[ Lost in the Landscape ]

january bloomday

Happy Jan­u­ary Bloom Day, folks!

Lots of pic­tures this month.

Okay I cheated, with some mul­ti­ples of the same plant mixed in. But a big dose of perky orange in the dead of win­ter seemed morally acceptable.

I guess it’s a typ­i­cal South­ern Cal­i­for­nia Jan­u­ary, with some ever-bloomers mixed in with the winter-flowering plants or last of the fall plants. You can hover over an image above to get the name, but here’s a quick run­down on the Jan­u­ary back­bone plants.

Some plants that say “Cal­i­for­nia” but are from other places:

Aloe arborescens

S. Hot Lips

Pro­tea ‘Pink Ice’

Laven­der

Arc­to­tis

Oxalis pur­purea

…and the really noxious

Oxalis pes-caprae

Cal­i­for­nia natives:

Core­op­sis maritima

Salvia ‘Bee’s Bliss’

Salvia spathacea

There are also a few other things in bloom that didn’t make it into the mix, things like ‘Dr. Hurd’ man­zanita, but you get the idea…

Thanks as always to Carol of May Dreams Gar­dens for host­ing Gar­den Blog­gers’ Bloom Day. Check out the Jan­u­ary post to see what the rest of the world looks like in the mid­dle of Jan­u­ary [ here ]

January 14 2012 | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: flowers • Garden Bloggers Bloom Day • gbbd • January • native plants | 23 Comments »

gift idea

A cou­ple folks asked about whether that tshirt with my dud­leya photo would be avail­able via mail order. The answer is YES, but our local native plant soci­ety isn’t set up up for any fancy online trans­ac­tions and things will have to man­aged the old-fashioned way, by check. If you’re inter­ested drop me a line at james999@999soenyun.com (remov­ing every instance of “999” in the address) and I’ll put you in touch with the per­son han­dling the transactions.

The cost shipped to your door is $18, US sales only. All pro­ceeds go to a wor­thy cause, the San Diego chap­ter of the Cal­i­for­nia Native Plant Soci­ety. Last I heard the extra larges were close to all gone, but small, medium and large were still in fairly good supply.

December 04 2011 | Categories: gardening | Tags: Dudleya pulverulenta • gift ideas • photography • presents • tees • tshirts | No Comments »

proper pesticide application

In this photo Lt. John Pike of the police force of the Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia, Davis demon­strates the proper way to apply pes­ti­cides and fungi­cides in your gar­den. The lieutenant’s top tips:

• Wear gloves! The stuff is gross. Keep it off your hands.
• Wear long pants and long-sleeved shirts. You don’t want the nasty stuff on you!
• Pick a day with lit­tle or no wind. You want to con­trol exactly where the poi­son goes.
• Apply from the dis­tance rec­om­mended by the man­u­fac­turer. The prod­uct label should tell you. Too close, you waste mate­r­ial. Too far, you risk inef­fec­tive cov­er­age and your treat­ment won’t have the desired effect.
• Wear eye pro­tec­tion. I know, I know. I don’t have the visor down in the photo. Silly me. Don’t do as I do, just do as I say!

The riot-gear hel­met is entirely optional, but a respirator–or at least a mask–is a really good idea. Happy spraying!

For other par­o­dies of last Friday’s UC Davis pep­per spray inci­dent check out:
[ tum­blr ]
[ Huff­in­g­ton Post ]
[ The New York Times ]

And why stop there? Invite Lt. Pike over to tomorrow’s Thanks­giv­ing pic­tures! Entice him into your vaca­tion pic­tures with your ex! And what bet­ter way to improve those musty fam­ily pic­tures with the sib­lings you’re not sure you’re really related to?

November 23 2011 | Categories: art • gardening | Tags: humor • parodies • pepper spray • photoshop • police abuse • political humor • politics | 8 Comments »

not for sale to minors (november bloom day)

Things have slowed down. It’s Novem­ber for god­sakes. But stuff keeps hap­pen­ing in the garden.

Prob­a­bly the most remark­able thing bloom­ing is this, a var­ie­gated muta­tion of Salvia divi­no­rum.

