Heh.

"I'm getting really nervous for our feathered friends. In this endless campaign, what if more candidates get in on this? Will pheasants be on the endangered species list by November? I'd like to personally plead with Hillary: Don't even think of picking up a rifle. And please, Barack, we don't want to see you in an orange vest and a hat with ear-flaps … not a good look for you."

Link.

The Rainy Day Garden

After today, it should be clear for a few days. We're having perfect winter weather for the Bay Area: a few days of rain, followed by a few days of dry and sunny, followed by a heavy storm, followed by a minor winter "heatwave" where it's 75 degrees F for two weeks, repeat.

Except that we haven't had the major storm yet; I think that's coming next week. Me, I'm looking forward to the heatwave. All the temperature weights in the Galileo thermometer have floated to the top this morning.



I don't think it's much colder than 50 deg F. Maybe 45.



Anyhow, the rain we've had is sufficient to bow the bamboo.



And many other plants.



And some are just decorated with beads.





Including these little moss body parts on the birdbath. I used to know their names.



I can see why people would be excited about having a moss garden. (Loved the one at the Bloedel Reserve.)



The Hardenbergia violacea is very pretty in the rain.



So is the manzanita in a container next to it. This is Arctostaphylos rudis 'Vandenberg'. It's a young plant. In a few years, watch out.



I don't like spiders, but I'm learning to live with them because 1) they eat pests, and 2) birds eat them.



Something's been chewing on my lemon.



Probably some moth caterpillar or leaf roller (or both). I saw a lot of moths last summer and fall.

This is another common insect in my garden.



I saw two without even looking. It looks like a walking stick, and it could be something in that order.



As a kid I was fascinated by walking sticks, reading about them in books. I spent hours in my backyard searching for them--for years--but I never saw one. Here, they seem to be everywhere.

I see signs of spring in leaf buds. This is Symphoricarpos, but the Ribes are leafing out too, and I have daffodil leaves poking up here and there.



Cymbidium orchid. Very slow process with this plant. But these flowers should open soon.



No sign of the foxglove flower stalk. I keep looking for a sign.



Really, I ought to be thinking about what I'm going to replace all the foxglove with after it flowers and dies. Because I have quite a bit and its sudden absence from the small garden will certainly be noticeable.

Maybe I've sown something I can use, but I doubt it. I'm pretty sure most of those containers have seeds for full-sun plants.



(The Lilium pardalinum on the bottom shelf could work, but they're still very young and they're dormant half the year.)

These wildflowers are ready to be planted out.



The finer-foliaged plant is Platystemon californica (Cream Cups), and the coarser one is Layia platyglossa (Tidy Tips). I've learned the Cream Cups can go out small and will thrive, but something likes to eat Tidy Tips when it's young. Wait until the plant has at least three inches before planting it out.

I sow flats of wildflowers in succession--a new flat every couple weeks.



I don't remember what seeds I tossed in the hanging baskets, but they're doing fine. Might even be last year's Nolana paradoxa, but I think there's some Nemophila maculata (Five Spot) in there too. I read that it trails.



There's some muscari too. Can you see the rain-beaded blue mini-inflorescence?



I hung one hanging basket from the bottom of another.



Finally now the tree fern fronds are over my head so I can walk past it without having to bat them away.



It will be a long time before it's really a tree tho'.







Anyhow, that's what's happening outside.

Inside, we still have our Christmas lights up.



We didn't get a tree this year because we were afraid what the kittens might do to it.



All we did was put up a string of lights draped out of kitten reach (not that they haven't tried) and hung a few ornaments on it.

We have fairly traditional (tho' secular) ornaments. (And, actually, these are all Guy's which is not an accident because he put them up. I tend to be the one who takes the less traditional approach...)







He positively hated these "PURR" and "MEOW" ornaments his sister gave him this year. I found them in our Goodwill box in the garage.





The stockings are felt decorations that used to belong to my grandmother. I like them because they remind me a little bit of Christmas at her house.



And speaking of meow and purr... how are those little kittens?



Not so little anymore.





They continue to be very close.



And they like to spend time on the top floor of their condominium...



Watching over Bernal Heights.

About those "tuned liquid dampers"...

"This is a high-end, upscale condo building," Johansson said. Motion sickness high above San Francisco is not acceptable.

The solution was to build a 50,000-gallon water tank at the top and to equip the tank with devices called tuned liquid dampers, which are screens that move the water and allow the liquid to move in the opposite direction of any building movement, a bit like water sloshing in a bathtub.

