Pruning class

I enrolled in a pruning class at a community college several miles south of San Francisco. Today is the second of four class meetings. (A rundown of last week's class in Part IV of this post.) We're assembling in a backyard fruit orchard in Santa Clara to prune fruit trees. I have to be there at 9 a.m.

I shot a little video of me driving south down 101, but accidentally deleted it before uploading to YouTube. Whoops!

Santa Clara. I was born near here and lived here for 18 years, but I haven't got a clue what distinguishes Santa Clara from the cities and towns that surround it. Everything runs together, here in the heart of residential Silicon Valley. And for the most part it's not especially pretty.

I was a little kid before there was a Silicon Valley. I remember orchards and fields and roadside produce stands. The soil under the asphalt and expressways and factories is among the most fertile and rich you could ever hope to find. But Bill Hewlett and David Packard started something in their Palo Alto garage the old orchards could not withstand, and the rest is history.

Today Santa Clara feels dreary and dated in that uniquely suburban way.



Rocks and agapanthus figure prominently in the local mise-en-scene.



(FYI: these ugly, low-slung, knock-ups sell in the $800,000 to $900,000 range.)

We're here to prune fruit trees in the backyard of this house.



My teacher owns it. He used to live here, but now he rents it out.

Note Buddha head under Sequoia sempervirens. So California.



You expect your hort teacher to show up in a truck, but our's drives a beamer!



Okay, we're not here to compare cars; we're here to prune trees. Let's get down to business. Fruit trees. Lots of them. Apples, cherries, peaches, oranges, pomegranate.







This woman thought I was "Gross!" for tasting seeds from a fallen, partly rotten pomegranate. As a rule, I despise people like her and avoid them at all costs. (The seeds were delicious.)



However I do deserve some disdain because I picked an orange without permission and ate it. How unbelievably rude of me. Driving home afterwards, I could not believe I did that! I must have been rendered temporarily insane by the sight of a bountiful orange tree. We can't grow them in San Francisco. We can hardly grow any fruit in San Francisco. Lemons (Meyer, and better, Eureka) and pineapple guava work best. Anyway, I deserve a spanking for picking an orange.

What is there to say about pruning fruit trees? Rule of Thirds. Don't remove more than one-third of a tree's crown in any year. Cut back to lateral branches that are at least one-third the diameter of the wood below the lateral. He couldn't remember if there's a third rule of thirds and I wouldn't know if there is or not.

Teacher shows us how it's done. Isn't he cute?



We pruned the trees to keep them small and healthy, cutting out dead and damaged wood and always leaving the collar so the tree can close the wound.

Before:

After:

These pots are groovy as hell.







I'm always taken aback by the sight of an exposed compost pile.



Rats? Raccoons?



I used to add charcoal to my compost pile too. But I thought it was a no-no.

He has a beautiful garden with a unique style that I can't capture on camera with 30 horticulture students milling around. I'll just say the garden is simple and understated and feels very nice to be in.

After a few hours, I felt satisfied. This was fun, and I'm looking forward to next week. As I understand it, we'll be pruning ornamentals in Palo Alto.

I rarely drive this far south of San Francisco. Since I'm in the neighborhood, I call my dad to see if he wants to have lunch. He still lives in the house where I grew up. He's at a Macintosh workshop when I call, but he'll be home in an hour. What's more, he's delighted to hear I'm pruning fruit trees because he needs some help with his fruit trees--apricot, apple, pear. When I was a kid, we also had loquat, miniature orange, and two kinds of plum.

I have only vague ideas about where I am when I start out in Santa Clara, but having grown up in this area, I find my way intuitively without getting on the freeway. It takes me 30 minutes to reach my childhood home.

Here it is: the house where I grew up.



A neighbor told us the house went up in one day in 1970. My dad bought it in 1973 and he's lived there ever since. He's not home and I don't have a key. I hop the fence into the backyard.

My dad's got a thing for trains. These narrow-gauge train tracks circle the house, cross trestles, pass through tunnels and exert their trainy charm on all who are susceptible to it.







