whoreticulture

A new blog for a new year.

2008-01-01T10:33:00.000-08:00

I've mentioned before that I don't like my blog name very much, and the URL address comes from an older conception of a blog that I never really enacted.

This being New Year's Day and all...it's a fine time to bid adieu to whoreticulture.

Henceforth, this blog will go dormant, except perhaps for comments.

From now on you can find me blogging in My Back 40 (Feet).

Heh.

2007-12-30T15:00:00.000-08:00

"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

2007-12-29T12:16:00.000-08:00

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"...

2007-12-29T09:40:00.000-08:00

"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!

2007-12-28T08:37:00.000-08:00

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!

2007-12-28T08:03:00.000-08:00

"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.

2007-12-27T18:01:00.001-08:00

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

2007-12-27T09:08:00.000-08:00

"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,

2007-12-25T16:50:00.000-08:00

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

2007-12-24T16:12:00.000-08:00

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

2007-12-21T14:56:00.000-08:00

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.

2007-12-18T11:18:00.000-08:00

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!

2007-12-18T09:26:00.001-08:00

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

2007-12-17T08:11:00.000-08:00

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.

2007-12-15T21:16:00.000-08:00

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.

2007-12-14T20:36:00.001-08:00

"[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

2007-12-14T13:52:00.000-08:00

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.

2007-12-11T23:54:00.001-08:00

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...

2007-12-11T22:47:00.001-08:00

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

2007-12-11T11:09:00.000-08:00

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.

2007-12-05T20:52:00.000-08:00

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.

2007-12-05T16:25:00.001-08:00

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

2007-12-05T08:03:00.000-08:00

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.

2007-12-05T00:15:00.000-08:00

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.

2007-12-04T10:11:00.000-08:00

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"

2007-12-04T00:48:00.000-08:00

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

2007-12-01T12:04:00.000-08:00

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.

"City Scapes and Public Places"

2007-11-30T17:39:00.000-08:00

That's the name of the San Francisco City Guides walking tour I took today.

"City Guides got [their] start more than 25 years ago when a San Francisco mayor asked the city librarian to find volunteers to give tours in City Hall."

Today, City Guides offers walking dozens of different walking tours all over San Francisco "focus[ing] on the architecture, history, legends, and lore".

The best part? All tours are free. (Donations accepted.)

That's pretty cool because tourism in San Francisco is not cheap. Tickets for comparable commercial tours would easily start at $30.

Today, we're going to "discover hidden parks, rooftop gardens, and other delights while experiencing some of the colorful history and distinctive old architecture of San Francisco's financial district."

And why not. San Francisco's getting all tricked out for the holidays.

The roof garden at Montgomery and Market. I've always wondered how to get up here. The entrance is through the Galleria next door.

Coleonema album, Rutaceae. I like this plant. The foliage has a spicy fragrance.

You can get a good view of the Palace Hotel from up here--formerly the Palace Sheraton. I'm going to take the City Guides tour of that too.

And you can see this building...

which is built entirely around this smaller building...

and I've never noticed that before although I've walked right past it hundreds of times.

Moving on...

I didn't know Evel Knievel died today when I took these pictures of motorcycles.

The address is One Sansome Street.

(The tree is actually crooked, not the photographer.)

And this is Star Girl.

I was too busy taking pictures to pay attention to the historical narrative, or even to pay attention to where we were exactly. The guide took us into dozens of public buildings I never imagined entering by myself. I took a lot of pictures, including stuff that had nothing to do with the tour.

San Francisco has amazing old banks with incredible features and flourishes. Unfortunately, they don't want you taking pictures.

And many of the pictures I took anyway were too blurry to use. Heh, heh. But this one's okay.

The tour was full of interesting nuggets. Seriously. This is a "money museum" in the basement of an old bank.

And these are some relics from a pre-1906 apothecary shop found during a building excavation some years ago.

More roof garden action.

Every once in awhile you catch a little glimpse of the bay between the buildings.

And I learned these statues (which I like, but which many consider tacky) are made out of styrofoam so that if they fall, hopefully noone will die.

This is the Bank of America building.

You might know the Transamerica Pyramid...

But did you know there's a garden of redwood trees next to it?

With a fountain.

And I like plantings like this, with the redacted hardscape.

This was the last stop on the tour, but I'll end with this short clip of a mesmerizing fountain in one of the buildings we buzzed through.

Vegetable gardening, Honolulu style

2007-11-29T00:08:00.000-08:00

There's a big community garden next to the Foster Botanical Garden in Honolulu.

Apparently, maintaining your garden plot is vital. Guy loved this sign; he wanted to move here and be in charge of it.

At first I thought this was a little over the top. But after I thought about it, I realized the growing season is 365 days long in Hawaii. If you don't stay on top of the garden chores, things could get out of control pretty fast.

Let's take a look at what people are growing.

Ah, I grow this in my garden.

'African Blue' basil. Do you grow this too?

Ordinary basil, Ocimum basilicum, is an warm season annual that likes a little more warmth than San Francisco summers have to offer. It will grow here, but a lot of people grow this hybrid perennial instead, or as a supplement. In addition to potager service, it has showy flowers that attract bees. (I actually have a variegated form.)

So that's community gardening Honolulu. Let's now turn to home gardening. Guy's nephew's sister-in-law and her husband own a house in a very prim and trim development on Oahu's western side. They have a small garden, and grow some vegetables. (His name is Dave, so you could say this is, wait for it, Dave's garden!)

Seems like an innocent enough little garden, doesn't it? Well, it's illegal! Their neighborhood association forbids vegetable gardening! I can't imagine why. Produce in Hawaiian markets, shipped from the mainland United States, or wherever else, is expensive and shabby. Banning vegetable gardening seems downright un-American to me.

This pepper plant volunteered.

And this is papaya. Papaya with lemon juice is my favorite Hawaiian breakfast.

Foster Botanic Garden

2007-11-28T01:14:00.000-08:00

A couple days after visiting the Koko Crater Botanical Garden, we visited the Foster Botanical Garden.

The brochure says "more than 75,000 visitors view the gardens annually" and I think that's a shame considering that Oahu's population is about 780,000 and five million people visit the island every year. Clearly, word has not gotten out.

I'm NOT starting off with a picture of the information guide crashed out at his desk. Please focus your attention on the fantastic display of nuts and seed capsules that grow here.

You can't grow these things in the temperate zone, and the trees are too big for a small garden anyway. And the trees at Foster are huge. Trees dominate the garden. There are only a few true shrubs and nothing a coastal gardener would recognize as "perennials" (unless I count bromeliads, crinums, and orchids). Mid-level plants are generally aroids and hibiscus.

Anyhow, back to those fruits and nuts:

The visual interest of reproductive parts in this climate is unbeatable. Ahem.

And I'm feeling a lot of love for visual textures here in general...

Dead trunks adorned with bromeliads, mosses, orchids, and tillandsias serve as accent points throughout the garden.

But what impressed me more than anything else was the collection of trees.

Really big trees.

The Oahu County Arborist Committee has designated over 100 trees on the island as "exceptional by reason of age, rarity, location, size, aesthetic quality, endemic status or historical and cultural significance"; 24 of those trees are found in this garden, including enormous specimens of Adansonia digitata (Baobab), Enterolobium cyclocarpum (Earpod), Ceiba pentandra (Kapok), Cavanillesia platanifolia (Quipo), and most impressive during my visit, Couroupita guianensis, the Cannonball Tree.

And they mean it.

The garden brochure: "This member of the Brazil-nut family (Lecythidaceae) is native to Guiana. Note that the flowers are borne only on special stems on the main trunk. The heavy spherical fruit gives rise to the common name."

Besides being large and interesting, the flowers were powerfully and sweetly fragrant.

Finally, a post about the community garden outside the paid area of the Foster Botanical Garden.

Koko Crater

2007-11-27T23:25:00.001-08:00

We spent Thanksgiving weekend visiting Guy's nephew in Oahu. We visited the Koko Crater Botanical Garden in the southeast corner of the island, about 10 miles east of Diamond Head, and a mile north of Hanauma Bay (as the nene flies).

This is a dry landscape in a southern rainshadow. The garden is young, admission is free, and tours are self-guided. The collection features bouganvillea, plumeria, dryland palms, cacti, cycads, and a grove of young baobab trees (among other things). Many of the most of the interesting specimens have accession tags.

Here are some pictures.

Here is the plumeria's fruit--elongated capsules, 10 inches long--but I still can't figure out the sex parts.

Euphorbia milii. You can grow this outdoors in San Francisco (and I do), but it's so much more impressive in low desert gardens.

Agave attenuata. I was surprised to see this plant all over Oahu, because I've never seen it in Kauai (the Hawaiian island I visit most often).

What looked like some Euphorbia hung from trees like Spanish Moss.

This went on for acres.

(Note Nolina texana in the background.)

Even small baobabs (Adansonia) make very impressive specimens, and Koko Crater has dozens.

I'll be excited come back here every few years to monitor their progress.

A couple days later we visited the Foster Botanical Garden, Hawaii's crown jewel of botanic gardens.

2007-11-24T18:51:00.000-08:00

An article about perennial vegetables, with lots of links.

2007-11-20T15:35:00.000-08:00

"She is a nice, warm, friendly animal, the cow."

Link.

Here are two people

2007-11-19T19:44:00.000-08:00

that I have absolutely no interest in ever reading about or seeing pictures of, ever. For the rest of my life.

For whatever reason, the media seems intent on manufacturing and servicing a desperate need in the heart of every man, woman, and child for new news about John Kennedy and Jackie O.

I want to a lone voice speaking truth to power (into the ethereal nothingness of the Internet): No, I am not interested. I do not care. I have never cared. I will never care. Seeing pictures and headlines about these people make me want to flee. I very much doubt there are two people in the world that I would be less interested in reading about or seeing pictures of.

I just want that to be clear.

2007-11-19T17:38:00.001-08:00

Living with a vegetarian, it's no surprise that I've eaten at every vegetarian restaurant mentioned in this New York Times article Expanding the Frontiers of the Vegetarian Plate, currently ranked #7 on that website's list of most e-mailed articles. I can think of a few more vegetarian restaurants to choose from in San Francisco, but the article got all the big ones.

Our favorite is Millennium.

The one I would most like to get back to some day is Cha-Ya. We ate there once when it first opened.

I can only imagine people who don't live here must find the critic's description of the Cha-Ya dining experience quite...amusing. (I know it makes me laugh, and I live here.)