I noticed the var­ie­ga­tion a few months ago and will try to prop­a­gate the part of the plant with speck­led leaves. A sport par­tially lack­ing chloro­phyll would be at an evo­lu­tion­ary dis­ad­van­tage out in the wilds, but gardeners–We’re weird–we’ll prop­a­gate these runts just because they’re pretty-like.

This is prob­a­bly the most dra­matic of the alli­ga­tored leaves. Even though many leaves are var­ie­gated, you can see that it hasn’t stopped those parts of the plant from flowering.

Enough of the leaves, this being Gar­den Blog­gers’ Bloom Day. (Thanks as usual to Carol of May Dreams Gar­dens for host­ing this monthly meme on every fif­teenth of the month.) Let’s take a look at the flowers.

The blooms are fuzzy up-close, like some other salvias, includ­ing the Mex­i­can bush sage, Salvia leu­can­tha, a depend­able low-water plant that’s com­mon in South­ern Cal­i­for­nia and beyond. This blos­som looks very friendly in a lisp­ing, come-hither, snag­gle­toothed sort of way.

Unfor­tu­nately if you’re a gar­dener under the age of 18 in Cal­i­for­nia you can’t pur­chase this plant. In some other states own­ing a plant can buy you three years in prison. I’m sorry but all this sounds ridicu­lous. Peo­ple some­times com­plain about a gov­ern­ment being a “nanny-state,” but many of the states where you hear that claim being made loud­est are ones that are likely to ban this plant. Hey, look at the cool flow­ers! Look at the the cool leaves! This is obvi­ously a plant with orna­men­tal value, just like Gramma Olive’s opium poppies.

Flow­ers are scarce all around, but if you look deep enough into many plants you’ll see a few hardy hold­outs still in bloom. And with win­ter on the way, there are a pre­co­cious win­ter bloomers start­ing to do their thing. This one’s ger­man­der sage, Salvia chamaedry­oides. As far as I know, this plant the rest of those fea­tured here are per­fectly legal to grow everywhere.

Another salvia, the com­mon but cool “Hot Lips”

Oxalis pur­purea, white form

Paper­white narcissus

Galvezia spe­ciosa ‘Firecracker’

Galvezia juncea, a species from near-by in Mex­ico, a mem­ber of the snap­dragon family.

And here’s another local with a name change pend­ing. Was: Iso­meris arborea; Now is: Per­it­oma arborea. Gack.

A rare local native, some­thing I’ve known as Core­op­sis mar­itima. But in the new Jep­son man­ual all the Cal­i­for­nia species we knew as core­op­sis have been moved to the genus Lep­tosyne. Lep­tosyne maritima–that one’s going take a while get­ting used to. (Sorry for the ragged half-flower. That is all that sur­vived the week­end rains.)

Sphaer­al­cea ambigua, the first blooms in a while

An orange epi­den­drum. I think you saw this last month

Gutier­rezia californica–a wispy plant with almost no leaves and a del­i­cate cloud of yel­low flowers

San Miguel Island buck­wheat, Eri­o­gonum grande var. rubescens, def­i­nitely not peaking…

Euphor­bia Dia­mond Frost–This hit just a few years ago and every­one was talk­ing about it. Now…almost noth­ing. Inter­est­ing. Gar­den­ers aren’t fickle, are they?

Des­per­ate, flower-starved times call for desparate mea­sures, in this case the macro lens for these tiny creep­ing thyme flowers…

Gaura lind­heimeri

Camel­lia Cleopa­tra, yes it was in bloom in Octo­ber for that month’s Bloom Day

And, finally, a few shots of everyone’s favorite this time of year, Pro­tea Pink Ice. Happy Bloomday!

November 14 2011 | Categories: gardening • my garden • plant profiles | Tags: flowers • Garden Bl • gbbd • laws • November • politics • Salvia divinorum | 24 Comments »

there was a crooked house

The house being built on the ground, with its even­tual perch being read­ied high on the roof of the build­ing behind it.

