions turned out to be correct, which is typical.)

Now back to the Botanical Garden...(I was here yesterday too):



I was here for a volunteer appreciation party. Last year when I was unemployed, I volunteered extensively. This year, I'm working again so I mostly volunteer for evening events and monthly sales, but I also do some nursery work from home in the form of growing native plants from seed. Last week, I dropped of several 4" pots of Keckiella cordifolia and Berberis nevinii.





People volunteer in different areas at the nursery. I, obviously, work with CA natives. These are shrubs people. The lady in the yellow sweater is the fuchsia lady. She has a lovely southern accent; I'm not sure exactly where from.



The guy in the yellow sweater is Bernie. He has a small installation and maintenance business named Dirty Hoe. He brings home brew every year; this was a hefeweizen. We worked together a little bit in the meso-American cloud forest last year.







Mostly I socialized (and got caught up on the coyote situation from one of the gardeners), but I did sneak out to visit the garden for a bit too.











I didn't get a good picture of this tree, but its name is Dais cotinifolius, from South Africa, in the Thymelaceae, which is a family I don't know much about, except that it includes Daphne (but not thyme which is in the Lamiaceae, obviously).



And I don't know what this blue-flowering plant is, but I like it.

"A magical night at May Dreams Gardens. The night blooming cereus, Epiphyllum oxypetalum, bloomed, going from a bud to a fully open flower in just a few hours."

Link.

I was thinking to myself the other day...there's the Drudge Report for general interest news and politics, there should be a Hedge Report for garden blogger hard news. Because, for me, Carol's Epiphyllum, Pam's vacation pictures, Christopher's building permit, Lisa's blog's anniversary, etc., etc., these are all important news items to me. I need to know.

Thursday night botanical garden

Finally, a halfway decent picture of Iochroma cyaneum for you.









The Beaucarnia is flowering!



















Follow the trunk on that Echium. So cool!





I've been trying to get here after work for awhile. San Francisco is beautiful in the summer evening light. It follows that the Botanical Garden is even more beautiful. The garden closes at 5 p.m. I thought that meant noone could be in the garden past 5, but it means you can't enter after 5. You can exit through the turnstiles after the gates are locked.

But I didn't come here alone tonight. I'm here with my bff Kirsten who works for the non-profit arboretum foundation. For a living. Yes, she's that fabulous.

And she's a total brainiac. She knows immediately how to take close-ups with my camera. So now I know! I tell her this will dramatically increase the blog's photographic range. She said, "You have a blog?" She becomes the third person who knows me personally to learn that I have a blog.

Kirsten, thank you for showing me what that little button on my camera is for!















This odd, trailing dwarf conifer is one of my favorite plants in the whole garden.















Quail family!



(Sorry the picture's blurry. I generally try to keep my distance. There are usually at least two mating pair here every year. This brood covey seemed especially large. There were several more chicks not shown.)

There's a class tonight on 'Horticulture Therapy', like to learn how to help disabled people appreciate plants. Plants for blind people, plants for angry children. Something like that. Kirsten explained it better. They have a lot of classes here. These are the people in the class heading in to the garden.



They have classes and lectures and seminars going on all the time.







I love that there are two societies for succulent & cactus enthusiasts.



Do you belong to any horticultural societies? If so, which ones? If not, how come?



The offices are at the end of the hall. We're special so we can go inside and look around.



Last year's promotional posters. The arboretum has a large collection of magnolias from all over the world.





That's Kirsten's desk, and that's her hand.





An old aerial view of the botanical garden (along the bottom), Stow Lake (upper left), and the former California Academy of Science and DeYoung Museum (both now, or soon to be, in new structures).



After finishing some business, we're off for dinner.



This neighborhood is called 'the inner Sunset'.

This is le Video, generally considered the best movie rental store in San Francisco.











We're having burgers.

Thursday morning jimson weed

I probably won't grow this plant again next year. Better get the most out of it now.

It was especially lovely this morning before I went off to work.

Day 65

Site of future refrigerator.



Site of future sink.



Site of future compactor. I think we should use it for trash, but Guy thinks it's better to use it for recycling, and that doesn't make sense to me because trash seems more compactable than recycling.



Link to Day 64.

It rained last night.

A rare summer storm rolled into the Bay Area Wednesday, bringing light, but historic rains...The light showers sent forecasters at the National Weather Service scrambling to the record books.

While rainfall totals were less than an inch, it was the first time in history on July 18 that the Bay Area has had any kind of rain stemming back to when records were first kept in the late 1800s.

In San Francisco more than 0.01 of an inch had fallen and measurable totals were also recorded in Hayward, Oakland and Santa Rosa. The highest total as of 7:30 a.m., was 0.25 of an inch in Guerneville.

"It's not a real gully washer, so to speak, but it is a record," said Dan Gudgel, a National Weather Service forecaster in Monterey.

The source of the showers was a storm front that was generated in the Gulf of Alaska and driven into Northern California by a jet stream pattern that is common in the winter months but rarely seen in the summer..."

Link.

Suffice it to say, I was weirded out. When Guy told me last night they had rain in the forecast, I said that's impossible.

Potter

The Kakutani review is up (and there are spoilers at the hyperlink below, so beware):

"J.K. Rowling’s monumental, spell-binding epic, 10 years in the making, is deeply rooted in traditional literature and Hollywood sagas — from the Greek myths to Dickens and Tolkien to Star Wars — and true to its roots, it ends not with modernist, Soprano-esque equivocation, but with good old-fashioned closure: a big screen, heart-racing, bone-chilling confrontation and an epilogue that clearly lays out people’s fates. Getting to the finish line is not seamless — the last portion of the final book has some lumpy passages of exposition and a couple of clunky detours — but the overall conclusion of the series and its determination of the main characters’ storylines possess a convincing inevitability that make some of the pre-publication speculation seem curiously blinkered in retrospect."