Starting with shira ae ($5.50), a salad of blanched and delicately pickled vegetables served atop a thick sesame tofu dressing. Slices of lotus root and rubbery yam cake added a seafoody aroma to the beans, pressed spinach, shiitakes, and rapini. Cha-Ya's kitchen is adept at imparting umami flavors without resorting to the usual fish-based ingredients. The miso soup was richly savory, and the Cha-Ya roll ($6.75), a lightly fried inside-out roll of asparagus and carrot drizzled in thick, sweet sauce, was deeply satisfying.

Each dish was perfectly prepared. The vegetables in the sushi rolls (we had asparagus, eggplant, mushroom, and rapini nigiri rolls ($3.50 each), and avocado and mushroom uramaki ($5.25) had been cooked to the moment of perfection. A bowl of kinoko udon soup ($7.75) was heavy with chunky mushrooms: enoki, shimeji, oyster and shiitake. The broth, and the noodles, were good enough to imagine climbing into the big stoneware bowl.

Guy hated Cafe Gratitude (too hippy-dippy), but I went to UC Santa Cruz. I graduated with an abiding revulsion of the Grateful Dead, but crackers of dehydrated raw seed, and cheesecake dyed with green algae? No problem.

As far as food goes, I'm much more adventurous with vegetarian fare than I ever am with meat. I will at least try anything that grows out of the ground (or grew on something that grew out of the ground, e.g., fungi). But never will any dead animal creature's liver, kidney, heart, brain, foot, tongue, stomach, intestine, or any reproductive organ, ever pass my lips.

Bloom Day Is Ready (was Will Be Late)

2007-11-15T09:24:00.000-08:00

Bad news: I splattered my whisky and setlzer on my computer keyboard a couple days ago, and had to send it in for service. In the meantime, how to get pictures from my camera onto Guy's computer is not immediately obvious. So blogging will be slow for the next few weeks. Plus, I'm going to Hawaii next weekend. Hopefully I'll have Bloom Day up in the next couple of days. Monday at the latest.

Fortunately, this is not exactly a thrilling month for flowers in the garden. I have a lot of purple heliotrope, two abutilon (one white, one apricot), purple penstemon, and a scarlet epilobium all in full bloom. The Hardenbergia vine is pregnant with buds, and the manzanita flower buds are starting to swell. Tibouchina urvilleana responded to a heavy tip pruning by making dozens of new buds.

ADDED: pictures of some November blooms.

Link to last month's Bloom Day post.

2007-11-11T15:04:00.000-08:00

Visit the Garden of La Mancha and check out some fabulous decay in Northern California! Link.

2007-11-11T14:38:00.001-08:00

Check out Pam's big pea at the link. She's looking for information if you know anything about this big, hunky Brazilian.

Temporarily paralyzed from the ankle down

2007-11-11T13:31:00.000-08:00

The kittens love to snuggle up on my feet. They do this when I'm on the bed or couch with my computer, surfing. I feel like I shouldn't move. That's fine, except that I have to pee right now.

What a life.

Penny, wake up! I have to pee!

Pretty much the only time I can get a picture of Miss Patty in focus is when she's sleeping.

Pattycake, I have to pee!

In the garden this morning

2007-11-11T12:19:00.001-08:00

We got 1 inch of rain last night. The forecast called for 0.1 inch; I think we always get more rain than the forecast calls for.

I won't be able to use these roses for Bloom Day. Better take a picture now.

There's a slight chance I'll have Hardenbergia violacea 'Happy Wanderer' in bloom by the 15th.

Can you see all the buds?

Not so for Cobaea scandens, which only in the last few months has grown at the rate I expected it to grow all along.

I grew this plant from seed, which I do not recommend. I had a hard time getting any germination. I think I sowed 10 seeds, and I got one plant. Many gardeners grow Cup-and-Saucer Vine as an annual. Unless we have an unusually cold winter, it should live from year to year in San Francisco.

The cymbidium orchid is sending up a flower stalk. This is a division I made from a plant I received as a gift.

On cymbidium, Katherine Grace Endicott says this:

"The British imported them from the jungles of Asia and have been growing them in greenhouses for the past two hundred years. During World War II many cymbidiums were sent from England to Santa Barbara to protect them from bombing raids. In Santa Barbara it was soon discovered that the cymbidiums did better outdoors than in the greenhouse. When the war ended, the cymbidiums had multiplied and thrived so well in California that many divisions were kept when the originals were returned. They have been favored by California gardeners ever since."

Some narcissus are emerging...

And I dug this thing up from behind the bamboo. It's growing from a tuberous root or rhizome. I don't know what it could be.

I assume this is sweat pea. I think I sprinkled some wildflower seeds in here too tho'.

I have carrots, onions, peas, radishes and salad greens in the vegetable garden right now--and potatoes up at the pea patch.

This radish is pretty, but tasted bland. Maybe because of the rains last night? Or maybe it's just a bland variety. Or maybe it wasn't ripe. I bought it for the pretty picture on the seed packet.

It's not all spring-y.

I'm getting an unusually dark color on Vitis californica 'Rogers Red' this year.

My prediction?

2007-11-09T12:50:00.000-08:00

Absolutely noone will lose a job over this. A container ship rams the Bay Bridge, spills 58,000 gallons of oil in to the bay, and people dawdle. No problem!

What does it take to get fired these days anyway?

I'm so furious I can't even tell you.

Emergency officials were pressured Thursday to explain why it took them hours to announce that 58,000 gallons of oil had leaked from a container ship that rammed the Bay Bridge on Wednesday - creating a slick that has contaminated beaches and injured hundreds of birds from Hunters Point to the Marin Headlands and out to the Farallon Islands.

San Francisco officials, frustrated that they weren't told immediately about the severity of the spill, threatened legal action against the company or agency responsible for the disaster.

Link.

Japanese Tea Garden

2007-11-08T21:52:00.001-08:00

(Link to the Flickr set if the blog page loads too slowly for you.)

I haven't been to the Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park in about 25 years, even though it's right next to the Botanical Garden and I go there all the time.

In fact, I was at the Botanical Garden today for a this volunteer appreciation luncheon. I love this place and these people. As far as I'm concerned, I'm honored to volunteer here and I don't need to be feted. It was great to see everyone today and reconnect with some people I haven't seen in over a year.

We had delicious Asian cuisine and of course lots of wine. Seating places were set with plants in 4" pots that attendees could take home. I got a rooted cutting of Luma apiculata!

This is one of my favorite small trees. I included a picture of L. apiculata in a post from last July.

Warmed by good food (and wine), I was ready to visit the Japanese Tea Garden on this cold, cloudy fall day.

The structures loom over the garden fence from a ways away.

The garden dates from 1893 when it was built as part of a Japanese village exhibit for the Midwinter International Exposition of 1894. A brochure I bought at the gift shop details the history of the garden which becomes especially interesting during WWII when the descendants of the builder, Makoto Hagiwara, were evicted from their residence in the garden. You can read the brochure here if you're interested.

According to many sources, this is the oldest public Japanese garden in the United States--which begs the question, where is the oldest private Japanese garden in the United States?

Oil spill

2007-11-08T17:20:00.000-08:00

58,000 gallons of oil [approx. 1871 barrels] were spilled in to San Francisco Bay last night when a tanker collided with the Bay Bridge in fog.

"This is peak migration season for birds, and all the birdwatchers are excited about it - so it's at a particularly bad time," she said. Voice breaking with emotion, she added, "It's disturbing. These are all beaches that I love and spend a lot of time at."

Coast Guard officials said 16 beaches have so far been contaminated and closed off, and large patches of oil are floating on the bay. Beaches closed including Baker Beach, China Beach, Keller Beach, Point Isabel, Ferry Point, Caesar Chavez, Crissy Field and Fort Point.

Along Rodeo Beach in the Marin Headlands, National Park Service ranger Robert Del Secco kept visitors away from the beach, which is covered in dark clumps of oil.

The pungent oil scent can be smelled around the Bay Area.

Link.

Fall sale

2007-11-08T16:46:00.000-08:00

My local nursery began their off fall sale today--everything is 25-75% off from now until the place is cleared out for Christmas trees.

I got all these plants for just about $100.

This is all for my dad's garden which I'm going to work on this weekend. I didn't go looking for anything in particular. I just bought some things that caught my eye and that I know will work well in a no-to-low maintenance California garden.

I'll figure out later where it all goes, but how about some quick combinations?

Salvia guarantica + artichoke?

Echium candicans + Cuphea 'Sunset' + Arctostaphylos 'Emerald Carpet'?

Anisodontea + Teucrium?

From a friend.

2007-11-08T11:50:00.000-08:00

"Oh - my –gawd. I have had good chocolate before. I have had interesting chocolate before. I have seen unusual shapes of truffles before. But people, you have to look up L.A. Burdick Chocolate. Elizabeth in Seattle sent us a lovely package of chocolates with the most eclectic flavorings. The one (okay one of two) Mark and I tried tonight was dark chocolate with espresso, anise, and something I forget. It was the most complex and enticing chocolate I’ve ever tasted."

In which I take drastic action

2007-11-07T20:25:00.000-08:00

Before:

After:

I removed a section of the cobblestone path in my garden, thus eliminating the element of choice. Now it's one-way trip in, and one-way trip back out.

Inadvisable? Perhaps.

I did this for a couple of reasons.

1) I wanted to accommodate the volunteer Geranium maderense whose growth would have blocked the path next year anyway. I decided to keep this plant because I like its structure, particularly in juxtaposition with Echium wildprettii.

Also, insects like to visit the inflorescence and insects are an important consideration for me. Plus it was a volunteer. It was free! And a free biennial at that, which is even better because biennials are like having two plants in one (since the second year is often very different than the first year). I thought about moving G. maderense to a different location, but I decided it had picked the very best place to grow.

2) I wanted to put something green and evergreen between two silver-gray Eriogonum arborescens that flanked the path. Too much silver-gray was a problem in my summer garden this year. I bought a sporty looking Rhamnus californica (coffeeberry) during my visit to Yerba Buena. I tried to grow this plant from seed once, but failed.

This new redesign represents the death blow to any previously expressed wishes on my part for the garden to attain a certain level of completion and exist thereafter as something to be maintained in a state of design climax. As if!

The garden is what it is, and I will continue to tinker with the various elements and respond to the changing needs of the plants as I see fit.