The effect of so much water - 50,000 gallons weighs 416,500 pounds - prevents the building from swaying. "It's there to settle the building, " Johansson said.

Link.

OMFG!

You might have had lovely gardening-inspired Christmas decor, but "Martha Stewart showed off the handsome ceramic Nativity creche that she made while in prison."

Link!
Link to video!

"Just three months after the wildfire, signs of life began poking from the blackened ground. Wildflowers unlike any they had seen began to bloom: whispering bells, yellow-throated phacelia, fire poppies and Michael's favorite, the foothill mariposa lily, among others."

Link (with beautiful pictures, some of which cannot possibly be related to the article).

And this: "The discovery of beauty in the ashes, Michael says, has become a lesson in moving past tragedy."

I suppose that's one way of looking at it.

Today was rather gray.

It's supposed to rain for a few days, starting tonight. Then it will be clear again.

I had some errands and a date for lunch at the Botanical Garden this afternoon. After lunch, I strolled and took some pictures.



It was hard to escape the gray.



Things on my mind: recent events at the Zoo (putting me in an especially sour mood), scheduling a follow-up appointment with veterinarian (Penny came down with giardia while we were in Hawaii over Thanksgiving--a protest statement? The symptoms are gone, but we need to make sure the parasite is gone), paying for a swing I want to put in my garden (I saw one I like in Half Moon Bay; it costs $500, and that doesn't include any kind of delivery expense which I haven't figured out yet), finding a job (vs. not finding a job), and wondering why I didn't bring a jacket because it was rather cold.



What is this? I have no idea. If there was a sign, it was obscured under rampant growth.



There are still many plants here that I don't know anything about.



Most of the flower action's in the South Africa section right now. This is Leucadendron 'Red Gem'.



This would be a good time to visit the arboretum at UC Santa Cruz. They have a large collection of Protaceae.



Pink Nerine.



Pretty flower, but a ton of strappy foliage.



Pink Erica.



This pink Protea always makes me think of a bird. Don't those look like feathers?



This is a tree I don't see very much, Luculia pinceana (Rubiaceae). The flowers are highly fragrant and sweet.



The nicest specimen I know of is just outside the Botanical Garden, between the two entrances. This one seems too woody.



Do you know the name of this fern?



Could it be an especially pink Dryopteris erythrosora? I think of D. erythrosora as being more copper colored, but "erythros" means red.



Quite a lot of pink today. Let's move on.



More Protaceae. These are Banksia.



And this is Plectranthus; I'm a big fan. I helped to plant this patch.



Sometimes this plant has a different texture when you approach it from the shady side; I like that.



Melianthus major has foliage I admire too.



This reflects how I feel a little bit today. Pointed and sharp.



But if you actually touch it it's not sharp at all.

As I suspected

"San Francisco police are investigating the possibility that one of the victims in the fatal tiger mauling on Christmas Day climbed over a waist-high fence and then dangled a leg or other body part over the edge of a moat that kept the big cat away from the public, sources close to the investigation said Wednesday.

The minimal evidence found at the scene included a shoe and blood in an area between the gate and the edge of the 25- to 30-foot-wide moat, raising questions about what role, if any, the victims might have had in accidentally helping the animal escape.

The three victims, all young men from San Jose, were visiting the zoo together. They were all present just outside the tiger's grotto when the tiger escaped, killed 17-year-old Carlos Sousa Jr. with a savage slash to the throat, and injured the other two. The names of the survivors, who are brothers ages 19 and 23, have not been released.

The injured victims fled, leaving a trail of blood, which police believe the tiger followed for 300 yards up a zoo pathway. As the tiger cornered and attacked one of the brothers, four police officers arrived, distracted the animal and shot it dead."

Link.

Often, the simplest answer is the correct one.

Can we stop calling the boys "victims" now?

ADDED:

Earlier this week, zoo officials said the moat's wall was at least 20 feet tall. Today, they said it was little over 12 feet. Since the investigation began Tuesday, officials have given at least five different measurements for the enclosure, which is surrounded by a moat, two walls on either side of the moat, a small patch of grass and then another waist-high fence. Experts say that the depth of the moat and height of the walls could have a large impact on the animal's ability to escape the enclosure.

"Today we went out and measured the moat ourselves," said zoo Director Manuel Mollinedo. The tiger "had to have jumped (out but) how she jumped that high is beyond me."

