[ Lost in the Landscape ]

more december colors

Red and green seem to be the pre­dom­i­nant col­ors these days. Instead, how about a shot of hot magenta-pink against green? Of all my pitcher plants this sea­son Sar­race­nia Daina’s Delight is prob­a­bly look­ing the best of any of them.

Vivid col­ors aren’t the rule this late in the sea­son, with brown being the increas­ingly preva­lent shade. With fewer things like color to dis­tract you it’s a good time of year to con­cen­trate on the amaz­ing shapes these pitch­ers assume. In their brown state it’s eas­ier to see the lit­tle hairs on the leaves that direct the insects down into diges­tive juices.

For you color addicts there’s still a bit of color left. This species is Sar­race­nia rubra var. wher­ryi (a.k.a. S. alaba­men­sis var. wher­ryi.)

And for you color addicts who like a more tra­di­tional red and green combo, could you do any bet­ter than this? It’s a cross nick­named ‘W.C.’ by Jerry Adding­ton after Karen Oudean’s Wil­low Creek Nurs­ery, in honor of Karen bestow­ing on him this clone of the hybrid of S. (psittacina x rubra) x leu­co­phylla.

Hmmm…how about a cross between Daina’s Delight and W.C. for gor­geous late sea­son color and awe­some pat­tern­ing? If they both bloom next spring I just might have to make that cross and find out…

December 23 2010 | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: color • color combinations • fall • sarracenia • Sarracenia Daina's Delgiht • Sarracenia W.C. • seasons | 6 Comments »

those autumn leaves, so-cal edition

Here’s a short roundup of some of the leaf col­ors going on in the gar­den. This is South­ern Cal­i­for­nia so it was tough com­ing up with the stereo­typ­i­cal siz­zling reds and yel­low and oranges of a lot of autumn gar­dens in colder cli­mates. But I think we’ve got some pretty cool col­ors, includ­ing the color that might cause the most envy from the north­ern lat­i­tudes: green!

Happy fall, every­one. I hope you all enjoy what­ever col­ors the sea­son brings you.

December 04 2010 | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: colors • fall • leaves • seasons • those autumn leaves | 9 Comments »

unusual october

Octo­ber usu­ally throws some ridicu­lously warm and dry weather at us. This was the month that in 2003 and 2007 saw mon­ster wild­fires rac­ing through the county, includ­ing the largest fire to hit Cal­i­for­nia in recorded his­tory (in 2003).

We’ve a few of those warmer days, but what’s been sur­pris­ing has the the cool, wet fore­taste of win­ter. Here’s a lit­tle exam­ple: This is my park­ing pass for work, where I usu­ally go in to the office Mon­days through Thurs­days. Each big dark X cor­re­sponds to a day when it was too wet to ride my scooter in to work. Add to that another morn­ing when I got a bad weather report and arrived pretty drenched.

Over the last two weeks it seems like half the morn­ings looked a lit­tle like this, with mist–or out­right rain–turning the pave­ment wet.

Finally, the line of repur­posed cat lit­ter buck­ets that had looked so for­lorn all sum­mer at the drip edges of the roof were begin­ning to fill with water. In fact my two rain big bar­rels are now full, ready to have their con­tents shared back into the garden.

In response to the cool­ing trend plants are leaf­ing out; seedlings are ger­mi­nat­ing. Read­ers not in mediter­ranean cli­mates might think they’re read­ing a gar­den blog from the south­ern hemi­sphere. But no, this is Cal­i­for­nia, which shares this wet-winter/dry-summer cli­mate with less than 5% of the earth’s sur­face. To make up for being so spe­cial we’re treated with almost 20% of all the world’s plant species. More than a fair trade for long sum­mer months with close to no water.

I was out in the front yard over the week­end, tidy­ing up growth that had hit its expi­ra­tion date. Mixed in with branches that had truly died were plenty belong­ing to drought-deciduous plants that were com­ing back to life. On the left is our local chap­ar­ral cur­rant, Ribes indeco­rum, turn­ing from brown twigs to leafy twigs. On the right is Ver­bena lilacina, a plant that can stay look­ing fairly green over the sum­mer if you give it more water than I do.

Every­where I stepped I had to avoid mash­ing tiny lit­tle buck­wheat seedlings, or these guys, itty bitty lit­tle chia plants (Salvia colum­bariae). Early this sum­mer when I took out the dead plants of this annual I made a point of shak­ing the seed heads over the dirt. Still I was wor­ried that I wouldn’t have enough ger­mi­na­tion to repeat the amaz­ing show of last spring. Looks like I didn’t need to be so concerned.

In the back yard seedlings of baby blue eyes were push­ing their way through the mulch. The mulch really does help keep down the weeds, but this species for­tu­nately doesn’t seem overly daunted by my attempt to save myself a few dozen hours of weed­ing. Var­i­ous crea­tures do find these seedlings extra-tasty–including the cat, which seems to think these are almost as good as cat­nip. Once they’re larger the cat doesn’t seem to pay them any atten­tion. I’m hop­ing for a nice half dozen or so survivors.