Here a few ran­dom con­struc­tion pho­tos that show the devel­op­ment of part of Do Ho Suh’s Fallen Star instal­la­tion that I posted on a few weeks ago [ here ]. I’m sure there are prac­ti­cal rea­sons for build­ing the lit­tle house on the ground before hoist­ing it seven sto­ries into the air to its perch on the side. But hav­ing it take shape at eye level has been inter­est­ing and excit­ing, and it’s a great way to involve future view­ers of the art­work in the piece as it evolves from yards of con­crete and stacks of steel beams.

As I view the piece come into being I can’t help but imag­ine being the con­struc­tion firm approached to con­struct this lit­tle one-room build­ing: “We want you to build us a house. Only much of it’s going to can­tilevered over the edge of a tall build­ing. And the house itself has to be built with a strong rake to the foun­da­tion, mak­ing the whole house slant at a seri­ous angle…” A project like this doesn’t come along every day, and I’m sure some­body had some seri­ous fun get­ting to work on it.

The steel fram takes shape. Here you can see there’s lots more engi­neer­ing in this project than most houses that nest on the ground.

Fram­ing for win­dows being installed…

Sheath­ing going on…

The sheathed house, crooked on the hori­zon, at sunrise…

After the build­ing wrap…

Foggy morn­ing with the wrapped house, still crooked on the horizon…

Sheath­ing going up on the roof…

Shin­gles now in place…

At this point the project has pro­gressed to where stuff is hap­pen­ing on the inside, but it’s a mys­tery to out­side view­ers. The next big mile­stone will be when the exte­rior sheath­ing with its bouncy blue color shows up. Stay tuned.

Aer­ial ren­der­ing of the project loca­tion show­ing the rooftop with the crooked house and garden.

I touched base with the Stu­art Col­lec­tion folks about the “gar­den” around the house. Yes, it’s going to be live plants. The intent is to make the gar­den look a bit like the house, as if house and gar­den are lit­tle slice of Province­town that have flown and and been wedged into the Cal­i­for­nia fabric.

There are prob­a­bly thou­sands of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia houses with clap­board sid­ing and gar­dens with hydrangeas and roses that would be good mod­els for what the artist is try­ing to achieve. As much as these gar­dens require lots of added water and atten­tion to get them to thrive, the real stunt will be to try to pull off the effect when the house and gar­den will be ele­vated seven sto­ries into the air. The col­lec­tion is work­ing with a land­scape archi­tect to come up with a mix of plants that will rep­re­sent the botan­i­cal dis­place­ment but also be plants that will sur­vive life on the edge, exposed to the elements.

It shouldn’t be that much longer before this house gets lifted into place. I sus­pect they’ll be using cranes and not a giant flock of bal­loons, even though sev­eral of you have com­mented on how much the plans for the house make it out to be a dead-ringer for the fly­ing house in Up. More pic­tures to fol­low…

November 07 2011 | Categories: art • gardening | Tags: art installations • Do Ho Suh • Fallen Star • Stuart Collection • UCSD | 5 Comments »

october bloom day

This san­tolina sums up the state of the gar­den pretty well. Peak flow­er­ing was in the past or hasn’t started up yet, but I’m enjoy­ing where it’s at right now. This par­tic­u­lar plant bloomed four months ago, but I liked the dead flower heads so much that I’ve left them on the plant.

Cal­i­for­nia fuch­sia, Epi­lo­bium ‘Route 66′ peaked about 6 weeks ago.

We actu­ally had some sig­nif­i­cant rain–0.4 inches–last week. It was appre­ci­ated, but it also knocked off some of the plant’s flowers.

But it still looks pretty good. Here it is giv­ing a lit­tle shade and color con­trast to a chalk dudleya.

Blad­der­pod (Iso­meris arborea) is a reli­able bloomer for the times of year when most of the other natives have stopped bloom­ing. It’s never cov­ered with flow­ers, but there always seem to be a few on each of the ends on its branches.

Not peak mon­keyflower sea­son, either. This is all that’s bloom­ing right now. One flower.

Corethrog­yne filagini­fo­lia is another reli­able plant for this dif­fi­cult time of year.

And you can always count on the grasses. This is pur­ple three-awn, Aris­tida pur­purea.

