[ Lost in the Landscape ]

peak february bloom

The storm was pass­ing, and the after­noon light was per­fect. The suc­cu­lents bloom­ing in the front yard never looked bet­ter. I had to get the cam­era for this one!

In bloom are Aloe arborescens (orange-red) and a cras­sula species or rel­a­tive (yel­low). To the right, not in bloom but still dra­matic, are two clones of a tree aloe (Aloe bar­berae). The low filler plant to the right is the Cal­i­for­nia native coy­ote bush (Bac­cha­ris pilu­laris pilu­laris ‘Pigeon Point’). I don’t nor­mally love the neighbor’s big pointy juniper in the back­ground, but I think it com­pletes this pic­ture nicely.

February 08 2009 | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: Aloe arborescens • Aloe barberae • aloes • crassula • in bloom • succulents | 6 Comments »

dr. frankenstein’s plum tree

While John and I were out look­ing for a small orna­men­tal tree at our favorite local place to shop for plants, Wal­ter Ander­son Nurs­ery, we passed by some bins of bare root fruit trees. We weren’t in the mar­ket for a fruit tree, and we really don’t have the per­fect place to put one.

But John eyed the bins wist­fully. “I’ve always wanted a plum tree.”

Our past expe­ri­ence with a stone fruit was a vari­ety of apri­cot that was sup­posed to do okay with­out much chill­ing here in coastal San Diego. It’s been almost a dozen years, and that’s prob­a­bly how many fruit we’ve har­vested off the tree. Some of the fruits were eaten by crit­ters before we got to them, but for the most part the issue is that there just haven’t been many fruit to begin with. It just doesn’t get cold enough here for suc­cess with apricots.

I had that dis­cus­sion with Kurt at the nurs­ery, and he assured us that all the plums they car­ried were selected to do well in this area. I wasn’t totally con­vinced, but with John and Kurt work­ing their influ­ence, I gave in. We now have a plum tree. Or is it five plum trees?

We walked away with one of those Franken­stein multi-grafted plants, with a branch of five dif­fer­ent vari­eties. The the­ory is that they’re selected to pro­vide a long sea­son of fruits. But the real­ity of multi-grafts is that the vigor of the dif­fer­ent vari­eties is never the same as that of the oth­ers, and one or two vari­eties often take over unless you con­tinue to prune the plant care­fully. In fact, one of the vari­eties is listed as being par­tic­u­larly vig­or­ous. Uh oh.

John like the idea of the long sea­son. I liked the idea that out of the five vari­eties we might actu­ally find one that does well here–and actu­ally taste good. If a vari­ety doesn’t bear after its trial period, off the island it goes. Here’s what we ended up with:

• Santa Rosa: 300–400 hours chill requirement(below 45 degrees) . This vari­ety is the one that ends up planted every­where in South­ern Cal­i­for­nia, and it seems to set fruit pretty reli­ably. The fla­vor isn’t any­thing to get excited over, though. It’s in the “why bother” cat­e­gory for me, and I’ll be really dis­ap­pointed if it’s the only one that does anything.
• Bur­gundy: 300–400 hours chill requirement
• Golden Nec­tar: 400–500 hours chill requirement
• Beauty: 250 hours
• Meth­ley: 250 hours

Now, less than two weeks in the ground, some of the branches are bloom­ing already. Encour­ag­ing. But I sus­pect the tree was at least some­what pre-chilled at the orig­i­nat­ing nursery.

Inter­est­ingly, the branch with the most green foliage and no flow­ers at all is the sup­pos­edly low-chill Meth­ley. And the other low chill vari­ety, Beauty, has next to no flowers.

I’ll report back on how this all goes. How I love a good experiment!

February 07 2009 | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: fruits • grafted trees • multi-grafted plants • plums | No Comments »

spam plants

Ever won­der what to do with all that junk elec­tronic mail you receive?

If you’re Roman­ian artist Alex Drag­ulescu you might turn the annoy­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions into gor­geous art­works. One of his series, Spam Plants, takes the mes­sages and uses them as “plant food” to grow dig­i­tal art­works. Cer­tain val­ues in the mes­sages inter­act with a com­puter script to gen­er­ate the dig­i­tal organ­isms. The “plants” that result from this pro­gram look like amaz­ing under­wa­ter denizens.

(This first piece must have been derived from mul­ti­ple Via­gra ads…)

These works date from when he was at the Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia, San Diego, where he received his M.A. and then was involved with the Exper­i­men­tal Game Lab and the Cen­ter in Research for Com­put­ing and the Arts. (Cur­rently he’s a researcher at the MIT Media Lab.) These aren’t the only works he’s done using unwanted elec­tronic junk mail. Check out his Respam and Spam Archi­tec­ture series (my favorites of these works).