And there were even more seedlings. These are a few days away from show­ing their first true leaves, but I’m hop­ing that they’re the begin­nings of clarkias that sur­rounded this patch of bare dirt. If not clarkias, they’re likely seedlings of this really nox­ious weed that shared the space with the clarkias. We’ll soon find out…

Yes, it’s been an unusual Octo­ber. But I’ll take plants leaf­ing out and seedlings push­ing their way out of the ground any day over another round of brushfires!

October 26 2010 | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: fall • Mediterranean climate • October • rain • seedlings | 5 Comments »

hydrate!

Sum­mer heat finally arrived–in Sep­tem­ber. Two hours north, Los Ange­les hit 113 degrees on Mon­day, a degree hot­ter than Death Val­ley. At least one San Diego County town hit 109 on Mon­day, though down here near the coast it didn’t get much more than the low 90s. Still, really hot by what we’re used to.

Now that it’s turned hot I feel like as pun­ish­ment I need to write on the chalk­board two hun­dred times:

I will not com­plain about it being a cold sum­mer.
I will not com­plain about it being a cold sum­mer.
I will not com­plain about it being a cold sum­mer.
I will not com­plain about it being a cold sum­mer.
I will not com­plain about it being a cold sum­mer.
I will not com­plain about it being a cold sum­mer.
I will not com­plain about it being a cold sum­mer.
I will not com­plain about it being a cold sum­mer.
I will not com­plain about it being a cold summer…

It was so hot that the con­tents of the snack bot­tle of vit­a­min Cs (aka choco­late chips) were turn­ing into choco­late goo. John’s emer­gency response to stick them in the fridge averted disaster.

Over the week­end, know­ing it was going to be a stretch of hot weather ahead, I tried to give a seri­ous soak to the plants most sus­cep­ti­ble to dry­ing out. Any­thing in a pot got a good drink–a les­son I learned in August when we had two sur­prise days of hot sum­mer sum­mer weather. In August this Cean­othus lleu­co­der­mis that I’d care­fully prop­a­gated from seed didn’t sur­vive the hot spell to be planted this fall.

In addi­tion to the pot­ted plants, a small group that was new in August got an extra water­ing out of the weekly cycle. And the remain­ing zones of water-intensive plants and bogs got the extra soak.

Some plants didn’t seem to be both­ered by the heat or dry­ness. This native blad­der­pod (Iso­meris arborea) has been one of the most reli­able gar­den plants, expand­ing and bloom­ing like crazy in a spot where it has shaded roots. Another blad­der­pod in a more exposed loca­tion sub­sists on a sim­i­lar amount of water, though it’s just one third the size of this plant.

The non-native Solanum pyra­can­thum is another plant that gets by with close to zero added water in a semi-sheltered spot near the first blad­der­pod. It has a much longer bloom sea­son than my native night­shades, and it has the added bonus of a row of dec­o­ra­tive orange spikes that dec­o­rate the cen­ter of each leaf.

A pot­ted Stapelia gigan­tea also seemed to enjoy the hot weather. You can tell by the burned stems that this plant prob­a­bly doesn’t get enough mois­ture. Still, it sur­vives and blooms.

In my last post I men­tioned a dif­fer­ent stapelia species that stinks like car­rion and is pol­li­nated by flies. This S. gigan­tea has the same charm­ing trait. The fifty pound pot­full of stinky plant lives out­side the win­dow to my stu­dio work­sta­tion. Like most peo­ple in the neigh­bor­hood we don’t bother with air con­di­tion­ing, so work­ing in my stu­dio has been an…interesting olfac­tory expe­ri­ence. At least the stink is only really bad when you get close to the flower.

With heat often comes fire. Two recent evenings had extra-fiery sun­sets. What looks like col­or­ful sun-lit clouds in this photo is actu­ally smoke from a 500-plus acre fire in Mex­ico that made it over the bor­der. For­tu­nately the fire got extin­guished and didn’t develop into another of the mon­ster con­fla­gra­tions we’ve expe­ri­enced twice in the last seven years.

The rest of the West Coast seems to be shar­ing this same heat­wave. The worst seems over, but there are prob­a­bly more warm days ahead. So stay cool as possible–and remem­ber to hydrate.

September 29 2010 | Categories: gardening | Tags: fall • heatwave • September • summer • watering | 12 Comments »

fall foliage: just in time for winter

South­ern Cal­i­for­nia gets fall foliage col­ors too. If there’s a sin­gle tree that we can point to it would have to be the south­ern sweet­gum, Liq­uidambar styraci­flua. You see planted all over, so much that you might call it a cliche–But how can you can some­thing so sat­is­fy­ing a cliche? To me it’s one of the com­fort foods of plants, espe­cially now that the weather has turned cool and thoughts turn towards winter.

