[ Lost in the Landscape ]

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 »

our big food swap

Some folks in my office orga­nized an event where we’d bring in our excess fruits and veg­gies and do a big exchange for some of the other things peo­ple brought to share.

My main time of hav­ing excess food in my gar­den is around March, when the grape­fruit tree goes crazy. Now in the late throes of sum­mer, the gar­den basi­cally had herbs to share–I didn’t think the figs would make it intact in a tight back­pack as I scootered to work. So here’s my lit­tle pile of offer­ings: rose­mary, pars­ley, lemon­grass and rose gera­nium. Peo­ple weren’t con­vinced that rose gera­nium was edi­ble, so I also brought a cou­ple recipes. [ Here’s one of them. ]

I didn’t feel so bad that my figs didn’t make it in. Some­one had three trees of green figs, all of them ripen­ing at the same time.

We have another gar­den­ing artist in the build­ing. He had some pot­ted toma­toes and sweet pep­pers to share. I helped myself to one of the pep­pers, Doux Long d’Antibes, a long sweet pep­per from up the coast from Cannes.

And here’s this glo­ri­ous col­lec­tion of hot pep­pers. I love my hot pep­pers, but being fairly coastal I have a hard time grow­ing them. This gar­dener lives inland a few miles, so the lit­tle bit of extra warmth helped her get this great crop. So of course my haul included a few of these as well.

This was the first time that this food swap was tried at the office, and I’d def­i­nitely call it a suc­cess. You reach a point where even neigh­bors and fam­ily don’t want to see you headed their direc­tion with a bag of fruit.

I’m hop­ing we can do this again, maybe in the late win­ter, when I’ll have kale and chard to spare, along with a tree full of amaz­ing grapefruit…

August 27 2010 | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: food exchanges • summer • vegetables | 8 Comments »

summer at last

Sum­mer finally arrived last week. A humid mass of high pres­sure from Mex­ico hopped the bor­der fence and gave us some hot days and tropical-looking morn­ing clouds that lit up bril­liantly as the sun rose.

After almost four months with a total nat­ural rain­fall of .05 inches much of the gar­den has been head­ing into its defen­sive dor­mancy. But a few plants seem to be rev­el­ing in the arrival of some real sum­mer heat. Top of the list is this Cal­i­for­nia fuch­sia, the ‘Route 66′ cul­ti­var, which opened its flow­ers to coin­cide with the hot weather. Some Epi­lo­bium species and clones have fairly small, gray-colored leaves, but this is one of those where the leaves a smidge larger and greener, a bright con­trast to the scream­ing orange flowers.

Desert marigold, Bai­leya mul­ti­ra­di­ata, has been bloom­ing away with the help of a lit­tle addi­tional water, but not much.

In the bed that gets some irri­ga­tion the gin­gers are the cur­rent stars of the show. Coin­cid­ing with the Cal­i­for­nia fuch­sia was this kahili gin­ger, Hedy­chium gard­ne­r­i­anum, a plant that I’ve been grow­ing since my early teens, a hand-me-down plant from one of my mother’s gar­den­ing friends. Sit­ting in the back yard after sun­set is a treat with this insanely fra­grant gin­ger nearby.

Of course sum­mer isn’t all about the flow­ers. The fig tree is hit­ting its peak fruit pro­duc­tion this week. It’s the vari­ety ‘Brown Turkey,’ which is sup­posed to do well with less heat than what most other vari­eties require. This has been one its best years ever for me. I’m try­ing to fig­ure out what went right this year, and I’m think­ing the suc­cess has some­thing to do with water. This past win­ter and spring actu­ally deliv­ered a slightly-over nor­mal rain­fall that was spaced evenly through­out sev­eral months. Also, last year I applied some water-conserving wood­chip mulch over the bed that con­tains the fig. And John’ has made a point of water­ing the zone around the fig every other week or so. I hope to be able to repeat the suc­cess next year, which accord­ing to the prog­nos­ti­ca­tors could be a drier than aver­age La Niña year.