In measuring the area, Mollinedo said, his staff found that contrary to information they had on file in their office, the moat wall was 12 1/2 feet high - about four feet lower than is recommended as a national standard by cat experts.

They also found that, contrary to numbers they had on file, the moat was 33 feet wide, which is sufficient to meet national standards.

The confusion over the grotto's size is only the latest headache for investigators looking into the attack, which happened shortly after the zoo's 5 p.m. closing time. The zoo has no video cameras that watch over the animals, making it difficult to piece together how Tatiana, a Siberian tiger, escaped. And sources close to the investigation tell The Chronicle that the surviving brothers have not been entirely forthcoming during interviews with police.

Link.

Me, I'm done with this subject, but feel free to have at it (or me) in the comments if you wish.

Today I realized,

and none of this has anything to do with Christmas, or maybe it does. You can decide.

1) Noone on Project Runway has made anything better than what Debbie Harry used to wear in the early days of Blondie, 30 years ago.

2) There is nothing unintentional about testing an ICBM on Christmas.

3) At Home with the Braithwaites, a funny/interesting British tv show that ran for four seasons and is available on DVD in the USA, has beautiful gardening in the background.

A winter walk in the oak woodland

We went up to Ukiah for a couple days.

"Vichy Springs is a unique 150-year-old historic hot springs resort only two hours north of downtown San Francisco. Vichy offers the only naturally warm and carbonated Vichy mineral baths in North America."

We come here at least once a year. The last time was October 2006.

This is the hot tub outside the massage room.



And the mineral spring baths are in this building. There are four outdoor tubs as well. I like to use the outdoor tubs, but Guy likes to have more privacy. There are two tubs in each room, and a door you can latch shut.



This is how they work.


The tub fills to overflow, and the water runs into the creek below.

"The carbonation after three or four minutes dramatically dilates the body's capillaries and gives the bather a feeling of warmth and peacefulness. Tranquility follows and usually the bather begins to gently float in the bath. Due to the unique properties of the water the bather's skin is softened in the water and feels much like a baby's."Link.

The warm spring water is just above body temperature; cozy in winter cold and refreshing in summer heat. (The hot tub in the first picture is kept much warmer.) And there's also an Olympic-sized swimming pool.

I took a casual walk in the late afternoon light.



















Taricha rivularis, Red-bellied newt. They were everywhere, heading away from the water as the sun went down.



I had to watch where I was going lest I step on one. They move slowly.



There was a lot going on close to the ground. Native Douglas Iris (Iris douglasiana) rejuvenated by fall rains.



If I had fewer ethical restraints, I would have picked up all this beautifully rotting wood and put it in my garden.













I could have walked for hours, but it was getting late.



Bye, newts.

The End of Dark Days

It seems like they've only just begun. But in fact the southern solstice happens tomorrow morning at 6:08 a.m.

It always feels like we slide into darkness much more precipitously than we stumble out of it. But that's just how it seems. In fact, by the end of next month, I will have (ahem, my garden will have) a whopping 44 more minutes of daylight than I do today.

The Bay Area's pagans, crunchies, hippies, wiccans, earth mothers, faeries, and Berkeley residents all have big parties planned. I could include gardeners, too.

I know I'm celebrating by planting out my wildflower starts. I've already started in the northern half of the garden where the sun's rays can reach over my yard's southern fence. As the sun moves back up the eastern horizon, I can extend the planting southwards. My garden is so small, and I am so obsessed with it, that I garden down to the inch and monitor the sun's tiniest movements in the sky.

The cold rainy season lasts until mid-March usually. Sometimes into April. Very rarely into May.

I wish for lots of water this year to grow those roots deep and strong for a good show this spring.

The beaver dam has been a source of controversy for more than a month since the City Council considered euthanizing the family of beavers. However, public outcry caused the council to reconsider and they decided to relocate the animals instead.

After nearly a week of deliberation, and lengthy public discussion at the Nov. 7 City Council meeting, a decision was made to let the beavers stay for the time being, and to try and work out a way to peacefully coexist.

A beaver expert from Vermont has been hired, but cannot be in the East Bay city until January.

Link.

Vermont? Vermont?! We don't have any beaver experts in California? They have to be hired and flown in from Vermont?

I love my rain barrels!

I got these all set up and installed yesterday, and one of them is already full!

And we got less than 1 inch of rain last night.



The barrel under the downspout was actually overflowing, so I had to manually wiggle the tube connecting the two barrels to get the siphon action going.