Dad's got his work cut out for him getting this place in shape for his summertime train club get-togethers. A bunch of old geezers come over to drink beer and watch the trains roll. The next weekend, they do it at another guy's house.

The garden's gone to pot. The pond is empty and oxalis is the key planting.

The people dad bought the house from did a lot of interesting landscaping during the few years they lived here.



Lots of paths, raised beds, big trees, interesting lines and textures. Most of it is lost, but no doubt my immersion in this backyard affected me deeply. This was a happy place during my childhood.

This sedum under the leaves is at least 34 years old.



As is this bamboo and that birdhouse.



And whatever that dark green shrub is. I've never liked it.



I can see why he needs help with the apricot tree. What a mess!



He's still not home, so I go for a walk.

Our house was always special. The rest of the neighborhood looks like this.



For miles.

That cortaderia's been here forever. I remember playing in it as a little kid.



Despite the recent cold weather, everyone's citrus looks fine.





This house has been this color since I started walking to school in 1974.



It looked cute in 1974. Now it's just shabby.

Tucked in between the banality, interesting signs of horticultural life.





A lonely Nolina.



Hedges are the main thing.







And long fences.



This picture speaks one million cruel words about the suburban landscaping mind:



Look what's growing next to the bricks...Feijoa sellowiana. The pineapple guava that grows so well in San Francisco.



My dad calls to tell me he's home. On the way back to his place, I walk through my old elementary school.



The kickball diamond--a site of much humiliation.



This is cool.





I have a John Cage moment.



My dad's new best friend, Mr. Bojangles. Dad's girlfriend found him and brought him here. He's a sweetheart.



(Note: This is my "here kitty, kitty" voice; not my normal speaking voice.)

Inside, I'm reminded of why I don't visit very often. A bachelor with manic-depressive tendencies and an artist's temperament equals chaos.

And fabulous taste in furniture.







Wait, what's that? Apparently my dad carved Dorothy Gale's house out of wood "a long time ago". But since I have never seen this before today I am skeptical about the "a long time ago" part.



It's kind of scary that we both know Dorothy's last name is Gale.

He's a wood-carver my dad.

He carved the Nautilis from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. It has lights and a motor and everything.



It was his favorite movie from childhood.



The Adam and Eve bookcase always makes me smile.



Please don't ask me why he painted the wood paneling blue. Some questions cannot be answered.

He had a stained glass phase in the 1970s.



But mostly he's a photographer. These are the hills just two miles out of town.





We drink coffee and talk. He videotapes me pruning his fruit trees. He actually directs me pruning his fruit trees. "Let me focus in on that branch and then you come in and talk about it." Ugh. I try to get through it as best I can, and I'm on my way.

I take Highway 280 home.



Along the way I stop at a couple rest stops.





California's Missions are carved into the base of the Father Junipero Serra statue. I spot two of my favorites.



I wish I could take you to San Juan Capistrano. But I visit Orange County even less often than I visit Santa Clara County.

"Arthur Shapiro, who teaches entomology at UC Davis, has a standing offer: If you bring him the first cabbage white butterfly of the year caught outdoors -- and that part is important -- in Yolo, Solano or Sacramento counties, he'll buy you a pitcher of beer."

Do you know the word "phenology"? Learn about it at the link.

In which I amuse myself

Yeah!

I don't know what's going on in my birdbath.

Do you?



The birds are leaving all this crap behind. And by crap, I do not mean shit.

Are they seeds? Why are birds leaving seeds in my birdbath? (I guess it's their birdbath, but I have title to it, right?)

Are they softening the seedcoats? Birds don't care about germinating new plants. They just want to eat, right? Maybe the birds know soaking these seeds makes the seeds taste better. Birds can't taste capsaicin, but maybe there are other tastes birds cannot abide.

Softening the seedcoat might make the seed more digestible. But how would a bird know that? A bird doesn't understand that it digests its food. And birds eat plenty of seeds without soaking them first. How would they know these seeds need soaking?

And what about the seed? What's it getting in the bargain? (And what kind of seed is this anyway? I can't take a good picture of it. It's kinda spotted, and when I cut it open, it's white inside.)

