8 April 07
Salty Balty
The Giants won one game this week. They played six games — at home. Tomorrow they set out on the road.
Giants fans are miserable, already, one week into the season. Hard to see how anyone could be more miserable than Salty Balty, who calls in regularly to the postgame wrap, bemoaning the geriatric lineup and calling for heads to roll — a refrain that was taken up by caller after caller.
Today I did more gardening than I probably should have, given how my back is feeling, but it was fun to listen to the game (though not fun to hear them lose).
Peppers, chiles, leeks, fennel, squashes — all went in today (all the melons went in yesterday). It may be a little early. Oh well. We’ll see… Maybe Salty should take up gardening.
7 April 07
Botanic Garden
We met Ron and Joe at the Botanic Garden in Tilden Regional Park in Berkeley on a drizzly morning today. The Botanic Garden is exclusively devoted to California native plants. I realized as we went through the collections that I don’t think I’ve been there since I took my classes on California plants in 1992 back in grad school at UC Santa Barbara. The plant species seem to be a lot more familiar than when I was there last.
Ron and Joe related that this garden led to the origin of the California Native Plant Society, which is the most important organization for the conservation of the California flora. The garden dates to 1940; in the early 1960s there was a plan to expand the 9-hole golf course across the road over the garden. Local citizens objected, and the organization that grew out of this eventually became the CNPS.
Above is a sketch of Trillium angustipetalum, a plant collected from Humboldt County. It is in the lily family, but as Chris Clarke relates , who knows what that means any more.
6 April 07
9 March 07
Trouble
You know there’s a problem when you get home from work and see this truckload of manure in the driveway that TOWERS over your garden deposited there probably under duress by the guy with the tractor from across the road where the horses are and the first thing that runs through your head is “oh no that’s nowhere near enough.”
27 February 07
Methuselah the Date Sapling
Two years ago Dr. Elaine Soloway germinated a 2000-year date seed found at Masada in Israel. This was the oldest seed ever to germinate. The seedling survived, and now Dr. Soloway is planning to transplant it. If the sapling, named Methuselah, continues to flourish and is female, in several years time we may find what the dates of Judea tasted like — according to Pliny the Elder they were renowned for their succulence and sweetness.
24 February 07
Attacked by a Pomegranate and Other Gardening Dangers
I was planting a pomegranate tree yesterday morning when I grazed one of the sharp branches with my right eyeball. No major harm done, though there are lots of sharp things in gardens and it’s good to be reminded to avoid them.
Numenius doesn’t do a lot of gardening, preferring to potter with radio stuff nearby while I dig. So when I begged him to go to a worm composting workshop at Project Compost today on my behalf, since I had a bird trip to lead for Duck Days, and he complied and schlepped a newly-filled worm bin to his office, he earned a nice lunch. There are now lots of worms in the house, but I’m hoping they’ll stay confined to their bins till we figure out exactly where they’re going to end up. (One will go to Mary and Jim’s across the street, I’m hoping, since I already pick up their scraps for the compost.)
The leeks have emerged from their potting soil disconcertingly quickly. I now have to work out how to keep them uncovered and their neighbors not… and at what point to pull the gardens apart and line them with gopher-proof wire mesh. Should have done that last year when I was putting them in.
Oh it’s all such a lot of work, and aren’t I happy as a clam when I have dirt under my fingernails…
30 January 07
Loss Of A Topiarist
If one takes a hard look at the hedges on the far side of a campus parking lot bordering 1st Street here in Davis, one will notice that they have form. One is a dragon, another a whale. There are other topiaries scattered around Davis — a locomotive, an elephant, and others.
Sadly, the landscape artist who created these topiaries, George Sommerdorf Jr., just died Friday in an ice-skating accident up at Donner Lake in the Sierras, breaking through thin ice. Davis will miss his sense of whimsy.
26 January 07
Native Plant Links
I sometimes wonder where one might find a particular native plant for Pica’s garden. The California Native Plant Link Exchange figures to be a good resource here — among other things one can query it by species to find out what nurseries stock that plant.
9 January 07
Gobs More Of Weather Data
I’m not quite sure how to directly make use of the data for Pica’s garden, but at least there’s a good source of such information for us. This is CIMIS, the California Irrigation Management Information System. The state Department of Water Resources maintains a set of over 120 automated weather stations in the agricultural portions of California to provide measurements of evapotranspiration — that is, water loss from soil and plants to the atmosphere — for irrigation planning purposes. Conveniently, there’s a station less than 2 miles from our house. It’s a very solid data record, and it’s neat to see an event like last Friday’s bitter north wind reflected there.
19 December 06
Vertical Garden
Patrick Blanc’s work literally takes landscape architecture to a new dimension. There are more than a few buildings I wouldn’t mind seeing thus adorned.
(Via Urban Cartography)