Maybe we'll buy two more. But from a different company. We ordered these on Amazon from a Texas company. These are re-purposed olive brining barrels or something. They drilled out holes in the barrel wall to install inlet and outlet joints, but they used the wrong kind of caulking material to seal the joints. I had to re-do their work. (Apparently, in Texas they're too busy bilking Californians out of money from our electric bills to learn how to properly caulk a joint! Heh, heh.) And, they left the bits of drilled out plastic inside the barrel instead of tipping them out. Take some pride in your work, people.

Anyway, whatever, this is very exciting.

My favorite pictrures from 2007

I don't have anything to enter in the Kew Gardens photography contest, but I've been planning to make some year-in-review posts. Why not start with my favorite pictures from 2007.

Notes: I generally do not take much care when I take pictures. I'm strictly a snapshots kind of guy. I might take two or three snapshots of a subject that really interests me, and pick the best one. But I rarely stand and compose, or consider the light, or anything like that. I certainly don't do any kind of post-picture taking processing or alteration. It is what it is. Until August, I didn't even know how to use my camera's close-up function. I have a Canon PowerShot A610 set on 'foliage'. Unless I'm running out of memory, I like to use the largest file size.

Okay then...

You know I love this one. I made it my icon. (Hmm...after a year, maybe it's time to pick a new icon.) This picture comes from a January 20 post called Pruning Class. I took a four-day pruning workshop at Foothill College. My instructor (who was super-cute) took us to his backyard orchard and had us prune his fruit trees. What a life, huh?



If I could turn back time, I would make him a cash offer for all three of the planters in his yard.



I took this picture of a professional dog walker and his charges on top of Bernal Hill last February. I think there's something kind of strange and make-believe about this picture, and that's why I like it.



(Bernal Hill is one of the few places in San Francisco where you can let a dog run, although some irresponsible dog owners frequently let their dogs run in other places too. There's a lot of tension between the pro-dog-people and the anti-dog-people in San Francisco. This year the rudeness and dishonesty of certain pro-dog-people finally pushed me into the anti-dog-people camp.)


No pictures in March qualify as a favorites, but here are four that I like.





I visited Filoli in April. Although the formal garden isn't my style, the beauty and coherence of their spring color palette left me breathless. This one reminds me of a Klimpt painting.



I like to include pictures of the funky cars in my neighborhood. While on a walk in May, I took two pictures that I especially like. One suggests sex, adventure, and mystery. The other, delight, laughter, and electronic music. You can decide which one is which.





In June, my world changed. My clueless, idiot neighbor who should be barred from owning real property cut back his yard. His workers let this 6' by 6' pile of debris fall on my side of the fence. I wasn't too mad tho'. The result of his clearcutting let full sun into my garden. Even as we approach the shortest day of the year, I currently have full sun in half my garden. This time last year, I had none.



This is also one of my favorite pictures from June. I took it during a walk. This shot really captures Bernal Heights. Houses, hills, views, flowers, and the usual urban trash.



And I was very pleased with myself when I took this picture while doing some editing.



This, from Bloom Day, is one of the first pictures I posted of my Echium wildprettii, which I grew from seed (not hard to do!). By the time I planted this out, I was astonished by how fast it was growing. This was only six months ago. Today, the basal rosette is five feet in diameter and smothers the now-dormant redbud. I'll have to rejuvinate the soil when this baby comes out. I love the yellow moons of Cotula lineariloba.



June was a busy month. We took a road-trip to Sacramento, and stopped at the UC Davis Arboretum on the way back. If I had rigid ideas about what California gardens should look like, this would be one of them. I would love to get back there soon to see this garden in the dead of winter.



We went to Sacramento to visit the Old City Cemetery which I would also like to visit again and again. No single favorites from this visit, but several that I like.







The canna + opuntia qualifies as a favorite plant pair. Imagine the opuntia shaped tall and lanky.

July. In July, I visited the San Francisco Botanical Garden several times in the evening, and I took tons of pictures.

This is my all-time favorite picture for 2007. It doesn't matter to me that the grass is over-exposed, or that the composition needs to be scooted over one inch. I love this picture.



I was there again two days later and took my favorite video of 2007.



There isn't a favorite in August. But I like this one because it shows my design efforts finally coming into focus. The key plants are still small, but everything is in place. This picture captures a certain vibe I want my garden to have. This part of it, anyway.



September favorites!





Strybing on September 15. The fog and Monterey cypress make this picture quintessentially Californian. Excuse me, quintessentially northern Californian. You want coffee and a warm coat with you here. Later today, you might have crab salad at the wharf or Italian food in North Beach.



