Category Archives: pots and containers
notes from the December garden/Los Angeles
December temps have been in the 80’sF, astonishing even to this lifelong Angeleno. Fairly quickly I’ve re-adapted to the prevailing attitude that keeping track of the weather is mostly irrelevant here. I left checking hourly weather forecasts behind in Oregon … Continue reading
resuming rambles around town
Spending winter in Los Angeles means I get to indulge a lifelong passion for looking at old stuff that goes way back to thrift-shopping in high school. (Seriously, we were dressing like Annie Hall before the movie came out.) Other … Continue reading
cleaning up the zone 10 summer garden
Checking in on the Long Beach garden, it feels a little like cleaning up after a party that you weren’t invited to. In summer’s aftermath, it’s all about reading the seedpods and dessicated growth for clues of what vegetative frivolity … Continue reading
abandonment issues
With just one week until we depart for Oregon, the Long Beach garden has finally taken a shape that feels horticulturally logical to me, according to my tastes and the slim resources it will have available in my absence. A … Continue reading
touring summer gardens
Lately I’ve been dipping more and more frequently into photos taken while garden touring last summer with the Garden Fling, a highly recommended garden tour group. Compared to what’s being reported in this crazy news cycle, making and caring for … Continue reading
winter-blooming aloes go about their business
Returning from a 10-day trip over Thanksgiving, the garden buzzed with energy from emerging aloe flowers. Seeing the refreshed garden after the weeks of cleanup in October/November was a pretty special homecoming. Catching the aloes starting their winter bloom cycle … Continue reading
Posted in plant nurseries, pots and containers, succulents
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fence project status
(A quick recap. Creeping fig, Ficus pumila, covered the south CMU wall of the back garden since we bought in ’89. Clinging tightly, it grew tall and thick and provided excellent evergreen privacy. A couple years ago, the neighbor on … Continue reading
caudiciform plants for the win
I confess the loss of Beaucarnea ‘Gold Star’ was one I dreaded the most during our extended absence. It was one of the first plants I rushed to check upon return. Survival of caudiciform plants was a theme. Right up … Continue reading
Posted in agaves, woody lilies, journal, pots and containers, succulents
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taking stock of the runaway garden
I know “runaway garden” is an oxymoron, but even so the SoCal garden (zone 10) seems to have been on a journey without me, cycling through various caretakers, some benign, some less so. The last few days have been the … Continue reading
Posted in agaves, woody lilies, journal, pots and containers, succulents
11 Comments
my own private tulipomania
There’s a lot of the traditional horticultural canon that can be grown well here at the moist Oregon Coast in zone 8b/9a that I’m skipping so far– hellebores, roses, rhododendrons, hydrangeas, hostas, maples, Oriental poppies, peonies, clematis to name a … Continue reading
Posted in Bulbs, Oregon garden, pots and containers
5 Comments