The gar­den herbs are doing well. A six­pack of pars­ley sev­eral months back is turn­ing out to be way more than two peo­ple who use pars­ley once or twice a week. At least it’s a pleas­antly tex­tured plant for the front of a border.

A six­pack of basil, how­ever, hasn’t seemed to pro­duce nearly enough. Maybe the basil will pick up with the warmer weather.

Sur­pris­ingly the trop­i­cal lemon­grass plants (both the East– and West-Indian ver­sions) haven’t been sulk­ing and are over­pro­duc­ing just like the parsley.

Adding to the pile of edi­bles, our neigh­bor Olinda stopped by with her grand­son. It was all she could do to carry this giant water­melon. John was impressed with its size and sug­gested I weigh it: 30.8 pounds.

It’s one of the with-seed vari­eties that stores these days don’t seem to stock much any­more. Stun­ning rind, don’t you think? One of the many things we’re los­ing in part because of big agra.

I was hop­ing to save the water­melon for a day or two, until we had room in the fridge, but I was a lit­tle clumsy pho­tograph­ing its cool rind in detail. Now I know what a melon dropped 3 feet off a table onto a brick patio does. It stays in one piece, but you have to deal with it right away.

High sum­mer also means the best can­taloupes of the sea­son. This is Scooter help­ing us out by fin­ish­ing a cou­ple of half-melons we had for break­fast. The melon came from the local hybrid grocery-farmer’s market.

And so our sum­mer begins: a lit­tle too much melon and a gar­den peak­ing with fruit and herbs. Life is good.

August 23 2010 | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: fruits • herbs • native plants • summer | 10 Comments »

colder than alaska

It’s been a cool sum­mer so far, fol­low­ing on the heels of a sunny but cool spring. I’ve been watch­ing the tem­per­a­tures in the paper for Fair­banks, Alaska, and most days the offi­cial San Diego report has been cooler. In fact it’s been cooler than almost any­where in the US except for maybe Anchor­age in Alaska. Brr.

At my July 4th party I was talk­ing to some­one there with ties to the Scripps Insti­tu­tion of Oceanog­ra­phy, and his thoughts were that this is typ­i­cal for an El Niño year. The phe­nom­e­non that the locals call “May gray” would be slow to get started (as was the case this year), and the dreaded sub­se­quent phe­nom­e­non the we call “June gloom” would drag on longer than usual. All that seems to be happening.

The gar­den natives don’t seem to be wor­ry­ing about the tem­per­a­ture as much as I’ve been. In fact the late-spring bloomers seem to be hav­ing a field day, extend­ing their bloom, look­ing nice at a time of year when they don’t always. Black sage is often done by this time, but there are a few lin­ger­ing flow­er­ing stems.

For stun­ning flow­ers, though, the black sage has passed the baton to Cleve­land sage. Here’s the com­mon and gor­geous cul­ti­var ‘Win­nifred Gilman.’

…and here’s Win­nifred in closeup…

One of local live-forevers, Dud­leya edulis, has had one of the more amaz­ing years that I can remem­ber. Here’s an 18–20 year old plant from above, all cov­ered with flow­ers. In this photo it’s sprawl­ing six feet across from one edge to the other.

The same dud­leya, viewed from ground level as it cas­cades over a short lit­tle retain­ing wall.

The San Miguel Island buck­wheat that I grew from seed two years ago, Eri­o­gonum grande var. rubescens, is finally hit­ting its stride, finally look­ing the pho­tos I’ve seen in books. Maybe the cooler weather will keep it look­ing nice longer.

Among the many non-natives that call my gar­den their home, this is Clero­den­drum ugan­dense, finally perk­ing up after look­ing like a twig until late in May. I think it’s been a some­what slow start for this plant this year, but it always waits until the weather warms to look like a plant you want to keep in the garden.

The com­mon orna­men­tal sage, Salvia ‘Hot Lips,’ is grown for its red and white bicol­ored blooms. I’ve heard that it blooms mostly with white flow­ers when weather turns cold. In the left photo these are the only two red and white flow­ers I could find on three plants. The rest of the flow­ers are white. In the depths of win­ter, how­ever, this plant is often com­pletely bicol­ored, so I’m not sure if there’s any truth to this color change rumor.