During another walk around the neighborhood:



At a party (the cucumbers on that salad came from my garden; I brought them to the hostess and she chopped 'em up and served them to everyone--I was very flattered. Honored? Whatever):



By October the Epilobium was blooming. This is one of the few reds in my garden. I feel a little insecure about using red. I don't know how. Or where. Or something.



Eriogonum arborescens; a close up in the garden of my guru.



Penny with some fall bulbs.



November was a busy month, although I don't remember it that way. We went to Guerneville and Oahu (1, 2, 3). I buzzed through the Blake Garden, the UC Botanic Garden, and the Japanese Tea Garden.

I pick one favorite picture from the Blake.



And one from the Japanese Tea Garden.



Although, there are many other pictures in November that I like.

December, not so much. The year's not over yet, so this post is a little bit premature. We have a short trip coming up before Christmas. It's possible I'll have something more to add before 2008 rolls in.

Safety first.

A man hanging Christmas decorations in a redwood tree in East Palo Alto Saturday was killed instantly when a string of lights touched two high-tension power lines, according to officials...

The man reportedly threw the lights to reach higher into the tree when they touched two different legs of a high-tension power line, sending 12,000 kilovolts of electricity through the man's body.

Electricity apparently traveled through the man's arm and out through an area near his knee into the tree, Schapelhouman said.

Fire crews arrived to find the man hanging about 60 feet from the ground, apparently fused to the tree by electricity, and smoking from his feet, Schapelhouman said.

Link.

Be careful.

"[H]ere is the banana tree, still standing tall, a week after Dad had passed away. The garden lives on. The dwarf avocado has a heavy crop. The guava he planted is 4 feet tall and blooming for the first time. The navel oranges are starting to ripen. And the green nubs of paperwhite daffodil leaves are beginning to push up through soil that finally got some rain last week. Life goes on, and spring is not so far away."

Link.

December 2007 Garden Blogger Bloom Day

The forecast calls for rain next week, but it's sunny today.



The main Bloom Day story in my garden right now comes from the so-called Lilac Vine, Hardenbergia violacea.



I hope you don't mind a lot of pictures of it.



Lilac vine is a bit of a misnomer; Hardenbergia is scentless. Too bad!



I don't know if people grow this Australian vine where you are, but it's a relatively common sight in Bay Area gardens. I bought mine in a 1-gallon pot at the UC Santa Cruz Arboretum last year. It's climbed a good 15 feet in my garden, and it's still growing.



The inflorescence is a raceme common in the Fabaceae--like wisteria. But unlike wisteria, Hardenbergia's vigorous growth probably won't tear your house apart if you let it go.



I have not let mine go. I prune it lightly all the time--at least once a month--to keep it thin and untangled on the trellis (which is really the cable railing for my deck). This plant will cover a fence or building with thick, heavy growth if you let it.



It needs some help twining so I've tied some twine around the deck post. Once the vine gets established in a coil around the post and trained on to the railing/trellis above, I'll cut away the twine.



It gets woody at the base, but it doesn't seem to bow the cable railing. Which is good, because I wouldn't want that.



The color purple is way over-represented in my garden.



And so is white.

White salvia.



White abutilon.



White tree dahlia.



White leaf margins.



White flecks on this cala



which has a bud (whose flower spathe is white).



Some other colors... I liked this pink Lewisia so much more when I bought it last summer. In December, this pink seems so...insincere. It's almost tacky.



And then I have a bunch of plants with one or two little flowers.

Little pictures of little flowers.







It warmed up a little bit by the time I finished getting my pictures together.



Link to last month's Bloom Day.
Link to May Dreams Gardens, a.k.a. Bloom Day Central.

Vary your logins and passwords.

I want to share a little anecdote with you...

Last Friday, someone managed to hack my friend's Ebay password. (Apparently, this happens all the time at Ebay.) Inside my friend's Ebay account, the hacker got my friend's e-mail address. My friend used the same password for Ebay and e-mail, and voila, the hacker got access to my friend's e-mail account too.

And because my friend used the same basic login structure for several online accounts--first initial plus last name, full name without a space, et cetera--the hacker got access to other accounts by just trying the login pages for major companies, e.g. AT&T. (Of course, the hacker didn't spend his own time doing that; he used computer programs.)

Nastier still, the hacker read e-mail in my friend's Inbox and Sent Mail folders and sent fraudulent and embarrassing (i.e., pornographic) e-mails to all his correspondents.

