Piece of Eden

Shoot The Face, Not The Rear End.

2012-02-18T02:03:00.000-08:00

Wednesday it unexpectedly rained. Thursday it was horribly windy. Friday was lovely, and I was able to get outside and enjoy the garden. I tried to make a "foliage follow-up" post, but flowers and puppies distracted.

It was only after taking many photos of bees feeding on Calandrinia pollen that I realized I should be shooting the bee's face, not its rear end.

I was taken seeing the pollen all over the bee's backside. They get covered with pollen, like miners get covered with coal dust. Worker bees indeed.

The Coleonema pulchellum started blooming this week. I used to have three of these shrubs. One remains. They are extremely beautiful for several years, and then suddenly die. The Marilyn Monroe of shrubs.

I tried for foliage shots. Next to the Coleonema is a Duranta 'Golden Buddha', which really is this golden:

Common ordinary old Fescue 'Elijah Blue', looking it's cool-season best.

Euonymus japonicus 'Chollipo', complete with one orange seed. The foliage looks tired and faded in August heat, but comes back into beauty in winter and spring.

The orange seed looks perfectly coordinated with nearby Clivia flowers...

The foliage on Aloe plicatilis was looking really superb. Then I noticed that the first flower spike has emerged.

So much for foliage. I tried to get some puppy photos. Puppies are about as easy to photograph as bees. I did get the face instead of the rear end--some of the time, anyway.

It was a very busy day.

(Small) Rock Planter; "No, no, Natasha!"

2012-02-16T02:46:00.000-08:00

Just for fun I used a hole saw to drill a cavity into a piece of feather rock, then planted an Echeveria pulidonis in the cavity.   It has been content enough with the rock to bloom.

Slow-growing Echeveria pulidonis has a pure yellow flower.   If your planter is small, a slow growing plant is a good idea. Feather rock is a type of volcanic rock that traps a lot of air in itself and thus is very light. It's like pumice, only more glassy.   It can be very sharp, so one must be careful when handling it. It also appears to retain some moisture for a while, which is helpful for the plant.

In other news, the puppies are so very good. If they have a little accident, they are enthusiastic about helping to clean it up.


"No no, Natasha!" says Boris. "Don't eat the poop! Use a paper towel!"

"Oh, an extra paper towel! I'd better pee on it!"

"There! All clean!"

"Now what shall we do? I know, let's go sit on the furniture!"

Puppies. They're heeeere!

Bloom Day February

2012-02-14T22:09:00.000-08:00

Thanks to May Dreams Gardens for hosting this delightful blogger's meme.

The new puppies are taking up all my time just now, so just two flowers for this Bloom Day. Though there are many more, these must suffice. I've washed the floor more today than I have in the past year...such innocent little faces.

Kalanchoe luciae bloom. Kalanchoe luciae is native to South Africa.

I have read the seeds are quite easy to germinate, and I plan to try to get some seed-grown plants. The flowers are heavy with nectar: a hummingbird has been hitting them several times a day for the past week.

This other flower is ~~an unidentified South African bulb~~ Androcymbidium pulchrum, seen Saturday at the UCI Arboretum. Update 11:46 pm : It's Androcymbium pulchrum. I thought I remembered it from last year's visit, and I saved the name. A striking burgundy flower that snails were racing to devour. I picked a couple of snails and tossed them on the asphalt. No sympathy.

The nearby tag said Galiaxia, but it doesn't look like a Galiaxia at all. So unknown.

And then the little hellions. Don't let those sweetly innocent faces fool you!

Puppy Love! They're Here! They're Finally Here!

2012-02-14T08:23:00.000-08:00

They're here! They're finally here! The puppies are here!

Note: no, they do not have blue eyes. That is the camera flash doing something like bouncing off the backs of their eyes. They have beautiful dark brown eyes just one step this side of black.

Blooming Aloes at the UCI Arboretum

2012-02-13T03:00:00.000-08:00

Aloes blooming Saturday at the UCI Arboretum. Their marlothii is better than my marlothii.

Aloe plicatilis apparently fell over since my last visit. It now has a big rock to lean on. Looks happy.
I start close up...

...and pull back:

Look carefully and you can see the rock supporting it:

Aloe petricola has dramatic two-tone flowers. As they prepare to open they turn a greenish ivory:

Aloe wickensii starts red and yellows up, and always seems to be suffering through a Bad Hair Day:

Aloe chabaudii has intensely coral-red flowers:

So does this larger Aloe. It had no tag, unfortunately. A late ferox?

Aloe ramosissisma was finished blooming. This Aloe gets quite large before it begins to flower.

It was about 4.5' tall and 8' wide (1.4 M x 2.4M)

Aloe ferox was also finished blooming. It had a few seeds:

Aloe vanbalenii was still at it. It has formed a huge clump. This is about one-third of the clump:

The plant sale was okay. I was hoping for an Aloe buhrii...

or broomii (right), or wickensii (left):

but no such luck. A Xerosicyos danguyi would have been awesome:

Or a Brunsvigia josephinae:

But no luck there, either.

We got an Aloe thraskii, a variegated Kalenchoe tomentosa, and Arctotis 'Burgundy'.

Other plants besides Aloes were blooming. This Ceanothus looked glorious:

Many of the South African bulbs were blooming as well:

I've seen Cussonia paniculata mentioned on more than one blog in the past year or so. UCI's was looking dandy:

Several Melianthus were producing fresh new foliage and flower stems:

It's not the Huntington by any means, but they do have a Boojum:

And the plant sale is a lot less of a madhouse.

We got home to find Cuddles very, very busy taking a nap. Enjoy it, honey. The puppies will be here tomorrow. If you want a nap, you are going to have to hide somewhere to get one!

Names

2012-02-12T03:00:00.000-08:00

No, they are not here yet. Soon. Very soon! White Girl and Blue Boy.

Names! What do you think?

Nick and Nora
Luke and Leia
Boris and Natasha
Milo and Maris
Ken and Barbie?
Ken and Barbie? Okay, maybe not Ken and Barbie. It might end up being Blue Boy and White Girl forever. Though going out in public yelling "White Girl! White Girl!" might be kind of...hmm...I spoke with the breeder. Her nickname for Blue Boy is "Mr. Snuggles". Her nickname for White Girl is "The One From Hell". Ah. This may be interesting.

White Girl:

Blue Boy (photo from Wikpedia (link))

No, not that Blue Boy. This one. Mr. Snuggles:

And I Thought The Mulch Was Heavy...

2012-02-11T03:26:00.000-08:00

...Dirt is even heavier. I'm screening rocks out of a pile of soil to fill the raised beds in the veggie garden. I sure know how to have a good time, eh? Why laze by a crystal blue pool, adult beverage in hand, when you can get really sore lugging buckets of dirt up a steep garden stairway. (Not that we have a pool--just giving an example of what normal people might consider fun.)

There are not many rocks, but I want a very smooth textured soil for planting vegetable seeds.
I always put a piece of wire fencing over the veggie beds so the local cat population doesn't use them as litter boxes. (Go coyotes!) I will add compost and let them sit for a month or two. Longer would have been better, but I was slow about getting the Fall Project completed.

Three beds done, three to go. I made time to admire the Cercis occidentalis trees. Many sources say "best bloom in areas of winter chill" in regards to Cercis. There's little chill here, but they manage to bloom well anyway:

Their flowering beauty is very brief: two weeks at most.

It is a nice two weeks, but it didn't make the buckets of soil feel any lighter. Owwww!!!!

If You Love Agaves...

2012-02-10T14:23:00.000-08:00

If you love Agaves and have not seen the photographs from this plant lover's trip to Mexico, you are in for a major treat. Ever seen an Agave with fluffy leaf tips? Agave albipilosa may be very, very popular once it reaches the market.

Enjoy:

Mexico trip by Nick Macer

How Can We Celebrate Spring?

2012-02-10T03:43:00.000-08:00

How can we celebrate spring...

without a winter first?

Without the bite of cold and drear of grey skies, the fearful memory of barren times,

how can we truly rejoice in a crystal blue pool on a glorious day?

It's just another beautiful day...

Surely heaven must be...a very dull place!

Elgaria multicarinata, Southern Alligator Lizard

2012-02-08T15:30:00.000-08:00

This ~~fellow~~ girl wound ~~himself~~ herself in a circle trying to warm up on a cool morning. Some additional googling leads me to believe this is a female. Males have more triangular heads.

She was right in the path of the car, so we slid a post card underneath her to carefully move her out of danger. As she warmed up in the morning sunshine, she slowly unwound. Look at the fierceness of her gaze!

Elgarias will detach their tail as a distraction if they are threatened by a predator, and then grow a new but shorter replacement tail. The detached tail will wiggle for several minutes, allowing the lizard to escape. This girl was too cold to do anything except wait and hope. What a beautiful "S" curve her back creates.

Warmed up, unharmed, and apparently tired of being photographed, she scampered away.

Lizards are hearty eaters of bad bugs. Lizards are good.

Ooh! New Camera

2012-02-07T02:29:00.000-08:00

Rosa 'Eugene de Beauharnais'

Rosa 'Souvenir de la Malmaison'

Cameras have certainly improved over the past seven years. Wow.
Rosa 'Easy Does It'

This new camera is so much lighter than the old one.
Camellia japonica:

The new model does not have what the old one did: that long long delay between hitting the shutter button and the shutter actually opening and shutting. I learned to hold very still for quite a long time that way.
Winter Hydrangea flower:

It's going to take some getting used to all the new buttons and menus and all the buttons are in different places and the menus are all different and the zoom is very different...
Aeonium

In the meantime, the Aloe striata inflorescence is emerging. The first year I saw this, I thought it was Aloe Gall Mite and I cut it out. Oops. It wasn't. It was the flower.