I actually did this work a few weeks ago. I've been rearranging "hardscape" elements in other less impactful areas for awhile now--adding a few cobbles here, deleting some there. The net result has been the liberation of 40 cobbles--too many to store. I held on to 15, and sold back 25 to the stoneyard for $1 each.

In:

Out:

2007-11-07T10:49:00.000-08:00

"It's easy to misspell fuchsia, but did you know that it is also commonly mispronounced? Many know this cloud forest exotic as FYOO-shah, but the preferred pronounciation is actually FOOK-see-ah, as it is named after the 16th century German botanist, Leonard Fuchs. The fuchsia is a favorite in Bay Area gardens, and SFBG Plant Sales are a good source for the mite-resistant varieties that thrive here. Fuchsia boliviana can be found in the Meso-American Cloud Forest, the South America Garden and in this month's In Bloom feature, complete with photos, plant profile and exact locations."

That's from the San Francisco Botanical Garden Society's monthly newsletter. I wondered if that was the correct pronunciation for fuchsia, which is often misspelled, or misspelt if you prefer, even on garden blogs (but not this one).

My former boss's boss trained under a man named Fuchs, pronounced Fooks, so naturally I wondered about fuchsia.

It doesn't really matter you pronounce a botanical name, because people from different places speak differently and we're all content with that. I assure you noone at the San Francisco Botanical Garden says FOOK-see-ah unless s/he's joking.

I can only think of one genus name you really want to pronounce a particular way. Do you know which one I'm talking about? It starts with a C.

And it's not Ceanothus. Which is mostly pronounced SEE-a-NO-thus. I want to call it see-ANN-ah-this. That would be my preference.

I had one other thing to say, but someone just called and I forgot what it was. I hate it when that happens.

Now I remember. I was going to say when a genus or species is named after a person, there's a stronger argument for favoring a specific pronunciation. Heuchera is another example. The man's name was Heucher, and you say it HOY-ker. So it would be HOY-ker-a, not HYOO-cher-a or HYOO-ker-a. I've pointed that out many times. But noone cares. It's something I do for me. Pedantry can be fun.

UC Botanical Garden at Berkeley

2007-11-05T20:36:00.000-08:00

After the Blake Garden, I came here to the University of California Botanical Garden at Berkeley.

We're in the Arid House...

and this is Pachypodium lamerei.

And so is this.

As you can see from the identification tag, Pachypodium belongs in the dogbane family, Apocynaceae, the same family that includes vinca, oleander, and star jasmine. I know all that because I'm super, super-smart. No, I just took a year of Plant ID in the horticulture department at community college, by far one of the best things I have ever done with my time.

Here's another taxonomical surprise. This is a Pelargonium.

See?

That says Pelargonium carnosum.

Oh, my.

This is Welwitschia mirabilis. If you say it does not remind you of a vulva, you either need glasses or you're in denial.

This is a fast-growing vulva. I took this picture of it in September, 2006.

Now it's about to climb out of its planter box and start eating people.

I think this would be a neat houseplant.

It's just called Boophone sp., from South Africa. Amaryllidaceae.

Here's another Boophone, B. haemanthoides.

This is a rather compact-looking specimen of Aloe plicatilis. This is the plant I stumbled over in the field behind the community garden and took a cutting of several months ago. (The cutting is doing well, although I've since bought two more rooted A. plicatilis. So now I have three.)

I'm trying to think of other succulents with attractive fruit. I can't really think of any. Opuntia maybe.

On that note, we're done with the desert, and entering the woods.

The Vitaceae is an interesting family without clear connection to any other family. This is Vitis coignetiae and these leaves are as big as dinner plates. You might know this plant as Crimson Glory Vine. Digging Dog sells this plant.

Less densely foliated this time of year, these leaves seem to hang in the air.

Hydrangea shrubs. Always nice to see in other people's gardens.

Some kind of water iris. I actually think I own this plant, but I don't have it in a pond, so it will never flower and I should probably get rid of it.

The County Clerk started a Flickr Group, Berberine Daydreams, and I added this picture of Mahonia lomariifolia.

The genus Mahonia is in the Berberidaceae, and some think it should be consolidated with the genus Berberis. Whatever.

I didn't realize Berkeley Bot had so many of these Mexican salvia things. I thought Strybing had cornered the market.

They have pretty flowers, but need a lot of development before they're ready for any ordinary home garden. They're huge, rampant things.

I only took pictures of a couple others.

This one's pretty.

Now for some abrupt shifts...

Casurina torulosa.

Beautiful needles.

Beautiful bark.

This is Chayote squash, Sechium edule.

It's an elephant topiary. No, not really. It just looks that way.

Pam Peirce endorses chayote, even in small gardens because it's attractive and climbs. This is a cool season squash that ripens in November and December. In her book Golden Gate Gardening, she writes, "This tropical plant grows from seeds that never become dormant, but just grow out of the mature fruit a few months after it falls to the ground. To start plants, get two or three chayote fruits from another gardener in December or January or buy some at a produce market." I'm pretty sure you can get seeds from Territorial too.

Passion fruit vine, quite dead

and passion fruit.

I like how this combination looks from either side.

But especially this side.

The grass and that...other thing are cool in near proximity.

Lusciousness.

More blooming tree dahlias.

I couldn't decide which picture to use.

These pitchers are from the genus Nepenthes. There's an especially scary one from Borneo called N. hamata, that has "the mouth of the pitcher surrounded by long, curved, knife-sharp hooks. 'One can only guess what this plant may be evolving into,' D'Amato writes in his classic, The Savage Garden. 'Pray that it doesn't start walking.'" (Link.)

Cattleya labiata var. El Dorado

And we end this visit in California, where recent rains have rejuvinated Coreopsis gigantea.

November, California's second spring.

The Blake Garden in November

2007-11-05T18:29:00.000-08:00

The Blake Garden is only open during regular business hours, so I can only come when I'm not at work.

Happily, I'm off for awhile.

Whenever I have time off work, I ask myself, Can I visit to the Blake Garden?

The answer is always the same.

Yes!

I can't believe the tree dahlias are already blooming in November.

This event is still two months away in my garden.

And I have the double white, which is rarer. I wish I had this more common one instead.

This herb garden looks very exciting. I want this.

Cyclamen massed in the ground is really sweet. Usually you see it in pots, don't you? They don't grow under redwoods in nature, but that's okay here.

I have a terrible time just sitting down in a garden and enjoying a moment. I have to keep moving! It's always afterwards that I wish I'd sat for a minute.

You've seen the Echium wildprettii in my garden, this is another Echium, Echium piniana. E. wildprettii sends up an inflorescent spire from a basal rosette; E. piniana grows 4-12' high on a trunk, and then sends up an inflorescent spire.

Eriogonum arborescens in late summer dormancy... I'm like this plant's patron saint.

I love it.

And this is E. giganteum, next to the green manzanita.

Another place to sit and rest that I didn't take advantage of.

I think the Maytens tree is an interesting mixture of comfort and menace; comforting green leaves rustling in the breezes, swaying on casually weeping stems, menacingly contorted dark wood threatening to poke and grab.

The grasses capture the light and the wind.

Pardon my Piet Oudolf moment.

I like a trellis with many layers like this.

Probably triples the construction cost.

I just think it looks better than a single layer.

If I'd sat down here, I would have stayed until the sun went down contemplating the life of this tree.

Unless it serves as a barrier, I think people plant this Puya at their peril.

It has this flower once in awhile. But if it was my garden, I'd rip it all out.

The manzanita trunk draws the eye from 100 feet away.

On the other side, looking back to where I just was.

This is a classic combination of the California chaparral.

That gray Salvia is dead above ground, and bone dry. The oily resins in manzanita wood burn hot. In California, plant this combination at the back of your property, or better yet, just appreciate it in parks and public gardens. This would certainly be an unwise foundation planting in many situations.

Sure is pretty tho'.

I was just here a few months ago.

Guerneville, CA

2007-11-04T10:45:00.000-08:00

California Highway 116 runs through the small unincorporated town of Guerneville in Sonoma County--a 90 minute drive north of San Francisco (without traffic; easily over 2 hours otherwise).

A sign without periods in the Safeway parking lot tells the history of the place...

Today, this is a popular summer resort area for people in the Bay Area, especially the gays. The Russian River winds through Guerneville on its way from the mountains above Mendocino, and south to Jenner, where it empties into the Pacific Ocean. The downtown has a few bars, some restaurants, and several small art galleries, antique stores, and thrift shops. The vineyards grow Pinot and Chardonnay. The Bohemian Grove is here.

I don't know when the gays started flocking to Guerneville, or what it was like before they did, but up until 1990, I always thought of this as redneck territory.

My mom said she was going up here to visit a lesbian friend from nursing school and I was all, "Lesbians?! Up there?!" and she was all, "Get a clue; it's totally gay up there!"

After that, it seemed like everyone I knew was heading off to the "Rush Riv" for one gay-themed summer festival or another.

It's autumn now and the summer gays are gone.

We have a friend whose dad owns a rental cabin on the river. She has second dibs on the cabin when it's empty, which is often during the fall and winter. We're just here for a couple days.

The mornings begin with my favorite of all vacation breakfasts, pie and coffee.

I've been reading this book on and off for several weeks.

The mornings are slow. I lay outside and read while Guy watches a movie.

Chapter 8 was very good, but it's a little hard to concentrate with all this peace and quiet.

Sequoia sempervirens. No one calls it that in ordinary conversation but me. It's coast redwood, the tallest tree species on earth. A relict from another time.

A little walk?

The cabin is right on the river.

The Bohemian Grove is in the woods on the other side.

(Southern exposure; the sun is in my eyes.)

The river floods its banks during winter rains, so the dock gets pulled up for the season.

It's not all vacation rentals and summer homes. Some people live here all year round.

As a rule, redwood forests mean deep shade on the forest floor. But the sun is low on the horizon this time of year, and the forest has been thinned for residential development. Front yard gardens are a mix of things. I see lots of flowerless rhododendrons. But also Salvia leucantha, some roses, and lots of mostly-spent bedding annuals for part-shade like impatients and begonias.

It's a little depressing to see an environment like this so bereft of native plant species besides the trees. What's missing? Perfectly carefree garden plants with year-round interest such as Giant chain fern (Woodwardia fimbriata), sword fern (Polystichum minitum), evergreen huckleberry (Vaccinium ovatum), Salal (Gaultheria shallon), currants and gooseberries (Ribes sp.), Vine Maple (Acer circinatum, not native this far south, but it would still be nice to see), coffeeberry (Rhamnus californica), tanoak (Lithocarpus densiflorus), Douglas Iris (Iris douglasiana) tiger lily (Lilium pardalinum, well those might be here and be dormant, but I doubt it)...

