Filming James Griffith’s Tar Paintings

Posted on April 24, 2013 by Denise

I just voted for tar, and I know you want to as well, which is why I’m making it easy. Click, click here and it’s done.

Your reward? Should James win the vote, our reward is getting the full story of the genesis of the tar paintings in a short documentary to be made by the Los Angeles public television station KCET. (And maybe we can twist James’ arm for an invite for all of us to their summer concert series held at the Folly Bowl. I forget how many it holds.)

Five years ago artist James Griffith uncovered the answer to a mystery at the La Brea Tar Pits that we’ve all pondered since schoolchildren visits to the site — just how exciting are the social lives of paleontologists working among the saber-toothed tiger bones on Wilshire Boulevard? And the answer turns out to be not very. Lonely and isolated in their workspace beneath the auto-infested environs of Wilshire Boulevard where it intersects the Tar Pits, these hard-working scientists responded to a knock on their lab door and an improbable request for a bucket of tar with surprising alacrity. Aside from being starved for human interaction, that’s also due to the fact that the request was made by James Griffith, who could charm a mastodon out of its tusks. As interested in science as art, James instantly made co-conspirators of the scientists in his new project, his “tar” paintings, which I’ve posted about before here and here.

“”When I thought of tar as a material, I loved it because on one hand it is this primordial goo. At the same time, it’s at the heart of the whole environmental problem. It has a contemporary quality and but also an incredibly ancient timeline quality. I just love that.”

The search for the proper fixatives, the furtive trips back to the scientists’ lair for more tar, the first paintings taking form and clinging to the canvas, I’d love to see this story and work filmed. This tar artist needs your vote now. Voting closes Monday, April 29, 2013.

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Did I mention you can vote here? Click, click…(vote for tar — pass it on!)

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in love with my garden

Posted on April 23, 2013 by Denise

It’s Earth Day. Or the day after, to be exact. Let’s hope being a day late is not a portent of things to come. So this morning after, I’m sending mash notes to Earth for making my little garden possible. I want to thank photosynthesis for everything you do. I want to give special thanks to the atmosphere, to rocks, to continental drift. Who am I forgetting? Oceans, plankton, magma. You know who you are. I couldn’t have done it without you. You too, moon and tides. I also want to thank my latitude, nighttime pollinators. Oh, there’s just too many to thank, and I don’t want to forget anyone. I couldn’t have done it without you.

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Earth, I owe everything I am to you.
(title inspired by “In Love With My Planet.”)

“This work is not about landscapes. It is about love.”

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Rick Frausto’s Kitchen Window With Beakers

Posted on April 18, 2013 by Denise

When photographer MB Maher was in town a couple days ago, I told him that I keep bumping into one of his images in my travels through blogs and Pinterest boards. It’s one he took many years ago of Los Angeles artist and set designer Rick Frausto’s delicate, high-wire, aerial ballet of beakers, flasks, corkscrew wire, roots and spider plants for a kitchen window. This photo has been bobbing around on the Internet, obviously holding some special, intimate message for lots of people in those flasks and bottles.


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I had forgotten the artist’s name and the provenance of the photo entirely, and that’s when Maher told me that years ago he had made a little video snippet on Frausto. I immediately asked could the little film be found? And so it was, a work in progress with terrible audio, but it’s only fitting to put a name to that photo at last. Maher says this video was made during a period of “long, languishing student work when he had no idea how to run sound and as a result lost a lot of tape/interview and barely cobbled together this love letter to LB artist Rick Frausto.”

Presenting Mr. Rick Frausto, creator of Kitchen Window With Beakers.


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sweet peas at the community garden

Posted on April 16, 2013 by Denise

Seems all I bring home from my little 10 X 10 plot lately is sweet peas and fava beans. Not exactly a practical daily diet, but nourishing enough each in their own way.
More on the mysteries of fava beans later.


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Record-keeping is not my strongest suit. That’s a paragraph on its own in the as-yet unwritten post “Why I Blog.’ But I dashed off an email to myself with the date I planted these sweet peas, 11/29/12, noting only one of the names of the three varieties I planted, ‘Nimbus.’ White petals flushed and veined in indigo.

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They were bought as small plants of named varieties. Stormy ‘Nimbus’ is quite the change-up from the loads of deep wine-colored sweet peas that have been filling Mason jars and vases since late March from a seed mix by Renee Shepherd that I direct-sowed in November. It’s called ‘Velvet Elegance,’ an early-blooming, day-length neutral strain. I like this mix for fall planting, when the plants can take advantage of a long, cool growing season and the winter rains. And ‘Velvet Elegance’ does bloom extra early in the short days of spring. It’s all about getting as long a season of cut flowers as possible before the heat of summer kicks in. I’m using “cattle panel” as trellis to support the vines.