Yet Aloe striata forgave me, and bloomed the following year. In my wanderings around the Web, I've read that you can tell a purebred A. striata from a hybrid (hybrids are extremely common in Southern California, apparently) because a pure A. striata doesn't have bumps along the edges of the leaves. Mine is pretty smooth.

Aloe 'Blue Elf' is in its prime now:

An Aloe greatheadii bloom is starting to emerge as well. This photo turned out kind of cool:

Of course I am still staring at marlothii.

I am going to be fumbling around, flummoxed with this newfangled machine for a while, so bear with me. After seven years with the same camera, I had my routine memorized so thoroughly I didn't have to think about it. Now everything seems new and strange. I don't plan on going back to the old camera, though! It's rather eccentric nowadays to buy a machine dedicated strictly to camera functions. Most people use the one in their phones. Perhaps someone should just add basic phone functions to a camera, for odd people like me.

How Do You Do Your Guac?

2012-02-05T18:30:00.000-08:00

I am no cook; I know three or four dinner recipes and alternate them as best I can. Beloved puts up with this. (I think I've mentioned before he's a living saint.) However guacamole is hardly cooking. We have one of the greatest luxuries of California living: our own avocado tree. We are smack in the avocado belt. Even now with most of the agricultural land in Southern California gone, there are still commercial avocado groves visible from our balcony.

We are on such familiar terms with the avocado, "guacamole" is known simply as "guac" in this house. I halve the avocado. A Mexican waiter showed me the easiest way of removing the big slippery seed: you hit the seed with a knife blade, middle of knife blade to middle of seed. The blade gets stuck in the seed, which you can then pull cleanly out of the glowing green flesh. Then knock the handle of the knife against the edge of your trash bin, and the seed pops right off the blade into the trash, leaving your fingers clean. (Of course you have to be very very careful with the knife.) You don't need to hit the seed very hard with the knife blade. It usually sticks pretty well.
Food pictures are tricky. This looks terrible, but it was delicious!

All we do for guac is to cut the avocado into small squares and mix in some fresh salsa. That's it, that's all. Stir enough so that there is a little avocado mush mixed in with the chunks of avocado and the salsa. Done. A little fresh ground black pepper is nice, but I often get lazy and leave it out. I like the Santa Barbara Roasted Garlic salsa: the touch of garlic is...mmmm. The nice thing about a fresh commercially made salsa is the vinegar in it, which adds just a little acidity that brightens the buttery quality of the avocado. You don't make it ahead of time, either. You prepare and devour, like a soft-poached egg.

My sister is more of a purist. She likes just a token amount of salsa in there, or a bit of chopped tomato and a few drops of lime juice, and she leaves it chunkier.   Sister says she doesn't like to interfere with the flavor of the avocado. I suspect Sister's Puritan approach is a reaction to her neighbor, who apparently whips the avocado to the consistency of corn syrup and then loads it up with garlic, salt, sugar, ketchup...well, I won't go on.

While the rest of the neighborhood was watching The Big Game, Beloved practiced The Well Tempered Clavier and I went outside and to finish up the Fall Project before Spring hits. I decided against new raised beds for this year and will reuse the old ones. I came up with a good layout, I think. I have to straighten this out and measure and get everything perfectly spaced, but I think this will be it for this year:

The planting beds are now in the sunniest part of the area, the path is in the shadiest, it looks better, and it didn't cost much at all outside of my time and the health of my back. Everything was reused. I did spend $25 on a dwarf 'Cara Cara' orange tree, but I don't count that as part of the rehab. Now what's left besides getting the spacing perfect is filling those raised beds with soil, which will make the ten cubic yards of mulch I put down seem like an easy easy job.

Beloved got tired of practicing piano and finally turned The Big Game on, so I'll go watch the last two minutes with him. I don't really have to watch it. Our neighbor is a rabid Giants fan, and by his yells and shouts, I can tell exactly what is going on. Sounds close so far. The NFL strictly enforces the use of the copyrighted term "S---- B---", so everyone is starting to call it The Big Game instead. The NFL I suppose will have to copyright "The Big Game", too.   Then what? In the meantime, there is guac.

Let me know via comment how you do your guac.

Aloe marlothii Blooms

2012-02-04T03:00:00.000-08:00

This is so stupid: when I started planting Aloes I never even thought about the flowers. All I wanted was something that would not die of thirst on that arid front slope.

What A Weird Color!

2012-02-03T03:30:00.000-08:00

I'm getting very used to a no-lawn lifestyle, so much so that the beautiful velvety green of this estate's meticulously groomed lawn took me aback. Soon only the 1% will be able to afford the water for this. The news reported that LA's water will be going up 3% soon. 3%! Ha! Ha! Ha! I laughed at that. Ours is scheduled to be going up another 26%, after last year's 25% increase. 3% sounds good to me.

Those young-ish bare trees are some kind of Platanus, I think. Nice bark:

Nearby was this pot, which was so out of the ordinary I took a second look at it.

A coral bark maple with a wooly blob of Helichrysum on each side of it, and a "string of bananas" Senecio dribbling down the middle. Haven't seen that combo before. Almost as much a visual shock as that beautiful lawn in this dry dry year. I wonder what their water bill looks like. Scary, probably.

Mulch Madness

2012-02-02T20:15:00.000-08:00

Mulch Madness is done for the year. No more aching everything, and no more lame puns on the word "mulch". After mulching this area:

and..

and...

and...

and...(gotta do something about that lawn)

and...(the fall project is getting there, might be done by spring)

and...(this slope was a killer. I had to climb up and down an extension ladder all day)

and..(here I finally made those stones level instead of sloping while I was at it. Much better)

and...(I need to put that tower back straight this time)

and...(pots all over, what a mess)

and...

and...the phoebe was back on his block again...

and...(stairs to go up and down)

and...

and...(I finished up 'Abraham Darby'. I always leave Abe for last)

and...it was getting dark. I noticed many little things I would have missed if not for going through every square inch of the garden mulching-tossing. Like finding the tip of a hydrangea branch (lower arrow) had rooted, forming a baby plant with two strong new stems (upper arrow)...

And discovering that the single seed I got last year from Aloe gariepensis has germinated and formed a tiny plant:

I remember well standing on the slope looking at the seed last year, wondering if I should just toss the seed in the compost and not make the effort to keep a tiny pot moist long enough to germinate a seed and then grow a tiny plant. I just didn't have time to nurture a seed. Seemed a shame not to give it a chance, though. So I stuck the seed under a Calocephalus on the slope, where it would be a little moist and a little protected, and when I mulched this year and lifted the edge of the Calocephalus, there was a tiny Aloe plant!

This slope wasn't too hard. I stood at the top and threw mulch down. Digging out the rest of the sprouting Baccharis stems was the hard part:

Today, the last day, I started in the morning when the leaves were dewy.

Not much mulch left, but raking and trimming and sweeping took time, and I was slow because I've been doing this almost all day almost every day since last Wednesday...

Of course I had to stop and get a picture of Aloe marlothii...

and finally, finally as the sun went down at around 5:30 in the afternoon, I was done.

Mulch Madness 2012 is complete. I could use about two more yards--I didn't cover every spot. But not this year. Enough with Mulch Madness. A hot bath awaits.

Almulch Done

2012-02-01T02:28:00.000-08:00

I'm nearly done mulching, so while I was finishing up the mulch on the front slope, I planted an Aloe 'Hercules' while I was there. 'Hercules' is a cross between Aloe dichotoma and Aloe barberae, and is faster growing and cold-hardier than both parents. This hybrid occurs in nature as the two parent species sometimes share the same area.

I thought pretty hard about putting this Aloe in that spot. 'Hercules' can get 30 feet (9 meters) tall, so it needs to be placed as carefully as a tree, because it is a tree. It got very stressed in the 12" pot it was in, giving the foliage that lovely tangerine color. I am already beginning to think I need to move it. It won't be in the way, but it may look odd there eventually. This Aloe, once in the ground gets big fast, so I won't be able to move it for long.

If it falls, it shouldn't take out a car or pedestrian. Only another Aloe (or two or three)

I've only got about two more yards of mulch to spread. Also maybe an Aloe to move. I think I'll be done tomorrow. Ouch! Ow! Whee!

Scenes From Nearby

2012-01-31T02:41:00.000-08:00

A palm shaded courtyard

Beautiful Furcraea, but planted a wee bit deep in that fabulous pot, maybe?

May your day contain serenity.

Mulch Better!

2012-01-29T23:33:00.000-08:00

The pile is smaller

Being a typical gardener, I went out many hours after dark in my pajamas to take a picture of a pile of composted wood shreddings. I hate flash photography, but only because my flash pictures usually look terrible (example above).   Before hastening back indoors, I tried a flash shot of the bare Cercis branches. Interesting, sort of. It looks more January-like than our January has looked so far.

I'm up late because everything hurts. My back hurts, shoulders, knees, neck, toes, wrists. Ow, ow, owwwww. The hot bath helped, but not enough. But the garden looks better and better. I mulched like mad all weekend, gusty arid winds or not, stopping only to note that Aloe 'Fire Ranch' and Aloe greatheadii have the start of blooms.