Does the seed expect a bird to soak it in water before it germinates? Birds and seeds evolved without birdbaths. Where would a bird find water right now if my birdbath wasn't here? It's been cold and frosty. There is no standing water anywhere right now. There would have been streams without all these buildings, but leaving food in streams doesn't seem like a good idea to me.

Am I being too rational about this? Birds have tiny little brains. Maybe they're crazy. Maybe the bird vomited these seeds in my birdbath. Eww!

P.S. Please share your ideas about this in the comments.

Woodsy Owl

is going to be incinerated.

Link and link.

Like a lot of people who live in tourist destinations, I rarely think to visit the beautiful places that make my city famous. The beauty doesn't just belong to me as a San Franciscan or a Californian. It belongs to everyone.

In that spirit, on this MLK Day, would you like to come along for a visit?



You recognize this place, don't you?



Alcatraz. My dad's godmother's father was a sign painter on Alcatraz during the entire time it operated as a prison. They lived on the island. My dad's godmother frequently took my dad and his twin brother to stay with her family on Alcatraz for weekends. There are endless family stories about the trouble they got into there.

My grandfather worked for the Department of Public Health when he first came to California. As the county doctor, it was part of his job to operate on Alcatraz prisoners when they needed surgery. I've had all kinds of behind-the-scenes tours of over the years, including the surgery suite where my grandfather operated. The operating tables are still there.

The Garden Conservancy has taken custody of the gardens on Alcatraz and hired a gardener to renovate them. They were once quite beautiful. I would give my eye teeth to have that job some day!

Angel Island. My aunt was a docent there for awhile.



San Francisco Bay's version of Ellis Island. The government kept Chinese immigrants here for months, years while determining whether or not to grant them entry to America.

Adrienne Rich:

[N]o icon lifts a lamp here
history's breath blotting the air
over Gold Mountain a transfer
of patterns like the transfer of African applique
to rural Alabama
voices alive in legends, curses
tongue-lashings
poems on a weary wall

And when light swivels off Angel Island and Alcatraz
when the bays leap into life
views of the Palace of Fine Arts,
TransAmerica
when sunset bathes the three bridges
still
old ghosts crouch hoarsely whispering
under Gold Mountain

My own San Francisco story is a cliche. You've probably heard it before. I first moved here as a runaway when my father chased me out of the house after finding out I'm gay. I went from being a runaway to being a homeowner. How's that for the American dream?

The dunes at the beach went into restoration in the mid-1990s when the park service took custody of the land from the military after base closures some years before. Volunteers planted coyote bush, lupine, artemesia and coast strawberry. Once upon a time, this was what a lot of San Francisco looked like.



I love the old military buildings.



The big container ships sail in and out all day long.



Other kinds of ships sail in and out all day too.



I highly recommend the bay cruises offerred by the various ferry lines at Fisherman's Wharf. One goes just outside the Golden Gate; it's quite thrilling.

Another time we'll go across the bridge. But this is as far as we're going today.



I want to visit the Palace of Fine Arts too.









Surely San Francisco's most exquisite landmark.





Acanthus mollis planted beneath Corinthian columns!



This is the plant whose foliage inspired the Corinthian capital.



Coprosma repens, Mirror Plant. Popular with the Victorians. There's a lot of it in Golden Gate Park.



Maytenus boaria, the lovely Maytens tree.



Around the park, beautiful homes with some nice front gardens, all professionally done I'm sure.

Ask for an ocean view...

Nina takes it to the next level. Check it out!

Don't miss the travel archives, particularly Sicily '06 and Canadian Rockies '06.

It's the time of year...

...for seeds! I just added four of my favorite seed-sellers to the links list. They all have interesting websites and/or catalogs you might find useful and/or enjoyable.

(They're all in California, except for Territorial which is in Oregon.)

J.L. Hudson, Seedsman: I keep this groovy old-school catalog in the drawer of my nightstand. He also sells gibberellic acid kits.

Peaceful Valley Farm & Garden Supply: I did my soil test with these folks.

Swallowtail Garden Seeds: Great website with lots of pictures; they sell some hard-to-find seeds too.