Link.


ADDED: Where did she get her copy? At the bookstore apparently...

"A copy of [the book]...was purchased at a New York City retail outlet today, although the book is embargoed for release until 12:01 a.m. this Saturday."

Okay, I'm, like blogging the review as I read it. I'm going to stop, read the whole thing, and then blog it.

ADDED: Okay, it turns out there are too many spoilers in the NYT review (!), so I'm not going to read it until after I read the book.

Bay Area and state warm up to solar energy, survey says

"Spreading one rooftop at a time, solar panels in California are finally generating serious power.

The Bay Area alone now has enough panels to provide electricity to about 61,725 homes, according to a survey released Tuesday by a solar advocacy group. Statewide, the output of solar installations equals that of a mid-size power plant.

The survey, by NorCal Solar, a nonprofit group, shows that the environmentally friendly technology is becoming entrenched in both the Bay Area and the state."

Link.

I'm very happy with our solar system. I wish we'd had enough money to install a larger system and a generator to power us when the sun goes down. I would love to go off the grid in the middle of the city.

People say it's not economical to buy solar, but they make all kinds of other non-economical choices, or choices based on emotion rather than economics (like getting new kitchens?). That's fine (but people should listen to themselves and think about how they sound before trying to pass their decision-making process off as inherently rational when it's transparently not--ahem!), people can spend their money how they want. We're essentially homebodies, with zero interest in flashy cars or clothes. I probably spend more money on seeds and mulch than I do on clothes per annum.

The solar was a fine decision for us.

Day 64

Link to Day 59.

Yet more coyote news.

"Authorities defended their decision to shoot and kill two coyotes in Golden Gate Park even as the action triggered a lively debate Monday between those advocating public safety and those arguing the coyotes posed no real danger, or should have been relocated."

Link.

Pam's comment from the previous post, edited:

My perspective on wildlife management in cities has been influenced heavily by "Beast in the Garden," a provocative title but a thoughtful and well-reasoned book [Abe, Amazon]. See my posts about it [here] and [here].

Previous coyote news here.

More coyote news.

"[San Francisco] officials and wildlife researchers estimate that about five to eight coyotes live in [the city]. These include at least two in Golden Gate Park and one on Bernal Hill. There have also been sightings in McLaren Park, Lake Merced and the Presidio.

Wildlife experts believe that human activity drove coyotes out of San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake, as more people began settling in the western portions of the city. But coyotes were spotted in the Presidio about seven years ago.

Researchers believe that coyotes, which can travel up to 45 miles in a day, returned to the city by traveling up the shoreline from undeveloped parts of San Mateo County along Ocean Beach. Researchers tracked the movements of a coyote in the Presidio with an electronic device and said it traveled to the Daly City area and back in one day.

The San Francisco sightings come as coyotes, which tend to hunt in the evening and early morning, have successfully adapted to human habitation and spread into undeveloped areas adjacent to cities and suburbs.

When Europeans settled America in the 17th century, coyotes were found mostly in the western United States. But in recent decades they have spread all the way to the East Coast and have infiltrated many major cities."

Link.

Today at the San Franicsco Botanical Garden

It looked like this.



I'm in a new structure being built in the rhododendron dell using some of William Randolph Heart's old monastery stones.





The tree is Luma apiculata in the Myrtaceae, from Chile. It's considered a water-wise plant for Bay Area gardens. The foliage is fragrant, and the tree has white flowers later in the summer, followed by large berries.



Acanthus mollis, Acanthaceae.



I'm told this plant is ineradicable once established in a San Francisco garden. I have no experience with it myself.



The thorny tree.



This is its foliage.



I want love this conifer.



Pelargonium sidoides.



Really nice idea.







Cercidiphyllum japonicum 'Heronswood Globe'. Cercidiphyllaceae. This plant smells remarkably like burnt sugar.



Anigozanthos sp., Haemodoraceae.


I might have to rethink my feelings about this plant. Before, I was, like, "It's the new Agapanthus." Sunset says it's native to open Eucalyptus forests. That must be something to see. Here, nothing grows under Eucalyptus.

Far too rampant for the small garden, but I like Salvia cacaliifolia.



The triangular leaves get me.



Even more rampant, Solandra sp., Solanaceae.









Fuchsia boliviana v. Alba.



Encephelartos and yellow clivia.





Encephalartos tegulaneus, a cycad.



Strelitzia and agapanthus. Plants of the idealized suburban California garden of the 1970s.





Dierama pulcherrimum, Iridaceae.



I have seeds for this plant. Must. Sow. Them. Soon.







Protea. Part plant, part bird.



I sometimes feel like I should have plants like these in my garden, just because I could grow them here. And I like them. I think they're just too big for me. That's often what it comes down to.



Cercis occidentalis.



The western redbud is more twisty-shrubby than the eastern varieties.



We're in the California section now.



Eriogonum grande v. rubescens and Clarkia sp.







Eriogonum arborescens, Polygonaceae.





Right on the cusp of bloom.



Asclepias speciosa, Asclepiadaceae.



This is one of the few plants left that I really, really want in my garden.



This pink Mimulus aurantiacus (Scrophulariaceae) was growing in an inaccessible spot so I had to zoom in on it.



Toxicodendron diversilobum, Anacardiaceae. Related to mango!