I Didn't notice this bloom emerging on Friday. Love love love the red teeth on Aloe 'Fire Ranch':

Aloe greatheadii. This year's bloom looks more substantial. Last year's flopped over, and I had to stake it so no one would step on it.

Does it hurt to bloom, O Aloe? Or feel euphoric?
Do the bees crawling through your anthers
tickle?
Does soil have flavor--bitter, salty, sweet?
Does water sate?
Does the sun burn you as it does me or
do you shiver when it is night?
I should love to ask you, Aloe.
I should love to hear your voice, undoubtedly coloratura.

On Saturday night we watched "Bill Cunningham New York", which is a documentary about a man who has spent decades taking snapshots of people wearing interesting clothes in New York City. He rides a bicycle everywhere (in New York City! at age 80!), doesn't care about food, money, or clothes (his own clothes, that is) and lives in a tiny space filled with filing cabinets filled with a detailed history of the fashion of the last thirty or so years. "He who seeks beauty will find it," was something he said. I thought long and hard about what he said regarding getting out there, being out there on the street looking and looking at what people wear: “I let the street speak to me. There are no shortcuts…. It isn’t what I think, it’s what I see.” You don't decide short skirts are a trend and then go out and take pictures only of short skirts. You go out with no ideas at all, with a silent mind, and look.

That's just as true of a garden as it is of fashion in New York City. You look and look and look for hours and days, weeks, years, shutting your mind off, until the garden speaks. Then you have to make sure you are listening.

Too Mulch! (Wind)

2012-01-27T03:00:00.001-08:00

Wind making the Yucca vibrate:

Not only did I still have a big pile of mulch to spread, but the wind started to roar, whoosh, and howl. Eyes full of mulch dust. Lovely. I did what I could. The priority for the day was getting the pile pushed to one side so Beloved could get his car into the garage. Beloved wants his car parked in the garage, not on the street. He was willing to tolerate it on the street for two nights, but yesterday, time was up. I did get that accomplished.

Just before sunset the wind abated a bit, and I wandered the garden. There was a cluster of tiny birds with black and white striped heads peeping in the neighbor's hedge. Another bird in the Avocado tree was shrieking. Ah. A cat was stalking the shrieking bird--a very beautiful cat, golden and golden-eyed, marbled and swirled with dark stripes. A designer cat. I guessed the bird was possibly nesting. Stop and chase off cat. Bird shrieks ceased.

Aloe 'Fire Ranch' catching the last of the day's sun. I like the contrast of the thick meaty leaves with the delicacy of the Calothamnus behind it.

Well how about this: an Epiphyllum leaf that actually looks good. Epiphyllums are a lot like Orchids: out of bloom, they are not much to look at. I think that's why I don't have many of them.

Aloe ferox is finished blooming and the bloom stalks are now bare, but still sculptural

Aloe marlothii is just about to start opening, and is looking ever more spectacular.

At that point the bird in the Avocado tree started shrieking again. The cat was back. I chased it off again. The shrieking stopped.

Now the ldayight was really fading. 'Blue Glow' stopped glowing.

'Joe Hoak' looked more yellow and less white. Both were of course unfazed by the wind, which was starting to pick up again.

Before escaping back inside, I paused again at the Moroccan Daisy, Pyrethropsis hosmariense, which I've been taking picture after picture of lately. Why is it so beautiful? The silver foliage? The icy white and brilliant chrome yellow of the flowers?

Something else...its...the buds! The black-edged, silver buds!

I forgot all about the mulch pile at that point. And the howling wind.

And Mulch, Mulch, More!

2012-01-27T03:00:00.000-08:00

Does the pile look any smaller?

It wouldn't take so long to mulch the garden if I did not stop and do other things along the way. I pulled out this somewhat large rose, 'Climbing Shot Silk'. I might have a spot for it in the back, then again, I might not. I don't know yet. The shovel gives you an idea of how big it was. I had cut it back by about two thirds in preparation for the move (or remove).

Then I dug out the little Clematis that had gotten overwhelmed behind the rose.

And gave up on the limbed-up Camellia sasanqua that didn't survive a transplant. It was fine for several weeks after the move, but then we got two 90F (32 C) days in a row which killed it off. It might have come back, maybe...but I decided it was hopeless.

Now I had an empty spot...

...for the new 'Cara Cara' Orange tree. It is on true dwarf rootstock and should stay under 10 feet (3 meters) tall.

I planted the orange tree, then I put the Clematis in a better spot where it would get more sun, and finally I could go back to mulching. The only beauty shot of the day was this beautiful new basal break on 'Black Bacarra'. Well, if you are a rose grower, it's a beauty shot. A normal person probably wouldn't even notice, or just wonder why it wasn't green.

Does the pile look any smaller?

Didn't think so.

A Freshly Mulched Garden...

2012-01-26T02:45:00.000-08:00

Self portrait with mulch:

A freshly mulched garden is like a man wearing a beautifully tailored suit. No matter how handsome the man is, he looks even better wearing a beautiful suit.

I didn't mulch the garden last spring, and so the garden didn't look as good as it could have, plus it developed considerable number of weeds. Last winter and spring (and summer, and some of fall) dear Hoover needed a lot of care and attention and I didn't get around to the mulch, because Hoover was more important.

Not man not wearing suit. Wearing funny hat that makes head appear misshapen.

I always dread mulching, because lugging and distributing 10 cubic yards of mulch one five-gallon bucket at a time is a lot of work, and yet I'm always thrilled and delighted when I'm done, not because I'm done, but because the garden looks fantastic and for the following year there are no weeds at all. Each plant looks beautiful in its frame of fluffy brown. The moral of the story is that guys should wear a suit every once in a while. You may wonder how I reached that conclusion, but the truth is I'm so completely exhausted from spreading mulch all day, I don't even know.

Sweet Sparkling Rain

2012-01-24T20:21:00.000-08:00

Yes it seems so dreary. The birds cannot fly.

All is dull and bleak.

But look carefully. As rain falls, it dances.

When morning comes, all is jeweled.

The sun shines through every drop.

All is renewed, cleansed.

Reborn.

Breathing, enlivened.

Made new.

Oh, the sweetness of sparkling rain!

A Truly Magnificent Dracena Draco

2012-01-22T19:10:00.000-08:00

This neighborhood Dracena draco rivals any that I've seen in a public botanical garden. How it managed to get so large and stay so perfectly beautiful in someone's front yard is something of a miracle. Perhaps the people who originally planted it, or a descendent, still owns the home...or the original owners managed to sell the property to someone who appreciated the spectacular beauty of this specimen.

It has been trimmed slightly to keep it high enough above the sidewalk, but it was done carefully, not butchered. This tree started branching young, so it is proportionally rather short in comparison to its breadth. However, this was fortunate--it does not tower over the single-story home on the lot. In addition, the low branching makes it less top heavy, and therefore less likely to topple. Though the Dracena is large, it still works beautifully in the space. It dominates, but does not overwhelm. Okay, it is overwhelming, but not in size--in the beauty of it!

A mature Dracena draco casts dense shade.

Looking up into the canopy is entrancing. There is no other tree quite like it.

It is supremely ironic that the Dracena was given the perfect space, but that this garden also contains a couple of Dasylirion longissimas that are planted to close to the fence and too close to each other. There are also a pair of Chondropetalums also rather crammed into the space.

What does it matter? That Dracena!

Gasp! Sigh! Swoon! Oooooh!!

Winter = Busy

2012-01-20T19:14:00.000-08:00

'Laguna'

While a lot of the rest of the country sips hot cocoa by the fire, here we're frantically busy, getting the garden in shape before it gets too unbearably hot to be out there all day, which begins about mid-February. I'm almost done with rose pruning. There are still a few roses in bloom, even now.

'Fabulous' is looking very much like a Camellia:

So few blooms means each one is quite precious.

'Easy Does It' has intense winter coloring:

'Comtesse de Provence' is not toasted, as it so often was this past summer:

I've been raking up leaves and pulling old foliage off the Hemerocallis and Salvias. I repotted the dormant Bursera into its new fancy-pants handmade (in the USA!) container.

The bees are ecstatic about the Agave flowers. This afternoon the front slope was a cloud of bees harvesting nectar and pollen from blooming Agaves, Aloes, Chamelauciums, Limoniums, and Senecios.

In our version of winter, both gardeners and bees are busy. But not all dogs...

Think Carefully Before You Plant A Tree, Eucalyptus Edition

2012-01-18T16:39:00.000-08:00

A neighbor's Eucalyptus comes down piece by piece.

The size of the (very brave) man in the tree gives you a better idea how tall this tree was.

It was about 90 feet (27 meters) tall. Neighboring trees, better situated, can remain.

The doomed Eucalyptus, planted by a previous homeowner, was squeezed between the house and power lines. To avoid brushing the power lines, it was limbed up high above them. The limbs on the power-line-side were also shortened, unfortunately encouraging growth towards the house.

This man has five young children at home.

The space proved simply too small for a 90 foot tree. Think before you plant. I left before the rest of the tree came down. By now it is firewood.

And this very brave, hardworking man is back home with his family.

No, Not Yet!

2012-01-17T09:14:00.000-08:00

No, the puppies are not here yet. Still a couple more weeks to wait. I should have clarified, but I was overwhelmed with cuteness. Those are photos from the breeder. But how could I not be overwhelmed with cuteness?

See what I mean?

Cuteness Overdose

2012-01-16T13:19:00.000-08:00

Bloom Day January

2012-01-15T09:50:00.000-08:00

Calandrinia spectabilis:

Happy January Bloom Day! As always, thanks to May Dreams Gardens Blog (link) for this delightful celebration.