Territorial Seed Company: I ordered most of my vegetable seeds from them.

Two links I've had up for awhile:

Seedhunt: This woman works at Suncrest Nursery (wholesalers) in Watsonville and runs her own seed business. She sells rare CA natives and exciting restios, among other things.

Theodore Payne Foundation: Dedicated to preserving and disseminating CA natives and wildflowers.


Please feel free to list some of your favorite seed sources in the comments.

Can you identify birds?

I'm really impressed with Firefly's birding abilities. I bought a book to help me recognize avian visitors to my backyard, but it hasn't panned out. I see birds that aren't in the book, and the birds that are in the book don't seem to come around here. Except for the blue jays, and possibly some finches.

So I was happy to see Anne Raver's column in the New York Times. She's really good at birds too. She references the Cornell Lab of Ornithology website, and I want to say, "Why not just call it 'Cornell Ornithology Lab'?"

Well, they didn't ask me. Anyhoo, I've spent quite a lot of time at this dandy site, and it's much better than the book I bought. I want to alert you to it too in case you don't read the NYT. Because let's face it. Their Home and Garden section rarely has anything to do with actual gardening and that really bugs me.

January's prelude to spring.

I planted the amaryllis in the white pot first and it took forever to come up. Then I planted in the one in the blue pot and it came up right away. I meant to stagger them, but now I have two at the same time. There are worse calamities. (They don't live outdoors...I just thought they'd like some direct light for a couple hours.)



Cistus skanbergii usually has one or two flowers on it all year, but all the sudden I have a dozen this morning. By early spring it'll be covered with little flowers. Should that be Cistus x skanbergii? I'm too lazy to reach under the bed for Sunset.



Next year I'll make a small pot of the strappy black ophiopogon and bright green ipheion. Don't you think that's a nice, easy combination? Bright green and black? And the ipheion makes that little blue star-flower.



The little seedling back there is Heracleum lanatum (Cow parsnip)--a native I picked for habitat interest (that is, to attract bees and butterflies). I tucked a few seeds here and there and then sowed some in pots for good measure. Now I have five of them coming along. Which is fine, but they're biggish plants. I'm not sure how that's going to work out.



Small narcissus of some sort. I've already forgotten what to expect from these.



Two kissers kissing. Very spring-y.



Noticing how old you look. Very winter-y. I'm getting puffy! And where's my chin going? Come back, chin!

It's hard to take a picture of yourself kissing.

The official history of the Garden Club of Palo Alto...

...[A]ll 85-some years of it, is full of library book donations, checks sent to the Save the Redwoods League, and all sorts of landscaping projects around town.

But between the lines of its staid minutes is some of the stuff of soap opera -- there's no real explanation, for example, of what led to the fuss of April 1924, when all the club's male members resigned en masse. Men were thereafter allowed as honorary members only.

Sometimes, the ire was a bit more public...

Link.

Wouldn't it be wonderful to follow the ins and outs of local garden club in the paper? I would love that.

I'll take you to the Gamble Garden in Palo Alto next week. I'm going to be down that way for a pruning class.

More about bacteria.

This time in the air over Texas:

"[D]aily air samples were taken at several locations in San Antonio and Austin over a 17-week period. The samples were sent to Berkeley Lab where they were analyzed by the microarray. It found 1,800 types of bacteria, including some pathogens, wafting in the air over the two cities. This diverse population matches the complexity of soil populations, which is considered to be one of the richest habitats for microbes."

Link.

You hear that, Texas readers? Your air is teeming with bacteria! What do you have to say about that?

Note that this research is being funded in the name of homeland security. Everything's gotta have a reason I guess, but science for its own sake is fascinating enough, imo.

I composted my Christmas tree.

This guy gets to eat his.



Is it me, or is there something slightly disturbing about this picture? It bothers me a little bit. He looks happy enough, but there's something unnatural looking about a baby elephant eating a tree. I feel worried for him.

Unlike the pie, pudding, and honeyed ham that may be haunting your fridge, though, pine trees' unique oils may actually help some animals' digestion, Kuehne said.