Some of the plants that I worry about the most are my Amer­i­can pitcher plants, these Sar­race­nia from the South, where the daily low tem­per­a­tures these days are often run­ning ten degrees above the San Diego day­time highs. For­tu­nately these plants seem to respond more to daylength than to tem­per­a­ture, and the plants look pretty good. Still, they might be taller by now where they originate.

Cool as the days may be, one thing told me for sure that I do not live remotely near Alaska. Mon­day night was the grand open­ing of the first giant bloom of this climb­ing cac­tus, prob­a­bly Hylo­cereus unda­tus. Even if it’s prob­a­bly been slow get­ting started this year, it’s prob­a­bly the best proof that I’m over­re­act­ing. Hardy to not much below freez­ing, one hit of arc­tic cold and you’ll freeze this plant’s tuchas off.

At eight to ten inches across, the only shy thing about this plant is that it only opens as dark­ness approaches. Peo­ple in cold climes covet being able to grow plants like this–or in fact many of our more ten­der Cal­i­for­nia natives.

That’s def­i­nite proof, Dorothy. We don’t live in Alaska. It just might feel that way these cool sum­mer days.

July 07 2010 | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: buckwheats • Cleveland sage • Eriogonum grande var rubescens • Hylocereus triangularis • in bloom • night blooming cactus • Salvia clevelandii • Salvia mellifera • San Miguel Island buckwheat • sarracenia • summer • temperature | 13 Comments »

from spring into summer

The spring orgy of flow­ers is wind­ing down. Some spring bulbs flashed for just a few days and were gone. But it didn’t really mat­ter because they were replaced by some­thing else interesting.

Summer’s flow­ers seem to come at a more mea­sured pace. But for me it’s a dif­fer­ent sort of plea­sure, let­ting me focus on more sub­tle things like plant forms, leaf col­ors and textures.

Here’s some of what’s still bloom­ing from spring, along with the begin­nings of plants that will accom­pany me through the sum­mer months.

The flow­ers above, left to right, top to bottom:

1: Blan­ket flower (Gail­lar­dia pul­chella).
2: Laven­der cot­ton (San­tolina chamae­cy­paris­sus–I have to look up the spelling of this species every time).
3: Deer­weed (Lotus sco­par­ius) You might con­fuse this Cal­i­for­nia native for one of the inva­sive brooms. It’ll drop most of its leaves to sur­vive the sum­mer drought, but the del­i­cate wands of branches stay attractive–at least to my eyes.
4. St. Catherine’s lace (Eri­o­gonum gigan­teum)–a buck­wheat from the Cal­i­for­nia Chan­nel Islands and coastal regions. This is a young plant, but its umbels are already huge–the largest in this photo is two feet across.
5. Santa Cruz Island buck­wheat (Eri­o­gonum arborescens)–another Cal­i­for­nia buck­wheat.
6. This is a Crinum that came with the house. It might be C. pow­ellii.
7. Ver­bena bonariensis–a flower that’s exactly the same color as the ver­bena in the final pic­ture in this post, though their plant and flower forms are totally dif­fer­ent.
8. Clarkia williamsonii.
9. Same as 6.
10. Bro­di­aea species, one that I lost my records for–maybe B. ele­gans (any­body know this one?).
11. But­ter­fly bush (Clero­den­drum myri­coides ‘Ugandense’)–In the same fam­ily as mints and sages, this has square stems and a del­i­cate scent to the leaves and stems. It enjoys water but doesn’t get much of it and still looks pre­sentable.
12. Ver­bena lilacina, a tough species from the Isla de Cedros, off the coast of Baja. At first glance it looks like the laven­der lan­tana many peo­ple around here grow, but the leaves are totally dif­fer­ent. Here it’s planted along­side some suc­cu­lents with red and blue-gray leaves.

Thanks again to Carol at May Dreams Gar­dens for host­ing Gar­den Blog­gers Bloom Day!