There would be roses, but I've pruned early because of new pack members arriving soon. There will be no gardening for a while when they arrive.

So the roses look like this:

Well, 'Iceberg' I got a little sloppy with. I missed a bit of it:

The Aloes are still blooming extravagantly, but I've posted a lot of them lately. A couple of dainties instead. Sedum

A brand new plant for me, Grevillea lanigera 'Coastal Gem', said to be yet another hummingbird attractor.

But I can't resist a couple more Aloe shots. Cameronii which started out a deep bronze, went to red, then tangerine, is now growing golden:

And marlothii will be spectacular soon:

Little Dainty Flowers Valiantly Fighting Anger

2012-01-13T03:00:00.000-08:00

A Hebe

A Correa (I think), possibly 'Ivory Bells'?

A Cuphea

And this one is...Cuphea micropetala? Looking quite radiantly happy.

I'm pretty ticked off at the moment and am blogging to try to distract myself.   Yesterday afternoon in the mail I got a toll violation for the Bay Bridge in Oakland California, saying I had not paid a FasTrak toll for the Bay Bridge on December 31, 2011. Except I (and my car and its license plates) were about 400 miles away at the time. I was in the house, and my car (and its license plates) were in the garage. And I have not been near the Oakland Bay Bridge since October of 2010 when we went to Napa, and we were not in that car! I filled out the "no you made a mistake" part of the form and will mail it back today. I'm upset--did someone counterfeit my license plates? I'm upset. Tiny dainty flowers ain't helping much at the moment.

Well...maybe they are helping a little.

Hebes don't grow that well here. They like cool summers and hate hot Santa Ana winds with 90 F temperatures and 5% relative humidity. The Hebe I photographed looked pretty excellent for a Southern California Hebe. It's planted on the north side of a block wall (cooler conditions) with an adjacent lawn (higher humidity). Pretty plants. I've always liked them but in this neighborhood they either look like hell, or die rapidly.

The Correa is more appropriate to our climate, being from southeastern Australia. I liked the fuzzy grey-green leaves. Plant looked great.

The Cupheas looked excellent too. Not my yard, not my little dainty flowers. A neighbor's. I realized admiring her plants that I don't have a huge collection of plants with little dainty flowers. I go for the big and honking. I guess I need to expand my horizons, my horizons which most certainly did not include the Bay Bridge FasTrak lane on New Year's Eve. Grrrr!

Metrosideros collina 'Springfire'; Self-Pegging A 'Tea Clipper'

2012-01-12T03:00:00.000-08:00

Another long day of rose pruning. Climbing roses are the most difficult but also the most interesting.
'Altissimo'. 'Molineux' is in front of it.

Most of the climbers are at least a decade old now, so there's old wood to remove, yet plenty of new wood to replace it. I think I'm getting better at it. Probably by the time I have to get rid of all the roses because of water restrictions, I will know how to beautifully prune a plant I won't be able to own.

Just for the educational fun of it, I tried self-pegging some of the canes of 'Tea Clipper'. Self-pegging means to bend canes and tie them in a loop or arch to either themselves or a nearby cane. I used zip ties, aka cable ties.

The intent is to produce more flowers than would otherwise develop. 'Tea Clipper' is a good candidate to experiment on for two reasons. First, because it's very stingy with its blooms. Second, because it is nearly thornless. Since 'Tea Clipper' is so stingy I have nothing to lose by messing with it, and since it is nearly thornless, it's easy to mess with.   I'll see what happens when spring arrives. It could not be any stingier than it already is.

Yeah, yeah, those Aloes again...

Now that the garden is mostly a forest of bare canes for the next six weeks or so, some visual relief is provided by a few new plants (and old Aloes).

The plant purchase of a couple of days ago was three small Leucophyta (Calocephalus) brownii 'Twiggy' and a Metrosideros collina 'Springfire'.

'Twiggy':

Seeing a cultivar name on the Leucophyta (Calocephalus) was an excuse to buy more. I love this plant for it's white-silver color and scrubby-pad texture. 'Twiggy' appears to be slightly different in texture than the species, but I don't really care if it is different or not. I like it no matter what, at least as long as it doesn't die. It's a short lived plant. The longest I've kept one going is about four years, but that's okay. I like it anyway. I fear the day when I can't buy them anymore. How will I get my silver scrubby-pad fix then?

Unlike Leucophyta (Calocephalus), the Metrosideros collina 'Springfire' is new to me. There are two Metrosideros excelsa 'Gala' in the garden. 'Gala', which has variegated leaves (of course) is native to New Zealand. It will eventually form a small or medium-sized tree. M. collina 'Springfire' is a bit different. It is found scattered throughout South Pacific islands, and is more of a shrub, though San Marcos writes their specimen achieved a height of twenty feet (6 M) and a width of ten feet (3 M) in fifteen years.

I can't believe it's not variegated!

It may look very plain, but supposedly it covers itself with red-orange flowers in spring, and repeat blooms several times during the year. The blooms provide food for butterflies and bees, and an excuse for hummingbirds to fight with each other (as if they need an excuse). 'Springfire' may join my Narrow Screening All-Star collection, or it may not. We'll see how it performs. It appears to be a dense grower, always a positive in a screening plant.

Metrosideros collina is found on volcanic hillsides in Hawaii between 1,000 and 9000 feet elevation. It has a high tolerance for ashy soil, is cold-hardy down to the low 20s F, and now I have to find a spot for one.

I have not blogged about the Koi lately. They've been fine. The water has been fine. The string algae has been behaving itself. All is well. Yuki used to be about one-third the size of Les, but now she's about six inches longer than he is, and pushes him around a little.

Hey! You with the food!

Look at how the sumi (black) has developed on Hana's face. This photo was taken about two years ago:

I realize my subject matter has wandered all over the place in this post, but that's exactly what I do in the garden--wander all over, do this, do that.

2011

2012-01-11T03:26:00.000-08:00

It's late to look back on 2011 when 2012 is already going strong, but it's my blog, so I can do what I want to.

There was a sepia Autumn:

and a sapphire spring.

I loved this hellstrip,

and Agave patterns.

My taste in flowers expanded

while still adoring old favorites:

Foliage, too. I guess it doesn't have to be variegated.

I finally organized my clutter of pots onto shelves. ("Before")

The koi pond redo of October 2010 made koi keeping in 2011 a lot easier.

This sure was a popular post.

The neighbors cut down their once-gorgeous bougainvillea because it pulled their phone line out and the phone company wouldn't fix it unless they trimmed everything away from the lines.

How can I not miss it, especially since I didn't have to take care of it?

It was another great tomato year

But I had some failures in 2011

And lost a most beloved friend to extreme old age. My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song.

Thought hard and worked hard on water conservation

Pondered other people's gardens:

Sometimes wincing:

Went to some plant shows:

Tried really hard to improve my photography skills

Tried really hard to improve my garden

What an incredibly fortunate person I am to have had that year. I'm glad I looked back. No grand trips, no exciting events, no great achievements. Just the luxury of an every day mundane, uneventful little life, accentuated and made beautiful by plants. Wonderful, glorious, amazing, astounding, transfixing plants!

My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song.

What's Doing At Roger's

2012-01-09T03:00:00.000-08:00

We escaped another Santa Ana Wind Event by visiting Roger's Gardens yesterday, where we could be outdoors without getting hammered by blowing dust and debris.

Lots and lots of fresh new potted roses for sale, just leafing out. Roger's buys bare roots and pots them up in pulp containers. I have bought a couple in the past; they both had the roots wound in a circle to fit into the pot; the moral of that story being pull them out of that pathetic little container right away and either spread the roots out when you plant them in the ground, or spread the roots out and plant them properly in a larger pot. But everyone knows that. Or should. Roger's should.

I bought no roses. We spent much of our visit admiring the street plantings--Agaves! Aloes!

'Joe Hoak' a ghost of himself because...

...he was blooming. The flower spike is a bright lemon yellow, far less green than the "normal" version of A. desmettiana.

I fear my own beloved 'Joe Hoak' will bloom soon. It has that look. I only hope I get some offsets or bulbils out of it, because I assume it will not come true from seed.   From what I have read, some Agaves do not offset at all; some Agaves will offset as juveniles, some Agaves will offset as juveniles and as adults, and some Agaves will offset just before they bloom, or as they are dying. 'Joe Hoak' may be one of the last. I can only hope.

Gorgeous Aloes to gawk at while gleaming Mercedes, Maseratis, and BMW's whizzed by feet away on San Miguel Drive. A blooming Grevillea behind the Aloe:

Splendidly red Kalanchoes in the foreground:

Sedum 'Coppertone' with Agave 'Blue Flame', dwarfy Dianellas (a bit ratty) and Furcraea macdougallii in the background. Those dwarf Dianellas look so breathtakingly fresh and beautiful straight from the growers, but I've never seen one able to retain that pristine look. They get ratty at the edges and tips.

Aloe maculata (saponaria) 'Yellow Form', maybe?

We parked next to a neat little --Hakea? I picked up a fallen seed pod, for shame. Have no idea where the seed is exactly--inside that pod?

Reminder of the accent virtues of a beautiful boulder:

And in the parking lot, the Arbutus ('Marina'?) planted a couple of years ago, are growing. They looked rather pathetic when they first went in, but are developing beauty. I wonder if they will be allowed to mature. Roger's switches plants out frequently.