Populus tremuloides, Salicaceae. Quaking Aspen. I would grow this too if I could. The plant gets turned on by the slightest breeze, and it's so important to have some movement in the garden, in my opinion.



Currants.



This is a Keckiella; I'm not sure which one. I'm growing K. cordifolia from seed.



Calycanthus.



Allium.



And some yarrow.





Acer circinatum.





Okay, we're leaving California now.



I don't know what got into this Echium...









This is Francoa. There are a few different kinds, and I don't know which is which.







Senna condolliana, Fabaceae.



Remnant puya flowers up there.



A closer look from the other side.





Hmm. I didn't get a picture of the tree, but here is the flower of Chiranthodendron pentadactylon, Sterculiaceae.







They're having a plant sale today. I'm not working it or shopping it, so by the time I get here everything's pretty picked over.



But we can look around!



They're pushing the passion flowers.



Many, many kinds.



There's that Gunnera.



They're selling these Madia I grew from seed. Someone told me a guy bought four of them this morning.



I should have bought these pitchers.



And this Prunella vulgaris.



Isn't it pretty?



A little behind the scenes tour.













Allium flavum 'minus'. What a name.



Sweet swallowtail.

Garden Blogger Bloom Day

Madia elegans, Tarweed. And the fruit of Lypersicum lypersicon 'Stupice'.



I have the madia everywhere, and you'll be seeing a lot of it here for the next few months.



It smells really wonderful... musky mint is how I'd put it. Wild smelling.



And it's just getting started.



I don't know if this is sweetpea, or food pea.



The vegetable garden is crammed right up next to the bamboo.



That's the Clematis I bought the other day. I want it to find its way into the bamboo. I have one in there already. The flowers are gone and you can't see the vine if you don't look for it. So next next spring, the bamboo will suddenly bear clematis flowers. Anyhow, this one has flowers to complement the pink brugmansia which is just overhead, now almost ready to bloom.



This year, you can sit under the Brugmansia, but next spring the absurdly large flower of this Echium will make that impossible. Oh well.



Okay, that picture didn't have any blooms in it.

Sitting here, I can turn left and zoom in on the yarrow, also almost ready to bloom.



And if I turn right, there are a few flowers on the pink crystals grass.



As a native plant enthusiast, the exotic ornamentals planted in my garden that give me the most angst are the exotic grasses. I don't have a lot of angst about the pink crystals tho'. This will be much more showy next month.

That's the chair I was just sitting in. This is Cotyledon orbiculatum v. longifolium, and Trichostema lanatum, Wooly Blue Curls.



I think I'm going to put this in the ground. It's probably not too late. Just for this summer.



I have another morning glory, 'Split Identity', that I'm growing up the Tibouchina.



The flowers are fragile and unstructured, so it functions as splash of color and that's it.





Two pictures of Salvia clevelandii 'Alan Chickering'.



I have decided to change this salvia out for the Winifred Gilman variety; Alan is too silver-gray for this spot, and Winifred has some nice purple-red.

I should have started this post with this picture, since this is the entry to the garden from the stairs down from the deck.



I would have thought the Stachys byzantina would have flowered by now, but what do I know. Now I hope it holds back from flowering while the potted gaura gets big and goes nuts, because I like the gaura flowers with the stachys leaves.



The mimulus flowers all summer long.



So does the yellow Cotula.



The Mandevilla laxa flowers smell nice, but I like my Madia even more.



The Abutilon is on the way up.



I think that giant iris wants much more water because it's all moldy. It's a pond iris lily flower thing; I don't know what it is--got it from a gardener at the Botanical Garden on my way out one day. "Hey, you want this?" she said. "You know I do!" That's about how it went.

I'll put in the future water trough with the Farfugium I bought last week.





I did some serious pruning two weeks ago, and I cut back this penstemon quite a bit. But here it's coming back.



Same thing with Alonsoa meridionalis.



This Erigeron glauca is thinking carefully about whether it wants to establish or not.



It will be nice if it does.



That wire grass in the background is Juncus patens, and it's covered with flowers.



Or maybe those are seeds by now. Who knows.



I haven't gotten very good pictures of the Salvia spathacea yet, but it's been flowering non stop since late April.

Here's one flower blossoming from the sticky, fragrant whorl.





Eriogonum latifolium.



At least, I think so.



This is a coast native that grows in sandy areas. Butterflies and bees appreciate having this around.

And there's the odd Cosmos bipinnatus scattered here and there.



Same with Sisyrinchium bellum. You have to look for this one; it's small and hidden.



Zantedeschia, and you can see some cineraria in there too.



This is an usually exhaustive tour of the garden. We end with a Calycanthus occidentalis bud.



For your big fix, visit Garden Blogger Bloom Day Central: May Dreams.

Link to last month's GBBD.

Hey, everyone!

Lisa's throwing her blog a one year anniversary party with lots of pictures! Go check it out!

Pam is ready for her own special on the National Geographic channel.

Link and link.

Last tomato harvest 7/08/2007

(These posts are to help me keep track of harvest times and sizes for future reference.)

Days 57-59

Since Day 52, Day 56 was the only eventful day I failed to take pictures of.

Day 57:

I haven't showed this part of the remodel much, but these two pictures are the former-pantry-future-stacked-washer/drier.



Right now we have to carry our laundry to the basement/garage, and since there are no stairs inside the house to the basement/garage, we have to carry the laundry outside. Due to the house's layout, it's easier to use the front door to do that. So we carry our laundry in and out through the front door. It's kinda cheesy/trashy-tacky. (But we're lucky enough as homeowners to have laundry machines in our home. San Francisco renters have to go to the laudromat or pay a rental premium for coin-op laundry in the building. So accessible laundry facilities were always huge priority for me when apartment hunting in San Francisco. Thankfully, those days are behind me now. Big digression.)