Cur­rently his work is the “Data + Art” Exhi­bi­tion at the Pasadena Museum of Cal­i­for­nia Art, a show that ends April 12.

[ These images copy­right Alex Drag­ulescu, all rights reserved ]

February 06 2009 | Categories: art | Tags: Alex Dragulescu • computer-based art • digital art • e-mail • junk mail • spam • underwater plants | 1 Comment »

anagrams for darwin day

The bicen­ten­nial of the birth of Charles Dar­win (on Feb­ru­ary 12, 1809) is approach­ing. How many other peo­ple have con­tributed more to our under­stand­ing of nat­ural his­tory? I say, it’s some­thing to celebrate!

Here are some botanical-themed ana­grams using the let­ters of his name. They were gen­er­ated using the Inter­net Ana­gram Server, a totally mag­nif­i­cent way to waste spend your wak­ing hours. (With 7974 ana­grams to choose from I’ve prob­a­bly missed a few other choice ones.)

The first one is so con­cise and poetic it makes haiku look verbose.

Larch rains dew

Larch aids wren

Earl wins chard

Lawn ires chard

Car: “I shred lawn”

…and last but not least:

Red lawn chairs

[ Image to the right from the Cedar Chair Store web­site ]

February 05 2009 | Categories: gardening • rambles | Tags: anagrams • Charles Darwin • Darwin Day • science | 5 Comments »

my first wordless wednesday: in macro

[ African daisy (Arc­to­tis x ‘Magenta’), cur­rently in bloom… ]

February 04 2009 | Categories: gardening • my garden • photography | Tags: African daisy • arctotis • Arctotis Magenta • macro photography | 4 Comments »

deciding on a small tree

The record heat in Octo­ber and Novem­ber finally did in the Aus­tralian tree fern that I’d been nurs­ing. The plant grows in full sun in its native envi­ron­ment, and was sup­posed to be able to sur­vive full sun in coastal Cal­i­for­nia. But two months of the hottest and dri­est weather this past year took care of what lit­tle will to live the plant had left.

The fern served as a focal point in the gar­den, and its pass­ing left a big void and a sad stick of dead trunk. It doesn’t help that the neighbor’s bas­ket­ball back­board lines up almost per­fectly with the dead trunk.

We toyed briefly with train­ing a small vine up the dead trunk, cel­e­brat­ing life and death and renewal and all that, but we couldn’t think of some­thing that would look great as the main focal point of the space. So we were faced with com­ing up with a suit­able replacement.

We started with some basic requirements:

• The tree should max out in the 12–20 foot range and be not too broad–There’s a young tan­ger­ine tree nearby that we wouldn’t want to shade.
• Some plants imme­di­ately nearby would appre­ci­ate some shade, but oth­ers are quite happy with close to full sun; a tree that could be trained to have an open branch struc­ture would work well.
• Some­thing with a grace­ful nat­ural form would be terrific–no big green popsicle-looking shade trees, please.
• The plant should be pretty easy to find locally, and couldn’t cost too much.
• This being drought-prone Cal­i­for­nia, a tree that would be able to get by with much lower water require­ments than orig­i­nal the tree fern would be a must.
• The “look” of the tree would have to com­ple­ment Mediter­ranean, trop­i­cal or just plain odd-looking plants.
• Though not an absolute require­ment, a native plant would be nice.

The short list came down to four trees or large shrubs.

Ginkgo biloba
Pros: Both John and I have always loved gink­gos, par­tic­u­larly their dis­tinc­tive foliage and incen­di­ary yel­low autumn col­oration. And their his­tory of being a liv­ing fos­sil is cool. There are strains that range from lit­tle round shrubs to mas­sive shade trees, with a cou­ple options in the 12–20 foot range that could be trained with mul­ti­ple trunks. Though not desert plants, they can make do with fairly low amounts of water.

Cons: Avail­abil­ity, mostly. Local sources carry the itty bitty bonsai-friendly sub­jects or the big shade trees, noth­ing in between. The tree grows really slowly, so get­ting a spec­i­men of the small vari­eties would be a chal­lenge. The final look of the plant, too, might not be per­fect for the location.

Black pep­per­mint wil­low (a.k.a. Aus­tralian myr­tle wil­low), Ago­nis flex­u­osa ‘Jervis Bay After­dark’
Pros: Strik­ing dark dark dark pur­ple (almost black) leaves, and a neat weep­ing habit. The bark is shaggy and attrac­tive. Rapid growth to its tar­get size. Drought tolerant.