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Much as I love the ‘Velvet Elegance’ mix as a sure-fire source of flowers, I’m really glad I took a chance on a few named varieties to shake things up in April. I wasn’t sure the soil in my garden plot could grow decent sweet peas at all yet, after construction equipment from a municipal drain project left it in such a compacted mess. Splurging on a few fancier kinds seemed a bit reckless at the time. If gambling away 10 dollars can be considered reckless.

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The gamble paid off. The moral: Sow sweet peas, lots of them. You will probably be tired of cutting them for vases before they are bloomed out. Starting plants from seeds is best, but don’t ignore an opportunity to bring in some exciting new kinds even as small plants. There must be a window in just about every climate where sweet peas can grow and bloom, however small that window may be. In Southern California fall sowing might be best, so they grow strong in cool temperatures, taking advantage of whatever winter rain we get to bloom early before the heat of summer.


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I left the bucket of sweet peas in the car yesterday while I did a few errands. When I opened the door again, the unexpected fragrance that poured out stunned me for a moment, until I remembered leaving the flowers soaking in a bucket on the floor of the car. Along with finding the smallest parking spaces in Los Angeles, now I know a Mini Cooper on a warm spring day holds scent quite well.


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Bloom Day April 2013

Posted on April 15, 2013 by Denise

Spring is moving fast here in Southern California. I’ve already checked out some of the gardens on our host’s site for Bloom Day, Carol at May Dreams Gardens, and saw lots of traditional spring shrubs and bulbs and perennials like hellebores in amazing colors just coming into bloom. Slowly but surely spring is spreading across the land. Huzzah!

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Spring has had an unmistakably orange cast to it in my garden this year. A kniphofia in its current 50/50 bar coloration.

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Same kniphofia about a week ago. I moved this one around and didn’t keep track of the name, but all my kniphofias come from Digging Dog, which has a great list.

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Nepeta ‘Walker’s Low’ is just starting to bloom, and hopefully the isoplexis will hang in there a little longer. The grass Stipa gigantea was moved here last fall and hasn’t missed a beat, showing lots of bloom stalks.

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Tweedia caerulea/Oxypetalum caerulea may be a rare baby blue in color but it is a surprisingly tough plant. This one survived forgotten and neglected in a container throughout the mostly rainless winter. It’s climbing up a castor bean, Ricinus communis ‘New Zealand Purple.’

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The self-sowing annual Senecio stellata started bloom this week. Big leaves, tall, and likes it on the shady side.

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Another tall one, Albuca maxima.

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This South African bulb has been thriving in the front gravel garden, which gets very little summer water. Over 5 feet tall, it reminds me of a giant galanthus.

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More white blooms, Erodium pelargoniflorum, a prolific self-seeder in the front gravel garden.

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The fringe tree on the east side of the house, Chionanthus retusus, just about at maximum white-out.

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The fried egg on a long stalk near the Euphorbia cotinifolia tree trunk is Argemone munita. Hopefully better photos to come. I wouldn’t mind about six more of these self-sown in the garden for next year.

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Self-sowing white valerian forming buds, with the lavender bells of the shrub prostranthera, the Australian mintbush.

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The mintbush with the succulent Senecio anteuphorbium.

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A gift pelargonium, no ID. The small details in the leaves and flowers of these simple pelargoniums get me every time.

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Closeup of the tiny flowers.

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The plant at its base is even more self-effacing, with a big name for such a quiet plant, Zaluzianskya capensis.

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Lots of self-sown nicotianas. The flowers are too small to be pure N. alata, so it probably has some langsdorfii in the mix. Whatever its parentage, lime green flowers always work for me.

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Nicotiana ‘Ondra’s Brown Mix,’ with a potted begonia for scale. This strain of flowering tobacco has been keeping hummingbirds happy all winter. This is the first begonia to bloom (again, no ID!), and the colocasias are just beginning to leaf out.

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The porch poppies, with lots more poppies in bloom in the garden.

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The anigozanthos might be a tad too close to the euphorbia, but I love the lime green and orange together.

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The last two photos are by MB Maher, who was in town briefly and tried to get more of the Euphorbia lambii from a higher angle.

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MB Maher’s photo of the Salvia chiapensis with a bit of purple in the center from Penstemon ‘Margarita BOP,’ planted from gallons a couple weeks ago. I have a feeling that yucca will be in bloom for May Bloom Day. See you then!