What's here in nauseating abundance is Algerian Ivy, Hedera canariensis. It sickens me to see it climbing redwood trees and I want to take my pruners and cut it off at the base of every tree I see.

(It's been pruned off these trees; other pictures I took were too blurry to use.)

The architecture and design is all over the place.

It's past noon before we go in to town for some real food.

After breakfast, we mosey around.

These two pictures, above and below, tell you a lot about the Guerneville milieu.

This store, in case you haven't figured it out, would be the one-stop-shop for all your female impersonation needs.

I like to think that at least some of my readers actually do dress like this from time to time. You know who you are.

A fabulous night of liquor and lip-syncing await you!

Or just get dressed up for Ugly Betty at the Rainbow Cattle Co.

Moving on...

I had a hemp shirt once. I think it shrank in the drier or something.

I don't know what that says.

I must say, the chocolate seems like an afterthought at Hemp & Chocolat.

I do enjoy a good truffle.

In other stores...

the Christmas vibe is upon us.

This is my first encounter with the spirit of Christmas(-shopping) in 2007. I can't say it feels all that bad.

I see lots of stocking stuffers.

If I was a chick, or just wanted to dress like one, I'd wear stuff like this.

Tonier fare in a few shops.

I wonder how the kittens are doing.

The neighbor S will visit them tonight for dinner and play time.

These jellyfish glass things are in all the finer crafty stores now. I do like them, but we have nowhere to feature such an objet d'art at the house of whoreticulture.

And I like these very inexpensive baskets made out of dried grasses. But I didn't buy one.

Julie, I rang the gong for you.

Somehow, I forgot to bring socks with me on this trip, so I was glad to see this fishing tackle store had boot socks for sale.

I cannot go without socks at night because my feet get cold. I have big feet, so that means a big part of my body is cold, and that means I catch a cold. And that would suck.

Are you bored yet?

Here I am looking at cards.

October 18 was my birthday.

I'm getting old.

What a lovely garden.

There's a little bit of garden interest downtown too.

This is probably the best use of Lamium maculatum I've ever seen. People plant it with impatients and pansies and I think that's crazy.

I would like to have this wreath of bay leaves. I love bay leaves. California has a native bay, Umbellularia californica. Its fragrance is stronger than the Mediterranean Laurus nobilis and I'm always reading it gives some some people headaches. Not me. I like the California one much better.

Big tits, and what's the nose?

There's a flea market in the Safeway parking lot, and a woman is selling rooted cuttings from her garden.

She had some nice stuff, but her prices were too high. She wanted $10 for six-inch yellow-flowering abutilon in a 4-inch pot, and even more for a small double purple Datura. I didn't tell her that or try to haggle with her. I wonder if that could ever be me--selling cuttings and seed-grown plants at flea markets in semi-weird, semi-rural California supermarket parking lots. It doesn't sound so crazy, but I think I would rather be gardening.

The Garden at Night

2007-10-29T18:49:00.000-07:00

"Noted photographer Linda Rutenberg invites you on a nocturnal journey as share stories and images of twenty public gardens throughout the United States and Canada. Her newly published book, The Garden at Night: Private Views of Public Edens features our very own San Francisco Botanical Garden along with 19 other spectacular gardens seldom seen at night. Refreshments, book signing and evening tours of the Garden."

Link.

File under: San Francisco, freaks in

2007-10-29T15:23:00.000-07:00

"Aline Xayasouk, dressed up as a piece of sushi, became San Francisco's first cardboard fighting champion."

Link.

2007-10-29T11:31:00.000-07:00

"France's president abruptly ended a 60 Minutes interview aimed at introducing him to U.S. audiences, dubbing it 'stupid' and a 'big mistake' and refusing to answer questions about his wife."

Link.

Good for him! I wish American politicians would do similarly. It would be better for everyone [in most cases] if our personal lives returned to being more personal.

Everybody I know in San Francisco right now

2007-10-29T07:35:00.000-07:00

is very excited about the opening next year of the new California Academy of Sciences.

You would be too:

The entire top of the museum, with the exception of the piazza's glass ceiling, consists of the biggest sustainable roof in the world. It is essentially a planted garden stretching to all four walls, supporting 1.7 million plants, including California poppies and strawberries.

Counting the tops of the two domes - Morrison Planetarium and the living rain forest - the roof sports a total of seven soil hills, mimicking the seven hills of San Francisco. This serendipitously also echoes the seven hills of Rome - capital of the home country of the man who designed the new museum, Italian architect Renzo Piano.

And I think this sounds very exciting:

Perhaps the most visually stunning feature of the new building will be the four-story-high glass dome that will house an exhibit of four rain forest habitats, all kept at a constant 82 degrees.

This dome will feature several palm and other trees soaring 70 feet high, and a winding ramp and an elevator will lead visitors to the four different habitats.

The first floor of the dome will imitate the rain forest of Borneo, with a live colony of bats living alongside snakes and flying geckos, frogs and lizards. The second floor will house Madagascar ants and chameleons, and the third floor will feature the birds and butterflies of Costa Rica, all flitting through the canopies of the dome's gigantic trees.

Finally, the basement will take visitors beneath a living mockup of a flooded Amazonian rain forest floor. To save visitors the trouble of swimming through heated muck, there is a long, acrylic tunnel that will allow them to stroll through and gaze directly into the bottom of the forest with its mangroves, soggy tree roots and freshwater fish.

And that's just the botanically-related stuff.

"The plans for every room, every glass-walled tank, and every exhibit of rain forest trees will bespeak the museum's basic mission: to tell the world how life evolved on planet Earth, how its diversity has spread across all the seas and continents, and how every visitor must come away newly committed to protect and sustain these infinitely varied life forms that are now threatened everywhere."

(In my fantasy world, major American cities would compete with each other to have the best science museum.)

Link to the current Cal Academy webpage.

"The Fires Next Time"

2007-10-29T00:36:00.000-07:00

WSJ:

Until insurers are allowed to charge premiums high enough to cover actual risks, people will continue to build and reside in places they probably shouldn't, secure in the knowledge that when Mother Nature inevitably strikes, someone else will write a rescue check.

According to a recent study of 11 Western states by Headwaters Economics, just 14% of the wildland urban interface [WUI] is currently developed. But that number has been growing steadily, as have the costs of protecting the WUI. Since 1992, the Forest Service's fire expenditures have grown by 450%, and well over half of that has been spent protecting private property next to public land.

"The only behavioral change I can imagine is if fire-fighting costs were borne by local counties," says Ray Rasker of Headwaters. "Right now, if you're declared a disaster area, FEMA will bail you out, or BLM will bail you out," he says, referring to the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Bureau of Land Management, two of the more than two dozen federal agencies that respond to emergencies.

California's last big fires occurred in 2003 and largely in the same areas burning today. Which is to say these fires are not only natural but somewhat predictable in location. And while the immediate priority is to suppress them while giving aid and comfort to the displaced, policy makers might also look to mitigate the potential damage the next time they occur. And that means holding homeowners, developers, states and local communities more accountable. Link.

Yes.

As it is, the over-regulated insurance market and the promise of federal emergency money means we're effectively paying people to live in communities that destroy our wildlands.

I don't get it.

Seed germination progress report

2007-10-28T20:35:00.000-07:00

The Lotus formosissimus came up well.

It's a little worrisome to me that the leaves look so much like a weedy oxalis. This is a west coast native from the Fabaceae. I'm not sure what to expect from it; I've never seen it before in real life, and it seems rather variable in pictures. Common names are Seaside Bird's-Foot Trefoil and Witch's Teeth.

I bought the seeds several months ago, but I didn't sow them until Judith Larner sent this picture around, via her mailing list:

And, I was, like, yeah--sow those seeds ASAP. So I did.

Ms. Larner says:

"Coast Lotus, (Lotus formosissimus), is a good example of one of the many beautiful 'small things,' the annual and perennial wildflowers, that pack a powerful punch ecologically and horticulturally, and are not commonly seen, even in native plant gardens. It is our goal to bring as many of these under-appreciated and frequently threatened species to your attention as we can. Lotus formosissimus is a good place to begin.

This species has many common names, including:coast lotus, bi-colored lotus, the beautiful lotus, (which it is), coast hosackia, and coast trefoil, but by any name, it's a fascinating, useful plant. Found on the coast in a number of situations, from Monterey County into Washington state, it likes damp swales and grassy headlands. Though it looks appealing next to California oatgrass in a prairie, we were amazed by the months of bloom it provided when coddled a bit in a container. It is thought to be the host plant of the almost extinct Lotis Blue Butterfly."

Coast Melic, Melica californica. I tried these seeds before, but they didn't sprout. This time it worked. That happens a lot.

This, and Nassella pulchra (Purple Needlegrass) are slated to play a big role in the garden next year... The needlegrass is already planted out in the garden and doing fine.

For some reason I had exactly two Coyote Mint (Monardella villosa) seeds in my fridge. Why? I don't know. Sowed 'em.

This is a small, short-lived native perennial that occurs in many situations. It's a good filler, bee-friendly, etc. I have three planted out, this will be five. The foliage has a nice, but not especially minty, fragrance.

Isomeris arborea, Bladderpod. Another plant I've never seen before.

Apparently, it stinks. But it's supposed to be a good habitat plant and flowers constantly. I'm not sure what this plant's destiny in my garden is. Maybe I'll plant it at the pea patch. I think it grows in desert washes.

The Jacarandas came right up. Nooo idea what I'm going to do with these.

Interlude with Penstemon and Epilobium.

2007-10-28T20:29:00.000-07:00

Fitzgerald Marine Reserve

2007-10-27T17:12:00.000-07:00

I'm taking Plants and Animals of California at City College Thursday nights. The instructor was going to take the class here on a field trip, but something came up and she made this an optional, self-guided field trip.

So this isn't just a blog post. It's homework.

The Fitzgerald Marine Reserve is in the small town of in Moss Beach, a short drive south down Highway 1 from San Francisco.

If I could sing, I just might join a chorus.

The trees are Cupressus macrocarpa, Monterey Cypress. Moss Beach is about 100 miles north of their native range, which is very limited. These trees have been planted widely in California (and other places), particularly in coastal environments where wind pruning sculpts them into uniquely beautiful specimens. But not here.

