7/27/2007
It's Froggy Friday...
Lisa's got lotsa frogs. Carol's trying to [avoid] squish[ing] them. Lost Roses recalls a rain of frogs. (But I don't believe it.)
Can't Bust This
Former narcotics officer Barry Cooper says he feels guilty for making over 800 drug arrests in his career: "The war on drugs is an utterly losing proposition," he tells Radar. "We caused more harm breaking up families to put non-violent drug offenders in jail than the drugs ever did. And for what? To eradicate 1/10th of a percent of drugs on the street."
Now he has made an instructional video called Never Get Busted Again. Radar Online has printed some of Cooper's tips.
Link.
My favorite: "If you are driving with large quantities of narcotics, do so in the rain. Cops hate pulling people over when it's wet out. Traveling during rush hour and other times of heavy traffic is also a good tactic."
Heh!
Added: A different view.
7/25/2007
Day 67 and 72
Day 67 looked good!
But this is wrong.
The countertop is supposed to be extend over the top of the undermounted sink so it's a straight drop off the counter with no lip. It's all there in the plans, but the sub didn't understand that, so the contractor has to eat this. Too bad!
Day 72:
They've papered over the counter top in preparation for tiling the backsplash.
The floating shelves are new.
The countertop on this wall has been removed.
Site of future refrigerator.
Pantry plus wine rack. Guy thinks all our food can fit in here. We'll see.
Paint swatches. We're going with the the very pale one on the left.
Link to Day 65.
But this is wrong.
The countertop is supposed to be extend over the top of the undermounted sink so it's a straight drop off the counter with no lip. It's all there in the plans, but the sub didn't understand that, so the contractor has to eat this. Too bad!
Day 72:
They've papered over the counter top in preparation for tiling the backsplash.
The floating shelves are new.
The countertop on this wall has been removed.
Site of future refrigerator.
Pantry plus wine rack. Guy thinks all our food can fit in here. We'll see.
Paint swatches. We're going with the the very pale one on the left.
Link to Day 65.
7/24/2007
Other Golden Gate Park news.
In today's paper:
Link.
Do you ever watch the television show Intervention? (We're hooked on it--heh, heh.) It's worth checking out just to see some of the interesting ways families and friends service their loved one's addiction. For example, parents frequently give their addict children money to buy drugs believing that it will keep them from resorting to prostitution or violent crime as means of funding a spiraling addiction. Eventually, something gives and they arrange an intervention. By that time, the damage is usually extensive and severe. (The 30-minute television format imposes some provocative limitations; the show is very watchable and easily engenders complex discussions that I won't get in to here. But you can if you want.)
Anyhow, I want to say San Francisco and its homeless (if those two things can be made separate) share a similarly co-dependent relationship. But where individual families can eventually come together and agree 1) that something must be done and 2) what that something is, it seems impossible that a whole city will ever be able to do that. Two contributing factors: a lack of strong leadership, San Francisco's deeply ingrained suspicion of strong leadership when it appears.
The result is variously comic, pathetic, frustrating, maddening and all kinds of other things.
Forget the coyotes. Do you really think your biggest concern is getting bitten by a wild animal?
Frankly, if you are in Golden Gate Park, a far greater danger is that you, or your child, or your pet, will step on a dirty hypodermic needle. Step off the paths, and you'll have plenty of chances...
"Needles?" said homeless park resident Christopher Ash when we asked him if there were any syringes at his camp site near the 25th Avenue-Park Presidio Boulevard split. "Sure. I stuck one in a tree right over here."
Ash found a needle in 30 seconds. A cheerful soul, he says he began taking LSD at the age of 13 and insists he has been living in the wilds of Golden Gate Park for five years...
"It's kind of like one big family," camper Valo Astonea said when he poked his head out of his sleeping bag. Among the 10 to 12 campers in the area, Astonea said, there were sometimes intravenous drug users, "but we kind of frown on that here."
That's not good enough. Inevitably when we write a story like this, there are complaints that we are unsympathetic to the homeless. But this isn't a homeless issue...
Volunteers like Bakewell and Stan Kaufman are doing their part cleaning up areas on their own. Now it is time for city government under this mayor to do its part.
"I am ... paying $8,500 a year in property taxes," says Kaufman. "In an ideal world, it wouldn't fall to volunteers to do this."
Of course, this is no ideal world. It's San Francisco.
Link.
Do you ever watch the television show Intervention? (We're hooked on it--heh, heh.) It's worth checking out just to see some of the interesting ways families and friends service their loved one's addiction. For example, parents frequently give their addict children money to buy drugs believing that it will keep them from resorting to prostitution or violent crime as means of funding a spiraling addiction. Eventually, something gives and they arrange an intervention. By that time, the damage is usually extensive and severe. (The 30-minute television format imposes some provocative limitations; the show is very watchable and easily engenders complex discussions that I won't get in to here. But you can if you want.)
