I love plants.

That is such a cool flower! I bought something at Roger's Garden's today that might be Hoodia. I have to bring it up to the computer and compare it to photos.

Roger's Gardens is legendary and I can now see why. Quite an interesting selection of plants and the the whole place is nicely laid out. They had some Gasteraloe's I hadn't seen so I bought the most prolific-looking specimens of three to propagate for next year. Oh but it will be dull this winter if growth rates slow.

I also got a very fragrant pink carnation for my collection of very fragrant carnations. They are going to look great all humped together in a bed some day.

Rob and Marcella made terrariums last night. M filled a large footed jar with sand and planted a 6" high baby Saguaro in it. She poked down against the glass to draw sand from higher layers down through a few lower layers. The effect is like chocolate frosting dripping off a cake. I have forgotten what Rob did; something with an egg cup. Oh yes, he took some Conos with my approval, although my approval was reluctant to say the least. I put 3 small plants and a plastic pit bull in a square pot. The pot's surface was divided in a 2x2 grid; each item got one square. The dog's entire square was covered with a layer of beige sand that conceals the dark soil.

I also got a nice small columnar cactus at Roger's that was $12.99 and had a few spires in one pot. I hope it stays this cute. Finding out what it is is going to take a while. All the Cereus-type cacti are pretty similar.

Something interesting another day, I promise.

Octember

Well, I thought it was still October. I'm not wrapping my head around this whole November thing. That's partly because I do not feel as bombarded as usual by holiday themed advertising this year. I suppose advertisers have scaled back like the rest of us have.

What's that got to do with my garden? Bloody nothing, as I am sure you'd noticed.

All right then. What is going on?

The lawn is all green and ready for a trim. I must take pictures to send to the city to get into the lawn removal rebate program. For every sf I get rid of and replace with mulch or something else, I shall receive one dollar. Open to lawns in the City of Los Angeles.

The Gasteraloes are blooming again, some with a fury. By that I mean that some have two flower stalks. The new ones, which lack the pink decorations, are not blooming. I got those at Descanso this fall.

I guess I haven't mentioned what else I got there. I got a Saguaro for mom for Christmas, a Bismarckia (blue fan leaves; different from the Brahea), a blue med fan palm. Something glauca of course. This was bought from a retiring Mt Sac Hort prof. In my next life I will study hort in school. Home study is darned good also, but the more people to talk about plants with, the better.

One of Jero's Streilitzia nicholii (sp?) offsets has rooted. It's the larger of the two I checked. The other one had not rooted but is alive. The big Philodendron seems to have rooted. I got tired of all my indoor attempts and finally just shoved it in the barrel of calla persistence (BCP) and put a pot on it (Solandra grandiflora) to hold it down. I took the pot off and gave the Phil a good tug...nothing doing, it seems to have rooted. We shall see. I wonder if it will wait until spring to do anything. It's a climber with three-lobed leaves.

Well, to be frank I am more interested in soil content that what's above it these days. I wonder if there's any gold on my property :)

Back to the topic at hand: what lives?

Ai! I was about to start typing, and remembered just then that I had taken wads of photos today. I might have to post them in Picasa or photobucket. Oh my. Well, next time I get up I'll look for the camera and the cable I need. I would be nice if Blogspot let us keep photo libraries online. If not uploaded files, then at least owner-created indexes of the photos on our hard drives with small thumbnails.

Hmmm. Garden coming along! Haven't seen ryegrass sprouting, but remain hopeful. Watering going well. I am going to use Round-up on the weeds I think [ugh!]. Or maybe the steamer. Shouldn't that do it? I hope so. I will apply it as close to the crown as possible, and also to the soil where many weed seeds lie. Gee, if you had Bermuda grass or St. Augustine you could write seasonal messages in the lawn with steam. With Festuca you could etch permanent designs and fill them with gravel once the grass rots and can be removed. I like the idea of rivers of green glass or a narrow, winding stream if you have an incline. I might try this.

I cannot wait to see how the grass looks. Would I regret seeding Bermuda grass? Could I keep it out of the tree cages? If I must have lawn I guess it should be St. Aug. I love the stuff and it's tough as nails and fills back in after injury, but it's much more controllable than Bermuda. I think it's easier to notice its first forays out of its own zone because its stolons are chunky. Bermuda grass can have a few footholds in the soil before you realize it's there. And then, if you procrastinate...

Okay, here is a thought experiment. What ONE plant would survive the longest and spread the most in a home garden with total neglect. Bermuda grass would be high on the list, I think, if you exclude true cacti and trees. If we include trees I might wager Washingtonia filifera (sp?). When thinking of your own yard, assume everything is perfectly well established.

