I wrote earlier about Linda offering to make a wedding gift of a quilt for John and me. I got word last week that all the squares were completed, and Sunday I stopped by to consult on their arrangement.
Here’s how the quilt looked in its near-final version as it was all laid out on her living room floor. Come on everyone, tell Linda how gorgeous her quilt looks!
Linda likes to live with these arrangement decisions before stitching things together, and we had fun moving a few blocks around, fine-tuning the arrangement. On the table in front of the quilt you can see the rough mockup I did of the quilt after scanning the fabrics and playing a morning with Photoshop. It ended up being a great way to pre-imagine how things would look. The blocks are in different places, but the overall quilt looks a lot like the early sketch.
The design is based on a quilt by Liz Axford that was exhibited in the Quilt Visions quilt show in 2002. Entitled “Bamboo Boogie-Woogie,” that quilt was an abstracted take on bamboo stems.
Speaking of bamboo, it was an interesting bit of coincidence that the night before I’d attended a concert by the Hillcrest Wind Ensemble, a band that John sometimes plays in. The venue was the Neurosciences Institute in La Jolla, a nice piece of architecture by Billy Tsien and Tod WIlliams, with striking landscaping done by the San Diego County firm of Burton Associates. The grounds feature this amazing long rectangle filled with golden bamboo that must be my favorite single planting of bamboo anywhere. (The planting is even more impressive by day, but that’s not when I was there…)
The bamboo connection goes even further. The architects of the Neurosciences Institute designed an exhibition at the National Building Museum devoted to concrete as a building material. Part of the space included these forests of steel reinforcing rods, rebar, that are used to strengthen concrete. At least to my eyes the installation bears more than a passing resemblance to the bamboo planting at the Neurosciences Institute. Or am I just delusional? (This photo by Frank Oudeman [ source ] )
But back to quilts…
Linda’s house, like the home of many quilters, is a one-person quilt show, with lots of great examples of her work. I’m a pretty visual person and I can always look at more cool things. It so happened that the Quilt Visions quilt biennial was happening up the coast at the Oceanside Museum of Art. That was an obvious extension to the afternoon if I ever heard of one.
Some museum exhibitions allow photography in the galleries, others don’t. Unfortunately this was one of those no photography ones. You’ll have to take my word that the show had a few drop-dead spectacular art quilts, as well as several that spoke quietly and revealed their secrets slowly as you looked ever closer at them.
It’s the sort of show that will either inspire you to take up quilting or to intimidate you into giving up all hope of ever making anything beautiful out of fabric and thread. Even though I have a Y chromosome and quilting isn’t typically a guy thing, I think I ended up being inspired. Now, someone please give me a few months of free time so that I can start up yet another obsession…
And here’s one final picture. The museum was part of a civic center complex designed by the architect Charles Moore. The very comfortable, human-scaled buildings take their design clues from Irving Gill, San Diego’s most daring architect of the early 20th century. Gill used the Spanish-inspired arches of this region and stripped them down to their essential geometry: tradition and history meets modernism.
Part of the complex is the Oceanside Public Library, and here’s the pond in front of it. Sorry, no more bamboo, but what a terrific way to plant palm trees, each on its own little geometric island…
At least that’s seemingly the case for those of us in Mediterranean climates. With our dry summers and moist winters, the plants best adapted to our climate come close to taking the summer summer off, and then use the onset of cooler, wetter weather to start thinking about getting growing again. Some of the shrubs in the local canyons drop some or all of their leaves in response to drought stress, and most of the wildland annuals disappear not long after the last rains. Our long brown season of summer could almost be confused with the depths of winter in other areas.
Left: Coreopsis gigantea in its defensive, leafless summer mode.
Reading the recent blogs from those other climates, I’m noticing that people are starting to withdraw from their gardens, holing up with some favorite plants transplanted into pots to overwinter indoors. These gardeners are thinking about sitting down with plant catalogs and looking ahead to the holidays, and then to warmer days and the reemergence of their gardens.
Here in San Diego, however, I started off September by transplanting plants around the garden, readjusting plant spacing and color relationships.