It's just a tiny space off the foyer and there's no way to back up and show it to you in one shot.

The kitchen pics begin now:









We have a living room next to the kitchen. It's partitioned down the middle with the plastic sheeting on the left of this picture to help contain dust.



We have our makeshift kitchen here.



It's been adequate.



Guy does all the grocery shopping online.



He's also manic about organizing the refrigerator just so. (We don't buy Corona, just in case you think were thinking we do. We don't usually have beer in the house at all, but Guy got two cases for free from work, so it's here for now. We also don't drink much white wine, which is why I bought that white cab two buck chuck, just to see if we're missing something.)

And I don't know what the story is with this sparkling wine. We never buy that.
Next to it are baggies of Sambucus mexicana seeds chilling in moistened perlite/vermiculite. And the big ziploc bag is just my general, miscellaneous seeds.



The frozen food section is the most popular part of the refrigerator these days, for obvious reasons.



We advocate the Morning Star fake meat meal starter. It's good for all kinds of things, but we mostly use it for tacos.



I'm going to have this for dinner tonight.



Of course, it always looks better on the box.



The Phaseolus coccinnea 'Scarlet Emperor' plants are very productive. I have two plants, and I harvest at least this much every single day, and I have for about a month now. The beans aren't especially tasty, but I think 'Scarlet Emperor' is used mostly ornamentally. I'm going to look for a variety developed more for food next year.

Okay, that was day 57 (this last Tuesday).

Onward to Day 58...

Oh, but first I want to show you how the contractors like to spit their expired chewing gum into my planters.



What is there to say about that.

Okay, Day 58:







Here, the future pantry has been scooted left from where it was yesterday. It will go back where it was yesterday after they put the drawers in it. The refrigerator will go in the spot where the pantry is in this picture.







Sorry for the over-exposure. I wanted to show you the light switches are going in. This is good because it means they can re-energize this circuit which has been switched off for several weeks. Which sucked, because for some reason that circuit also includes the outlet the lamp and clock on my nightstand plug in to. (Is it called a nightstand, that little table next to your bed where your reading lamp and clock go? Why am I blanking on that right now?)




Day 59 begins now:



(Note the glamourous drawers in the cabinet in the lower left. I'll show those to you more closely in a future post.)







Counting Day 56 (not shown), this is four days of sustained progress.

This calls for a celebration!



This is not Smirnoff. Or comfrey compost tea. It's gingeur. Or, if you insist, a ginger liqueur I taught a friend how to make and who has provided it to me in ample supply ever since. I'll dig up the recipe for you sometime if you want it (and you should want it, because it's a fabulous gift for a gardener to give [although you can just do a Google search for "ginger liqueur" and find several recipes yourself]), but it's essentially vodka and brandy (or just grain alcohol) infused with ginger, orange zest, cardamom and cloves, with sugar. It's very strong from the very first sip, but you don't taste the alcohol at all. Not even a little bit. And it doesn't give you the ordinary buzz. It's extremely mellowing.

You can strain it out or leave it settled--whatever.



I pour it over ice and add seltzer (not tonic!) and call it a gingerisco. Heh!



Do you like this chair?



It's from my granddad's house.

It still has original taggage underneath.



Original masking tape.





It's better if you mix it.



Link to Day 52.

Answers to silent questions

I was supposed to go up to the pea patch and water, but I was tired and just didn't feel like it. Instead I pored over my recent SiteMeter statistics, which is something I don't do very often. I should, because it's very entertaining to see what brings people to the blog. I have access the search engine search words for the last 4,000 whoreticulture visitors.

A lot of people come here looking for the same things.

For example, "thorny trees" or "trees with thorns" is very popular. It's all because I took this picture during my first visit to the Ruth Bancroft Garden.



However, I didn't name the tree in that blog post. That's gotta be at least somewhat annoying. Let me remedy that now. It's Chorisia speciosa syn. Ceiba speciosa (Thank you Bob and Annie in the comments.)

A few people come looking for the "Ruth Bancroft Library", but to my knowledge there is no such thing. There is of course UC Berkeley's Bancroft Library, but its name arises from the the Bancroft patriarch, Hubert Howe Bancroft, not his garden-loving granddaughter-in-law Ruth.


Search results on variations of "Echium cuttings" are popular whoreticulture pointers. Lord knows I've talked at length about Echium. (You must be sick of it.) I know I brag a fair amount about all the cuttings I take. But I've never taken an Echium cutting, nor have I ever discussed it. However, I can tell you on good authority that E. candicans syn. E. fastuosum can easily be propagated from fresh tip cuttings (not so sure about any other species). Strip off the lower leaves and put the stems in moist perlite or sand until they root. I'm told you don't even need to apply rooting hormone.


Perhaps you'll be surprised to hear that "flowers that smell like semen" is a popular pointer too. (Perhaps not?) It turns out I'm far from being the only place to go for information about that. Check it out, people.

I'm sure some of you, thinking about semen again, immediately recalled last winter's discussion in the comments about Geranium maderense. Annie in Austin made a funny joke (two, actually), and the County Clerk went shopping. Later, I seem to recall the whole thing triggered a minor existential crisis (Clerk's), but I don't now recall where that unfolded.

Lots and lots of people want to see pictures of Maytenus boaria. I've called out the Maytens Tree a few times in my bloggerly travels. This is the picture most seekers find, from this blog post.



I only vaguely remembered that post, and I forgot that it included that picture.