My own asso­ci­a­tions with the plant go back years. My mother planted a tree of the clone ‘Bur­gundy’ in front of the Los Angeles-area house where I spent many of my child­hood years. The tree pro­duced red to pur­ple leaves in the fall, depend­ing on the weather con­di­tions, and proved to be a favorite back­drop for a num­ber of fam­ily Thanks­giv­ing pic­tures. When my par­ents retired to Ocean­side, my mother started a sapling in from of the new home.

The plant is planted so much you might almost think it’s a native. But instead it hails from the Amer­i­can South–some com­pen­sa­tion for their alli­ga­tors and mos­qui­toes. In some loca­tions it has escaped into the wilds, but seems to be much less of a prob­lem than many other plants.

This is a plant­ing at the UCSD cam­pus, pho­tographed this week between rain­storms. The plants began col­or­ing up a month or more ago. Unlike aspens or maples or other plants with amaz­ing autumn foliage, some liq­uidambar clones can hold on to their leaves through much of the win­ter. In fact, there was a year where big stands of it still had dark pur­ple foliage hang­ing on the branches, even as the new growth was emerg­ing in the spring.

What a weird year that was, a sign that some­times we seem to escape hav­ing a gen­uine win­ter. But we do get autum. And liq­uidambars are the proof.

December 19 2008 | Categories: gardening • plant profiles | Tags: fall • Liquidambar styraciflua • seasons • sweetgum • UCSD | 3 Comments »

the new spring

Autumn: It’s the new spring.

At least that’s seem­ingly the case for those of us in Mediter­ranean cli­mates. With our dry sum­mers and moist win­ters, the plants best adapted to our cli­mate come close to tak­ing the sum­mer sum­mer off, and then use the onset of cooler, wet­ter weather to start think­ing about get­ting grow­ing again. Some of the shrubs in the local canyons drop some or all of their leaves in response to drought stress, and most of the wild­land annu­als dis­ap­pear not long after the last rains. Our long brown sea­son of sum­mer could almost be con­fused with the depths of win­ter in other areas.

Left: Core­op­sis gigan­tea in its defen­sive, leaf­less sum­mer mode.

Read­ing the recent blogs from those other cli­mates, I’m notic­ing that peo­ple are start­ing to with­draw from their gar­dens, hol­ing up with some favorite plants trans­planted into pots to over­win­ter indoors. These gar­den­ers are think­ing about sit­ting down with plant cat­a­logs and look­ing ahead to the hol­i­days, and then to warmer days and the reemer­gence of their gardens.

Here in San Diego, how­ever, I started off Sep­tem­ber by trans­plant­ing plants around the gar­den, read­just­ing plant spac­ing and color relationships.

Left: Some of the gar­den before and after autumn thin­ning and transplanting.

I planted dozens of lit­tle pots of seeds of plants that I want to grow this fall and next year: giant core­op­sis, datura, buck­wheats from the Chan­nel Islands, mal­lows from the desert, mil­let for the birds and some South African restios for a spot in the gar­den where the orig­i­nal plants haven’t aged grace­fully. It’s a frenzy of activ­ity of the sort that peo­ple in other cli­mates would asso­ciate with late win­ter and early spring.

All sum­mer, the patches of earth that get almost no sup­ple­men­tal water stay brown and vir­tu­ally weed-free. Once the rains return, the weeds begin to claim the uni­verse and the weed­ing chores begin again.

For­tu­nately, a layer of mulch makes a world of dif­fer­ence in keep­ing down weed seedlings. Unfor­tu­nately, areas where you want to sow wild­flower seed can’t be mulched at all if you want the lit­tle seeds to ger­mi­nate on their own. To keep down my work­load, this year I’m iso­lat­ing the wild­flower patches to just a cou­ple spots, around a cou­ple lit­tle trees that will drop their leaves for the win­ter. We’ll see how well that works out…

A few spots in my gar­den don’t have to abide by strictly Mediter­ranean water require­ments. There’s a small herb and veg­etable gar­den that gets mod­er­ate doses of water year-round. A new raised bed har­bors some trop­i­cals that get to stay moist, as well as some other selec­tions that need a lit­tle help with the water. This is the part of the gar­den that gets to expe­ri­ence sum­mer along with the rest of the world. So the task of weed­ing never com­pletely comes to an end, although it’s greatly local­ized to these spots that get watered one to three times a week.

All in all, this 2% of the Earth’s land mass that expe­ri­ences this Mediter­ranean cli­mate (the region around the Mediter­ranean Sea, west­ern South Africa, parts of the Chilean coast, west­ern Aus­tralia, and much of Cal­i­for­nia) has its own sea­sonal cycles that don’t sync up eas­ily with the rest of the world. Gar­den­ers in other areas might not under­stand us. For­give us if we have this glaze of antic­i­pa­tion coat­ing our moods these days. Even as we worry about weeds and increased gar­den chores, fall is here, and it’s the emer­gence of a whole new sea­son in the garden.

November 16 2008 | Categories: gardening • my garden • rambles | Tags: fall • Mediterranean climate • seasons • spring • transplanting • weeding • weeds | 6 Comments »