[ Lost in the Landscape ]

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 »

random updates

San Miguel Island buck­wheat, Eri­o­gonum grande var. rubescens, pos­si­bly pro­tected by a cloak of extra-hot chili powder

Update #1: The gopher chron­i­cles (Orig­i­nal post: Cook­ing for Ver­min)

It’s been three weeks since I tried to ward off gophers by using extra-hot chili pow­der. Peo­ple want to know if it works.

The con­clu­sion: There’s no sign of obvi­ous dam­age from pocket gophers in the treated area. The plants are grow­ing and bloom­ing nor­mally. That might sound like suc­cess, but there hasn’t been any gopher dam­age any­where else in the gar­den, either. So it’s incon­clu­sive at this point. But I’ll post as the sea­son goes on. I really really want this to work.

Update #2: Life post-hacking (Orig­i­nal post: I was hacked)

After I real­ized that my blog was hacked I cleaned out what looked like the prob­lem code. But two days later the Word­Press Pharma Hack was back. I did more dras­tic cleanup after that, and it looks like that took care of the problem.

The tide turns…

Even after cleanup, because it takes days to weeks for Google to catch up and rein­dex every­thing on a site, searches for my blog showed many titles for my posts as promis­ing ways to buy var­i­ous drugs with­out pre­scrip­tion. Even as recently as Wednes­day, last week, the num­ber one blog key­word was “Pre­scrip­tion.” For a gar­den blog it’s pathetic to have that word ahead of the next four on the list: “gar­den,” “plants,” “blog” or “land­scape.” But the tide turned on Thurs­day, and the good words con­tinue to rise as the hacker words sink.

Update #3: Aloe, good-bye (Orig­i­nal post: Exotic plant, exotic pest)

It’s been almost a year since I men­tioned that my spec­i­men Aloe bar­berae (aka A. baine­sii) was in seri­ous decline. Aloe mites had attacked the plant and I was blam­ing its fate on them. The plant con­tin­ued to decline to the point that it had just a few grow­ing tips that kept get­ting smaller and smaller. Some­thing was very wrong and we cut the plant back to a stump one to two months later, leav­ing three small pups that were spring­ing from the low­est two feet of the plant.

The dying trunk of the dying aloe, with the three pups look­ing increas­ingly worse. Time to pull the pups off to root them, it looks like…

Since then even those lit­tle pups have failed to thrive. Signs of mites have been few, so I’m begin­ning to think that some other cause is respon­si­ble for the prob­lems. Hypoth­e­sis #1 at the moment: pocket gophers eat­ing the roots. My main rea­son for think­ing this is that there’s another A. bar­berae just a few feet away that looks robust, with none of the signs of ill­ness the big plant was show­ing. I’ll keep my hope up for that plant.

A rooted cut­ting of the orig­i­nal big aloe

In the mean­time, aloes being aloes, I fig­ured that all the lit­tle branch tips I cut off might root eas­ily. I treated all the chunks with miti­cide, stuck them in pot­ting mix and kept them just-moist. All three took.

Quite frankly I’m not sure there’s room in the front for two giant aloes I had there in the first place–placing the two orig­i­nal plants so close was a mis­take. So I gave two of the rooted plants to peo­ple in my office who were eager to grow this ter­rific plant. I still have one rooted plant, along with a half dozen more unrooted branch tips sit­ting on my green­house floor that are still green, almost a year later. I might end up with an impres­sive aloe in a pot if I can’t find a place for it. And if I root the remain­ing branch tips I could have a half-dozen more giveaways.

The orig­i­nal plant looks doomed, but pieces of the orig­i­nal clone live on. In the life and death world of gar­dens that’s almost a happy ending.

Update #4: Crest-fallen (Orig­i­nal post: Mutant Prim­rose)

In case you’re won­derng what hap­pened to the mutant Hooker’s evening prim­rose from a May 12 post­ing, it looks like the weight of the extra tis­sue on the crested grow­ing tip was more than the stem could keep aloft. Within a week of the orig­i­nal photo, the stem flopped to the ground, where it has stayed, still alive, but not thriving…

Now (early July)…

How the plant looked in early May…

Update #5: A dif­fer­ent out­come for a crested growth (Orig­i­nal post: Defor­mity or Bio­log­i­cal Won­der?)