***


Experts advise you to vary your logins and passwords. I never listened until now. Today I changed all of mine. And of course I had to write them down, because I could never remember them all, so now I have a piece of paper I absolutely cannot lose.

It's hard to come up with tons of logins, so I used my drag queen name. "My drag queen name"? No, gentle readers, I don't have a drag alias. To get your drag queen name, you pair the name of your first pet with your mother's maiden name. Then I started using other people's pet names, with other people's last names. Soon, I had lots of fabulous new logins.

Anticipation builds...

for the opening of the new California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park.

"The first living full-time residents of the California Academy of Sciences took root inside the new Golden Gate Park building. Four of the six trees that will be part of the museum's rain forest exhibit completed an 18-month journey and were installed inside a four-story glass dome."

There is a short QuickTime video, and lots of pictures, at the link.

I think it's great we're going to have a tropical rain forest in Golden Gate Park to showcase biodiversity. But I'm always a little concerned that tropical biodiversity gets so much press, when the California floristic province is itself a biodiversity hotspot.

Conservation International's 25 biodiversity hotspots here.

Criticism of hotspot designations discussed here.

Building REsources

According to the website, this is "San Francisco's only source for reusable, recycled and remanufactured building and landscape materials. We are a mix of old-fashioned junkyard, building materials store, remanfacturing facility and education center."



I came looking for some anti-gopher gardening ideas. I don't have gophers in my backyard garden (knock on wood), but they're pretty bad at my community garden plot.

Let's take a look around.



Old door gates make obvious candidates for trellises. You'd want to get a really nice one tho'. I think the one in front could qualify for some gardens.



And all this glass makes me want to build a greenhouse.



San Francisco still has lots of old buildings with old windows and old window frames. No surprise they would turn up here.



Do you know what these are?



These are the counterweights in old windows. They hold the window open when you lift it up.

Every old San Francisco residence has a mantle piece like this...



And this kind of plaster ceiling moulding for a light fixture.



Terra cotta sewer pipes. I've seen these used in a garden before--upright, in a line, at the back of a border and filled with succulents. I wonder if really long ones could be used to make interesting columns and focal points.



California used to have many terracotta manufacturers (now I understand there is just one) and some of downtown San Francisco's most beautiful old buildings have terracotta fronts or trimming that survived the 1906 earthquake.

All the sinks and bathtubs your garden could ever want...





They certainly do have lots of boards, and I like this washed-out white. That would give any wooden container a classic look.



What could you do with marble countertop in a garden?



Or the letter S?



Stoplight covers?



I recently started watching Project Runway--love it--and I'm thinking about the first challenge in the first season, where they take everyone to a grocery store, give them a small amount of money, and tell them to make an evening gown out of whatever they can find. Austen Scarlett chose corn husks. Even if I had a fabulous idea, I am not terribly handy. I'm more of a ready-wear kind of guy.

Put some hardware cloth under these and you have cool planters for herbs and trailers.



Something like this wouldn't fly in my home garden, but in a funky San Francisco community garden...could be perfect.


I was specifically looking for remnant lumber of some kind that I could build boxes or crates with, and sink in the ground to grow potatoes in.



What about a kitchen cabinet? Just take the doors off and voila.



Glass. To tumble and make mosaics with.





Or perhaps mulch.



Little points of interest.



The ultimate in kitschy garden ready-wear.



Stick some poppies or zinnias in here and voila.

I fixed it.

I exchanged the barrel and the blue rectangular planter. So much better. I'm just going to put that temporary insanity behind me now.



But unfortunately, my nursery is out of pea gravel and has been for some time. That's what I use to 'mortar' the cobbles. Bummer. I guess I'll have to find another source or wait it out.

What else is going on?

Clematis buds are swelling.



Echium wildprettii is rising. It seems to stretch up an inch taller every day. One day someone will make a time lapse of it's bloom and we'll enjoy embedding that in our blogs.



I want to give a shout out to this unnamed pink salvia. I bought it as a temporary replacement for the dead Mandevilla, but it's starting to get some shape and it sends out flowers after every pruning. A real trooper.



And speaking of bloom, the Hardenbergia is putting on her show. I'll have to get an in-focus picture for Bloom Day.



These little huckleberry seedlings are so sweet turning fall colors while still in the seed tray.



And we bought two rain barrels--on Amazon, of all places, from a company in Austin, TX. How irritated was I when I couldn't find anywhere to buy them in San Francisco? Very.