Instead, when I think about blogging the Maytens tree, the first thing that comes to mind is a visit I paid to the Blake Garden where someone incorporated the tree into an art installation.



You step under the skirt and dig the grooviness.



Today I regret not lingering longer under the skirt of the Maytens tree...


Some people come here looking for a "gay gardener". Of course, I am a gay gardener but I have to wonder. Is my gardening so gay you can Google it?

It's not because of this post about the Brokeback Mountain premier, it's not about Gay Merit Badges, it's a remark I shared last December about how only gay men buy Gunnera.



(That post also attracts numerous people looking for Aloe polyphylla.)

And lots of people come here wanting to learn where they can buy Gunnera. (Are they gay?)

People of the world, gay or straight or lesbian or bisexual or transgendered or questioning or whatever, you can buy Gunnera at the San Francisco Botanical Garden monthly plant sales. They usually offer it from February through May.

You can also buy restios there, which is another plant people apparently want to buy judging by SiteMeter statistics. And, as I've mentioned before, you can even buy restio seeds, and the liquid smoke you need to germinate them, from Seedhunt over there in my list of links.

Speaking of gay or straight or whatever, some people come here looking specifically for whoreticulture. But for that you have to choose. Do you want this blog, or this series of queer-themed podcasts from 2005? We are not related. But I'm sure the podcast is fabulous.

I get all kinds of dope fiends looking for information about growing pot. (Like I would know anything about that!) "Growing marijuana in bamboo" was an interesting search. Marijuana does not seem terribly ornamental to me. I guess you could cloak it in a bamboo grove, but then it probably wouldn't get enough sun. But I wouldn't know! Someone yesterday came for "marijuana pruning lessons". Pruning marijuana? Why would you prune marijuana? Well, whatever.

Someone came looking for "blue flowering hanging plants". They find Campanula muralis or C. portenschlagiana, viewed here during a long walk. (Merci Delphine for the ID.)



Or, maybe they had in mind Nolana paradoxa, a blue flowering plant sold for hanging baskets.



The verdict is in: Those flowers were nice for a month or so, but their season came to an end before the stems started to trail. Trailing was the whole point. I did some dead-heading but I don't have much hope for a new flush of bloom. Adios, Nolana paradoxa.


I love it when the plant seekers get all hyper-BOOLEAN, as in this recent example: "we sell" AND salvia AND "long island"

That just cracks me up because you think the last time that person had any computer training was in the late 1980s on a UNIX terminal or something. People, try going to yp.yahoo.com and looking for plant nurseries in your general area and calling them on the telephone to inquire! They're always answering inventory questions over the phone when I'm in line at Flowercraft. It works! It's gotta work better than devising an absurdly overdetermined computer search query that leads you to an irrelevant blogger on the other side of the country who doesn't know Long Island from Long Beach.

(It occurs to me they're probably looking for Salvia divinorum extract or powder or whatever. Every garden blogger's probably getting Salvia related hits for that. Too funny.)


Someone from China wanted to see pictures of Glen Canyon Park. I hope they didn't get their vacation plans confused when they saw my pictures of San Francisco's dank, weed-choked Glen Canyon Park...



Because it turns out there's 1.2 million acres of Glen Canyon Park in Arizona too. Who knew!

They come for comfrey compost tea, but I just send them along.

Another compost question I get: "sluggo in my compost pile?" I don't know why they come here, I've never taken a position on that. But since you ask, I don't see why not. Sluggo is just iron phosphate, and I don't think the worms care. Anyone disagree? (I can think of someone who I'm sure will disagree, but let's wait and see.)


Some random stuff to laugh at...

An AOL user wanted to know "what's it mean when a bird poops?" Ha!

"ceanothus fossils". That was probably Julie.

I'm the fifth search result for the string "Your order had been shipped" Hmm!

Giant mushroom

Did you see it?

Flowercraft Garden Center

I buy a lot of stuff here, especially mulch. Whatever plants I don't grow from seed, or buy from the Botanical Garden, I likely get here. I live two minutes away and I come here often enough that everyone knows me by sight, but they don't know my name (although I know most of their names).

Have a look around.



















I like thyme, but I loathe caraway. So, eww. (It's the smell I loathe.)



Farfugium japonicum!



I buy this. Apparently, this is the plant I've been waiting for to make a little water garden. Now I just have to find an aluminum trough...

I always check out the 50% off area in the back.



There's nothing back here I want today, but this poa is/was kinda cool.



My haul.



I came here for hummingbird plants for the roof. Besides the Farfugium, I'm also splurging on Clematis 'Madame Julia Correvon', two gaura, and the Erigeron glaucus (which isn't really a splurge since a gallon is $6.99). The Clematis is definitely a splurge.

Hummingbird plants (hopefully!) in 4" pots: Cuphea varia 'Caribbean Sunset', Angelonia sp., Salvia nemerosa 'Blue Hill', Salvia 'Forest Fire', Salvia greggii 'Moonlight'.

In which I get a present!

This is what I saw when I got out of the shower yesterday:



"What's that?"

"It's a present."

"For me?"

"Well, yes.

It's this beautiful glass garden ornament!



I love it!



Here it is on a hook I had up already, but I'll try moving it around to see where it works best.



I think I like it best just above my head.

Added: It's from the Craft Gallery in Capitola, CA, and it was made in Canada.

Check out the Malawi Windmill Blog

Link.

Via Internet Ronin.

Sunny day

It was nice today so we went for a little drive down the peninsula.

This is from the car driving south on 280. The ocean, making its presence known.



Some snapshots from my guru's garden in Menlo Park.









Eriogonum arborescens. I love this plant.