People too might benefit from a little bark—but not necessarily in their bites. Some doctors are touting supplements with a pine bark extract called Pycnogenol. Supporters claim the antioxidant compound can reduce asthma attacks, thin blood, improve circulation, lower blood pressure, and relieve symptoms of diabetes.

Link.

Pycnogenol? I've never heard of it. But then I don't know much about natural products. Pycnogenol.com has this to say:

More than 170 scientific articles and clinical trials have confirmed Pycnogenol’s safety, absence of toxicity and clinical efficacy over the past 35 years. Today, Pycnogenol® is one of the most researched ingredients in the natural product marketplace. Published findings have demonstrated Pycnogenol’s beneficial effects in cardiovascular health, skincare, cognitive function, diabetes health, inflammation, sports nutrition, asthma and allergy relief and menstrual disorders, among others.

And there's this 1998 report from UC Berkeley:

Pycnogenol is a combination of some 40 chemicals extracted from the bark of the French maritime pine, Pinus pinaster, which grows in many areas along the Atlantic coast of France and into North Africa. Extracts and teas of pine were commonly used by early Europeans and native Americans, and reportedly are used in Asian medicine as well.

While many scientists eschew research on chemical mixtures like Pycnogenol, Packer has long seen the value of looking at natural plant extracts, most of which are a mélange of chemicals.

It's true: most scientists do eschew research on chemical mixtures. Chemist that I am, I would have to number myself among the eschewers. I was trained to study one variable at a time. Plus, that's how the FDA likes it. Although Pycnogenol® is in some small clinical trials, lotsa luck getting the FDA to embrace those trial results.

I think some companies bankroll clinical trials just to get the credibility of being in clinical trials. They have no intention of launching a drug. They don't need to; they'll sell plenty of extract without the hassle of seeking FDA approval. Saying your stuff's been through clinical trials will be enough for some consumers. But people shouldn't think something is safe and effective just because it's been through clinical trials or scientists at notable institutions support it. (Thalidomide? Vioxx?) Be wary about what you put in your body.

Science Corner

Read in Nature, vol. 444, issue no. 7122, page 982:

Climate change is allowing subordinate male [seals] on a remote Scottish island a chance to mate. Higher temperatures and lower rainfall mean that female grey seals forage over a wider range, making it more difficult for the top male to keep an eye on them all.

(Ambiguous references provided, so no source. Take it or leave it.)

ADDED: One of my favorite subjects of late is on the cover, the role of gut microbes in obesity.

"Although there is no doubt that human genetics plays a large part in determining body weight, it is equally undisputed that the increase in prevalence of obesity over the last 25 years cannot be attributed to changes in the human genome. The inference is that other factors are responsible, such as the availability of calorically dense foods, or the reduction in human activity in our daily lives. [Other work] raises the possibility that our gut bacteria are another factor that contributes to differences in body weight among individuals."

Two reports in this issue describe studies that suggest obesity alters the composition of intestinal microbiota. Of the trillions of bacteria that live in healthy human intestine, two groups dominate: the Firmicutes and the Bacteroidetes. It turns out the guts of obese people have a higher ratio of Firmicutes to Bacteroidetes than do the guts of lean people.

When two groups of obese people--one group eating a carbohydrate-restricted diet, and the other a fat-restricted diet--lost weight over the course of a year, both experienced a decrease in the ratio of Firmicutes to Bacteroidetes. That is, the composition of their intestinal microbiota became more like that of lean people. That's interesting, because how do the bacteria know whether they're living inside obese people or lean people?

It gets more interesting when those results are considered along with results from two studies in mice.

First, the scientists found the Fermicutes/Bacteroidetes situation in mice to be similar to that in humans.

Then they did a controlled experiment where they transferred obese mouse microbiota into the guts of lean, microbe-free mice.

Over a two-week period, mice [receiving] microbiota from obese mice extracted more calories from their food and had a modest fat gain that was statistically greater than that of mice receiving microbiota from lean mice. [T]hese data suggest that differences in the efficiency of caloric extraction from food may be determined by the composition of the microbiota, which, in turn, may contribute to differential body weights.