The book Introduction to California Plant Life says this:

"[B]oth Monterey Pine [Pinus radiata] and Monterey Cypress--rare and remnant species that are ecologically unsuccessful in their natural habitat--are widely planted as windbreaks and timber trees in many areas of the world, particularly New Zealand and Australia, and...in some of these southern regions, these trees are invasive weeds that have spread from areas in which they were planted to adjacent areas of native vegetation."

The 2001 Sunset Western Garden Book says, "Away from cool coastal winds, C. macrocarpa is very subject to coryneum canker fungus, for which there is no cure. Look for foliage that first turns yellow then deep reddish brown, and falls off slowly. Destroy infected trees."

Like these?

Maybe they have something else; these trees are growing in full exposure to "cool, coastal winds".

But we're not here to see trees.

We've come to observe the tidepools, contemplate California's biodiversity, and appreciate the ecology of the plants and animals that live in this special habitat.

It's about 3:30 p.m., which happens to be somewhere between high and low tide this time of year.

2007-10-27 11:16 PDT 6.58 feet High Tide
2007-10-27 18:17 PDT Sunset
2007-10-27 18:18 PDT -1.42 feet Low Tide

(Link.)

The Reserve closes at 5, and we need to (want to) be home having coctails at 5, so this is the best we can do. (It's funny that Google, and the Blogger spellcheck, want you to spell cocktail with a k, but Wikipedia and quite a few other sources spell coctail with no k. Is this slow evolution into klessness unfolding right before our eyes? What are the selection pressures favoring or disfavoring k?)

But I digress. The point is that during the time of our visit, water is receding back to the ocean.

Water is quite literally seeping out from the sandbank underneath my feet.

Professor Traut's handout for this field trip quotes some text by Bart Oxley and Bob Breen that says "Until its designation as a reserve in 1969, there was unlimited removal of wildlife from its tidepools, and at one time overflow crowds from San Francisco rushed to its shores to experience its touted reputation as a health spa."

Talking to the Volunteer Director at the San Francisco Botanical Garden about this class, I mentioned that we were going to come here on a field trip. He recalled visiting this beach as a child, before 1969, with his father and brother, and collecting crabs and such to take home. It seems so unthinkable now.

But there are a lot of people here today, and I feel certain some of them are collecting.

Don't you?

(As another assignment for the class, we're supposed to write an impact report about how human activities have adversely impacted California's ecology. I'm not going to do that assignment, but if I was going to, it might be interesting to write about how visitors to parks and nature reserves impact those places.)

But what's a reasonable, practicable solution to that problem? I don't know.

Anyhow, let's get on with it already.

Ecologists describe this environment as the "rocky intertidal". They divide the rocky intertidal loosely into different zones...

the splash zone: wetted by surf spray during high tide
the upper intertidal: covered during most high tides
the middle intertidal: uncovered by many but not all low tides; covered by all high tides
lower intertidal: exposed only during the lowest tides

Splash and High:

Middle:

Lower:

Of course, it's very clear where the rocky intertidal meets the sandy shore. I'm starting to think how interesting that is, that these two different environments abut each other so sharply. Such crisp borders are not often found when you think about it.

My class notes say, "Many small invertebrates live in between sand grains, lots of filter feeders (sand crabs)". I'm curious what it's like beneath the surface, where the sandy shore meets the rocky intertidal.

Judging by the animals that are visible in the pictures below, I would guess we're seeing the lower intertidal zone during this visit to the Reserve.

"The lower intertidal is exposed only by the lowest of the low tides, the spring tides. Its upper margin is considered to be the average sea level, the line from which the height of a tide is measured. A low tide that drops below this line is called a minus tide. During a 6-foot tide, this line would be 6 feet underwater." (Schoenherr's Natural History of California)

Tide levels vary all over the earth, and some places only have one high tide and one low tide. The two daily high and low tides on the east coast are pretty much equal, but that is not the case on the west coast. Here, one high tide is higher than the other, and one low tide is lower than the other.

Time plays an interesting role in the rocky intertidal's biotic zonation. If you consider a mountain ecosystem, altitude and longitude distinguishes the alpine, subalpine, upper montane, and lower montane zones. Seasonal progressions bring change, but the zones remain more or less fixed geographically from day to day and year to year. In the rocky intertidal, zonal qualities change radically from hour to hour, every day, always.

Living in the rocky intertidal means being ready to cope with relatively extreme variations in water cover and dessication, exposure to predators, temperature, and wave action.

One of the things I've enjoyed thinking about in this class is the importance of space as a resource for living things. Living things take up space. Space is limited. How effectively an organism, or species, occupies and utilizes its space determines whether it gets to continue living there.

Competition must be fierce--especially in this environment, where the volume of living space contracts to a very small size indeed. This tiny pool will just get smaller in the next few hours as water evaporates.

This tight little crevice is filled with creatures vying for space.

But then there are relatively big pools, nearly vacant.

Do you get more protection in a tight crevice than a big, open pool? Is that what explains the difference in population density? Or is this just random? If I observed this one pool every day during low tide for a year, how would it change?

Two kinds of limpet vie for space here on top of this rock, in the upper intertidal zone. The gray little volcanoes are Chthalamus sp., commonly called Buckshot Barnacles. The little black snails are Littornia sp., commonly called Periwinkles.

Chthalamus use a feather-like hind appendage to feed when the tide is in, and close up when the tide is out. They seal in water and resist dessication longer than the barnacles that grow lower down.

It seems like Chthalamus is winning the battle for space on this rock, but who can say. The flattened cone shape of barnacle shells helps to disperse the energy of crashing waves.

"Periwinkles have an interesting set of reflexes that brings them back to their normal habitat in the upper intertidal or splash zone [when waves knock them off their perches]. When they are underwater, they respond negatively to gravity. This instinct, known as negative geotaxis, causes them to crawl along rocks upward to the surface. If the snail crawls into a crack, when it is right-side up it has a negative reaction to light. If it is upside down it has a positive reaction to light. These instincts are known as positive and negative phototaxes. The result is that cracks pose no problem. A snail crawls into the crack and back out again, always moving upward. Once the snail emerges from the water it knows it is 'home'. As long as it remains moist, it will move only to feed." (Schoenherr)

Red algae (Phaeophyta) typically grow deeper in the water than green algae where it effectively absorbs deeply penetrating (short wavelength) light at the blue end of the visible spectrum.

This kind looks strongly attached to the rock to better resist wave action. Note that its growth does not extend into the perpetually wet lower areas.

It's limited to the surface which dries out between high tides. The coarse, leathery texture resists dessication.

Other kinds of algae can occupy the submerged bottoms. The brown algae in this picture is long and filamentous. I would guess it has a higher surface area overall than the flattened kind in the drier zone above.

And these sand-speckled things seem to know exactly where they belong, lined single-file in a crack!

Other creatures "sharing" space on this cord of kelp.

Anenomes are filter feeders. Here are some anenomes nestled in a crevice with water riffling over them. They can filter the organic matter out of the water as it continually rushes over it. I believe anenome reproduce asexually for the most part--an advantage, if you can't get up to find a mate.

These look like snails, but they're hermit crabs, perhaps Pagurus sp. "Life for a hermit crab includes incessant scavenging, either for food or for a home with the proper fit." (Shoenherr)

Green and red algae together. Very different morphologies. One is short and tufted, the other is thin and flat.

Many anemone.

Anenomes living in tight spaces. Do they grow big at their peril, and risk predation or dessication? Is it better to stay small?

Farther out, a harbor seal. They are said to like protected bays, inlets and river mouths. They are predators in the intertidal zone, but prey in open water.

Harbor seals (Phoca vitulina) are distinguished from sea lions (e.g., Zalophus californicus, the most common on the west coast) by having little depressions for ears, and strong hind flippers. Sea lions have visible ears and strong front flippers.

(When you see a seal show at a water park, with clapping "seals" playing with beach balls, those are actually sea lions, not seals. FYI.)

Like Australia and South Africa, climates similar to California's, there are big sharks off these waters, and transient orcas are more and more common according to my instructor. They only eat marine mammals. The residential orcas off Canada's coast eat fish.

For all the interest in the water, what captures my imagination today are these algal bouquets washed upon the sand.

So many different kinds, all knotted together.

You can see how closely they once shared space under water.

"A number of scavengers live among these piles of rotting kelp..." (Schoenherr)

A gardener would intuit as much. This is bascially compost material.

Except that it's not decomposing a pile.

This is Sea Palm, Postelsia palmaeformis.

"It is an annual species that is torn loose by the surf during fall and winter. Each year, about February, a new forest of Sea Palms grows on bare surfaces produced by disturbance... Studies of primary production in Sea Palms indicate that the intertidal region is one of the most productive ecosystems on the planet, producing more biomass per year than a tropical forest. A grove of Seal Palms fixes about 32 pounds of carbon per square yard of surface area per year (14.6 kg/m2/yr)." (Schoenherr)

The rocky cliffs are slowly giving rocks back to the ocean. This is chert, a sedimentary rock formed from dead sea creatures deposited on the ocean floor and lifted by plate subduction and translocation millions of years ago. (This whole area of California was at least 200 miles south of where it is right now only 25 million years ago.)

Signs warn of falling rocks, and I could hear rocks falling off the cliff during the whole visit. You can imagine this is a problem for people who choose to live here.

Many people do.

Talk about creatures sharing space...

Intending to counteract coastal erosion, people brought in this African (or is it Chilean?) iceplant Carpobrotus edulis syn. Mesembryanthemum edulis.

The result has been a net negative for California's coastal biodiversity, and I doubt it's done much to stop erosion.

On the way back to the car, I spot a garden...

In mild climates, gardeners don't really take down their gardens and put them in the garage for winter. (How depressing!) So there's sometimes a long period of "in-between" depending on your motivation to clean up.

But the winter lettuce is in...

And the pumpkins are ready for harvest.

And there are flowers all year long if you want them.

There's more about coastal erosion on the drive home. You can see current progress on the tunnel that will bypass Devil's Slide.

And you can see another noxious invasive plant from South America which has all but taken over all of the coastal cliffs: Cortaderia jubata, commonly called Pampas Grass, although people with more knowledge call it Jubata Grass and reserve Pampas Grass for the cleaner looking C. selloana.

And then you can glimpse on the bridge leading to the other side of the tunnel as we come around the bend.