I liked this silver Astelia paired with silver Helichrysum. The effect doesn't quite come across in the photo, but the two silvers looked right together.

Now actually in the establishment, rather than out in the parking lot, a group of Bouteloua gracilis 'Blonde Ambition'. Do they or don't they reseed everywhere?

And an Edgeworthia. I've never seen an Edgeworthia before. Southern California is simply not a mecca for deciduous shrubs. The flowers looked like--Lantana. Of all things. Hmm. It wasn't advantageously lit for photos; I did what I could.

I played around with Photoshop and considered the Lantana-ness of the Edgeworthia. It had a much sweeter fragrance than Lantana.

Roger's ferox has more spikes than my ferox. Sniff.

Yes, I bought some plants.

Random Firsts

2012-01-08T02:58:00.000-08:00

First open bloom on the Agave spikes.

First 2012 bloom on the Calandrinia grandiflora. If you are in a climate that can support this plant, but you don't have this plant, you are missing something wonderful. Completely undemanding, with splendid fishing-poles of flowers that lure eyes and bees, for months and months.

Check out this homeowner's monoculture of Calandrinia, the entire front yard crammed full of it, spotted by non-secateur (link) Am I the only one who adores this?    I love a good obsession.

First notice of interesting texture, Liminium perezii, Senecio mandraliscae, and Euonymous japonica microphylla 'Variegata'. Amazing how the Euonymous can live in the same conditions as Agave and still look good.

First and only Aloe gariepensis opening of 2012. Not particularly wow as Aloes go, but the clear pure yellow color is striking.

First photo I get of Aloe henryii without a Limonium perezii flower getting in the way. I should just cut off the Limonium flowers, but bees need the food source.

Okay, enough of random firsts. Rose pruning continues. This 'Tamora' was a mess because it didn't get pruned last year, but I had an excuse: a song sparrow (as I remember) had built an early nest last year and was using it as a nursery. Fair enough. I left the rose alone for the growing season, and forgot about the old nest until I started trimming yesterday. It was nicely tucked in there, very well protected. The bird could engineer as well as sing.

Of course it was carefully lined with Samoyed hair, as every nest I find seems to be.

No way no how the first nap of the day:

Not A Photogenic Activity, Rose Pruning

2012-01-06T19:38:00.000-08:00

Not a photogenic activity, rose pruning. Sometimes the shapes can be vaguely intriguing.

A lush cascade of blooming Rosemary above the barren rose seems an interesting contrast.

Until I recall the rose's bloom.

The only other floral solace for the day was a Day Lily in January, looking darn good for a northern hemisphere January Day Lily.

Now, back to work.

Brilliant Winter Light Continues

2012-01-05T18:52:00.000-08:00

It was near 90F (32 C) again today. I followed the deep winter shade around the garden to continue rose pruning and leaf raking in cool comfort. Meanwhile out front, in the blazing light...

Bulbine latifolia against Senecio.

The tiny individual flowers look a little like daffodils

The plant looks something like a miniature Agave attenuata with water retention issues. It shrunk up for the summer, but woke with the October rainfall and has 4 flower spikes, with another just appearing.

I'm surprised with all the sun and heat that the Agave has not begun to open.

Aloe marlothii's flower candelabra continues to develop. Tagetes lemonii begins to dry up in the background. I'll cut it to the ground soon and it will come back afresh come spring. At least it has for several years.

Aloe plicatilis won't be blooming for a while yet.

I've been photographing Aloe cameronii for several weeks. The spikes began as a dull brown, yellowed up a bit, then all of a sudden became a sweet tangerine. They will open any day now.

I keep photographing and photographing Aloe ferox. I'm still agog.

I would show off my pruning work, and my neatly raked-out beds, but they are not nearly so photogenic, so expressive of the brilliant light of winter.

Such Was My Day

2012-01-04T20:34:00.000-08:00

This is the time of year for the most frantic and constant activity in the garden. Unlike those gardeners in snowy places who are stuck inside, forced to sit by a warm fire reading seed catalogs, I am out there until sunset, trying to get the entire garden pruned, raked, and re-mulched. This year those projects are especially urgent. Since we have puppies coming at the end of January, I want all that stuff completed and out of the way when puppy-chaos begins.

The Fall Project path is completed (not the project, just the path), and I bought a new Naval Orange 'Cara Cara' on true dwarf root stock to replace Climbing 'Shot Silk', which has been in the wrong place for eleven years--it never had a proper support.

Unsupported:

I will move the rose if I can, kill it if I can't. The new dwarf orange tree will go approximately where its pot now sits, or a little farther out from the wall. It should get all day sun with some reflected heat from the stucco walls. Heat = sweeter fruit. Sweeter fruit = yum. I saw 'Cara Cara' oranges for sale at the grocery and bought some to try them--they were pretty sour. I hope mine will do better. Those are my eleven year old dwarf lavender buns on either side of the path. They bloom only in spring but are exquisitely sweet-scented when they do: well worth the wait. Mixed with orange blossom scent...ahhhh!

Otherwise, this week and next, I'm frantically pruning. The warm, even hot, dry weather is hard on the gardener, but it is a good time to make pruning cuts--they will heal fast and have less chance of canker infection in this low humidity and hot sunlight.

The Agaves are not doing much, possibly waiting for warmer nights:

Though there are plenty of bees around to pollinate them. Bees in the Aloes, in the Chamelaucium, in the Limonium, in the Rosemary, in 'Rozanne':

Some roses are still blooming; the house is full of what I call "pruning bouquets"--all the flowers I've cut off to get the rose cleaned up and cut back. If I waited until the roses stopped blooming to prune, I'd be waiting forever.

With the foliage stripped or fallen off, tiny details are more apparent. I always forget rose sepals often have a fuzzy inner coating. The brilliant light of winter shows it off.

Running from rose to rose, like a bee, I notice other winter events only briefly. Cooler nights have pinked up the Coprosmas.

A bunch of Hellebore (I think) seeds have sprouted:

I find a fallen nest, beautifully crafted last spring from the long grass in a neighbor's yard, unfortunately lined with invasive Pampas grass bloom fluff.

I marked a spot on the wall with a brick, so I'd get a pittosporum planted in exactly the right place to screen out a window. A Phoebe started using the brick as a perch, so now I feel obligated to leave it, as a courtesy to the Phoebe.

As I continue to run around, I notice Agave ellemeetiana still needs potting up.

Such was my ordinary, unglamorous day. I saw no celebrities, made no financial killing, made no history.

A peaceful, glowing, gardening day. Now that I think of it--a gardening day is never an ordinary day. I'll leave glamor and greed and history-making to the fools, and grow roses, and feed bees, nurture birds for their song and fruit for its sweetness, and be at peace and one with the green, breathing world. Such was my day.

New Year Baby

2012-01-01T19:52:00.000-08:00

Is this going to be one of our New Year babies?

I am clean! Where is the nearest mud puddle?

Or is it this little guy?

Which newly planted seedlings need to be dug up and scattered first, Mommy?

And which will be our baby girl? One of these sweeties?

Or this dear little darling?

We'll be finding out in about three and a half weeks. You may now "Awwwww!"

Happy 2012!

More San Diego Sunshine

2011-12-30T08:46:00.000-08:00

Two different Agave blooms. One full of seeds and no bulbils, the other all bulbils!

The rest of the sights from the San Diego Botanic Garden. This next Agave stalk covered with bulbils was fantastic. I was itching to pick off a bulbil (no I didn't!), though I could not identify the parent. There was no sign, and the plant was so completely deflated it was unrecognizable as an Agave.

In contrast, this A. attenuata stalk was just beginning its journey. Bees were loving it.

The arc of the flower stalk is mirrored by its shadow:

In some shade, an out-of-the-common Agave, A. pachycentra, had a dramatically pale new leaf:

Back in brilliant sun, an Opuntia for you Opuntia fans:

The Aloes were the stars of the day: davyana

Elegans (I think):

Ferox breathtaking yet again, behind emerging vanbalenii

And possibly wickensii, which has that distinctive two-color effect. No sign, though, so do not trust my ID:

A mass of 'Grassy Lassie"

I don't remember which one this was:

Similar colors on a different genus, one of the last of a huge mass of Kniphofia blooms. The rest were done:

The garden had several Green roofs.

If not for the fascia, you might mistake this for a berm, but yes, that's a roof:

The mild zone 24 conditions (we were in sight of the Pacific) make this pristine lushness possible. In my 23, they'd be a little thinner, a little crisper. This, this, ladies and gentlemen, is what a completely happy Aeonium looks like:

Something called a "Spear Lily", Doryanthes palmeri, was opening. (Doryanthes info here.)

The Doryanthes looked something like a Furcraea with rattier foliage. Spots, burnt tips and edges. Ehhhh. After that pristine Aeonium clump, ehhhh. Perhaps a fully open flower makes the foliage tolerable.

There were two Furcraea actually blooming, which I'd never seen. The flower stalk was so tall I could not get a good photo. Individual flowers, way, way up there, were lovely, something like hellebores, only 25' (7 M) high.

Also blooming, white Echium. The hummingbirds were loving this, zooming through trails of equally ecstatic bees.

In nearby dappled shade, this backlit Adenanthos sericeus gave me pause. I killed one of these quite a few years ago, and still feel terrible about it. Probably always will.

Great visit. It was just the right day.

Brilliant Winter Sunlight, Sapphire Blue Sky, and...Trees?

2011-12-29T02:32:00.000-08:00

Beaucarnea with surfboard. In the San Diego area, you are never far from a surfboard.