It's awful. Tomorrow might be Jero's last day. I cannot stand it.

solved a few problems this morning...

...namely, terrorism and healthcare.

let's just bite the bullet and put CT machines in airports. Everyone gets scanned for cancer and weapons at the same time. Excess radiation is a trivial problem for some individuals compared to the other problems it solves for the government.

More thinking

"The writer enjoys writing because it makes doing nothing feel like doing something."

Agree or disagree? I'm afraid I agree. If this is meant to be a gardener's blog, well this gardener spent more time today getting dirt out from under her nails than into them.

I did de-pot the mold. I felt I had to break the pot to get it out, so I did. It began accidentally and soon was beyond control. The mold will need a little repair but will probably be usable. I keep getting be-fuddled as I try to order ceramic supplies. I guess I will do one category at a time: slip, glazes, furniture, molds. Must research kiln-sitting devices.

The lovely Stapelia bloomed--three of the four buds are open wide. The fourth bud hadn't opened as of late afternoon today. I was lucky to get such sharp pictures with an eight year old video camera.

I am keeping an eye on the variegated Stapelia in the same pot as the one in bloom. It's doing two small outgrowths that seem to be four-headed and might be flower buds. I'll see if I can get a photo.

Thought of building a low deck around the pool using Monrovia lumber. Revert to sand for passage from seating area to shade potting bench/pool equipment. Build a low wall with cinder block and make it seem as though it is a simple step up to a new level. Perhaps find or make smaller table top for blue table--re-shape to better fit in corner?

Oh, rats, I totally forgot I was writing a blog. I have to go now. Bye.

How to bloom if you is a Stapelia

In 4 Easy Steps.







These were all taken at the same time, this very morning. I used an older Sony video camera with a still function and a 4MB memory stick. Oh, and the fragrance of the blooms is as promised. A jab in the nose of something awful.

Eh?

I haven't found the camera yet. Maddening. I did find the cell and was dismayed. Oh well I can use it to take pictures until I find the camera. The camera's four years old and I only bought it because my then 5-year old Kodak went kaput. I have another Kodak somewhere I got for free; must unearth and use. Oh, Tom has it in Monrovia.

Oh, great news about the landscape! For Jero's swan song, I directed him to build a kind of terrace that extends southward the palm terrace, four feet below the concrete patio. He built it with the broken concrete chunks Marcella and I had brought, and filled it with soil from many locations. A great aspect of this project was that some of the soil came from the boggy area where the tap always drips. Clearing that mud away allowed him to fill it with gravel, and to use the cleared-away mud as part of the new soil for the terrace extension. [Ed.: Do I sound crazy?]

Anywho, once the terrace extension was created, Bayou tested its restorative powers by running in tight circles, rolling around, and then casually lounging on the new bed. He was a delight to watch and I didn't worry much about the ancient wildflower seeds I had just strewen. He tilled them in good. Something will survive around the edges and that'll be fine. I'd be thrilled if it were carnations.

Did I mention that Marcella and Jero gave me a Delphinium in a deep blue for my birthday? I repotted it and noticed it's got at least two good stems coming on soon. (As an aside, the Stapelia buds are bigger still...but not open yet.)

Jero's true final act was showing me how to make a mold from a nice pot I found at Rob's. He showed me how to make a removable wooden case to restrict the plaster poured around the object of which you are making a mold. He and Marcella had to go to the post office before 5pm, so he couldn't stay long enough to pull the mold off the pot. I was supposed to do it but plumb forgot in the midst of other excitements. I am going to make pots in pastel shades that correspond, but with more white, to the various colors of the plants I sell. I may or may not mix yellow greens with blue greens on one pot. Maybe I would, if it had a white band at the top that dribbled into watery blue green that dribbled into watery yellow green. Maybe with red earthenware showing though.

If a city was once magic, is it always magic? Can the magic be killed by development, which is a form of decline? Because whatever you loved about an area will be gone once the area is developed. Development is another word for obliteration. You shouldn't have to get permits to build, you should have to get permits to obliterate. You shouldn't be able to change the nature of an area unless the surrounding public agrees. Votes taken annually.

I am thinking of Vancouver. It's not the city I remember as a child and as a young adult. I wonder what San Francisco is like these days? It's a magic city, too, but I feel its magic is dark; so is some of Vancouver's. Los Angeles and New York are not as dark as the two west coast gems SFO and YVR.

Good night; nothing much else to say.

