Congratulations, Mr. President.
(Image from “A Nation Emerges: The Mexican Revolution Revealed” exhibit at the Los Angeles Central Library)
Wordless Wednesday 11/7/12
Congratulations, Mr. President.
(Image from “A Nation Emerges: The Mexican Revolution Revealed” exhibit at the Los Angeles Central Library)
shadowplay
Some startling effects can be had from shadows in the garden, like the mirror-image pattern this egg-shaped wire cage and the tillandsia within make against an east-facing wall in the morning sun.
Too ephemeral an effect to pursue perhaps? One could argue that a garden is, if nothing else, an opportunity to, in Baudelaire’s words, “extract the eternal from the ephemeral.” Not that I ever plan for shadow effects, but the idea is certainly worth exploring.
Gomphrena decumbens ‘Airy Bachelor Buttons’
A space oddity of a gomphrena, is the Airy Bachelor Buttons. When it grew in my garden, I didn’t know its full name, only that it was a perennial gomphrena in zone 10 with a very lanky habit, that grew vine-like to the top of my pergola, over 8 feet high, and eventually required the support of a trellis. I’ve been a little afraid of growing it again ever since. Haven’t seen it offered in nurseries lately, but spied it on a recent bike ride growing relatively demure and compact among shrubs, spilling onto the sidewalk.
Rather than meekly watching it grow to the top of a pergola again, I can imagine lightly clipping it to spill out of a large, tall container, whose sides it would ring like a ruby-clouded nebula. Something spiky — a phormium, agave, yucca, etc. — would be ideal holding the center. The gomphrena would require similar amounts of sun and water, as in plenty of the first, very little of the second. I may have to go back and beg for some cuttings.
Annie’s Annuals & Perennials sometimes carries this gomphrena, which gives masses of material for cut flowers, both fresh and dried.
Big Red Sun – Venice, California
The quick, cheap solution was a trip to Big Red Sun in Venice about 30 minutes away. The Austin, Texas landscape design business and retail shop added a location in Venice a few years ago. I hadn’t visited since the Venice Garden & Home Tour last spring. As it turned out, the shop on Rose Avenue off Lincoln Boulevard was getting ready for an open house Saturday afternoon and was aglow from all the polish and prep.
Posted in design, garden ornament, garden travel, plant nurseries, pots and containers, succulents
Tagged AirPlantFrame, Austin Motel, Austin Texas, Bat Conservation International, Big Red Sun, Congress Avenue Bridge bat colony, Driskill Hotel, Feathers/Austin TX, Feliz Holiday Sale, Firehouse Hostel, Franklin Barbecue, Hotel San Jose, Josh Rosen, Spartan/Austin TX, The Garden Conservancy Open Days, Venice California, Wildflower/Austin TX
8 Comments
driveby garden 11/2/12
Bicycling past this house a couple days ago, I made a hard U-turn to check out the swath of silvery groundcover running alongside the sidewalk underplanting a couple shrubs. It’s probably a variety of Gazania rigens. As an inveterate plant collector who tends to overly complicate things, I love to see simple ideas executed so well. (See and admire them, not necessarily live with them. I’d probably require extensive psychoanalysis if I couldn’t continually mess around and complicate things in the garden.)
Parking the bike is when I noticed the nice detail of the two mustard-colored, square ceramic containers holding a collection of various orbs flanking the pathway.
The flagstone/decomposed granite pathway runs through what would traditionally be the front lawn, bisecting the silvery gazanias adjacent to the sidewalk on one side and low-lying grasses and other ground covers adjacent to the house on the other side, taking one to the main front walkway. This is a corner lot, which allows for lots of scope to build up the simple rhythm of rivers of silver, shrubs, and a couple small crepe myrtle trees on either side of the front walkway.
The shrubs underplanted with gazania might be Melaleuca nesophila. Further down can be seen the bark of crepe myrtles.
Large pots planted with succulents including Kalanchoe luciae and Senecio radicans, flank the steps to the front door.
The container harmonizes with the beautiful bark of the crepe myrtle.
That same day, at a different house, I found a parkway squared away with Dymondia margaretae and succulents. Marty has complained bitterly about the feather grass (Stipa tenuissima) I’ve planted in our parkway, whose seedheads completely engulf and attach to lower legs exiting cars. Clever seed dispersal tactic, but really annoying when you’re dressed for work. The gazania or dymondia are definitely being considered as replacements, but the dymondia has the edge since it can tolerate light foot traffic.