Among the non-natives this stapelia (S. gigan­tea) pretty much owns the gar­den with its big floppy flow­ers that smell of dead meat. Charm­ing, dis­gust­ing and weird. I don’t apol­o­gize for it anymore.

You know things are slow when you show pic­tures of rose­mary bloom­ing. I’ll apol­o­gize for that, however.

But there’s a lti­tle bit more…

Oxalis bowiei

Don’t put too much stock in plant names. White flow­ers, species name of Oxalis purpurea…

Salvia Hot Lips

Clero­den­drum myri­coides, but­ter­fly bush

A pink Gaura lind­heimeri that either vol­un­teered or came up in a spot where I for­got plant­ing it. That hap­pens sometimes…

The ever-blooming orange epi­den­drum, an orchid that’s def­i­nitely not a prima donna assoluta

Camel­lia Cleopa­tra, one of the garden’s clear sig­nals: fall is here

And there are a few other things:
Yel­low waterlilies
A red aloe I’m for­get­ting the name of…
Red epi­den­drum
Gail­lar­dia pul­chella
A big magenta bougainvil­lea
A some­what pam­pered orchid: Vanda roe­blin­giana

Hope­fully autumn is bring­ing great things to all your gar­dens. Ongo­ing thanks to Carol of May Dreams Gar­dens for host­ing Gar­den Blog­gers Bloom Day. Take a look at who’s got what bloom­ing all around the world: [ link ]

October 14 2011 | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: flowers • Garden Bloggers Bloom Day • gbbd • October | 25 Comments »

cnps plant sale tomorrow, october 15!

If you’re near San Diego, be sure to stop by Bal­boa Park for the big annual native plant sale of the local chap­ter of the Cal­i­for­nia Native Plant Soci­ety. Hours are 11–3 for the reg­u­lar folks, but you can shop at 10 if you’re a member.

[ Plant list ]

And a spe­cial bonus: You can have your very own CNPS teeshirt imprinted with my Dud­leya pul­veru­lenta image:

Quan­ti­ties of plants–and teeshirts–are lim­ited. Come early for the best selection.

October 14 2011 | Categories: gardening | Tags: California Native Plant Society San Diego Chapter • native plants • plant sales | 5 Comments »

more mediterranean than thou

Gosh, it’s been a while, hasn’t it? The main dis­trac­tions keep­ing me away from post­ing have been a cou­ple of classes I’ve been tak­ing to fill in some art his­tory holes I hadn’t both­ered with before. For one of them I’ve been doing a lit­tle research on Granada’s Patio de la Ace­quia, the “Court­yard of the Aque­duct,” one of the gar­dens at the Gen­er­al­ife, the gar­den fortress across the canyon from its more famous neigh­bor, the Alhambra.

This par­tic­u­lar gar­den, a long, rec­tan­gu­lar space with a cen­tral water fea­ture 162 feet long and 4 across, holds the dis­tinc­tion of being “…the old­est orna­men­tal gar­den in the West­ern World, with the addi­tional value of never hav­ing ceased to be a gar­den dur­ing the last seven cen­turies” (Casares-Porcel et al. in Del­gado et al., 2007).

I enjoy cre­ative research of this sort, and I thought I’d share some of the cool things that I’ve been find­ing out.

Today, the gar­den looks like this:

Peter Lor­ber. Gar­te­nan­lage Gen­er­al­ife, Alham­bra, Granada, Spanien eigene Auf­nahme, Erstel­lungs­da­tum 22.Juni 2006. Photo via Wiki­me­dia.

But like any gar­den that’s been a while it’s under­gone some major changes. The plants, for sure, have gone through a few gen­er­a­tions and some major changes. For exam­ple, the big splashy bougainvil­lea that you see behind the col­umn cap­i­tal on the right side would in no way have been part of the orig­i­nal gar­den. The Patio was started in the later thir­teen cen­tury. Bougainvil­leas weren’t described until the 1700s, and didn’t make it to Europe until later. And the big splashy foun­tains are gen­er­ally bogus to the orig­i­nal as well, hav­ing been added in the 1940s or early 1950s by archi­tect Fran­cisco Pri­eto Moreno. (EDIT: Sep 19: While the foun­tains are not orig­i­nal, their appear­ance pre-dates Prieto-Moreno’s work on the gar­den. I’m still research­ing when they appeared.)