Left: Some of the garden before and after autumn thinning and transplanting.
I planted dozens of little pots of seeds of plants that I want to grow this fall and next year: giant coreopsis, datura, buckwheats from the Channel Islands, mallows from the desert, millet for the birds and some South African restios for a spot in the garden where the original plants haven’t aged gracefully. It’s a frenzy of activity of the sort that people in other climates would associate with late winter and early spring.
All summer, the patches of earth that get almost no supplemental water stay brown and virtually weed-free. Once the rains return, the weeds begin to claim the universe and the weeding chores begin again.
Fortunately, a layer of mulch makes a world of difference in keeping down weed seedlings. Unfortunately, areas where you want to sow wildflower seed can’t be mulched at all if you want the little seeds to germinate on their own. To keep down my workload, this year I’m isolating the wildflower patches to just a couple spots, around a couple little trees that will drop their leaves for the winter. We’ll see how well that works out…
A few spots in my garden don’t have to abide by strictly Mediterranean water requirements. There’s a small herb and vegetable garden that gets moderate doses of water year-round. A new raised bed harbors some tropicals that get to stay moist, as well as some other selections that need a little help with the water. This is the part of the garden that gets to experience summer along with the rest of the world. So the task of weeding never completely comes to an end, although it’s greatly localized to these spots that get watered one to three times a week.
All in all, this 2% of the Earth’s land mass that experiences this Mediterranean climate (the region around the Mediterranean Sea, western South Africa, parts of the Chilean coast, western Australia, and much of California) has its own seasonal cycles that don’t sync up easily with the rest of the world. Gardeners in other areas might not understand us. Forgive us if we have this glaze of anticipation coating our moods these days. Even as we worry about weeds and increased garden chores, fall is here, and it’s the emergence of a whole new season in the garden.
Today was a national day of protest against discriminatory initiatives that were approved by voters on election day. California just barely passed its Proposition 8, and that slap in the face against civil rights has stirred up a community in ways that haven’t been seen since the Rodney King police brutality protests of the 1990s.
I joined a small protest last weekend, and this morning I headed over to Balboa Park for what was promising to be a much larger parade and rally.
If you don’t know the park, it’s pretty much the equivalent of San Diego’s front yard, and is one of the great civic parks in the US. Many of the city’s museums and zoo are there, and it’s a great communal gathering place for everything from family picnics and pickup volleyball games to big civic events like Earth Day celebrations and the starting point for today’s Prop 8 protest march.
There were people everywhere. Thousands of them! This front yard was getting pretty crowded fast. You couldn’t have asked for a better November day: sunny, warm (even hot), light breezes that helped keep you stay cool but didn’t blow signs out of your hands.
We got going a little before 11:00, and followed route that took us through downtown and over to the County Administration Building, where many of us were married over the last five months. People honked and waved and were amazingly supportive. People were on their condo balconies, waving. Service workers at the hotels came out on break and shouted their support for us.
Here you see the parade heading into downtown. The marchers were whooping it up at this point. Part of it was the enthusiasm. Part of it was an appreciation for the first sign of shade on the parade route.
There were a lot of people. (Yes, that’s marchers extending all the way into downtown.) The local paper’s story says something like twenty to twenty-five thousand.
And here’s the end of the parade and the site of the rally. One of the parade chants went: What do you want? Equal rights! When do you want them? Now! But I will admit that at this point some of us were substituting “lunch” for “equal rights…” Protesting is such hard work!
But all in all a magnificent showing, an amazing day, and a great affirmation of community and support.
Anyone who thought things were concluded by the mob-discrimination on election day are so wrong. How do you stop positive energy like this?
I’ve been thinking a lot about weeds lately. Now that the weather is changing, the little cool season green interlopers are starting to show themselves with a vengeance. And as I mentioned earlier, I’m reading American Perceptions of Immigrant and Invasive Species : Strangers on the Land by Peter Coates.