This picture's a mess, but in the garden I was loving the light blue salvia flowers arching over the unmanaged gaura.



The inflorescence belongs to Eriogonum giganteum.



I appreciate the mixture of dry brown and moist green.



Symphorocarpus mollis, creeping snowberry. I love this plant too.





Sigh. I wish I had a real-size yard for a garden, instead of my make-believe postage stamp.



Poor me.

San Francisco's new Federal Building opens Monday.

"This is a new building with complex systems. It takes awhile for us to dial in," said Warren Sitterley, the property manager for the General Services Administration. "That would have been true even if this was a perfectly conventional building."

Sitterley said it could be a year before all the quirks are resolved. It also could take that much time for people to adjust to the tower's ecological sensibility. For instance, the natural ventilation system doesn't have the precise stability that comes from typical heating or air conditioning. The building's temperature ranges from about 68 to 81 degrees.

"There's a wider range of temperatures here than you'll find in a normal building," Sitterley said. "If someone's expecting 67 degrees every moment of the summer, they're going to be disappointed."

Interesting. There's also a "skygarden" on the 11th floor, landscaped with...sod? Zzzz.

Pictures at the link.

So far, I've only seen it zooming by on the freeway, and I think it's ugly. But not necessarily uglier than the old federal building which is indescribably hideous. I hope they find a way to tear it down.

Some gardening.

The headlines are all "heat wave out west" and "no relief in sight". Not so much in San Francisco. Actually, I can tell it's hot everywhere else because we got a soaking fog last night.

The lupine is soaked



And there's dew on my rue.



This was at 12:30 p.m. by which time this sort of thing has normally evaporated. In fact, we didn't see the sun at all today in Bernal Heights. This is what happens when hot air in the Central Valley rises and sucks in cool ocean air.

A perfect day to garden.

But terrible for tomatoes. Which is one reason why we grow cherries in San Francisco.



I transplanted Ceanothus 'Ray Hartman' today. (I bought the Ceanothus book recently (after a few glasses of wine at a Botanical Garden members event; I really ought to blog the members events--they're a real hoot--but it would be hard because I really couldn't tell you everything, if you know what I mean).

Anynow, according to the book, 'Ray Hartman' is a cross between C. arboreus and C. thryrsiflorus var. griseus that was first collected in Saratoga, CA. "Howard McMinn was the first to evaluate and distribute [it] and for a brief period in the late 1940s it carried the name 'Blue Sky'...It was [later] named in honor of Ray Hartman for his lifelong interest and advocacy of California native plants." No good links easily available for the horticulturists Hartman, or McMinn (perhaps best known for the cultivar of Arctostaphylos densiflora named for him). 'Ray Hartman' is among the most tree-like cultivar of ceanothus commonly available.

I'd been growing Ceanothus 'Ray Hartman' in this container, which seemed like a reasonable experiment when I started, but, in my opinion wasn't turning out very well. Despite an absolute requirement for well-draining soil, ceanothus don't seem to like containerization, at least in my hands. I don't see any discussion of container culture in the book, but there is a picture of a containerized Ceanothus impressus var. impressus in England on page 71.



So, I put it in the ground at the end of a path you can't see in this picture.



This will be very nice if the transplanting succeeds. But it's right in front of a containerized Fremontodendron'San Gabriel' (doing okay, but not fabulous) that I'm now under serious aesthetic pressure to move.

And look what I found buried in the Ceanothus container!



WTF?! How did I do that? Geez! No good way to spin this--I'm careless with my gardening tools!

I had been waiting for the Dip 'N Grow to arrive before I did some much needed pruning. Actually, I waited an inexplicably long time to order the Dip 'N Grow. It arrived four days after I ordered it. Despite giving up four precious Saturday mornings to drive to Los Altos in January for a pruning class (2nd class, 3rd class), I have yet to develop a serious pruning ethic. I get to it when I get to it (but at least I feel confident when I finally get to it).



Among my many idiosyncratic gardening angsts, I absolutely cannot prune natives without trying to propagate them.

So, lots of cuttings of Mimulus aurantiacus and Salvia clevelandii 'Alan Chickering', and some tips I took off 'Ray Hartman'.



And I headed back the Tibouchina urvilleana (Princess Plant).



I've decided the best way to prune Princess Plant is to make whatever shaping and thinning cuts are necessary all year long, and then make heading cuts on every central stem before it blooms. These I don't bother to propagate.



I think it works best in the garden as a multi-trunked small tree.

I potted up some succulent cuttings.



Photographing high contrast is something else I need to work with on my camera (in addition to close-ups).

Datura wrightii





That reminds me, there's a short discussion about Brugmansia vs. Datura in Robert Raabe's Laboratory Report section in the new issue of Pacific Horticulture:

Originally, all angel's trumpets were placed in the genus Datura. They are now divided between the genera Brugmansia and Datura, depending on several factors. Datura are annuals or short-lived perennials with fragrant upright or pendulous flowers, and spiny dehiscent fruits."

Yes, believe it or not, I'm primarily growing this Datura wrightii for the visual interest its spiny seed pod will provide in winter, not the summer flower. But the summer flower is nice too.

"Brugmansia species are shrubs or small trees with pendulous flowers and smooth fruits that do not split at maturity. Both native to the Americas, but questions remain about the origin of some Datura species."

Well, I've been wondering.

I've never seen a Brugmansia fruit--perhaps it's not warm enough to set fruit in No. California.

The 'Kniola Black' turns out not to be all that black. I have a real weakness for morning glory. So I only grow them in containers.



I heart cordate leaves!

