{"id":14281,"date":"2011-03-09T12:26:18","date_gmt":"2011-03-09T16:26:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/?p=14281"},"modified":"2011-03-09T12:26:18","modified_gmt":"2011-03-09T16:26:18","slug":"hortus-obsessus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/?p=14281","title":{"rendered":"Hortus Obsessus"},"content":{"rendered":"

Spring planting must be on just about everyone’s minds now, right? I shop at Annie’s Annuals<\/a> all the time, fill my cyber basket to overflowing, then walk away from the computer. The walking away is pure character building. <\/p>\n

At least that was my m.o. until local nurseries started stocking AA’s plants. Aaaagh…Now I routinely come home with such judiciously selected purchases as this Puya chilensis<\/a>, armed to the teeth, destined to grow 15 feet wide, taking as much as 15 years to bloom. <\/p>\n

Annie, have mercy!<\/p>\n

\"Photobucket\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A smaller Puya mirabillis would have been a much better choice for my tiny garden. But so hard to walk away when confronted with a plant in glorious leaf and spine, not just pixels. I’ve been longing for a new puya, these exotic but tough terrestrial bromeliads. A flourishing Puya alpestris planted not far from this P. chilensis, near a pathway edge, died last summer, never having bloomed. A mysterious death. I can still vividly recall that unique smell — the word putrefaction barely conveys the odor of its death throes. So my gravel garden may have some obscure anti-puya attitude. A soil pathogen? Too crowded? I pulled out a big swathe of the beautifully easy calandrinia<\/a> for the new guy, whose mature size of 15 feet wide makes him more a contender for a botanical garden. Or maybe the hell strip? What a hellish thought — I couldn’t do that to my neighbors.
\n<\/big><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Spring planting must be on just about everyone’s minds now, right? I shop at Annie’s Annuals all the time, fill my cyber basket to overflowing, then walk away from the computer. The walking away is pure character building. At least … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[36],"tags":[126,43,667,668],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paNJ2E-3Il","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14281"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14281"}],"version-history":[{"count":37,"href":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14281\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14364,"href":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14281\/revisions\/14364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}