Did you visit an ecosystem near you and blog about it? Post a link in the comments.

ADDED: The Chronicle ran a story on where to visit tide pools. Link.

Fall in the garden of my guru

2007-10-17T22:42:00.000-07:00

Emma's been wondering where the pictures I took in her garden are! I took these before we went to Yerba Buena.

(I love this combination of kangaroo paw with tibouchina!)

Eriogonum arborescens is one of my favorite, favorite plants.

Baccharis pilularis

and again a couple hours later with Nandina on the left and Japanese maple behind.

Bulbs for fall planting

2007-10-17T19:18:00.001-07:00

Pennykins simply does not know what we're going to do with all these bulbs!

She says, "Gack!"

With this delivery from Old House Gardens, all my fall bulbs are in, and I am done. Done!

What's in this order?

A bag of five Camassia leichtlinii, and the $30 Intro to Heirlooms fall sampler for Zone 9/10.

Camassia seem to be up in the air taxonomically--do they belong in the Liliaceae, Hyacinthaceae, or Agavaceae? I'm not sure about Agavaceae, but I could see either Liliaceae or Hyacinthaceae (with Chlorogalum!). The Liliaceae...what a mess that has been. I'm not even going to go there.

I'm just happy to have the quamash, or maybe I should say camas. Not to be confused with Death Camas which is Zigadenus. Even the common names are confusing. Well, the common names are always confusing. That's why noone likes them.

Why don't we move on to the fall sampler.

What did they pick for me?

Leucojum aestivum 'Gravetye Giant snowflake', Lilium 'Red Velvet', hyacinth Gipsy Queen, and daffodils Erlicheer, Sweetness, and Thalia.

I dug the five Camassia in today--between the tree fern and fuchsia (one), between ribes and next year's Digitalis (two), between Brugmansia and bamboo (three), next to Colocasia (four), and between Mimulus puccineus and Verbena lilacina--to test tolerance for dryness (five).

I have no idea where anything else is going. In pots most likely. The Red Velvet sounds interesting; it has "New England-bred, triploid vigor". Well, who wouldn't want that?

What did I do after I got all these bulbs I can't figure out to do with? Placed a spring order for $70. Hey, something has to replace the monocarpic Echium wildprettii after they bloom (hopefully next year), and I have four of them.

What did I order?

Dahlia atropurpurea! (I wonder how that will look next to the obscenely large cones of Rudbecka californica spp. californica which I bought at Yerba Buena a couple weeks ago.)

I thought G.F. Hemerick looked too good to pass up. I ordered three. Madame Stappers, meet Prince Noir. "A fragrant glad?" Fascinating, give me ten. Tuberose, pink rain lily? Yes, and yes.

Unbelievable.

Bloom Day...

2007-10-14T11:07:00.000-07:00

and other points of interest in the garden this morning.

I didn't want to open the window to take these pictures from the bedroom because Guy was still in bed, and it's cool out. So, they're a little blurred.

Link to last month's bloom day.
Link to Bloom Day High Command.

Seriously,

2007-10-12T21:55:00.001-07:00

if you're not watching Planet Earth, you should be. Because there might be something wrong with you. Ask your video store to carry it.

Notes to myself.

2007-10-12T21:24:00.000-07:00

I was much more drunk an hour ago. Than I am right now.

Besides my favorite coconut rum + pineapple chunks (with juice) + cran concoction, I'm also drinking lots of Bloody Marys these days. Bloody Marries? Surely, San Francisco's best Bloody Mary is had at the Lush Lounge. Well, at Whoreticulture Gardens, we do them with vodka + V-8 + freshly ground pepper + a few of these peppers Guy has Safeway deliver because we don't do grocery stores.

Anyhow, this blog post is a note to myself that all my recently ordered seeds have been delivered, and that tonight I sowed Penstemon Palmeri, Camassia quamash, Delphinium cardinale, and D. californica.

It has long been my custom since I started sowing seeds last year, to soak them in a glass of water overnight before sowing, and to discard any floaters. Only seeds that sink get sown. Well, none of the D. californica sank. They all floated. But I sowed them anyway. Because they all floated. We shall see what happens.

(I could just write that note down on the tag I insert into the sowing flat, but then what would I have to blog about? Carol keeps her notes separate from the blog, but I'm not that organized. Everything that happens that needs to be remembered, I put here. Because I have to do this for me. Because I don't know you. Why should I care about you?)

Also, I want to note, to myself, that Flowercraft Nursery was out of sterile sowing mix, and has been for several weeks. So I concocted my own mix with bagged peat and perlite, mixed 5:1. (Peat is reasonably sterile, and since I've never experienced damping off, I am not afraid of it.) What's generally* most important to seed germination, besides sowing shallowly, is good contact between the seed and sowing medium. Contact must be thorough. This is what keeps the seed coat soaked, so that water can leach away germination inhibitors, so the coat will soften, so that it will slough off. Peat fibers are very small, and form a nice, tight enclosure around the seed.

*What may be specifically important to germination are things like diurnal temperature fluctuation and stratification. Most temperate zone perennials need at least the diurnal temperature fluctuation to germinate. I keep the seed-sown containers on a heating pad during the day, and I put them outside at night.

The Camassia quamash I did not bother to soak. They will take several weeks or months to germinate, and during that time they'll be in a flat left outside in the cold California winter rains with no diurnal fluctuation. They'll have plenty of soaking.

They can dry out next summer. Like me.

Yerba Buena Nursery

2007-10-10T20:16:00.000-07:00

The godhead of California native plant nurseries in the Bay Area is a mile down this dirt road off Skyline Road in Woodside.

The drive is actually more beautiful than that picture indicates. It's more like this.

It's always very festive here.

In December, they have Christmas tea lunches. And they have farmhouse teas throughout the rest of the year.

Anyhow, it's a nice place to visit, and especially nice to visit today--the day after the first real fall rain of 2007.

And, of course, tons of plants.

Did you know the tallest tree species in the world is endemic to the Pacific coast, from mid-way up California to southern Oregon? This is it in a 1-gallon pot. Sequoia sempervirens, the Coast Redwood.

(Not to brag, but California also claims the world's most massive trees, and the world's oldest trees--Sequoiadendron giganteum and Pinus longaeva, respectively.)

Anyhow, I didn't come here to buy a big tree.

I came for Monardella macrantha, and I'm taking five of them. I'll donate one or two to the San Francisco Botanical Garden so we can try to propagate it there for plant sales, and I'll keep the others for myself.

No indication whether this is the one cultivar 'Marion Sampson', or if it's the species, or whether these were propagated from seed or vegetatively from one plant. The woman working the store today didn't know, and the nursery manager is away on vacation for another week. Maybe I'll call back to ask. I'd like to at least try growing this plant from seed. Other species of Monardella are very easy in cultivation, but this one is not. Which is too bad. Because it smells great and the flowers are relatively unusual.

Pet peeve of the day.

2007-10-09T08:39:00.000-07:00

"Oregon stay-at-home dad Thad Starr and his 1,524-pound pumpkin came from out of nowhere today to win the annual world championship pumpkin weigh-off in Half Moon Bay, shattering the competition's old record by nearly 300 pounds."

Link.

"Stay-at-home dad"? What could possibly be the reason for telling us Mr. Starr is a "stay-at-home dad"? How about "Home gardener Thad Starr"?

Stay-at-home dad. Is that me, or does the expression drip with condescension? You're not quite a normal dad if you're a stay-at-home dad. You're special. Do most mothers work in two-parent households nowadays? Should we call the ones who don't "stay-at-home moms"? Would you like to? Is that anyone's business? Ugh.

"Oh, great. More kitten movies. Just what I need."

2007-10-08T21:31:00.000-07:00

Bells and feathers.

Up on the roof

2007-10-08T19:23:00.000-07:00

This pot is making me happy.

The problem with "tree professionals"

2007-10-04T17:33:00.001-07:00

This article about legal consequences for topping tress in San Francisco contains a gem. Apparently some people see it as a problem that property owners face liability for bad pruning, and not the pruners.

Mike Sullivan, Friends of the Urban Forest adviser and author of "Trees of San Francisco" (Pomegranate Communications), has another idea. "It's not really effective to punish the homeowners for topping trees. ... The people who should be subject to the ordinance are the tree professionals. They absolutely know the city's laws. If you fined them a couple hundred (dollars) it would ensure it wouldn't happen again."

Who do you suppose are the tree professionals Mr. Sullivan is talking about? I have some ideas!

If the property owner cheaps out and hires, um, tree professionals instead of a licensed or certified or certificated arborist (I'm not sure if arborists are licensed or certified or certificated--and I'm too lazy to look it up), then that wasn't that the property owner's decision?

And if you hire an arborist, and the arborist fucks up, it's not going to be hard to bring the arborist to court. Which might not be the case with tree professionals.

2007-10-02T22:37:00.000-07:00

Pam Peirce has some pictures of the Undersea Garden at the Quail Botanical Gardens in Encinitas.

What is Penny chewing on?

2007-10-02T14:54:00.000-07:00

It seems a very informal seed exchange has sprouted up in my little corner of the garden blogger zone. (Heh, heh--I said a seed exchange has sprouted! Oh, geez, I'm good!!!)

Lisa, my number one garden blogger idol (an awkward, ineffective locution meant to communicate that I am her Number One Fan) sent me some Prunella vulgaris, a plant she was shocked to see me enthusing about. In exchange, I sent her some Digitalis purpurea 'Apricot Beauty'.

(I sent some of that off to the County Clerk too. Why, I guess you could say, I'm...wait for it...spreading my seed! Damn!)

Anyhow, I've been on a seed buying/gathering binge in the last few days. I wasn't sure if it was worth blogging about, but when Lisa's Prunella arrived today (thanks, Lisa!), I took it as a sign from God that he wants me to blog about my seed purchases. And let's face it, I haven't had much to say in a week or two.

Also, you may not have noticed, I reorganized the links. There's now a section just for purveyors of seed and plant. These are sources I use.

So, what seeds did I get?

From J.L. Hudson:

Delphinium californicum DELP-26 1 packet $2.00
Delphinium cardinale DELP-28 1 packet $3.00
Penstemon Palmeri PENS-121 1 packet $2.00
Jacaranda mimosifolia JACA-16 1 packet $2.00
Camassia quamash CAMA20 1 packet $2.00
Alonsoa meridionalis ALON-16 1 packet $2.00
Sphaeralcea ambigua SPHA-4 1 packet $2.00

I'm trying to amend the order to include Ricinus communis 'Camencita'. About that plant, a satisfied customer wrote, "The leaves are a luminous purple in full sun, and the impossibly bright, carmine red seed pods seem to glow from within." Oh, yeah.