My last progress report is on this mutant crested growth of a Euphor­bia lam­bii. Since I posted on it in June of 2009, the plant seems to have incor­po­rated the crest into its con­tin­ued growth pat­terns, unlike on what was going on with the prim­rose above. Still, you can tell that the growth pat­tern isn’t quite what nor­mal plants go through. Still inter­est­ing, two years later…

The crest as of July of this year…

The crest in June, 2009

A dif­fer­ent view of the plant as it looks today. The spindly-looking-ness of the plant is my fault (for­get­ting to water it enough) and not some­thing the crested growth is respon­si­ble for.

July 15 2011 | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: Aloe bainesii • Aloe barberae • aloe mite • blogging • crested plants • Eriogonum grande var rubescens • Euphorbia lambii • Oenothera elata • pocket gophers • Wordpress Pharma Hack | 8 Comments »

the big project

It’s done at last, the project from Hades.

The ugly back­side of the out­door fire­place, a week into the demolition

What started out as this ugly out­door fire­place with attached bench…

The fin­ished bench, from the end.

…has now mor­phed effort­lessly (yah right) into this new gar­den fea­ture: part bench, part deck, part raised bog/planter. It’s about four by six­teen feet in size.

For the last two years my bog plants were hog­ging up the sunny spot in the mid­dle of the patio. Totally in the way. The new bench needed to have a raised bog/planter detail, return­ing some of the hard­scape to garden.

With a gen­eral plan in place we got going.

 

Some scenes from the project:

This act of cre­ation began with an act of destruc­tion. The decrepit and not earthquake-safe chim­ney came down a brick at a time over sev­eral week­ends. We saved 350 bricks that came off in pretty good con­di­tion and hand-chiseled the mor­tar off of most of them. Inside the fire­place was the rea­son the whole thing hadn’t col­lapsed already: 200 pounds of rein­forc­ing steel. At cur­rent metal recy­cling rates we got almost 30 dol­lars for the scrap metal.

The rus­tic Japan­ese tiles that I loved 15 years ago and still appre­ci­ate now

I had some moments of nos­tal­gia and renewed appre­ci­a­tion for the lit­tle Japan­ese tiles that I picked out fif­teen years ago to try to orna­ment what at the time was already a mar­gin­ally attrac­tive gar­den fea­ture. The didn’t come off the fire­place eas­ily, and the shards and even the good bits were dis­patched to the dump. As much as we tried to recy­cle, this project is not going to get a Plat­inum LEED rat­ing.

The super-story bricks removed, we were left with a long con­crete bench. I like plain con­crete as a mate­r­ial, but this bench had been formed around a wood fence that had rot­ted away a decade ago. We shimmed over the ugli­ness and cov­ered it all with wood.

A shimmed cor­ner with sup­port for the deck­ing about to be installed

The whole bench with shims in place

The bench with black paint to keep the white from show­ing through between the slats

Before adding sup­pot bat­tens for the planter we checked to see how it would look with them out­side. Ugh. Way too rus­tic, too Coun­try Home, too NASCAR. The bat­tens are now hid­den inside.

With the fire­place gone, it opens up the patio to the rest of the back yard.I liked how the zones were dis­tinct before, but the bench still serves as a gen­tle sep­a­ra­tor between gar­den zones.

The bench was poured with this Greco-Roman col­umn for sup­port. Were they pin­ing for some lost ances­tors? Or were they post­mod­ern ten years before the move­ment caught on with archi­tects? What­ever the case, we decided to paint it black to de-emphasize it. No way were we going to take on tak­ing it out!

The planter nearly com­plete, ready for the pond liner

Pond liner being put into place. This is to pro­tect the wood and allow the bog plants to sit in water. This could also be repur­posed in the future as a raised pond, or–after punch­ing some drain holes–a nor­mal planter box.

…and here it is with the bog plants in place.

A final “after” picture:

We’re going to relax some before start­ing the next gar­den project, maybe in these two old but­ter­fly chairs John got second-hand 30 years ago, with our feet up on the new bench…

July 09 2011 | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: benches • bog garden • bog plants • decks • diy • hardscape • pitcher plants • projects • sarracenia | 10 Comments »