But the one really mind-blowing dis­cov­ery that came about in this gar­den was the result of some exca­va­tions done in the wake of a cat­a­strophic fire that con­sume one of the adja­cent struc­tures. Archae­ol­o­gist Bermudez and his team dug and dug and didn’t encounter the orig­i­nal soil line until they got 70 cm. beneath the level of the orig­i­nal pave­ment. And his and oth­ers’ research began to paint a pic­ture of a gar­den with plant­ing beds sunken deep between the walk­ways and water features.

Part of me–the gar­dener side–says “so what.” Maybe they just dug out the old icky soil and added a new layer on top. But exca­va­tions in Seville at the gar­dens of the Alcázar have found gar­den beds with stucco dec­o­ra­tions on their sides. Oth­ers had fresco paint­ings. So that pretty much con­vinces me that they weren’t going to all that bother just to bury their orna­men­tal gar­den bed dec­o­ra­tions under a pile of gar­den soil, and it reveals that these were part of a gar­den tra­di­tion where they had low­ered plant­ing beds at least some of the time.

Below is a photo off Flickr of one of those gar­dens at the Alcázar, the Patio de las Don­cel­las, the Court­yard of the Maid­ens, that’s been restored to its orig­i­nal low soil sur­face. In gar­dens today you’re used to see­ing raised beds, or gar­den paths near the level of the sur­round­ing plant­i­ngs. But this? Wow. (There were prob­a­bly fewer per­sonal injury attor­neys around in medieval Spain, so I doubt the ropes at the edges of the gar­den bed reflect the orig­i­nal way these beds would have been experienced.)

Christophe Porteneuve. [Patio de las Don­cel­las, Alcázar, Seville]. Photo via Flickr.

And the last piece of infor­ma­tion related to all this was a lit­tle graph that I put together try­ing to see how my local cli­mate stacks up to Granada’s, rainfall-wise. On his most recent visit to lec­ture at my local Cal­i­for­nia Native Plant Soci­ety, Bart O’Brien, author and Direc­tor of Spe­cial Projects for the Ran­cho Santa Ana Botanic Gar­den, pointed out how California’s mediter­ranean cli­mate is the most extreme of all the five main mediter­ranean cli­mates in its extremes of wet and dry.

The fol­low­ing com­pares Granada, located at over 2000 feet of ele­va­tion against sea-level San Diego, so this isn’t the fairest of com­par­isons. And Granada’s annual rain fall is some­thing over 14 inches, ver­sus San Diego’s aver­age of slightly over 10 inches. But you can get a gen­eral sense of how extended the Cal­i­for­nia sum­mer dry can get.

Spe­cial rights on this post, to com­ply with the Cre­ative Com­mons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license of the first image:

More Mediter­ranean than thou by James SOE NYUN is licensed under a Cre­ative Com­mons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at www.soenyun.com.
Per­mis­sions beyond the scope of this license may be avail­able at http://soenyun.com/mailform.html.

September 18 2011 | Categories: gardening • landscape design • places | Tags: archaeology • Generalife • Granada • Mediterranean climate • Patio de la Acequia • Spain | 11 Comments »

garden on the edge

Here’s the artist’s ren­der­ing for a new project that’s going up on the way to my week­day office. In this view things look pretty nor­mal: a clap­board house, lawn, shrub­beries, foun­da­tion plant­i­ngs, patio fur­ni­ture, shade umbrella–nostalgic Amer­i­cana, tidy, idyllic.

But here’s an alter­nate view of the entire project. In this piece, “Fallen Star,” by artist Do Ho Suh, this lit­tle blue house hangs over the edge of one of the cam­pus build­ings, seven sto­ries above the quad below.

The project descrip­tion on the Stu­art Collection’s page for the project pro­vides some back­ground, includ­ing this:

For the Stu­art Col­lec­tion, Suh has pro­posed Fallen Star, a small house that has been picked up by some mys­te­ri­ous force, (per­haps a tor­nado) and “landed” on a build­ing, seven sto­ries up. A roof gar­den is part of Suh’s design and will be a place with panoramic views for small groups to gather. This can be seen as a “home” for the vast num­bers of stu­dents who have left their homes to come to this huge insti­tu­tion, the uni­ver­sity, which has noth­ing even resem­bling a home. It is an unfor­get­table image and will be a truly amaz­ing expe­ri­ence sure to stay in the minds and mem­ory of stu­dents and vis­i­tors for years to come.”