You may recall I reported that Betsy Clebsch extolled the virtues of Delphinium cardinale--how nice to find the seeds for sale.

Hudson extolls the D. californicum in the 2007 catalog supplement. "Light blue-green to purplish three-quarter inch flowers in long, dense, 20-inch racemes in April to July. Vigorous hardy perennial to 7 feet, with palmately divided 6-inch leaves. California. Drought resistant. Magnificent. Germinates readily in 3-6 weeks." Sold.

I'm going to try the drought-loving native from the Great Basin, Penstemon palmeri, on my roof. Why not--it "needs hot, dry sunny places with well-drained gravelly soil." Annie's sells this in 4" pots. She describes "large pink flowers are fragrant and have beautiful nectar guides in their throats". Sold.

I bought Jacaranda seeds on a whim. Pam once inquired in the comments whether we grow it here. We do. It's everywhere, but not on Bernal Heights. At least not that I've noticed on Bernal Heights. It was blooming in May/June, and driving around town then, I kept thinking "Must take pictures of Jacaranda to show Pam." Never did tho'.

Bulbs are so expensive, and really not that hard to grow from seed, I decided to give Camassia a whirl. Alonsoa is a florific garden plant from Chile. I bought this cultivar, and I love it. So now, the species. Sphaeralcea ambigua is a mallow from the southern deserts. I didn't have good luck with desert native Calliandra eriophylla, but maybe the mallow will be better.

That's not all the seeds I bought. I found this Underwood Gardens place when I was cleaning out my web browser's bookmarks. No idea when I bookmarked it, or where I learned about it. Anyhow from them, I bought a few freak-o vegetables.

1 x Wonderberry (SYWB 40) = $2.75
1 x Asparagus Pea (PLT 07) = $3.00
1 x Alpine Strawberry, Red (FFV 48R) = $3.00
1 x Tomato, Black Cherry (TBC 66) = $3.00
1 x Radish, Red Meat Winter / Watermelon (RARM 11) = $2.50
1 x Pea, Snow, Oregon Giant Sugar Pod (PSO 01) = $2.50
1 x Fire n Ice (SYSS 32) = $3.00
1 x Cucamelon / Mouse Melon (SYMS 41) = $3.50
1 x Cosmos, Bright Lights (FECP 64) = $0.00

Wonderberry, Solanum Burbankii, was invented by California plantsman Luther Burbank in 1909.

Fire n Ice, Solanum sisymbrifolium. That's Underwood's spelling. When you do a Google search, it wants to know if you meant Solanum sisymbriifolium. And then you find out it's called Sticky Nightshade and it's toxic, but you can eat the fruit when fully ripe. I don't even know if I'll be able to get it fully ripe in San Francisco's mild summers. Between this and the Ricinus, I might die y'all!

What excited me first about the Underwood seeds was the Cucamelon, aka Mexican Sour Gherkin, Melothria scabra. That was the first thing I knew I wanted to buy from them, but if I wasn't such an impulse shopper, I would have found seeds for sale much cheaper in the J.L. Hudson catalog. Half the price, in fact.

Oh, well--whatever. What else is going on in my world of seeds...

If I'm going to sow Prunella, why not Purslane?

And to go with that, Miner's Lettuce.

These columbine took forever, but they finally came up.

Native perennial Keckiella brevifolia. White flowers, I think. I think I potted up ten of these on Sunday. I'll keep one and give the rest to the Botanical Garden for the plant sale.

Also recently potted up, Lilium pardilinum. I grew these from seed and just potted up the dormant bulb. Some sources say wait two years, but I found one reliable source who said it's okay after one year. Good enough for me. Fingers crossed.

And this is Evergreen Huckleberry, Vaccinium ovatum. I tried potting up a few of these recently, and they all died. I'm going to let them get bigger before I try again. In the meantime, I top-dressed the sowing medium with potting mix to get some nutrients in there. Tho' I'm not sure if they want any nutrients, being ericaceous and all...

Excerpt from an e-mail

2007-10-01T18:28:00.000-07:00

My BFF Kirsten just wrote:

"Did you know Dat is featured on page 20 of the new Garden Design? I opened up the new issue and he's there looking like a super model with the article 'I love this plant: Bell Reed'. Too funny :)"

That made me laugh out loud. Dat is my friend who works at Living Green. He functions at the outer limits of Super-Fabulous and I'm in no way surprised to hear he's turning up in the pages of Garden Design.

I don't subscribe to Garden Design (but I recently decided I want to), so I'll have to pick it up tomorrow. And then call Dat and invite him over for a drink. (My favorite drink right now: equal parts coconut rum, pineapple chunks with juice, cranberry juice, in that order, over ice, not mixed.)

Anyhow, I thought maybe they'd have Dat online so I could link. Well, it turns out I Love This Plant is a regular feature, but they're still running last month's feature, Whitfeldia elongata. Or maybe it's this month's feature, and Dat was really last month. Publishing is mysterious to me; everything seems to come out several months ahead of time. So you get the December issue in October. Why not ship the October issue in October?

Well, anyhow, Garden Design also has a readers poll up on the homepage: "The [American] city with the best exterior design is..."

San Francisco is beating L.A. three-to-one. Chicago is coming in second. Garden blogger capital of the known universe Austin, TX is tied with Boston, MA for second to last. Last is St. Louis. (Note to self: Is it always St. Louis? Never Saint Louis?)

Also, you can subscribe online by just signing up. Nice. And it's only $12 a year. Even if I hate it, I can deal with $12/year.

2007-09-30T20:48:00.000-07:00

Behind the Makeover!

2007-09-28T15:37:00.000-07:00

Extreme Gets Exposed!

Oh, enough with the sad attempts at cleverness.

Link.

Yes.

2007-09-27T22:21:00.000-07:00

"If [Thomas] Jefferson had dined only with those who'd been a force for good in the world, Jefferson would often have dined alone. If we insist only good and moral leaders talk to us, we'll wind up surrounded by silence. In fact, if we insist we talk only to those whose good deeds have matched their high aspirations, we won't always be on speaking terms with ourselves."

I'm not generally Peggy Noonan's biggest fan, but when she's right, she's right. RTWT.

Link.

2007-09-26T21:39:00.000-07:00

"A garden is an artificial construct. It shares some aspects with wild nature, but sometimes the two are at odds with each other. We shouldn't be surprised when nature complains about being contradicted." --Pam Peirce.

2007-09-26T21:31:00.000-07:00

Article about garden coaches, here.

Fine Gardening

2007-09-26T18:46:00.000-07:00

The new issue (No. 118, Dec-07) has an interview with Napa County designer Brandon Tyson who, if the pictures of his work are any indication, is very good at what he does. The piece is titled Designing with Form & Texture. Sounds good! I'm all about form and texture.

Should I be disappointed when the interview sends mixed messages?

Consider the discussion of cuphea.

"Cupheas have a weak form but possess an extremely light, fine texture. They can set a receptive mood in which to stage more-assertive plants."

Okay, pair cuphea with assertive plants. I'm on board with that. But then there's this:

"Many of the sculptural plants that I love to use--beaked yucca, for example--have powerful forms, smooth textures, and subtle colors. [Sounds like an assertive plant!--ed.] If you combine them with another plant with the same qualities, the combination comes alive. Surround beaked yucca with cuphea--a lively plant that I see more as texture and color and less as form--and the yucca will steal the show."

But I thought we should use cuphea to set a receptive mood to stage assertive plants...?

Well, whatever. Design is an art, and you can't teach it like a science. Me, I am a scientist, and design can be a real challenge. I expect that, and I don't really mind. I enjoy tweaking my garden, and it's possible I enjoy the process more than the result. Well, that's me.

I have a cuphea on my roof deck. Cuphea turns out to be an excellent container plant for a hot, sunny roof in San Francisco. This one's looking a little piqued right now, but aren't we all? I had it with a fine-textured, hyper-flowery white angelonia and dusty lavendar agastage--it was horrible. Today, I took those out and added passalong orange-flowering aloe and passalong orange-flowering Cotyledon orbiculatum v. longifolium.

I happen to really like orange.

The neighbor, S

2007-09-26T18:29:00.000-07:00

Although I haven't posted about it since I started, work in my neighbor S's garden is ongoing.

Since that inaugural post, I've probably worked ten hours.

Mostly culling deadwood.

Not enough to make visible headway.

I can't even say we've turned a corner yet.

But soon.

In exchange for today's haul...

I was sent home with a wild mushroom lasagna, roasted chicken, baked potatoes, and chocolate cake.

I enjoy listening to Fred's conversations while I work. Of course, he doesn't want to go on record. Maybe next time.

Indian summer

2007-09-26T17:47:00.001-07:00

It's hot.

(You will note this picture was taken in shade.)

The Echium wilts daily...

And perks up when the sun goes down.

Indian summer is one of the few reliable seasonal features of the San Francisco Bay Area. While shorter days mean cooler temperatures for the rest of the country, things start heating up here in coastal California this time of year.

Cold, moist ocean air gets pulled in from the Pacific all summer long when hot air in the Central Valley rises. That convection gets shut off when the Valley air stops rising as the days get shorter. But there's still plenty of sunshine during the day. At night, it's cold.

Perfect time to put out last year's amaryllis bulbs, which I did a couple weeks ago.

Planet Earth

2007-09-23T20:20:00.000-07:00

Are you watching (did you watch) the BBC documentary series Planet Earth? If not, you should put it in your queue.

Penny makes a strong endorsement.

2007-09-23T13:41:00.000-07:00

Southern Bulb Blog visits Los Angeles. Lots of pictures.

Link.

2007-09-22T20:26:00.001-07:00

Some garden notes.

2007-09-22T18:41:00.000-07:00

A light rain fell yesterday and today! California's second spring.

The bamboo shoots grow so fast. I wish I could remember which species we bought. I know the genus name for one was Bambusa, but I'm not sure if that's the tall one or the short one. Oh, well.

A few more Cosmos getting in under the wire.

Morning glory seeds coming up everywhere. Yikes!

Carrots and radishes too. I'd really like it if the carrots self-sowed in the garden.

One tomato plant is still producing.