Now that Google Reader is in the dustbin of history, I’m trying out Bloglovin for organizing blogs I want to follow.
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Rolling Greens Culver City (tillandsia porn)

Posted on April 13, 2013 by Denise

A fresh shipment of tillandsias had just arrived when I visited Rolling Greens yesterday for their 75 percent-off sale, which ends today. Almost all of these little bromeliads were in bloom or about to bloom. Lordy.

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Like agaves, most tillandsias are monocarpic. After blooming the main plant dies, but will leave behind “pups.”
The blooms do last for months though.

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Chartreuse tillandsias. Who knew? All mine are silver. The bright leaf color on some of these might be an effect of the plant going into bloom.

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This wholesale grower of tillandsias has advice for their care.
I think I need to thoroughly drench mine more often, instead of the scattershot misting method I use.

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I tried my best to stay out of the way as she selected tillandsias and then carried them in flats to work with at the floral worktable.
But I hovered here for quite a while.

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How she could make a sober, cool-headed selection out of this stunning array, I have no idea. Guess that’s why she’s the professional.

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None of them were labeled as to species. Rainforest Flora has a helpful tillandsia identification page, but I couldn’t positively ID any of these. I can see another reference book is needed in the library.

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Lili Singer’s Thursday Talk with Isabelle Greene

Posted on April 12, 2013 by Denise

“Sixteen years ago I was writing only prose and what I consider now traditional garden writing for magazines. And then one day I was in my office looking at a landscape architecture magazine, turned the page, and there was an image that had an enormous physical effect on me. I had a sense of utter physical certainty and determination that I would do whatever I had to do to stand in that place. I don’t know quite how to explain it, but it was nothing to do with my thinking. It had absolutely a physical kind of jolting experience.” — Poet Hazel White on Isabelle Greene’s Valentine garden, Natural Discourse lecture 2/10/12

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Isabelle Greene’s Silver Garden at Longwood Gardens, photo included with kind permission of Fleeting Architecture

I’d resolved to attend as many of Lili Singer’s Thursday lecture series as the workweek allowed, which turned out to be not very many, but the 2/7/13 talk with legendary landscape architect Isabelle Greene was definitely not one to miss. Ms. Greene exudes every bit of wisdom and playfulness you’d expect from someone who has practiced an art that has continuously absorbed and replenished her astonishing creative energies for 49 years. She grew up steeped in a tradition of architecture that celebrates and integrates climate and landscape into a design vocabulary, the Arts and Crafts movement. Henry Greene was Isabelle’s grandfather. (Greene & Greene’s masterwork, The Gamble House in Pasadena, is open for tours.)

Ms. Greene’s speaking engagements are rare, so the turnout filled every seat, where we balanced notepads on our knees and scribbled away, taking notes as she coaxed and cajoled the audience through a garden design brainstorming session. The talk drew quite a few professional designers, and much of its focus was the designer/client relationship, but there was inspiration enough for both professional and layperson. Overall, Ms. Greene exhorts us to “listen to the site, the floor of everything.”

Continue reading →

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more poppy drama

Posted on April 10, 2013 by Denise

Ferocious winds all day Monday left the poppies leaning, some struck down entirely by Tuesday morning.
I was clipping off broken branches and thinning, trying to trim their sail should the winds return, when Marty walked through noting, “Hey, that poppy opened.”
I looked up at a couple still standing upright, saw some new blooms and thought how sweet that he’s trying to console me. Walking past the porch is when I realized he meant this particular poppy, the one we’d been waiting for:

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Months before I’d found a few small plants in the garden and tucked them in the one-inch-wide channel that runs for a couple feet between the brick walkway and back porch that’s been filled in with gravel. Poppies have self-sown here in the past and grow surprisingly well in the confined quarters, but no seeds found their way to the porch this year. And it’s such a nice way to wake up, opening the back door and walking down the steps fluttering with poppies, that I took matters into my own hands and planted about six seedlings I found in the garden. Marty later observed how evenly spaced the poppies had seeded themselves here this year. I didn’t say anything.

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I assumed the poppies would be Papaver setigerum, like all the zillion others in the garden. But in the narrow channel against the porch, they grew taller than garden poppies, and the leaves began to mildew, which I attributed to having been transplanted. Poppies hate root disturbance and always grow healthier when seeded directly. Even though the buds were noticeably bigger, I was ready to pull them out, but Marty stayed my hand, which is unusual since he’s consistently anti plants popping up anywhere but in the garden proper. “Let’s wait and see what they are.” I did pull three anyway but left the few that weren’t too mildewed.