Zinnia



Centaurea (both the regular blue and the really dark blue)



In the container next to the Centaurea seedlings, I planted a a 46-day novelty cucumber, Rocky, that makes 2-3" long fruit.



Just for fun, here we are today:



And here we are 20-Nov-05.



I was headed in a totally different direction, not even two years ago. Of course, I didn't have a clue what I was doing. Pretty much everything I know about gardening I've learned in the last year and a half.

East Bay Wilds is a California native plant nursery.

Mount Diablo a state park with 3489' peak in the east bay.

The owner of East Bay Wilds went to Mount Diablo recently and took lots of pictures. I'm on his e-mail list.

"after working on a nearby landscape, i spent a couple of very hot afternoons this week up on mt diablo and saw some incredible colors [flowers as well as foliage] – lots of fascinating plants which endure extreme conditions on that beautiful mountain. you can check out the photos here: http://tinyurl.com/22fx7g i got some good shots of keckiella corymbosa [red beardtongue] and penstemon heterophyllos ssp. heterophyllos [a ssp. of blue bedder penstemon w/ bright yellow flower buds] in flower, lots of clematis lasiantha [mopheads] in seed along w/ ptelea crenulata [western hop tree - one of my favorite small trees to use in landscapes – in the citrus family], rhamnus crocea [redberry], a very unusual rhamnus californica [coffeeberry] and umbellularia californica [california bay laurel], along w/ eriodictyon spp. [yerba santa] and lepechinia calycina, lotus crassifolius [big deervetch], etc. i’ve found most of these plants to be wonderful and easy garden specimens too."

So who's Lorenzo?

Lots of specuation about Harry Potter

Specifically, that he dies in the last book. My hunch is that he lives. But he has to give up the magic. And I posted this a long time ago. Link.

Whole books of speculation.

Day 52

You'll love this!

Today, the contractors determined the surface of our 100-year-old walls are too uneven (by an inch apparently) for them to shim up the cabinetry framing we bought (all custom made), and that it would be easier for them if they just built new framing on site.

So they undid all the work they did on Days 50 and 51, and tomorrow they'll start over again.







Isn't that HILARIOUS?

Couldn't you just DIE?

Link to Day 51.

My oil spill vandalism melodrama

A week ago some fucker poured oil down our driveway during the night. Do you believe that shit?



We can't figure out how else an oil slick would mysteriously appear one morning.

I called the San Francisco Police Department from work and the dispatcher told me I could file a vandalism complaint, but that I would have to be home when the officer arrived. She advised me to call again when I got home from work, and to take pictures. She also suggested I call the Department of Public Works for clean up.

So, I called the SFPD after work, but I got a different dispatcher who told me that this wasn't vandalism and there was nothing she could do for me. She even put me on hold to call the Ingleside station to get confirmation that this isn't vandalism. Okay, so I can go to the Ingleside police station and pour oil on their driveway and they can't stop me?

I was surprised to get two different answers about what is or is not vandalism in a ten hour period. So I e-mailed the police the following query, with the above picture attached:

Hello,

This morning I discovered someone poured motor oil
down my driveway (picture attached). Obviously, it's
a crime to pour oil on someone's driveway. My
driveway empties right into my storm drain. You can't
pour motor oil down a storm drain.

I called police dispatch when I got to work and the
dispatcher told me I could file a vandalism report,
but that I would have to be home for that, and I
should call again when I get home from work.

When I called after work, a different dispatcher told
me the police cannot file a vandalism report for oil
poured on my driveway and that I should call the
Department of Public Works and they would come clean
up the oil. (She put me on hold and said she called
the Ingleside Police Department to check and that's
what they told her.)

I thought I would check to see if a third try produces
a third answer. Can I, or can I not, have a vandalism
report filed for oil poured on my driveway?

Sincerely,
[me]

A day later, I received the following reply, posted here without alteration:

i believe motor oil should fit in as a "caustic substance", so it
should be
a violation of 594.4 PC (penal code). a report should be taken. If
you
feel that someone did it because of race/sex/sexual preference it can
be
reported as a hate crime also. SF Fire Code 5202.8.1 prohibits waste
oil
from entering any drainage.

after you file the report, you can call DPW to clean it up.

consult with a supervisor at Ingleside Station for a report, at least
on
vandalism. Depending on the officers observation, the fire code may or
may
not apply.

I thought about calling police dispatch again, but then I thought, you know, they're probably busy solving homicides, investigating the city supervisors, et cetera. Why don't I just go to the station, with pictures, and file my complaint there? Because it's not really something they need to see. But by then, I was over it.

Now that I'm looking at the SFPD webpages, why oh why didn't someone just tell me to file my report online? Sigh. Now I can do that.

I did call the Department of Public Works, and they said they would come clean it up [in due time]. He said it would be fine for me to try cleaning up myself, although he had no suggestions. He took my information and gave me a confirmation number.

So I did a Google search on "cleaning oil stains on concrete" and went to this ehow page and tried 1 and 2 (cola, then baking soda). That didn't really work, so I went to my friendly neighborhood Cole Hardware and the clerk sold me this eco-friendly Pour-N-Restore Oil Stain Remover.



It worked!



Although I think we will repeat treatment to get that last bit by the storm drain.

This product has the added benefit of smelling nice and citrusy.

This also gives me the opportunity to share with you my native shade planting for a north-facing wall.

The large shrub is Calycanthus occidentalis. Its wine-scented flowers were included on May's Garden Blogger's Bloom Day.



It still has flowers and flower buds on it today.