The runner beans not so much.

In bud:

Delphinium.

Keckiella cordifolia.

It's a small plant now--there it is under the yarrow.

Epilobium canum. Cuttings from my guru's garden.

No more flowers on the snowberry...

But big berries.

New leaves budding out on Arctostaphylos pajaroensis 'Lester Rountree'.

Behind/underneath, Eriogonum grande var. rubescens. New plants. I'm hoping for bigger, pinker, fluffier flower heads next year.

Madia elegans not even close to slowing down. You can see it back there.

Something's eating the Fuchsia. No biggee.

I really love this mimulus.

I think we still have a few weeks of hot coming up, so too early to plant most of the bulbs. But I planted the quamash.

I took a cue from the last issue of Fine Gardening and bought a bulb auger. So much better than digging them in with a trowel.

Look at this freak-o bulb.

It's Fritillaria biflora. Most native bulbs don't want any summer water, so I'll wait a few more weeks to plant the rest. This batch came from Telos. I bought one Fritillaria, they sent me two. I bought three Camassia, they sent me four. Nice people!

I potted up some cineraria volunteers I found in the garden. Maybe I'll plant these in S's garden.

And I dug up my little clump of Sisyrinchium californicum and divided it.

I guess that little white spot on the right is scale.

2007-09-20T17:33:00.000-07:00

"On the world's list of weird foods, ortolan — a bite-size songbird roasted and gulped down whole — can claim a place of distinction."

Link.

I remember reading about this before there was an Internet. I'm just as horrified today as I was then.

"Native Treasures: Gardening with the Plants of California"

2007-09-17T22:31:00.000-07:00

This is Part 1 of 2. I'll add Part 2 tonight or tomorrow.

I attended this month's meeting of the California Horticultural Society last night to hear nurseryman Nevin Smith talk about gardening with California native plants.

Mr. Smith grew up in Sonoma County, California, working at his father's nursery. He earned a graduate degree in political science at Johns Hopkins University thinking he wouldn't enter the nursery trade, however that turned out not to be the case. He later started his own company named Wintergreen which he sold to the wholesale operation Suncrest and he's worked there ever since.

Suncrest is a key wholesale provider of retail nursery plants to all of California, well regarded for offerring quality material suitable for mediterranean climate gardens. Probably half the 1-gallon cans I've taken home from my local retail nursery had Suncrest labels, and I know the San Francisco Botanical Garden augments its plant sale inventory with an annual trip to Suncrest. I know because I had the good fortune of tagging along on last year's shopping spree. I was physically exhausted after visiting Suncrest's enormous, sprawling facility.

By now, even beginning native gardeners have ready access to a familiar palette of garden-friendly choices: ceanothus, manzanitas, salvias, currants, redbud, mimulus, lupine, buckwheat, erigeron, et cetera. All these plants are discussed at length in several recent books. However this talk emphasized species not commonly found in gardens many of which Mr. Smith is still working on developing for the market. After a brief introduction, he launched into a discussion of native trees, shrubs, vines, and perennials.

On the subject of trees, Mr. Smith seemed desolate. He said, by and large, people are not planting trees or even large shrubs in their gardens anymore. The emphasis now is on perennials and flowers. I cannot imagine enjoying a garden without some large plants for very long. Especially in a tiny garden like mine, it's absolutely necessary to have some vertical interest. To that end, in my garden, I picked the first tree Mr. Smith discussed, our native buckeye Aesculus californica (well, he went through a list in alphabetical order!). He described an especially shrubby selection of buckeye he made from Goat Mountain where the trees averaged only 6-10 feet in height. I'm planning to keep mine somewhere around 12 feet. A. californica is apparently quite amenable to that.

People are very reluctant to plant this tree now because it hosts Phytophthora ramorum, the fungus associated with Sudden Oak Death. Well, there aren't any oaks anywhere near my house. Also, I'm tired of this Sudden Oak Death hysteria. I've lately heard some authorities say Sudden Oak Death has not exactly lived up to its billing. California oaks are still in trouble, yes, but other problems may be more urgent than Phytophtora. And many of the exotics are susceptible to Phytophthohra too. So it goes.

He suggested several other species that straddle the tree/shrub size regime. Cupressus macnabiana is a garden-worthy cypress with excellent fragrance, but noone plants cypress anymore, and the only native cypress people are interested in having is the famous Monterey cypress (that's Cupressus macrocarpa--the first picture in this post), which is ill-suited to most garden environments. I can't say I blame people for not being enthusiastic about cypress in the garden, or wanting to have the most inappropriate cypress of all. Although, we did have a sample of this C. macnabiana for sale at the Botanical Garden recently and it smelled wonderful and I was sorely tempted. Someone bought it before I could tho'.

Other native shrubby trees he mentioned include Betula occidentalis, Fraxinus dipetala, and Cercis occidentalis. I guess I didn't realize Fraxinus dipetala (Flowering Ash) remained relatively small for its whole life. Maybe one day I'll get tired of having a summer-dormant buckeye in the garden and get Flowering Ash instead. He discussed a Cercis collected on the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada that turns scarlet in the fall, instead of the usual yellow--even when its grown at the coast, where fall color is generally not impressive. (Sidenote: my ecology teacher recently mentioned Cercis flowers are edible and taste good! I had no idea. Now I have a reason to live through winter.)

Also mentioned in the talk: Arbutus menziesii (challenging in any garden), Populus tremuloides (excellent selections currently in development), Quercus garryana var. breweri (very variable, can be anywhere between prostrate mat to tree-form)

Moving on to shrubs, he discussed the difficulty of bringing several plants into commercial production. Arctostaphylos nevadensis (collected at Black Butte) might one day be an alternative to A. uva-ursi, but current selections are hard to maintain.

Artemisia tridentata v. vaseyana is a more compact and manageable wormwood than the widely available A. californica, and it deserves more exposure.

Very drought tolerant Cercocarpus betuloides is a plant "we will have to see more of" in ornamental landscapes of the future due to anticipated water shortages in California. I'm on board with that. See it in the second, third and fourth pictures, here.

Chamaebatiaria millefolium is native east of the Sierra all the way to Colorado. Its toughness and incense-like fragrance recommends it for gardens west of the Sierra as well. Apparently it's much used around Denver. Chrysothamnus nauseosus is a much overlooked desert plant much loved by butterflies. The best toyons (Heteromeles arbutifolia) come from Lake Berryessa. He sees toyons used a lot in commercial landscapes, but not enough in the garden. He said his popular Malacothamnus fasciculatus 'Casitas' came from an illegal collection (cuttings) made "a long time ago".

Other shrubs discussed: Ceanothus oliganthus var. sorediatus, Eriogonum parvifolium , Eriogonum umbellatum var covillei, Holodiscus microphyllus, Lupinus albifrons, Philadelphus lewisii 'Covelo'.

He says many common garden Ceanothus have C. oliganthus in their lineage. Eriogonum parvifolium is available in many native plant nurseries. He described it as a tidy mound, but mine ranged and trailed. Seeds are available from Theodore Payne in my links. My notes don't describe why he thought that species of Holodiscus merited special attention over the common Holodiscus discolor, and the specimen in the slide he showed didn't look very good either, so I have no comment. Lupinus albifrons is the Silver Bush Lupine I've mentioned before (so has Amy Stewart). Flowers and fragrance can vary dramatically from specimen to specimen. Mine smells like grape soda and I couldn't be happier.

In Part 2: Vines, perennials, and sub-shrubs. And I'll talk about how I absolutely loved the Cal Hort meeting itself.

Ten things to remember from the seed saving class I took at the San Francisco Botanical Garden

2007-09-15T22:26:00.000-07:00

As taught by Don Mahoney, Ph.D., Curator.

Unfortunately, I cannot find my notes anywhere! So this is from memory. Maybe my BFF Kirsten will help me recollect some other interesting details.

1. To grow wild roses from seed, collect the hip before it turns red and sow immediately.

2. Genetic damage from inbred plants shows up in seeds from successive generations, not in seeds collected from the first isolated parent(s). This is one of those things that I find intellectually obvious, but not intuitively obvious. It means that you may grow vigorous plants from seeds collected from an isolated parent (grown from healthy parents) over and over again, but successive generations of offspring from these same vigorous plants will produce weaker and weaker seed.

3. Ethical seed collection. Get permits to collect on public land, and permission to collect on private land. Get permits from the USDA to import or export plant plant material to/from the USA, here. Take no more than 10% of the seed from any plant, or any plant population. Permits to collect can be hard to get. While there is legislation requiring you to have them, there is no mechanism in place for issuing them.

4. Collecting a few seeds from many plants is better than collecting many seeds from one plant.

5. Whenever possible, let seeds clean themselves.

Step #1) Take whole dead or nearly dead inflorescence (or what have you).
Step #2) Put in a paper bag, flowers pointed down.
Step #3) Wait.
Step #4) Collect loose seeds at the bottom of the bag.

6. A subscription to Rock Garden Quarterly is apparently a must for horticulture sophisticates. The Summer 2007 issue has some of the best writing about seed collecting Dr. Mahoney has ever seen.

Note: He also extolled the Deno book (link and link), but did not discuss Deno's passion for giberellic acid (link).

7. He joked about botanists' talent for distinguishing every teensy, tiny, minute micro detail, and why doing so makes perfect sense to botanists (so they can communicate clearly with one another).

No need for amateurs to exert themselves with all the fine distinctions. There are four basic seed vessels to remember: pods, capsules....nuts and berries? (Kirsten, help me out!)

8. Environmental Impact Reports do not typically take account of seed banked in soil. This is a serious flaw from a botanical-ecological perspective since large amounts of viable, quiescent native seeds may reside in a given volume of undisturbed soil. (An anecdote was shared about a forest fire in a redwood grove that yielded a vigorous, valley-wide stand of Ceanothus where no one could recall having seen a Ceanothus before. Within five years, the stump-sprouting redwood trees had shaded out the Ceanothus.)

9. The big thing for the last few years is using smoke to germinate seeds from fire-adapted ecosystems like South Africa and California. The active ingredient is nitric oxide and artificial smokes containing nitric oxide are now available (from two places I won't remember until I find my notes). Smoke is absolutely essential for germinating restio seeds and these artificial smokes will do the trick. (Nearly all grass-like plants fit in to one of four categores: carexes, sedges, rushes, and restios; you could add bamboos and make it five.)

10. Don't lose your notes.

Gunnera tinctoria in front.