I rarely blog about trees unless they are mutilated, but yesterday brilliant winter light called eyes to a searing blue sky, and rather than look at a big blue expanse, my eyes drifted to the trees framed against that blue, blue sky. We visited San Diego Botanic Garden yesterday, blessed with the kind of winter weather people visit California to experience, mid 70s F. Personally, I'd rather it rain, but the pure clear light made everything sing with color.

Eucalyptus with Alluaudia procera, Beaucarnea recurvata and Aloes:

Aloes marlothii( or x 'Hercules'?) and barberae:

A grand Dracena draco:

Look at the size of this Beaucarnea base! This area was strung with lights; the Botanic Garden has one of those Holiday Light events that botanic gardens often do at this time of year. No doubt they need holiday lights in Anchorage or Spokane, but San Diego in December has sunlight of a quality beyond need for anything else.

Encephalartos horridus, an out-of-the-ordinary cycad:

A baby Boojum tree, Fouquieria columnaris, backed by a Yucca and a golden cypress:

A hummingbird so secure it could relax and sit in a Banksia, there to suck up nectar in comfort:

A gorgeous Quercus suber against the sky:

The faded blooms of Stenocarpus sinuatus, still fantastical:

Various cycads in a carpet of blue Senecio, reflecting that sky...

Not a mutilated tree to be found. As I said, I'd rather it rain, but sunlight and warmth can be quite seductive at the end of December.

Aloe capitata

2011-12-27T03:00:00.000-08:00

The foliage can color up quite splendidly:

The one I bought was not nearly as beautiful:

But the price was right!

Colored up or not, the red edging is interesting:

And the blooms are distinctive, arranged in a kind of Beatles haircut structure:

Unfortunately, getting my prize in the car, I snapped off the mop-top. Ah well, there's always next year. Pulling it out of the pot, I found the top half of the pot stuffed tight with roots, and the bottom half completely devoid of anything but potting soil.

Scrounging around the internet (just as I do at garden centers), I see there are several variations of Aloe capitata, so much so that one commenter termed it the "Aloe capitata group".   There is capitata var gnessicola and capitata var capitata. Other capitata vars are quartziticola, silvicola, and angoavana. What are the differences? Slight variations in foliage and flower, apparently.

Aloe capitata
Aloe capitata v. cipolinicola
Aloe capitata v. gneissicola
Aloe capitata v. quartziticola
Aloe capitata v. slivicola
Aloe capitata v. trachyticola = Aloe trachyticola
Aloe capitata v. capitata
Aloe capitata x A. macroclada = A. imerinensis
Aloe cernua = A. capitata v. capitata

This is generally a solitary, non-suckering aloe, endemic to Madagascar, though I see one commenter says in the (relatively) lush conditions of southern California, his plant split at the growing point and eventually formed a clump of multiple rosettes. Another owner said his plant survived the high 20s F without damage, indicating that on those near-32F nights, I can sleep without worrying about capitata. Another source said it was a summer-growing species that liked dryness in winter, which it will get, since it's slightly out of reach of any irrigation. Must remember to water come summer.

We live by rumor, we plant nuts who comb the internet for information on obscure plants. We find a scrap here and there, of often conflicting information, which must be taken with a large chunk of salt. Any plant nut learns that while the internet is a fabulous source, it's not to be trusted. You may read the same information in several different places, but it could be that the information was simply copied from one site numerous times. Trust no one.   This is a good thing. You learn not to take anything that seriously. Publishing companies and major media companies used to demand fact-checking; once upon a time there were standards. Now, not so much--it cuts into profits. And the wild west of the internet, along with post-industrial America's increasing disbelief in science, takes misinformation to a new level.

I should buy a few books or go to the library, and obtain more solid knowledge. I did get that Aloe on sale, after all. There's a few bucks left over. A few more good books, a few less plants.

I hope you don't take anything I say seriously. Just...enjoy the pictures.

Merry Christmas!

2011-12-25T12:40:00.001-08:00

Aloe marlothiii bloom appears

2011-12-23T11:05:00.000-08:00

What wind looks like:

Stuck inside yesterday--more roaring wind. When it is windy here, it sounds as though the washing machine is on spin cycle. For hours. Spinning a load consisting of tennis shoes. A few more smashed pots, many of the roses stripped clean of their foliage...

Work on the path stopped. I've made it more difficult by deciding to wash and screen all the pebbles before putting them back. The extra work seems worth it.

Hey, you missed a leaf there:

The wind was blowing hard enough to make me concerned about the Agave bloom stalks, but they were fine.

As was Aloe ferox...

When what, to my wondering eyes should appear...

No, not eight tiny reindeer. The beginnings of our first Aloe marlothii bloom!

Cool!

Foliage Arranged in Rosettes

2011-12-21T02:15:00.000-08:00

Foliage arranged in rosettes, looking flower-like.

Yucca 'Bright Star'

Echeveria gibbiflora hybrid

Aeonium 'Zwartzkop', gleaming as it does in active growth:

The enfolding shells of Agave parryii truncata.

Happy Winter. May yours be mild.

Blown

2011-12-19T02:08:00.000-08:00

Wind battering everything. The capacitor bank on a nearby power pole blew, browning us out for thirty hours.

Pots smashed:

Tuteur blown over

Succulents snapped off

One of the Dodoneas blew over, nearly plummeting into the neighbor's yard. Dodoneas have relatively modest root systems, and don't hold on very well in high winds.

I will replace the Dodonea with this Pittosporum, a variant of P. tenuifolium with a cultivar name I've forgotten (no, not 'Marjorie Channon'). I've had the Pittosporum a while, intending it as a replacement for the Dodonea anyway--I just was having trouble tackling the Dodonea. As it happened, the wind saved me a lot of work, for once. The Pittosporum grew about a foot sitting waiting in its pot, so I'm hoping it's a reasonably fast grower.

The brown-out was inconvenient (no fridge, no TV, no garage door,) but what I was most worried about were the Koi. The brown-out meant we were getting about 60 volts instead of 120. One of the pumps worked just a little, the other not at all. However, because the pond water temperature was only about 53F (11 C), they were okay for thirty hours on that one barely working pump. Colder water holds oxygen better than warm water.

Some plants seemed oblivious to the wind; Geranium 'Rozanne', of course, being a ground-hugger:

The Aloe flowers survived:

Rose 'Brass Band' was also fine, though ground-hugger it is not.

And my buddy the Mantis is still around! Is she hanging on in hopes of a delicious husband?

After the wind, and some showers, the Fall Project continued, slowly. Re-working the irrigation took so much time and effort, and then I discovered I also have a leaking sprinkler valve to repair. But the path is finally in place. I like the looks of it. Looking north-east:
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And from the opposite direction, looking south-west:
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Beloved's help was invaluable. I coudn't have done the path without his kind and patient help.

Since one of the tuteurs fell over, I dragged it into the project area as an example focal point:

Yes, that's sorely needed: focus! I think that particular tuteur is a little small--but that's what was missing: focus. Now if I can only focus and complete this project, and not, like, blow it.

The Heck With Plants!

2011-12-17T13:47:00.000-08:00

Beloved managed to drag me away from my garden and to Los Angeles for a concert at the Walt Disney Hall. I realize everyone in the world except me has already seen and photographed this building, but it was love at first sight. I couldn't take a bad shot.

There are a few plants like that--Agave 'Blue Glow' comes immediately to mind--but that building was even easier. And I found at least one spot where the stainless steel reflected so much heat I got a slightly scorched cheek by standing there. And loved it. What a masterpiece!

Racked

2011-12-17T03:04:00.000-08:00

rackedpast participle, past tense of rack (Verb)

Verb:

Cause extreme physical or mental pain to; subject to extreme stress: "he was racked with guilt".
(of a horse) Move with such a gait.
Draw off (wine, beer, etc.) from the sediment in the barrel.

Now why did I do this? I not only don't need more roses, I don't even particularly want more roses.
I have plenty of roses, hundreds of roses.
I can make a rose bouquet the size of a bathtub--in December.
So why this?

It was on the death-rack at Lowes, of course. That's why. I've been--racked!

Looking carefully at the base, I saw it was healthy, unscratched, un-cankered, unspotted, and own-root.
There were two; I left the blooming one, so it will be bought before it dies of thirst.
It's 'Cinco de Mayo' (Iink), by the way, which has a good reputation.
Child of 'Julia Child', an excellent rose here.

rackedpast participle, past tense of rack (Verb)

Verb:

Cause extreme physical or mental pain to; subject to extreme stress: "he was racked with guilt".
(of a horse) Move with such a gait.
Draw off (wine, beer, etc.) from the sediment in the barrel.
Forced to buy a plant because it is 75% off the original price.

December Bloom Day

2011-12-14T22:24:00.000-08:00

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

Lots still out there, so why am I obsessed with Aloes this month? Most of them have yet to open, though many are budding. Late fall and winter used to mean mainly Camellias here.

Of course there are always roses, but their beauty depends somewhat upon the weather--wind makes them ragged, rain blotchy. The cooler weather and shorter daylight hours means deeper, richer color.

'Molineux'

'Cressida'

'Prospero'

'Laguna'

There are the odd one-off blooms, due to our early October rainfall. Even here, Hydrangeas should be dropping foliage instead of blooming.

Hemerocallis trying to open without the warmth it really needs:

Update: it opened! :)

Even a lone Shasta Daisy threw up a bloom, because of the rain:

Graptoveria--December seems a little early, but it's doing well.