Also, this trailing herb is Satureja douglasii, a.k.a. Yerba Buena. Before San Francisco was named San Francisco it was named Yerba Buena and this is the plant it was named after. S. douglasii grows in shade up and down the west coast and has a strong, somewhat minty smell that a gardener at the Botanical Garden told me reminded him of the sanitary pucks used in mens room urinals. He's right about that. So now I have that lovely association in my mind, and maybe you will do. Ha, ha!



Salvia spathacea. Next to the north-facing wall, I don't get flowers stalks on these until August or September.



Behind and around it, Oxalis oregana, Redwood Sorrel, found in redwood forests.



Some fern I'm not sure about, and Gaultheria shallon, salal. The foliage is used in floral arrangements and they call it Lemon Leaves.



The salal will get much bigger and need some management in the coming years.

And this is Vaccinium ovatum, commonly called Evergreen Huckleberry.



This and the salal are heath family plants like, heath, rhododendron, madrone, and manzanita. I saw a lot of this at the Bloedel Reserve although I didn't take many pictures of it. This will get big too and need some management.

Also in this bed, lots of the mystery...saxifrage?

Day 50 and 51

Day 50 was July 3 and Day 51 was July 4. The main thing that's happened since the last time I posted is that the walls got primed. I took pictures of it, but I'm too lazy to look for them on my messy computer desktop. Anyhow, the priming took 2 or 3 days and filled the house with a nasty chemical odor. I don't think we slept very well the first night but that could be unrelated to the bad smell.

Day 50:

They're starting to lay down the foundation for the cabinets, whatever that's called. I guess that wall is where the cooktop is going. Yeah, that's right. See the vent hole high in the wall? Site of future cooktop ladies and gentlemen.



I see they put up ceiling trim too. I hadn't noticed that.



I guess the cabinets all sit on this kind of framing.



I think we do lose that furnace vent in the floor. But they didn't cover it up... Hmmm.





I could sell this on EBay.





Good-bye, Day 50.

One more picture I took yesterday...



Guy is changing out our incandescents for compact fluorescents on a trial basis. I have no complaints! They're especially fine and sensible for any fixture that has the bulb behind glass.


Hello, Day 51. They were eager to work today, July 4, because 1) they're so behind, and 2) they're Irish and July 4 is just another day to them. It seems many of the contractors in San Francisco are mysteriously Irish. We do have a lot of Irish in San Francisco, but there is an oddly large supply of Irish contractors in particular.

They spent four of five hours leveling what I'm calling the cabinetry foundations.



They said it's the hardest part [of installing the cabinetry].



So it's not a very dramatic difference from Day 50. Except that here is an actual future cabinet. (The cabinets were all delivered a couple weeks ago and they're crowding me out of the garage which is the base of operations for my garden; I'm very eager to have my base back.)



Funny snippet of contractor conversation I overheard this morning: "I'm not that into tits anymore since my last girlfriend."

Link to Day 43.

How do you get this job?

Link.

A funny plant name

Calochortus weedii weedii.

Seeds for sale at Theodore Payne, for, ahem, $10.

Calochortus, if you don't know, "is the most widely dispersed genus of Liliaceae on the North American Pacific coast."


Me, I just wanted to say "Calochortus weedii weedii".

The half-way point, Part 2.

Meanwhile, back home the neighbor has chosen the nuclear option. (Details.)



The only trees left standing have been butchered.



He even took down the wisteria.

Before:



After:



I'm not going to complain about this, but it means I have to redesign my garden for more sun. A lot more sun.



Maple, salal, huckleberry, fern, ribes, fuchsia, bromeliad, clivia, huechera, tiarella, cineraria, asarum, and foxglove are all in play.



But he's got to assess the damage his neglect has done to his house.



And build a new deck.

The half-way point, Part 1.

It's July 1st. How are you doing at the midpoint of 2007? Are you happy? Are things good?

I would have to say that by all the meaningful, objective standards I am happy and things are good...but! if I linger on the question, and settle into it a bit, and really ask myself how am I doing right now, today, on July 1st, I would have to say that I'm a bit out of sorts.

So, what's bugging Chuck B?

Well, for one thing, the situation at my dad's house is bugging me.



My aunts who are trustees of my 92-year-old grandfather's estate, and for all practical purposes his conservators, have decided it would be best if he went to live with my father.



At first blush, everyone agrees this seems fine and reasonable. But the actual implementation has been carried out extremely fast and this has created considerable disruption for my father, and by extension, for me as well.



The situation is complicated--of course--and because it's all happening so fast, I for one do not feel like I've had adequate time to fully consider the pros and cons of this new arrangement and to consider all the options. That bugs me because the cons of this arrangement happen to be considerable, particularly for my father and I'm not clear that he's had adequate time to consider it all either.



It really bugs me that I volunteered my assent to this plan without first taking the time to consider the situation more fully. Believe me when I tell you that with my family, at 37 years old, I should know better!



So I have to own that. I hate being angry at myself; I would so much rather be angry at someone else.



Then it bugs me to see that granddad has been allowed to collect all this crap. And trust me, a lot of it is crap he's collected. He picks things up and brings it home. At 92, granddad is surprisingly active. This puts us in a hard spot sometimes since we are loathe to curtail his freedom but we cannot control his compulsion.



After granddad moved in to his previous living arrangement, I went part-time at work for six months and spent 2-3 days per week at his house to help my aunt clean it out. I wish I was blogging back then so I could show it to you now. Anyhow, here we are doing it all over again on a smaller scale. That bugs me a little bit.



So, I'm frustrated and my dad senses it and sends me home with a basket of apricots from his tree. In all that, there are some important facts that I'm not losing sight of.



On the 4th of July, I'm going back to my dad's house, to pick some more apricots, and make a pie for my dad, my granddad and I.