Ai! I was about to start typing, and remembered just then that I had taken wads of photos today. I might have to post them in Picasa or photobucket. Oh my. Well, next time I get up I'll look for the camera and the cable I need. I would be nice if Blogspot let us keep photo libraries online. If not uploaded files, then at least owner-created indexes of the photos on our hard drives with small thumbnails.

Hmmm. Garden coming along! Haven't seen ryegrass sprouting, but remain hopeful. Watering going well. I am going to use Round-up on the weeds I think [ugh!]. Or maybe the steamer. Shouldn't that do it? I hope so. I will apply it as close to the crown as possible, and also to the soil where many weed seeds lie. Gee, if you had Bermuda grass or St. Augustine you could write seasonal messages in the lawn with steam. With Festuca you could etch permanent designs and fill them with gravel once the grass rots and can be removed. I like the idea of rivers of green glass or a narrow, winding stream if you have an incline. I might try this.

I cannot wait to see how the grass looks. Would I regret seeding Bermuda grass? Could I keep it out of the tree cages? If I must have lawn I guess it should be St. Aug. I love the stuff and it's tough as nails and fills back in after injury, but it's much more controllable than Bermuda. I think it's easier to notice its first forays out of its own zone because its stolons are chunky. Bermuda grass can have a few footholds in the soil before you realize it's there. And then, if you procrastinate...

Okay, here is a thought experiment. What ONE plant would survive the longest and spread the most in a home garden with total neglect. Bermuda grass would be high on the list, I think, if you exclude true cacti and trees. If we include trees I might wager Washingtonia filifera (sp?). When thinking of your own yard, assume everything is perfectly well established.

It's awful. Tomorrow might be Jero's last day. I cannot stand it.

Man, I lost my cellie which is fine, I don't miss it at all except for the GPS and the camera. Realized I should sell my truck and the Chevy and get a lime green convertible Saab. I love it when things just fall into place like that. I guess an iPhone touch would do the trick? Or would it. Anyway I am done with cellphones. If the dogs get out, call me at home. They wouldn't be treated any differently by their rescuers depending on whether I were reachable or not; [Ed. Order new tags with your address on them.]

That was quite a train of thought. I do believe it left the station without us. It began because I am lamenting the absence of photos for today's diatribe.

Onto the garden...during a pissy little discussion with Rob about whether my sailboat's mainsail was ripped or not, a powerful gust toppled one of the queen palms. Not sure if I should mention here that I do not like that plant much at all--not for any reason I can think of--and give my excuse for owning five of them. Or should I simply attempt to return them? The latter.

Well, anyway, one of them came a cropper and knocked my basin of mature Stapelia off the card table. Oh sheesh. The budding one was unearthed and lay panting, imploring, on the concrete. I tenderly re-planted her and her ilk, steadied the palm, and generally rearranged things so it wouldn't happen again. As Amos Tversky said, "Such are life."

I think I have divided all the succulents now, which takes away a sense of urgency that had been building and becoming sort of a tirade. Everything I have is maximally divided and planted to grow on and into saleability by December. A lot depends on temperatures. I wonder if I'll need artificial light and to grow indoors. Maybe a greenhouse would be helpful to warm things up and keep them growing in winter. I wonder if there's time to build one before Jero leaves. I won't tell him today. We are going to focus on ceramics and tile today. We'll make a mold of a pot I found and maybe pour the first realization. Depends on my getting my tax matters addressed by noon, I think. Must upload dogs for Connie and must...check with Ross...do bank statements for ...something else...involves printing..."Very, very, very, very important piece of paper" (Bubble, in an early AbFab ep.).

We planted several trees, I think I said, and Jero might have finished the drip irrigation. What a trouble free garden I will have. Just trees, each with a wooden cage to keep the dogs away, some mulch, and the potted plants inside the tree cages. Then my nursery activities up near the house. I do think I should keep the pool and grow aquatics in it. If that doesn't rule out swimming, I might.

Oh, I give up.

Well anyhow I am starting to think they are Stapelia and that the cutting I took from Tom is also Stapelia. I was in the dark about this genus at the time of the theft but did notice his were about to bloom. Damn. So anyway I also bought one that looks like Tom's at Armstrong and decided that what I have are Stapelia, not Huernica. My buds are bigger and darker than they were before. Four of them in one cluster. Oh hell what if I am out of town when they bloom? This feels like it has happened before. Darn.

The photo in the upper left of this update is of my supposed Brahea armata while it was in its box at Home Depot.

What else? Jero adheres to the bury the root flare school of tree planting and I do not.