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The petals are in the same color range as all the other poppies this year, Papaver setigerum, but deeper, more saturated. And these porch poppies are bigger and frillier, the stamens much larger. It looks a lot like Annie’s Annuals & Perennials Lavender Breadseed, which I don’t recall ever growing.

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Within minutes of the mystery porch poppy’s opening, you’d think someone announced a blue-light special on pollen.

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It was a bee brawl, with as many as ten at one time wrestling in the petals, their knickers covered in poppy pollen.

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The petals had fallen by nightfall, and there were no new blooms open this morning.
The bees were back to making their rounds on the poppies in the garden this morning, which are slightly wind-blown but still blooming.


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squirrel week

Posted on April 9, 2013 by Denise

I didn’t know that the Washington Post’s squirrel week has been an ongoing tradition, but I’m glad to see squirrels getting their due. Maybe we fawn and make too much over what wildlife manages to get a toe-hold in our asphalt jungle. Possums, racoons, squirrels, you know, the common wildlife many consider pests. But fawn we do since it’s the only wildlife we’ve got. And especially captivating are the squirrels that leap about in the parkway jacaranda trees, clicking like castanets as they munch on the seedpods, using the utility wires as their exclusive transit system up and down the street. The squirrels in our trees are the exotic Fox squirrels, Sciurus niger, that will probably out-compete native squirrels one day, but that doesn’t make them any less charming. Their insouciance, acrobatics, and survival skills have elevated them into a private totem creature. When I saw this chap at Anthropologie recently, I had to bring him home. Our resident red squirrel.

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Cheeky little devil, he’s into everything.

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A fearless explorer.

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Not his best side.

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“Any nuts in this garden?”

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Just can’t keep him out of the trees. (Seems to be operating a squirrel hovercraft of some sort.)

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We haven’t tested his skill as a nutcracker yet, but that’s kind of beside the point anyway.

Happy Squirrel Week!


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birthday plants

Posted on April 8, 2013 by Denise

My birthday took up just about every single day last week, and more days on the weekend, which is how I rationalized a trip on Saturday to find that hitherto unknown-to-me, unmet, spectacular plant that would forever after be marked as my, gollum gollum, birthday present. (Because we wants it.) At our house we always make a big deal about not making a big deal about birthdays, no presents, please, thank you very much, which has the unintended (intended?) consequence of turning birthdays into birthweeks. You don’t want any presents? You better take off work then. Can’t buy you anything? Then I’ll cook you a special dinner tonight. And tomorrow. And breakfast the day after. And bake you a cake. And why don’t you sleep in this morning, and I’ll feed the cats?

Yes, I don’t want any presents for my birthday, but I don’t mind some festive shopping around for something fabulous in the leaf and twig department during my birthday/week celebration. And on Saturday I did find my birthday plant, but it could not be had for love nor money, birthday or no birthday.

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An unknown, unnamed leucospermum looking extremely fat, happy and floriferous. Weren’t these supposed to be the malingering shrubs with soil issues? The grower is now out of business, and the retail nursery where this thrives in a sloping display border, Roger’s in Newport Beach, has been trying to find more stock for the past two years, without success. I know all this because I shouted out questions to one of their nice, extremely busy employees who was mid-stride in the process of helping another customer. Beautiful plants can cause my manners to slip occasionally.

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Research suggests it’s probably Leucospermum cordifolium ‘Yellow Bird,’ one of the pincushion protea shrubs from South Africa. A nursery in Ventura County I’ve been meaning to visit, Australian Native Plants Nursery, has it back-ordered. I see that they consider it a candidate for containers, which is wonderful news because there isn’t an inch of garden available for a shrub. I very possibly need to extend my birthday/week further to include a trip to Ventura.

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On Saturday I watched the shoppers peruse and select plants, which is endlessly fascinating. And I sniffed the sweet peas.

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And admired the new succulent plantings.

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Slipping in a tiger-striped aloe among the echeverias was a nice touch.

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This nursery leans toward an Old World, heavy-on-the-European influence, so it was nice to see some pieces made of concrete, simple and unadorned. Or possibly a lightweight stand-in for concrete. I didn’t touch.

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And I envied the luxurious billowing of Ursinia anthemoides ‘Solar Flare,’ one of Annie’s Annuals & Perennials signature annuals.

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And noted the effects of the afternoon sun on a bromeliad, glowing, backlit, diffused by a screen.

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More screen and shadow effects, this time with a tillandsia.

I just love birthdays, even without any presents — maybe especially without presents. I’ll take the gift of time filled with beautiful incidents over presents any day.

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