Do Ho Suh Fallen Star ren­der­ing and view of the piece’s even­tual perch.

Some projects you can look at and tell imme­di­ately that they’re going to be pop­u­lar. This is one of them.

Count me in to stand in line to get a chance to visit the instal­la­tion after it’s com­pleted and open, cur­rently pro­jected to be Jan­u­ary 2012. It should be a cool mix of fun and unnerv­ing, look­ing for home on the edge in a fad­ing empire.

August 21 2011 | Categories: art • gardening • places | Tags: art installations • Do Ho Suh • public art • sculpture • Stuart Collection • UCSD | 17 Comments »

what’s eating you

No gar­den project seems to ever be com­plete, but we did put the fin­ish on the bog bench we’ve spent a lot of time work­ing on.

We used this stuff, Superdeck. It took already good-looking wood and turned it into some­thing almost like a nice fin­ish on fur­ni­ture. Over the last few years we’ve tried var­i­ous ways to fin­ish ipe used out­doors and this stuff seems to give it the most durable and attrac­tive fin­ish. They haven’t paid me a cent to say this. I like the stuff.

Twenty feet from the bog bench Stapelia get­tl­ef­fii has opened its first flow­ers of the sea­son. I’ve men­tioned before how this plant is one of an infor­mal group of carrion-scented plants that are pol­li­nated by flies.

Back at the bog bench this Sar­race­nia alata, vein­less form, is hav­ing a hard time hid­ing the fact that it’s had a lot of bugs–most of them flies–as meals this sea­son. Just look at how the pitch­ers sud­denly turn dark as you go down the tube. Dead bugs inside. Lots of them.

Midsummer’s edi­ble high­light is the ripen­ing of the figs, and this one is about thirty, forty feet from the bog bench..

One of the annoy­ing neme­ses of fig grow­ers is this shiny lit­tle guy below, the fig bee­tle. It has the unpleas­ant habit of break­ing the fig’s skin and then feed­ing off the suc­cu­lence inside. I can’t say that I blame them, but I want the figs all to myself.

For some rea­son they seem cap­ti­vated with this one plant in the bog, the “green” form of Sar­race­nia leu­co­phylla, a form that lacks the abil­ity to make the red­dish antho­cyanin pig­ments. I’ve noticed that the pitch­ers of this plant have a dis­tinct damask-rose aroma. Maybe the scent reminds the bee­tles of the flo­ral notes of figs?

What­ever the case, at least one of the bee­tles got a lit­tle too inter­ested in this pitcher and fell in. It was grue­some to watch as it tried to fight its way back out of the pitcher, strug­gling so hard it kicked a big hole in the side of this tube. It took at least three days to die.

There’s a cer­tain streak in many car­niv­o­rous plant afi­ciona­dos that seems to delight in the bug killing aspect of these plants. I’m not one of them. My father spent much of his life as a Bud­dhist, and I’m sure some of its tenets of non-violence against the uni­verse rubbed off on me. I found it unset­tling to walk by the pitcher and watch this hap­pen­ing. A slow death by star­va­tion and dehy­dra­tion, head-down into a pile of dead bugs–not the way I want to leave this earth.

So I put on my rosy gog­gles of denial and look at the plants in the bog. This is one of the more spec­tac­u­lar ones right now, named ‘W.C.,’ it’s a polyg­a­mous hybrid involv­ing S. leu­co­phylla, S. rubra and S. psittacina.

Still, I’m reminded of the obliv­i­ous pet-owner’s line: “He’s a cute puppy isn’t he? Why, no, it doesn’t bite.”

Yah right. Pretty, evil things…

July 31 2011 | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: benches • bog garden • carnivorous plants • fig beetles • figs • hardscape • sarracenia • Stapelia gettleffii • Superdek | 8 Comments »