June 14 2009 | Categories: gardening • my garden | Tags: flowers • Garden Bloggers Bloom Day • gbbd • spring • summer | 14 Comments »

another summer of love

Garden’s aren’t neu­tral, apo­lit­i­cal spaces. Along with the sub­tle autumn changes in foliage the neigh­bor­hood has been grow­ing Obama and the occa­sional McCain yard signs, as well as signs for where the home­own­ers stand on the var­i­ous state propositions.

My No On 8 Sign

Here’s a view from the front side­walk of one of my signs. I couldn’t get a proper yard sign locally, but I found a small win­dow sign in pdf for­mat to print from the web. Yeah, it’s tiny. So small I put another one in my car win­dow, about two feet away, eye-level, from the side­walk. No miss­ing that one.

The sum­mer just con­cluded has been a remark­able one here in Cal­i­for­nia. When the Cal­i­for­nia Supreme Court ruled last spring that pro­hi­bi­tions against gay mar­riage were against the prin­ci­ples of the state con­sti­tu­tion, it opened up the flood­gates for a lot of us who’ve been in long-term rela­tion­ships to finally be able to enter into the legal rela­tion­ship that mir­rored how we live our lives every day.

I wrote a while ago of John and my get­ting mar­ried, back in June. And so many of our friends have decided to tie the knot. Although John and I are usu­ally home­bod­ies our social cal­en­dar up to Sep­tem­ber had us attend­ing more wed­dings than we’ve attended in a decade, let alone one sum­mer. We attended wed­dings and recep­tions in people’s back­yards, in some of our local parks and in parts of town with sweep­ing views of I wasn’t in the state in the sum­mer of 1967, the orig­i­nal Sum­mer of Love, but this was one all over again.

No On Propo­si­tion 8

There are polit­i­cal and social forces afoot here in the state and beyond that want to with­draw those newly-granted civil rights, how­ever. Propo­si­tion 8 on California’s Novem­ber bal­lot would place dis­crim­i­na­tory lan­guage in the state con­sti­tu­tion of the sort that’s been pushed into many other state con­sti­tu­tions over the last decade. In our dif­fi­cult times, first post-9/11 and now in the mid­dle of our cur­rent eco­nomic melt­down, it’s easy for peo­ple to turn on each other and pick on the eas­i­est tar­gets. But I think we can do bet­ter than that.

Cal­i­for­nia is poised to be the first state in the coun­try to reject that trend. The polls are still point­ing to the propo­si­tion going down to defeat, and even our Repub­li­can Gov­er­nor is opposed to it. But we’re in no posi­tion to take things for granted. The mar­gin is slim, and get­ting smaller as the elec­tion nears. And who’s not to say that there won’t be a “Bradley-effect,” with vot­ers try­ing to sound more open-minded or tol­er­ant to a poll­ster even if it won’t reflect what they’ll actu­ally do in the vot­ing booth?

So, this Novem­ber, be sure to vote: Vote for me and John, who’ve been together over 25 years, or John and Robert who’ve been together over 21, or for Liz and Ellen, or Mason and Car­los, or Paul and Alan or the dozens of peo­ple we know plus the thou­sands of other cou­ples in the state who’ve com­mit­ted to each other. Is it time for divi­sive pol­i­tics as usual or for real change? This is our chance to lead the way.

October 25 2008 | Categories: gardening • rambles | Tags: civil rights • Proposition 8 • seasons • summer | 1 Comment »

the long brown season

When you spend your time in San Diego’s well-watered burbs it’s easy to for­get that you’re liv­ing in the mid­dle of a desert. The last sig­nif­i­cant rain­fall in town occurred in Feb­ru­ary, and the unir­ri­gated nat­ural lands around town have long ago begun their trans­for­ma­tion into the long brown season.

My recent lit­tle excur­sion to Los Peñas­qui­tos Canyon, a local open-space pre­serve between San Diego and Del Mar, gave me a chance to see what the nat­ural world is doing in these parts.

