Excerpt from an e-mail

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.

The neighbor, S

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.

In which I get legit

Too legit to quit?

You can decide that for yourself after reading this post. Although you might not have enough information to reach a decision.

I began my gardening-for-food arrangement with Neighbor S today. This is S's beautiful wolfhound-shepherd mix.



And this is her garden which has gotten away from her, as you can see.



Gardening efforts began here in the mid-1980s. I'd say this is a 250 sq. ft. space--about half the size of my backyard.

There's a too-large pear tree, an espaliered apple tree distorted from planarity....



Two lilacs, at least one fuchsia, three or four abutilon (one variegated), comfrey...



Lavandula, nastirtium...



a Brugmansia, various salvias, oxalis, Parietaria judaica, and other stuff including this fragrant, herbaceous thing--what is it?



(And, oh look, Japanese anenonme--she loves it and wants more.)

But what dominates the garden, and dominated today's gardening efforts: wild grape (on the right) and a huuuge old Rosa 'Mermaid' (center-ish):



The result is deep shade and extensive deadwood.



Mermaid's trunk is a good 4-5 inches in diameter.



I'm very excited about the sinuous old trunk of the wild grape vine.





You can't buy that kind of established effect--I'm excited about finding a way to feature this character more effectively.

Anyhow, with trusty loppers, hand pruners, and a hand-saw S loaned me because I don't own one, I filled two big bags of dead rosewood. What I really needed for this job was safety glasses to keep all the falling plant litter out of my eyes while I pruned overhead.

S loves her roses and she has a lot of them. And those roses have a lot of crossed wood.



I feel comfortable (i.e., competent) about pruning this kind of stuff out and getting some better structure in here. But I also know doing what has to be done will create some dramatic changes in her garden that she might find surprising. I want her to trust me, so I tell her exactly what I want to do and ask her to think about it for now.

Knowing the names of most of her plants during the walkthrough helped instill some confidence and I think demonstrating that I can distinguish living wood from dead wood did too.

I do not think this garden has strong bones. But there are some strong elements: the fruit trees, 'Mermaid', the grape, several othe roses. Also, the fence and various trellises seem to be in great shape considering.



I think most of the other plants are subject to transplanting (or expendable). But there's still lots of pruning to be done before decisions like that get made.

S sent me home after two hours with delicious rice and chicken I should have photographed but didn't think to until it was too late. Next time.

Visit Bali with the Deviant Deziner, here.

"Free Spirit Spheres build lovely, spherical wooden treehouses that you enter via a suspension bridge." Link.

[Joan] Rivers has been down too many times, and too far, to think that getting the last word really counts for much. It's an apt touch to play video footage of Rivers misidentifying one star after another on the Oscar night red carpet. Celebrity, which she's courted one way or another all her professional life, is a ripe fruit waiting to rot. "Who the f- are you?" as Rivers puts it, the eternal Hollywood question.

" 'Thank-you' is a sign of weakness," she says in one of her battle mottos in the show. Women should "use sex as a weapon." Balance that hard sell with the surreal images she conjures of her own body falling apart or the cartoon lunacy of some old man's 36-hour erection on Cialis. Rivers talks tough about going after what you want, but she knows it all falls apart anyway. Laughter, finally, is what gets you through the career disappointments and a husband dead by suicide and all the rest.

Link.

I can't say I've paid close attention to Joan Rivers in recent years, but when I was young I thought she was hilarious. I love outrageous, offensive humor. The worse, the better. Part of me thinks I would love to be the garden blogger who trashes everyone's flowers on Bloom Day. "Those flowers are hideous! What a shitty garden! Another goddamn daylily? Is she fucking kidding me?" But that's just not me. (So, I guess I would actually prefer to read that blogger, rather than be him.)

The Joan Rivers show at the Plush Room sounds like fun.

In a rapid-fire hour at the Plush Room, Rivers laid waste to homeless people, stroke victims, Palestinians ("They're so ugly"), lesbian nuns, Angelina Jolie's "pelican lips," Anne Frank, Tom Cruise, crazy people, Hillary Clinton ("She's such a dyke"), Madonna's "homely children" and her own good friend Linda Carter ("that stupid bitch") and "best friend" Julie Andrews.

but it's way sold out. There's always Connie Francis. And Charlotte Rae. Seriously. Charlotte Rae. Scroll down.

When I win the lottery, I'm hiring someone who's job it will be to make sure I have tickets to all the fun, ridiculous shows that come to town that slip past my admittedly poor radar.

Phillip Oliver blogged his visit to the Dumbarton Oaks in Washington D.C.

In a year or two of reading garden blogs, I've never heard of it. Apparently, it's not very well known out there either.

Out my way, the big estate garden is Filoli, and everyone knows about it. I blogged my visit last spring here.

ADDED: And then he goes to Hillwood, which has a pet cemetery, people! Link.

This might be your L.A. garden if you happen to be a certain famously androgynous Grammy-winning lesbian country/pop-singing Canadian.

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

Link.

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

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

Link and link.

"Really, do you think this is too big for a houseplant?"

Link.

Amy Stewart

chicken blogs!