They arrived today, and we'll set them up next week.

This sounds good.

Gardens That Work: More than just another pretty place
Design Symposium co-sponsored with Horticulture Magazine
San Francisco Botanical Garden

Sun, Jan 27, 8:00am--5:00pm

Flowering herb knots, productive potagers, home orchards ripe with fruit – these are some of the joys of gardens that function as more than superbly designed and meticulously maintained spaces. These are gardens that pay back hard work with fresh food, cut flowers and sustained enjoyment.

The trend in garden design has been focused on these workhorse gardens for some time, but beautifully executed gardens that produce for our vases and tables are classics that will always be in fashion.

Join us for an exciting and inspiring day working through the design principles and horticultural techniques as well as sharing in some of the delights of beautiful, bountiful gardens that work.

Our speaker line-up features Jennifer Bartley, author of Designing the New Kitchen Garden, SFBGS Curator and "workhorse garden" expert Don Mahoney, and McEvoy Ranch Head Gardener Margaret Koski-Kent. Rounding out the day will be Garden to Vase author Linda Beutler.

Registration includes all handouts and refreshments, as well as lunch. There will be plenty of opportunities to shop, visit the Garden and network with other Bay Area garden lovers.

Link.

More about the tree slasher

Just wanted to call out some of the reader comments from the LA Times piece (registration not required) about the Las Vegas tree slasher that I mentioned a couple days ago:

18. I understand where this poor man is coming from. He bought his home when it had a view. New selfish neighbors planted non-native trees without regard to their neighbors with views, ruining the values. Who is selfish here - the tree slasher or the neighbors who don't care about others? The same selfish people who planted water loving plants in a desert, that's who. "Going green" means conservation - not planting water loving plants where they don't belong.

52. I live in the community where this happened and it was sickining to wake up, go for a drive and see another 20-40 trees were sawed off 4 feet from the ground. Hoffman himselg has some 18 trees on his small 6,000 square foot lot. I wonder if he or his young wife would like it if someone came and cut down all their trees? Not likely. They'd probably call the police and press charges, demanding that the tresspasser be put in jail! What is the correct jail term? It's whatever is the term that someone who steals a half-million dollars from a bank gets.

Selections from National Geographic's International Photography Contest are up. Here is the link to the landscape gallery. Much more inside.

Rainy day garden notes.

After gardening for a few years and trying out different styles, I've reached the point where it's time to start thinking about "the big picture". I need to edit. For one thing, my garden has too many uncoordinated containers--wood, clay, glazed, different colors, different shapes--the result is downright bitty.

The situation isn't so bad on the deck. The wooden planters are mostly okay, but I do need a better plan for the amaryllis bulbs.



These have each been growing for different lengths of time, and in different situations for quite awhile. Should I keep them in pots, or plant them in the ground? Should I plan to grow them all together, or at different times? Should they be kept together like this, or be separated? They cry out to be separated while growing in clashing pots, and the flowers would definitely clash if they ever bloomed at the same time. Hmmm.



I like this planter on the left, but I have an aversion to the sight of container mix, so the dirt needs to be covered. Yucca + manzanita works well together.



Also in here: Graptopetalum, Aeonium and Freesia.



Freesia?

"If I see even one freesia, I will be verrry dis-a-point-ed!"

(Are you like me? Do you walk around all day muttering your favorite lines from The Devil Wears Prada?)

Propagating the Graptopetalum and using it to cover more of the container mix would probably help me feel better about this planter.

The other planter has too much different stuff, but I can't decide what to remove so I don't know how to fix it. The big aeonium should stay since there's one in the other planter. Sometimes I regret not planting these containers with the same plants.



I definitely need to coordinate better at the bottom of the stairs. I want two tall square planters here, but I don't know what to put in them, much less what to do with the plants that are here right now.



I have a rose geranium in one,



and Ribes malvaceum (and heliotrope) in the other.



It's a little easier to see w/ a background.



I like both. They'll have to go somewhere, but they can't stay here.

I have lots of big containers in the garden too, including four half-barrels, and two glazed blue numbers.

I know half-barrels are a garden cliché, but I like them. I use two to anchor raised beds in the ornamental portion of the garden.

One has Philadelphus lewisii,



and the other has the Tibouchina urvilleana.



I use the other two barrels to grow vegetables. (In a small space, vegetable gardening is easier in these than it would be growing in the ground.)