Nerines in November
My zone 10, winter wet/summer dry climate makes it possible to grow nerines in the ground, and they start blooming late October/early November. These stems were cut about two days ago. Nerine bulbs are never offered for sale locally but can be had from specialty bulb growers. All of my bulbs were generous gifts a few years back from Matt (Growing With Plants), who grows them superbly in his greenhouse in Massachusetts, alongside an astonishing array of rarities, many of which he grows from seed and/or hydridizes. Matt’s nerines are blooming now, too, and come in a wide variety of colors. My bulbs bloom in this pale pink and a dark orange, which I understand to come from N. sarniensis input. Past photos show a dark pink that hasn’t bloomed yet. I really think growing them in pots, with or without a greenhouse, is the way to go for best display. These South African bulbs loathe wet, cold, heavy winter soil and need a dry patch of sunny ground to thrive. This means that patch of sunny ground will therefore be bare all summer. I can’t abide bare patches of ground in my tiny garden in summer. In fall, slender stalks lengthen. The stunning, shimmering flowers are barely a foot above ground. Mine grow in the front gravel garden, a few feet away from the boundary fence, among aloes and agaves, which gets minimal irrigation all summer. They grow and bloom unseen unless you know to look for them when the days begin to shorten. I think kinder treatment and better soil would improve flowering. That they flower at all in these awful conditions is simply amazing.
The east-facing window ledge in the bathroom is my favorite spot for cut flowers. The opaque window glass gives a greenhouse-light effect, and the cool temperature lengthens the display much longer than in the main rooms of the house.
More information on nerines can be found on the Pacific Bulb Society’s site here.
Also informative is this article from The Telegraph by Alun Rees from 2007.
I previously wrote about my nerines here.
When my bulbs thicken up, I will pass along offsets, just as Matt did, a great way to introduce more gardeners to these beautiful bulbs.
live through this (Halloween 2012)
After the storm of the century, are you really in the mood for a postapocalyptic zombie movie on Halloween?
I know I’m not. Gates are locked, porch lights are dimmed, and on the Netflix queue tonight we’ll be watching (and it streams):
Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein
(photo from 3guys1movie)
With Bela Lugosi as Dracula and Lon Chaney as the Wolfman, what’s not to like? Just keep in mind that Abbott & Costello started out as radio comedians, so the movie is all about showcasing their banter and doesn’t strain itself when it comes to the plot. I always preferred these two to, say, the Three Stooges. Of course, the Marx Brothers trump all movie comedians.
And bicycling around Long Beach today, I actually found some Halloween decor to admire:
Kinda reminds me of the couple from Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice, another possible movie candidate for tonight.
Lastly, and scariest of all, from the Paris Review, Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Telltale Heart” in Pictures, by Daniel Horowitz:
“TRUE!—nervous—very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad?”
“Now this is the point. You fancy me mad. Madmen know nothing. But you should have seen me. You should have seen how wisely I proceeded—with what caution—with what foresight—with what dissimulation I went to work!”
“Yes, he was stone, stone dead. I placed my hand upon the heart and held it there many minutes. There was no pulsation. He was stone dead. His eye would trouble me no more.”
“Was it possible they heard not? Almighty God!—no, no! They heard!—they suspected!—they knew!—they were making a mockery of my horror!–this I thought, and this I think. But anything was better than this agony! Anything was more tolerable than this derision! I could bear those hypocritical smiles no longer! I felt that I must scream or die! and now—again!—hark! louder! louder! louder! louder!”
Yikes! I’ll just be nipping out to make sure those gates are locked again…
Happy Halloween
Wordless Wednesday
After spending all day Tuesday Monday blowing work deadlines, riveted to Frankenstorm coverage, the safe haven of Wordless Wednesday beckons.
After a storm like that, what is there to say?
Oh, maybe two more words: stay safe.
(This post will make more sense when it eventually is Wednesday, that is, tomorrow. All of which comes from living in a disaster news fog. Whoa.)
Occasional Daily Photo: corkscrews
Reputedly a more restrained passion vine, a young Passiflora loefgrenii, the Garlic Passion Flower, gives an exciting, tightly coiled performance its first year even when not in bloom.
Now imagine this with passionflowers. Hurry, summer 2013!
Posted in Occasional Daily Photo, Plant Portraits
Tagged Garlic Passion Flower, Passiflora loefgrenii, vines
1 Comment
James Griffith; Natural Selection/Offramp Gallery 11/18/12
Offramp Gallery – November 18 – December 23, 2012
Opening Reception: Sunday, November 18, 2-5pm
Closing Reception & Holiday Party: Sunday, December 23, 2-5pm
1702 Lincoln Avenue | Pasadena, CA 91103 | 626-298-6931
Artists Sue Dadd and James Griffith seem to invariably have both their names spoken in the same breath.
Bagging some glass mulch at Building Resources in San Francisco.
It’s only natural, since they are an exceedingly charming couple.
But their extraordinary achievement, the amphitheater they created and named the “Folly Bowl,” might also be partially responsible for this reflexive joining of their names.