I can't really get chocolate ice cream off my mind right now; it will be the first night without in months if I don't get any. The Dunns aren't answering.

Marcella and I broke up that clumpy Agave I'd got at Armstrong and planted the chunks in right-sized containers for growing on. Some were quite tiny; nearly all had roots.

We brutalized the various Dianthus, all having been chosen for fragrance and therefore meriting drastic measures to insure their vigor. Is it typical of them to have lousy root systems, or were mine started badly by the growers? It seems they just stop growing at some point, and no amount of watering or not watering makes a difference. I dug one up from its pot and the roots were fine, flimsy, and seemed inadequate to steady and fuel the growth of the plant. I have a yellow carnation that's down (due to irrigular watering) to a twig with very little foliage, and which has taken several weeks to show any sign of leafing out after I gave it a jarhead cut. But it has begun to make little green nubs offs its papery limbs.

What else. My gourds still thrive; the morning glories seem less than robust, though markedly better than those transplanted at an early age into Marcella's garden.

I foolishly checked the grape cuttings for roots--there were none. I became curious after noticing one of them wilting.

I got a tiny white mini-Cyclamen with a pink stripe on one petal of one blossom; I'll plant the seeds and see what I get. Big surprise: it is fragrant, and in a really nice way. It's the first time I had any inkling they had a scent. I have no idea what species it is, even after a lot of googling and goggling.

I forgot to re-plant the nodocactus (sp?). I went upstairs for the spray bottle so I could make a lemon juice solution and spray it on the stained parts of the old picture frames and have them bleach in the sun. A few hours after going up I remembered about the lemon juice. Anyway the frames are dry and quite usable; I guess I hope it is not too damp tonight. Well if they are damp maybe I will spray them with lemon juice solution; it'll soak in well and dry tomorrow. And I must plant the little gent.

Two of Hammer's Conos have bloomed, one in orange and the other in baby pink. Other of his plants are giving me the finger and making faces at me. Various Haworthia are blooming with their big frog tongues swaying in the breeze. I mean to ask him about the weird Crassula thingie that came in the pot with an Aloe from Altman's I got at Armstrong, but haven't got a picture of it yet. I doubt it is a repeat-bloomer so the opportunity to ID it passed for the year. I also must send him the old Cactus and Succulent magazine.

Well, I can't seem to focus on plants tonight, and there's the ice cream truck. Writing's on the wall.

Y'aint going to believe this but my dern Heurnias are about to bloom. That is, one of them is going to have four flowers. There are four buds. No, I did not say "that is one of them" in reference to the Gasteraloe to the right. That's just a little eye candy to get the ball rolling.

These are the ones I repotted about 2 weeks ago. I didn't check for buds at the time because it had never occurred to me that the things might bloom. What did I think they were--slugs? Is there an African succulent that doesn't bloom?

Oh by the way I own the domain "calandrinia.com." I feel this plant (oops--what species?) symbolizes the fun and excitement of succulents. The name might mean "Lark," as the Spanish "Calandrina" means Lark (the bird) in English.

What else...oh, my gourds are just popping up with big baby leaves...what are those called? But the one I gave to Marcella is barely out of the ground. I think I should put these right into one gallons and not bother with 4". We'll grow the gourds used to make the cups (mates) from which yerba mate is drunk.

Found two big pots in the alley, plastic ones. Old but not meaningingfully cracked or damaged by age. Faded.

Getting ready to murder the pool. Can use the water to water the new lawn I suppose. Must get on weeding tasks. Blowtorch?

Huernia etc

Rob so liked the photos of Stapelia in my cactus book that I searched the internet looking for a place that sells Stapelia. Found ONE! Made me pay attention to my Huernia about which I know little. They have muddled along in the same pot with the big Kalanchoe for a while, but I recently re-did that and took them out. Now I have to find out what might trigger them to bloom, as they haven't yet. Meanwhile a Sansevieria I got at the same plant sale has made 11 plantlets and stayed alive while being neglected. And it takes a lot of neglect to make a snake plant shows you it is suffering...

Proper respect must be paid to Mr. Martin Heigen, who took the photo above and generously posted it on the interwebs. More of his work on Huernia: http://anti-matter-3d.com/Stapeliads/Huernia.html

The Kalanchoe is probably Kalanchoe prolifera, unless it belongs in another genus. I did some research and apparently there is confusion.

In my searching I found a very interesting plant in the genus Dorstenia. Succulents are so weird and cool! Gee, how scientific of me. Well anyway, have a peek at this puppy...click to enlarge your mind.

If you like 'er, read all about it here: Caccy/Succy Socy.