Anyhow, I want to say San Francisco and its homeless (if those two things can be made separate) share a similarly co-dependent relationship. But where individual families can eventually come together and agree 1) that something must be done and 2) what that something is, it seems impossible that a whole city will ever be able to do that. Two contributing factors: a lack of strong leadership, San Francisco's deeply ingrained suspicion of strong leadership when it appears.
The result is variously comic, pathetic, frustrating, maddening and all kinds of other things.
7/22/2007
Some gardening.
Death came for the Mandevilla this week. This is the first time I've lost an established plant in my garden.
I know they're prone to lethal root rots. Sure enough. It's dead at the crown.
I liked having a vine here, trellised on the back steps, but for now I planted this Salvia coccinea 'Hummingbird Coral'.
Pretty, pretty.
The calla leaves drive me batshit.
Why won't they point down? They've been doing that for months now and I continue to feel annoyed every time I look over here. These plants are supposed to be content in shade, but this one acts like an abused child who never sees sunlight.
That ray growing at a painful diagonal is Cestrum nocturnum. One of these days, I'm going to cut it back.
I put the Japanese maple in here a few weeks ago when my neighbor cleaned out his yard and realigned the sun/shade axis in my garden. I hope to get some good texture mojo from the combination of Acer palmatum and Bartlettina sordida.
A constant gardening irritation. Non-neatly nesting 1-gallon pots.
Drives me nuts. I don't buy that many 1-g plants, but I do keep the containers for cuttings and transplants. They should all just nest without me having to nest them. (Do I sound like a crazy person?)
While I was at the nursery looking for something to replace the dead Mandevilla, I found Symphoricarpus albus for $8.99. I put it here next to the bird bath. It's loaded with flower buds. The snowberries I already had in my garden have teeny, tiny flower buds. This one's going to be in full bloom next week, and I'll have berries this winter for sure!
Climbing roses in a container...who knows. I have to put something on the retaining wall in back, and I want it to cover the fence a little bit. I figure it's worth a shot. I just moved this container here from another spot and tied down the verticals.
Novelty cucumbers doing good. I hope they taste good too.
I'm surprised to find Cerinthe coming up everywhere already. I know it self-sows, but I did not expect to see seedlings in July from plants I took out in May.
That's just some of them.
Anyone know what this plant is?
It must have come from seed too. Any ideas?
I know they're prone to lethal root rots. Sure enough. It's dead at the crown.
I liked having a vine here, trellised on the back steps, but for now I planted this Salvia coccinea 'Hummingbird Coral'.
Pretty, pretty.
The calla leaves drive me batshit.
Why won't they point down? They've been doing that for months now and I continue to feel annoyed every time I look over here. These plants are supposed to be content in shade, but this one acts like an abused child who never sees sunlight.
That ray growing at a painful diagonal is Cestrum nocturnum. One of these days, I'm going to cut it back.
I put the Japanese maple in here a few weeks ago when my neighbor cleaned out his yard and realigned the sun/shade axis in my garden. I hope to get some good texture mojo from the combination of Acer palmatum and Bartlettina sordida.
A constant gardening irritation. Non-neatly nesting 1-gallon pots.
Drives me nuts. I don't buy that many 1-g plants, but I do keep the containers for cuttings and transplants. They should all just nest without me having to nest them. (Do I sound like a crazy person?)
While I was at the nursery looking for something to replace the dead Mandevilla, I found Symphoricarpus albus for $8.99. I put it here next to the bird bath. It's loaded with flower buds. The snowberries I already had in my garden have teeny, tiny flower buds. This one's going to be in full bloom next week, and I'll have berries this winter for sure!
Climbing roses in a container...who knows. I have to put something on the retaining wall in back, and I want it to cover the fence a little bit. I figure it's worth a shot. I just moved this container here from another spot and tied down the verticals.
Novelty cucumbers doing good. I hope they taste good too.
I'm surprised to find Cerinthe coming up everywhere already. I know it self-sows, but I did not expect to see seedlings in July from plants I took out in May.
That's just some of them.
Anyone know what this plant is?
It must have come from seed too. Any ideas?
Friday Night Botanical Garden
Posted on Sunday because I was too tired when I got home on Friday, and I spent all day Saturday reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (which I was delighted to find at Red Hill Books a few blocks away from where I live. I picked up my copy Saturday around noon, but the bookstore had a party Friday night and stayed open until 1:30 a.m. Saturday morning. She told me they sold 150 Harry Potters. Two people in line in front of me and the woman behind me all bought the book, and they had three two-foot stacks of pre-ordered books wrapped in paper and ready for pick-up. Anyway the book was good and I enjoyed it very much. None of my predictions turned out to be correct, which is typical.)