The plants that seem to bloom the year round continue to perform.

Salvia discolor. The hummingbirds fight over this plant non-stop. Nectar must be good!

So much going on, yet my mind is all aloes, aloes, aloes:

cameronii, not open yet...

gariepensis, just going up...

henryi, not open yet...

van balenii, not open yet...

the yellow version of arborescens is peaking, though. This one is earlier than the others.

the fabulous ferox, with the yellow flowered form of megalacantha behind it, is just about to open. The hummingbirds will soon do battle here.

and the little hybrid 'Grassy Lassie'

Meanwhile, the flowers on the Agaves are still not open. They can wait for warmer weather.

Funny how human attention works: you see what you want to see easily, and yet miss so much else that is also there waiting to be examined. There is much more going on in the garden today than just Aloes, and it would be a shame to miss it. As Orwell wrote: "To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle." holds just as true in the garden as in other human endeavors.

Wednesday Beauty Shot

2011-12-14T02:45:00.000-08:00

Goodbye, 'Mary Rose'

2011-12-12T02:57:00.000-08:00

'Mary Rose' in 2007:

'Mary Rose' was one of the first plants I put in when we moved here in '99. 'Mary' wasn't all that good for the first few years, providing a fine spring show, but for the rest of the season, mostly just mildew. By 2006, she was in her prime, and '07 and '08 were very good: A spectacular spring show and an excellent June repeat, with a decent autumn as well. After '08, 'Mary Rose' came down with a stubborn and unyielding case of stem canker, and began to decline. Several years of various treatments did not help, the decline continued, and so yesterday, she came out.

In 2008:

She never was my favorite rose, but she had her moments, and we made the best of it, her and I. I learned from her, and she had a life here for over a decade. 'Mary Rose' had a long run here, with moments of great beauty mixed in with exasperation, hope, and mildew.

Removing any plant can be agony for the novice gardener, but after quite a few years out there, you gain perspective, and as more years pass, you realize how fleeting every bit of the garden really is, and change it without much regret, because you have learned it will change, no matter what you do or don't do.

Thanks for the memories and the lessons, dear 'Mary Rose'.

Arcs and Undulations

2011-12-10T03:00:00.000-08:00

A California Classic Garden

2011-12-09T03:00:00.000-08:00

Let's meet for margaritas by the snowman!

The home was built, I believe, in the 1920's. It has the classic California red tile style of the times, with arched colonades,

romantic balconies,

and construction details that are rarely seen today.

There are the inevitable Palms,

patios graced with Italian Cypress,

hazy vistas,

California oaks,

and places to relax and perhaps dream.

Because of the size of the property, and the beauty of the site, the landscape style is one of simplicity.

Though much of it has been in place for many years,

it looks undated, and appropriate to the home.

The latest fashion trends and manias are unnecessary.

When you look like Elizabeth Taylor...

you are always in style.

While The Wind Blows

2011-12-06T03:00:00.000-08:00

While the wind blows, the light is intense,

revealing texture,

painting shadows.

Cold and wind staining flesh with new colors.

Dasylirion leaves become tracers from a fireworks explosion behind Agave 'Blue Glow'

The Agave distanced, becomes smudged mystery.

The Yucca leaves, arrows shot at the sun

Everything must wait, until the wind is done.

I Dig Up A Dyckia Clump, or, Having Fun With Sawblades

2011-12-04T18:23:00.000-08:00

I've been putting off digging up a clump of Dyckia 'Dark Shadows' that was interfering with the beauty of Yucca linearfolia. Both the Dyckia and the Yucca had grown much faster than I had expected.

One entirely appropriate common name for Dyckia is "Sawblade". The terminal spines are like razors, as are the leaf-edge hooks. A good soundtrack for this post would be a small, pained voice repeating the word "Ow!" over and over again.

But it really wasn't bad.

Being a bromeliad, the clump had a relatively modest root system, so it was easy to pop the thing out of the ground. I ended up moving a dwarf aloe in front of the clump, and then dragging the chocolatey-brown mass of spines forward by holding on to it with gloved hands and a towel. Not bad at all.

A meeting of true spines:

The real work will be splitting the clump into pieces. There are at least several dozen rosettes.
It may be the wrong time of year to do this, but I'm not about to do it when it's 90 degrees (32 C). There are two other large, undisturbed clumps still on the slope. Even if all of the dug-out rosettes die, there will be plenty left of 'Dark Shadows'. I had to marvel at how these plants use every drop of water in an impressively efficient manner. The soil here is dry, dry, dry, but these plants grow, grow, grow.

Aloes are harder to dig up, but less painful to separate. The fall and winter bloomers continue.

The yellow version of A. arborescens:

A. gariepensis, not looking too happy, but with a fat flower spike emerging:

And this is apparently A. ferox after all. What a beauty!

The benefit of digging out that Dyckia clump at this time of year was being able to enjoy all those Aloe flowers while I dug and pulled and said "Ow! Ow!", in a small, pained voice.

Do Plants Get Confused?

2011-12-03T02:54:00.000-08:00

December Daylily:

December Clematis:
Do plants get confused? Daylily and Clematis blooms are a little out of the ordinary for December, even here. The significant October rainfall did it. The plants are not confused, rather, they are opportunistic, taking advantage of that sweet soaking rain to produce a few more seeds, a little more hope for the future.

Two of our Japanese Maples are leafless, while one is still fully leafed, with foliage that has turned quite a good red (for our area). This is baby 'Emperor I':

Is gorgeous little 'Emperor I' confused?   It is all of about 10 feet (3 m) away from the other two. Ten feet can make a difference. Two of the maples are in quite a bit of sun. 'Emperor I' is in the back gully, on the north side of a wall that towers 10 feet above the maple. The soil is much colder and the area is in full shade. Confused? No, just living in a different micro-climate.

The maple is at the end of the pathway, in a green wire cage so the rabbits don't eat it.

In this garden, it's not the plants that are confused, it's the gardener. After a lot of struggle with irrigation leaks, the drippers are all dripping, not leaking. The fall project ready for the next step: a new pathway.

The start of a sketch. I'd love some of that orange dirt-spray paint to mark the path, but ohhhh...do I really want orange spray paint on my soil? Er, no. I used the old edging instead. Looks like I might have a drain (green dome grid) to move.

A straight path between gate "A" and gate "B" seems like the correct solution. Except it's not. A straight path would use up the sunniest part of the area. The sunniest part of the area must absolutely be reserved for the vegetable beds. Veggies need sun. Visitors, on the other hand, need shade.   So it's not going to be a logical, rational straight path. It's going to bend and follow the shade cast by the house. I know: not logical. Not the most direct. But rational.

How can logical and rational not be the same thing? Sometimes they are not. Why not? I get so confused.

Tres Trendy Live Ornaments

2011-12-02T15:49:00.000-08:00

The LAT reports (link) a new trend: succulent cuttings as natural Christmas tree ornaments. After the holidays, simply pot them up. Flora Grubb (link) is selling a cutting-on-a-hook for $19 each (in this economy?), or make your own with a paper clip for...well, how much does a paper clip cost?

Wind Event II

2011-12-01T17:10:00.000-08:00

The Pasadena area got hammered last night. Here there was nothing more than a light breeze. It finally started on to blow about 3 in the afternoon in our area, but so far it's not much beyond average, say 40 mph.

The LA Times has a photo gallery (link) of fallen trees. Many of them appear to be Ficus nitida, along a couple of Sycamores, an Oak, some kind of evergreen, and a Jacaranda, though it was a Euc that knocked over a crucified wooden Jesus: I recognize the bark. Long time residents around here who want to preserve their trees (or their house) have their trees laced out every year so that the wind can blow through the tree instead of blowing it over.

If only trees could hold up to wind the way a Yucca can.

It's looking better and better, that Yucca.

Wind Event Preparation

2011-12-01T03:00:00.000-08:00

Our first major "wind event" of the season has been forecast. Winds of 60-80 mph had been predicted for this area. Time to prepare the garden. Say goodbye to the last of our modest autumn color.

Don't waste time sweeping. It's going to get much worse than this:

Tuck the potted plants into protected corners to ride out the storm:

At minimum, weight them down so they don't go flying:

Or bury them temporarily in the ground for some extra protection:

A cachepot is better than no protection at all:

Wedge the trash bins in together tightly, so they are not blown away, or slam against the house at 3:00 am.

Put the tools away, lest they smash something:

Turn the irrigation off, because it will all just be carried away by the wind. Complete waste of water.

Anything that's been perched up high all spring and summer...

...needs to be taken down and put in a safer place.

Pick every rose you can for the vase, because they'll either be gone, or turned into something resembling a piece of burnt pita bread.

Give the koi some extra food, because when the wind starts to howl they will cower at pond's bottom and not come up until the storm dies out.

Fill the watering cans with water, so they don't go flying off into the next city, or bounce around the yard all night.

And before the storm hits, take some time to walk the garden and admire what may soon be destroyed.
Why did this Clematis decide to bloom in November?

Doomed delicacy:

Most of all, enjoy the wind. It will let you catch up with indoor maintenance.

Oh, joy!

(Nearly) Wordless Wednesday

2011-11-30T02:39:00.000-08:00

Rosa 'Brass Band'

I drove out yesterday to get another shot of this hellstrip, only to see the Aloes were blooming. Surprise!