Furthermore, I think the barrels provide some structural continuity and help integrate the vegetable garden with the ornamentals. The barrels also have a rustic quality that complements the cobblestone path. Besides that, anchoring the raised beds as they do, the barrels are more or less "fixed" garden features.

We got two of these blue glazed rectangular containers to sit on the retaining wall which runs along the back of the yard. (They usually grow cucumbers and tomatoes, but right now they have seedlings I'm getting used to being outdoors.)



We got these a year before I started gardening; today I might pick a different color.
But that's not going to happen anytime soon because I can't afford to replace them. We have to work with rectangular blue. (At the very least, I'm thinking rectangular blue dictates square blue for the containers at the bottom of the steps, but it might be hard to match blues.)

A while ago, I thought it would be a good idea to move one of the blue rectangles off the retaining wall and in to the garden. I had some idea about strong rectangularity bringing structure to the vegetable garden. I thought it would serve as a strong dividing line.



From a design standpoint, this was a serious, total error. I don't want to divide the vegetables from the ornamentals; I want to integrate them! Duh! The rectangle makes no sense whatsoever in the garden like that, and the circular barrel jammed up against the fence is one of the dumbest, stupidest things I have ever talked myself into.



I need to move the blue rectangle back to the retaining wall, and move the barrel back into the vegetable garden. I think they can more or less trade places. This means I have to move the path a little bit (for the third time). Argh.

I collected all the potted plants I had scattered over the garden. Every one of these has to go...somewhere else.

I got these salvias 50% off at my nursery. They can all be planted at the community garden or guerilla gardened among the cacti and agave on the public land outside the community garden.



I can wait to plant these bromeliads where there is currently foxglove.



I propagated Calycanthus occidentalis from cuttings. These I can give to the Botanical Garden and they can sell them.



But I need to stop propagating succulents every time I prune. This is just ridiculous (there are many more, not shown). These can go on the free pile at the Botanical Garden.



And I have to stop buying crap over the internet when I'm depressed. I can't use this guava from Logee's.



Mint can stay in random pots. There's nothing wrong with that. But I can clean it up.



Before I buy tall blue squares, I need something big for the Dahlia imperialis.



He doesn't really fit in the garden anymore, but he'll be happy in a bigger pot and he looks good against the back of the house.

"Nevada man is guilty of killing trees"

In November, a jury convicted Hoffman, 60, on 10 charges in the destruction of nearly $250,000 worth of mesquite and other trees. He will likely face sentencing next month and could get as much as 35 years in prison.

Link.

Read the whole thing for balance. If you want balance.

ADDED: It's especially interesting that this happened after taking horticulture classes!

Practicing Patience

That would be a good name for a gardening blog, because that's half of the gardener's game. This time of year is all about investing in next year, and I'm impatient for the payoff on my investment. So I'm practicing patience right now.

Is the requirement for patience a reason has gardening has entered decline in this age of instant gratification? People make a terrible mistake when they fail to ascertain the rewards of practicing patience. Have you seen that in your life, or in the lives of people around you? I have.

Life still rewards patience, but sometimes it can be hard to see that.

That's what I was thinking about this morning while I pricked out and potted up a flat of Gilia tricolor (Bird's Eye).



I felt the biggest problem in my 2007 garden was insufficient flowers. I want 2008 to be different, so I'm planting a succession of western wildflowers: Nemophila menziesii (Baby Blue Eyes), Layia platyglossa (Tidy Tips), Platystemon californica (Cream Cups), Limnanthes douglassii (Meadowfoam), Lupinus nanus (Sky Lupine), Phacelia tanecetifolia (Fernleaf Tansy), Clarkia bottae (Farewell-To-Spring)...

I'm starting them all in flats because I've had poor results previously from direct sowing. It seemed like a good idea at the time... after all, wildflowers direct sow themselves in nature. But no garden is entirely "natural". Besides that, natural conditions vary from year-to-year, and you can see that in the annual wildflower show.

Like any other investor, a gardener's strategy depends on both faith and reason. I have faith this is going to work out right, but I can't know that. I have reason to believe it, so I'm not exactly flying blind. But by definition, when you run on faith, you're running blind. You have no reason to believe--you just do.

But I don't think most people operate entirely on faith or entirely on reason, so it's funny that there isn't a single word in the English language for "a mixture of faith and reason". Instead, we have these two separate ideas side-by-side, and often at odds. (I'm not sure if that's really true or if it just seems that way.)

Anyway, it's interesting where the mind wanders when you're gardening. Which is a perfectly fine reason to garden in the first place.