Now back to the Botanical Garden...(I was here yesterday too):
I was here for a volunteer appreciation party. Last year when I was unemployed, I volunteered extensively. This year, I'm working again so I mostly volunteer for evening events and monthly sales, but I also do some nursery work from home in the form of growing native plants from seed. Last week, I dropped of several 4" pots of Keckiella cordifolia and Berberis nevinii.
People volunteer in different areas at the nursery. I, obviously, work with CA natives. These are shrubs people. The lady in the yellow sweater is the fuchsia lady. She has a lovely southern accent; I'm not sure exactly where from.
The guy in the yellow sweater is Bernie. He has a small installation and maintenance business named Dirty Hoe. He brings home brew every year; this was a hefeweizen. We worked together a little bit in the meso-American cloud forest last year.
Mostly I socialized (and got caught up on the coyote situation from one of the gardeners), but I did sneak out to visit the garden for a bit too.
I didn't get a good picture of this tree, but its name is Dais cotinifolius, from South Africa, in the Thymelaceae, which is a family I don't know much about, except that it includes Daphne (but not thyme which is in the Lamiaceae, obviously).
And I don't know what this blue-flowering plant is, but I like it.
Now back to the Botanical Garden...(I was here yesterday too):
I was here for a volunteer appreciation party. Last year when I was unemployed, I volunteered extensively. This year, I'm working again so I mostly volunteer for evening events and monthly sales, but I also do some nursery work from home in the form of growing native plants from seed. Last week, I dropped of several 4" pots of Keckiella cordifolia and Berberis nevinii.
People volunteer in different areas at the nursery. I, obviously, work with CA natives. These are shrubs people. The lady in the yellow sweater is the fuchsia lady. She has a lovely southern accent; I'm not sure exactly where from.
The guy in the yellow sweater is Bernie. He has a small installation and maintenance business named Dirty Hoe. He brings home brew every year; this was a hefeweizen. We worked together a little bit in the meso-American cloud forest last year.
Mostly I socialized (and got caught up on the coyote situation from one of the gardeners), but I did sneak out to visit the garden for a bit too.
I didn't get a good picture of this tree, but its name is Dais cotinifolius, from South Africa, in the Thymelaceae, which is a family I don't know much about, except that it includes Daphne (but not thyme which is in the Lamiaceae, obviously).
And I don't know what this blue-flowering plant is, but I like it.
7/20/2007
"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.
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.
7/19/2007
Thursday night botanical garden
Finally, a halfway decent picture of Iochroma cyaneum for you.
The Beaucarnia is flowering!
Follow the trunk on that Echium. So cool!
I've been trying to get here after work for awhile. San Francisco is beautiful in the summer evening light. It follows that the Botanical Garden is even more beautiful. The garden closes at 5 p.m. I thought that meant noone could be in the garden past 5, but it means you can't enter after 5. You can exit through the turnstiles after the gates are locked.
But I didn't come here alone tonight. I'm here with my bff Kirsten who works for the non-profit arboretum foundation. For a living. Yes, she's that fabulous.
And she's a total brainiac. She knows immediately how to take close-ups with my camera. So now I know! I tell her this will dramatically increase the blog's photographic range. She said, "You have a blog?" She becomes the third person who knows me personally to learn that I have a blog.
Kirsten, thank you for showing me what that little button on my camera is for!
This odd, trailing dwarf conifer is one of my favorite plants in the whole garden.
Quail family!
(Sorry the picture's blurry. I generally try to keep my distance. There are usually at least two mating pair here every year. This
There's a class tonight on 'Horticulture Therapy', like to learn how to help disabled people appreciate plants. Plants for blind people, plants for angry children. Something like that. Kirsten explained it better. They have a lot of classes here. These are the people in the class heading in to the garden.
They have classes and lectures and seminars going on all the time.
I love that there are two societies for succulent & cactus enthusiasts.
Do you belong to any horticultural societies? If so, which ones? If not, how come?
The offices are at the end of the hall. We're special so we can go inside and look around.
Last year's promotional posters. The arboretum has a large collection of magnolias from all over the world.
That's Kirsten's desk, and that's her hand.
An old aerial view of the botanical garden (along the bottom), Stow Lake (upper left), and the former California Academy of Science and DeYoung Museum (both now, or soon to be, in new structures).
After finishing some business, we're off for dinner.
This neighborhood is called 'the inner Sunset'.
This is le Video, generally considered the best movie rental store in San Francisco.
We're having burgers.
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