How did the researchers determine that mice receiving 'obese microbiota' extracted more calories from their food than the control group (who received 'lean microbiota')? They measured and compared calories left over in feces.

Interesting that 'obese microbiota' extract calories more efficiently than 'lean microbiota'. Lean hosts are the ones who need to extract calories most efficiently; obese hosts have stored calories to burn.

The authors note that questions about how and why gut microbiota is regulated should be answered before manipulating the microbiota to effect changes in obesity.


You know, it took the medical community almost twenty years to fully accept the idea that bacteria can cause gastric ulcers. Now everyone's heard of Helicobacter pylori. But that idea was a hard sell for a long time. Today we hear about viruses causing cancer and all kinds of things previous generations didn't connect. There's a long way to go before concluding bacteria cause obesity, but it shouldn't be deemed too far-fetched to consider.

Why does this interest a whoreticulturist?

When plants depend on soil microbes to fix life-sustaining nitrogen in nitrogen-poor soils and absorb minerals that are otherwise unavailable, and when those microbes depend in turn on the plant for food and whatever else, where does the plant end and the microbe begin? Separate the two and both fail. So it is with human life, going all the way back to the very beginning.

P.S. Mark my words: I predict we'll be hearing a lot about Fermicutes in the near future, just like we hear about good and bad cholesterol and trans fats.

Snipped from the San Francisco Rose Society 2007 events calendar:

"BIG ROSE DADDY PRUNES"
by James Armstrong
For our first membership meeting of 2007, James Armstrong, SFRS Member, Consulting Rosarian and Prize Winning Rose Exhibitor will arrive with his gear in tow and proceed to demonstrate how to sharpen your tools and prune your Roses "Big Rose Daddy Style".
Jim will show more than one technique, regale us with antidotes and generally keep us in a happy mood.
James has also written CR Reports for our newsletter, with excellent advice, for the last three years! If you have not yet met him, now is your chance.

What more do you people want? I am so there. I'm gonna get down with the Big Rose Daddy style, be regaled with antidotes, and be kept, generally, in a happy mood. Do you think they'll let me blog Big Daddy? Do you want me to blog Big Daddy? You know you do.

Buena Vista Park

in the Haight-Ashbury. If these trees could talk, the stories they would tell. I lived in this neighborhood for a year in the early 1990s (1990, in fact--I was 20 and 21 years old then), but I don't recall ever visiting.

37 acres (and, hey, 37 years), and all I know about the place is what I've heard from other people and read in books. How different I am now!



For one thing, I can identify most of the plants growing here! Quite a few are Bay Area natives, including these three:

Garrya elliptica (Garryaceae), the coast silktassel bush. Those long, white catkins start growing in Nov-Dec, and put on quite a show in Jan and Feb. The whole tree becomes festooned with white tassels. Then it looks pretty ratty when the catkins die, so time to prune. This one needs at least another two weeks before it's ready for prime time.



Another good one for winter interest: Ribes sanguineum var. glutinosum. Currant, in the Grossulariaceae. Semi-deciduous shrub. I have three Ribes in my garden. This one could use some thinning. Clusters of pink flowers hang from mostly leafless stems. By Feb-Mar, the whole thing is covered in bloom. Hummers sip the nectar, and then finches eat the berries. (The building in the background used to be a hospital, but now it's condominiums. It's on the National Register of Historic Places for some reason.)



Ceanothus (Rhamnaceae). I can only ID a few species of Ceanothus and I'm not going to take a shot at this one. They all look alike to me except for a few that have very distinct leaves or growth habits.



Mostly mansions ring the park, and I've always wondered about that because I think of it as a seedy park. Probably San Francisco's seediest. (And by seedy, I mean, you know, rundown, disreputable...not full of garden seeds. Although, I'm sure there are a lot of seeds here too.)



We're on a hilltop--so nice views.



This is also San Francisco's oldest park (established in 1867), and some of the trees are believed to be original, but I wouldn't know which ones.



Believe it or not, WPA workers built these drainages with marble from tombstones when San Francisco's cemeteries were moved to Colma!



File that under things that would never happen today.