The Aloes are blooming at home, too. This one is off and on, summer or winter. I can't remember the species at the moment. It starts with an "m":

Cameronii waking up after resting all summer:

And maybe-Ferox continues to progress. We're expecting 60-80 mph winds in the next day or two. I hope the still-soft flower stems don't snap off.

The tippy-tops of the Agave towers are finally opening, so open blooms may be imminent . These guys, I think, can survive the wind. I know the roses will not.

I'd Rather Be Studying Agave Leaves

2011-11-27T02:30:00.000-08:00

A. titanota, with Opuntia microdaysis (or is it Opuntia rufida?) in the background. "Titanota" means "alabaster white".

This Agave titanota has a ghostly mid stripe. Oooh! I want that one!

Not titanota (unless it is F076):

The irrigation change from sprinkler to drip is complete in the fall project area. I tested the changes, and discovered the sprinklers I capped off are leaking, and the sprinklers I replaced with dripper manifolds don't drip. Sigh. But as Katie Scarlett O'Hara Hamilton Kennedy Butler said, "Tomorrow is another day!", so I'll think about that tomorrow.

Now that the project area is just about empty, I'm considering the views into the space. I'd really like something in the spot marked by that potted blueberry, to focus the eye on something besides the neighbor's roof. Though...I see the neighbor's Magnolia grandiflora is beginning to do the job, isn't it? Except I've hinted to the neighbor that those Magnolia grandiflora roots will eventually undermine the retaining wall that keeps our property from collapsing and crushing the neighbor's garage, a point they seemed to appreciate. The original Magnolia there was a 'Little Gem', not the full sized species. But 'Little Gem' died, and was replaced with the species. Always something. You just want to look at something besides the neighbor's roof when walking out to pick tomatoes, but everything is so complicated!

From the other entrance to the project area, the same pot in the same spot. Here, something is needed to screen out, or draw attention away from, the neighbor's bathroom window. Somehow windows are like staring eyes, even when it's a window no one looks out from. At least I hope no one looks out that window and sees me scowling at it. I need a screen there, for the neighbor's sake, if not my own. No, for my own sake, too.

I thought about a dwarfish (8 feet, maybe 3 M) citrus tree for that spot, which would screen out one neighbor's roof as viewed from the front entrance, and also screen the other neighbor's bathroom window as viewed from the other entrance.

An alternative might be a pair or trio of tallish, narrowish shrubs, perhaps Pittosporum 'Marjorie Channon', on the other side of the wall, which would provide the screening, but not the focal point. Screening shrubs for each entrance. The focal point would then become some sort of urn, fountain, statue, or other such object, inside the wall, in the project "room".

I think about this stuff carefully, and drive myself nuts with it. Why do people think about the strange things they think about? No wonder I'd rather be studying Agave leaves.

Infrastructure Isn't Glamorous

2011-11-24T03:01:00.000-08:00

Infrastructure isn't glamorous, but we cannot do without it. This part of the fall project was the irrigation upgrade. Some sprinkler heads were switched out for drippers, others were unnecessary and were capped off. Sprinkler...

...to dripper:

The switch may not save a lot of water, but it will save some. In addition, some of the sprinkler spray hits the stucco walls. Wasteful and damaging. Since water is the enemy of stucco, getting rid of the sprinklers will prolong the stucco life. Infrastructure isn't glamorous, but it matters.

Needing a break from the muddy tedium of digging up pipes, I turned to a little deadheading. Lopping off a tall cane of 'Tamora', I suddenly discovered something firmly grabbing my sleeve. A panicked screech and flail of surprise followed. Something flew off my sleeve and onto the pavement. I discovered it was my little buddy the Mantid that I photographed several weeks ago.   She's still around!

Luckily, she appeared uninjured. However, she looked as startled as I felt. My panic nearly turned to fear and anger. If it had, I might have crushed her with my shoe, or cut her head off with my secateurs. And thus become, in miniature, a monster. I managed to chose not to do that. I took some deep breaths instead, then found and extended a leaf, which she grabbed hold of, and used the leaf to carefully lift and place her back into some foliage, where she'd be safe while recovering from her encounter with me, the hapless giant.

The garden is my little domain wherein I have the power of life and death. I make the choices here. I am the dictatorial general, the ruthless plutocrat of this garden. Mantids, climbing roses, dandelions, live or die by my hand. I can build infrastructure and balance into my world; use thought instead of anger, or....destroy the innocent.

The powerful are either careful to stay mindful of the effects of their power, or they choose to become monsters.   Even in a little garden, just as in the wider world. We can choose to build, or we can choose to destroy.

Four Roses

2011-11-23T02:18:00.000-08:00

'Easy Does It':

'William Morris':

'Firefighter':

'Black Bacarra':

Soil, Mulched, vs. Soil, Native

2011-11-22T12:44:00.000-08:00

A few hundred thousand years ago, this garden was a silty river delta. Today, with the river long-gone, the silt remains and forms the native soil. Mulched regularly over 12 years, the native soil (the lighter yellowy clods) became the darker color through the work of earthworms slowly incorporating the mulch into the soil over time.

The transformed soil has tiny air pockets, organic content, greater nutrient content, and stays moister longer than the original, all without any effort on the gardener's part besides the tossing of the mulch. Sometimes, not even that.

There's The Bloom! Yay! Of Aloe-Maybe-Ferox

2011-11-20T02:41:00.000-08:00

I just noticed Aloe-maybe-ferox has its first flower. Now maybe I'll be able to identify what species it is, or is not. See the flower?

No? There it is!

Tips of a couple are damaged. No sign of Aloe mite, though. There appeared to be a tiny bit of Earwig damage also, but Earwigs I can deal with.

I've been waiting several years for this plant to flower, and am really looking forward to seeing it. Now I hope I haven't jinxed my chances by getting my hopes up. The easiest way to ruin your chances is to get your hopes up.

Also in the long-awaited blooms department, the Agave desmettianas continue. I tried shooting photos of the mighty flower stalk from a different angle, being inspired by the most excellent tree photo by b-a-g here (link), b-a-g blogs here (link).

b-a-g gets the texture of the trunk at the bottom of his photo much better, doesn't he? And perhaps my cloudy sky distracts. I'm thinking that the photo might also be more effective without the Chamelaucium flowers there at the bottom of the frame. I'll have to try more shots. Luckily, Agave bloom life being what it is, I have weeks (probably months) to get around to trying more angles.

Graptoveria amethorum (Echeveria purpusorum x Graptopetalum amethystinum

2011-11-19T02:45:00.000-08:00

I am guessing that this is Graptoveria amethorum, which is cross between Echeveria purpusorum and Graptopetalum amethystinum. Shouldn't it, technically, be Graptoveria 'Amethorum', in the same way that Echeveria x imbricata should be Echeveria 'Imbricata'? Nice plant of an silvery grey-green color, apparently easy to rot. Uh oh. No water for you this winter, honey.

I like the fatty plumpness of the leaves.

Fall Project Update

2011-11-18T02:52:00.000-08:00

Now is the time to move Camellias, since they are blooming. A blooming Camellia means the roots are somewhat dormant, the right time to try a relocation. I'm still moving plants out of the project "room", and messing with the irrigation system. I moved a formerly shrub Camellia japonica that I trimmed into standard some time ago to this shadier spot. It has no place in the new version of the "project room", and the foliage and flowers were always sun burnt in the old location, anyway. It may do better here, where it will be more shaded, and I like the height it gives, floating above the big daylily clump. Unfortunately I photographed it at an odd angle. It looks tilted, but is really quite vertical--or more vertical than that, anyway.

The formerly shrub Camellia sasanqua has always been in the wrong spot. Now who would plant what is destined to become a small tree right in front of a window? It wasn't I, it was professional landscapers getting sloppy because they were at the end of a months long project and were in a hurry to finish. Last winter I limbed it up into a standard because it was jammed into that corner, doing no one any good, not even itself. I've been prowling around the yard for a week now trying to figure out where I can plant it.

I could just trash it, but it's made a cool standard that I think will continue to improve. Not only did I limb it up last year, I also topped it--it was 12' tall, I think. I don't want to trash it. That low shrubby C. sasanqua next to it needs a new spot as well. There is also a volunteer Ligustrum japonicum, splendidly healthy, growing in the low sasanqua as well. I might have myself a free shrub for a big pot on the balcony.

November Foliage

2011-11-15T22:36:00.000-08:00

Thanks to the Pam Penick at Digging blog for hosting "Foliage Follow Up"!

Here, we get nothing like the spectacular fall foliage color of New England. If we get the merest touch of red or yellow, it's cause for notice. This year our Japanese Maple had a touch of autumn red for the very first time since we planted it about ten years ago.

It's been a colder than normal November. Even the blueberry plants have a touch of color for the first time:

A few plants here are reliably red or gold. Ginko foliage turns gold every year, a gold that holds on the trees for weeks. Parthenocissus tricuspidata turns red most years in sunny locations:

But I am perfectly content to see green all winter, and not feel the bite of frost. The grasses here are tawny from lack of rain, not frost. Muhlenbergia rigens:

Some Aloes will develop red foliage in cooler weather. Aloe dorotheae does:

Echeverias change according to light rather than temperature, unless the temperature gets cold enough to turn them to mush. :(

Luckily, that is even more rare than fall color on the Japanese maples Light is what effects Echeveria color. My plants get more sun in the cooler weather of winter, and some develop intense lavender color, something I look forward to every year.

Clockwise from noon, E. colorata, E. unknown, E. cante, E. lilacina, and E. secunda(?):

Yeah baby!

Not that Maples are so bad...