Cons: The plant seems to develop a dense shade-tree look as it matures–maybe too dense for the spot. The lit­er­a­ture says this form only gets to six­teen feet or so, but it’s only been around for a decade. Call me dis­trust­ful, but I’m just sus­pi­cious that it could be more main­te­nance than I want to sign up for to keep it small. Mature trunks seem large in scale to the plant. There’s a bam­boo nearby, and it might be just too much wispy, wil­lowy foliage.

[ Image from Metro Trees ]

Crape myr­tle, Lager­stroemia x fau­riei
Pros:Sev­eral clones are avail­able locally in boxed spec­i­men size for not too much money–instant grat­i­fi­ca­tion! Gor­geous sum­mer­time flow­ers. Inter­est­ing exfo­li­at­ing bark. The fau­riei hybrids resist mildew bet­ter than the pure species.

Cons: Their col­ors would look really sim­i­lar to a pair of nearby bougainvil­leas. The rigid forms of the trees would def­i­nitely pull the gar­den in a for­mal Mediter­ranean direction.

Dr. Hurd man­zanita, Arc­tostaphylos x ‘Dr. Hurd’
Pros: Per­fect even­tual size (ca. 15 feet). Fairly fast-growing for a man­zanita (though no speed demon). Dra­matic red-brown stems with large light green leaves. Drought-tolerant, but also more tol­er­ant of gar­den water than most man­zan­i­tas. Flow­ers in the winter.

Cons: Spo­radic avail­abil­ity locally, and pos­si­bly only in small sizes. I’m wor­ried that the spot might be just a lit­tle over-wet for even this manzanita.

[ Image from San Mar­cos Grow­ers, who grew my plant ]

So what was the deci­sion? I put a five-gallon man­zanita on order and it hit the nurs­ery a few days later. It’s more of a Char­lie Brown shrub at this point and will take some patience and a few years to get to its final size. If it sur­vives the amount of water it gets, if it attains the size I want, if it behaves well with its neigh­bors, it could be the per­fect plant for this loca­tion. Check back in five years and I’ll tell you how it’s worked out…

Coin­ci­den­tally Saturday’s Los Ange­les Times had a whole page spread on man­zan­i­tas a full eight days after I put mine in the ground. I felt so much ahead of the Times…

February 02 2009 | Categories: gardening • my garden • plant profiles | Tags: Agonis flexuosa • Arctostaphylos x Dr. Hurd • crape myrtles • Ginkgo biloba • Lagerstroemia x fauriei • manzanitas • trees | 9 Comments »

hot lips

I’ve heard salvia con­nois­seurs talk down about this plant, Salvia micro­phylla ‘Hot Lips,’ mostly because it’s get­ting to be so com­monly avail­able in areas where it grows eas­ily. But of all the sages in my gar­den this one has been the best performer.

Liv­ing in a sunny spot with dry-to-average gar­den water, the plants are cov­ered with these flow­ers year-round, hit­ting a peak in the fall.

Com­mon or not, the flow­ers make the plant really inter­est­ing. Most are two col­ors, a com­bi­na­tion of scar­let and white, with no two flow­ers exactly alike. But often you’ll get flow­ers that are almost all white or all red. I’ve heard that cold weather seems to bring out the white, and that syncs up with what I’ve seen. But at the same time you’ll often still have multi-colored flowers–all on the same plant.

The growth habit is like a lot of sages, mean­ing the plant has the lines of a choco­late truf­fle left on a warm dash­board. For me, so far it grows about 30 inches tall by 60 wide. It’s sup­pos­edly hardy down around 20 degrees, but don’t expect many flow­ers when the frost starts up.

If you can grow it, this could be a good can­di­date for your list!

February 01 2009 | Categories: art • gardening • my garden • plant profiles • quotes | Tags: sages • Salvia microphylla 'Hot Lips' • salvias | 4 Comments »

secretary of the arts

My local pho­tog­ra­pher friend Scott Davis sent me a link to an online peti­tion ask­ing Pres­i­dent Obama to cre­ate a posi­tion of Sec­re­tary of the Arts, an idea that was first floated by Quincy Jones. Wall Street bankers col­lect­ing their measly lit­tle bonuses aren’t the only ones need­ing a help­ing hand these days.

Just click on this link. It’ll take just 30 sec­onds of your time.

February 01 2009 | Categories: art | Tags: politics | No Comments »