Not every­thing is brown, of course. Some plants are tapped into loca­tions with resid­ual mois­ture. Oth­ers have adapted to the cli­mate and have the sta­mina to stay green year-round.

Here are a few of the plants still show­ing col­ors other than brown:

Flat-topped buck­wheat (Eri­o­gonum fas­ci­c­u­la­tum) a native plant.

Wild rose (Rosa cal­i­for­nica) a native.

Fen­nel (Foenicu­lum vul­gare) an exotic, inva­sive species. This is the culi­nary plant from the Mediter­ranean that has escaped into the wilds.

Poi­son oak (Tox­i­co­den­dron diver­silobum) a native–one of the few plants that turns blaz­ing red in the fall. Even now, it’s show­ing some of that red color.

This­tle in bloom. I’m not sure if this is native or not, but it’s not the hyper-nasty Russ­ian this­tle (the dried flow­ers of which are shown in the large photo above). [Correction/edit August 1: This is actu­ally a teasel, not a this­tle. Like the escaped fen­nel above, this too is a rene­gade exotic species. Pretty, though…]

It’s a con­di­tion of our con­sumer cul­ture and times to want what we don’t have. Liv­ing in San Diego, most of the plant mate­ri­als that peo­ple expect to find in their home gar­dens fall out­side of the cat­e­gory of what occurs nat­u­rally or is well-suited to the area.

It’s always instruc­tive to visit the nat­ural pre­serves to see plants–even the nasty invasives–that are supremely well-designed to live in this cli­mate. Some of the plants in these parks would do extremely well in gar­dens. But it’s hard let­ting go of plants that many of us asso­ciate with places we’ve lived in and even peo­ple we’ve known.

My own yard has sev­eral areas that I con­sider my guilty plea­sure zones. I have pieces of a bromeliad and a kahili gin­ger that I was given in the 1970s, as well as the green rose from that I dug up from the house where I grew up in the Los Ange­les area. And I’m a nat­ural born col­lec­tor who has a hard time say­ing no to inter­est­ing plants. These plants all require some water and tend­ing beyond what nature brings.

But they’re coun­ter­bal­anced by gar­den areas planted with drought-tolerant species, local and intro­duced, that receive almost no water and atten­tion over the sum­mer. As time goes on, I’ll be expand­ing those areas. Don’t expect me any time soon, how­ever, to plant poi­son oak, as pretty and hardy as the plant is. I have my lim­its as to how much true nature I want in my garden…

July 29 2008 | Categories: gardening • places | Tags: drought-tolerant landscaping • invasive plants • Los Penasquitos Canyon Preserve • native plants • seasons • summer | 4 Comments »

celebrating summer–medieval-style

Ah sum­mer, the sea­son when the meadow blooms and the stag farts! Here are some sprightly words cel­e­brat­ing the sea­son we’ve just begun. They’re the lyrics to a bouncy lit­tle ditty circa the year 1260 that most stu­dents going through music his­tory courses will have have run across. If your Mid­dle Eng­lish is about as bad as mine, I’ve pro­vided a translation.

You can sing it all by your­self, but it’s designed to be four-part round that you sing over a two-part ground. If you’re tired of “Row, row, row your boat” as the only round to sing at sum­mer camp this might be just the ticket. Below is the music (click it to enlarge). And if you want to sing along, click here for an mp3 file [ source ].

Sumer is icu­men in, tran­scribed from the ca. 1260 man­u­script by Bla­hedo, used under a Cre­ative Com­mons Attri­bu­tion Share Alike 2.5 license [ source ].

Warn­ing: Once you lis­ten to it a few times–and maybe even sing along–it gets to be one of those “It’s a Small World” ear­worm tunes that you’ll have a hard time get­ting rid of.

Find out more.
And if anyone’s read­ing this in the South­ern hemi­sphere, here’s Ezra Pound’s win­ter par­ody. (I guess he wasn’t par­tic­u­larly fond of winter.)

June 29 2008 | Categories: rambles | Tags: music • seasons • sumer is icumen in • summer | No Comments »