The epigram that starts off chapter 3 is an amazing quote from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince:
There were on the planet where the little prince lived—as on all planets—good and bad plants…If it is only a sprout of radish or the sprig of a rose-bush, one would let it grow wherever it might wish. But when it is a bad plant, one must destroy it as soon as possible, the very first instant that one recognizes it. Now there were terrible seeds on the planet that was the home of the little prince; and these were the seeds of the baobab. The soil of that planet was infested with them. A baobab is something you will never, never be able to get rid of if you attend to it too late. It spreads over the entire planet. It bores clear through it with its roots. And if the planet is too small, and the baobabas are too many, they split it in pieces.
I’m not sure if Saint-Exupéry ever met a real live baobab plant, the world’s largest succulent, shown to the left in a photo by Quinn Norton (used under the Creative Commons 1.0 Attribution General License) [ source ].
And I’m not sure if the author was just using the word “baobab” just because it sounds cool and deliciously evil. But his description of a plant from hell sure describes a lot of the weeds that I feel compelled to keep up with.
After all, I wouldn’t want the world to split into pieces just pieces I was too lazy to weed my garden!
Here are a few mostly unrelated things I’ve been storing up.
Shopping for Pumpkins
First off, I wanted to share this fun(?) photo that’s only a few days late for Canadian Thanksgiving or a couple weeks early for the US holiday. (Be sure to click it to enlarge it to get the full effect.) The image is “McLean, Virginia (1978)” by photographer Joel Sternfeld. It’s his best-known photo and the cover to one of the editions of his book, American Prospects.
A big part of photography can be being in the right place at the right time. But then you have to know when to snap the shutter. Sternfeld nailed this one!
Ornamental Grasses
Grasses have been used as lawn materials for centuries, but the last couple decades have seen an explosion in the use of ornamental grasses that you don’t attack with lawnmowers. The Canadian firm, Bluestem Nursery, has assembled one of the better brief guides to dozens of commonly-used ornamental grasses. When does a grass bloom? How much water does it need? How large does it get? Just take a look at the great summary. Click on the plant name for photos and a more detailed description. It doesn’t have every plant you’ll run into in a seed catalog, but it has plenty of the hardier species.
Penstemons from Seed
A few weeks ago I was planning to sow seeds of a couple species of penstemon. Some of the species in the genus require a cold snap to germinate, others require light, while some respond to a fairly elaborate string of temperature changes. And some just spring to life after you sprinkle them in some soil and water them in. I had no idea what kind of treatment my species required until I went trawling the web. That was when I ran across Jim Swayne’s penstemon seed germination methodology pages.
There you’ll find several hundred penstemon species listed, along with brief germination notes on how you make the little seeds come to life. (For example, one of the more elaborate routines, for P. hartwegii, goes something like: “Sow fresh seed @ 70ºF (21ºC), sow stored seed under thin cover 8 wks @ 40ºF (4ºC), move to 50ºF (10ºC) under light; if no germ. in 4 wks, move to 60ºF (16ºC).” Fortunately my two species were closer to the “just add water” category.)
An Election Video You Haven’t Seen
Leaving the garden, I wanted share this clip in recognition of the elections just concluded. It may be the last election footage you’ll need to watch this season: a promo for Please Vote for Me, a Danish documentary from 2007 on an election for Class Monitor for a third grade class in Wuhan, China. It’s a little Sesame Street in parts, but it’s got its Lord of the Flies moments as well.
Linda lives in inland San Diego, although nowhere near the extreme eastern frontiers of the county. Still, during the October 2007 wildfires, she was evacuated for several days when the flames came close to her home.
Recently a booklet showed up at her house. Entitled Will You be Prepared for the Next Wildfire?, it listed the steps you can follow to make your home more fire-resistant. Interestingly more than half of the pamphlet was dedicated to landscaping.
One of the main ideas the publication lays out is to develop “defensible space” around your house. The photo below shows the basic concept better than any words could [ source ].
The other landscaping tips deal with selecting the best plants to have near your house. Two pages of fire-resistant trees, shrubs, groundcovers, vines and perennials round out the recommendations.
Being the plant expert that I am (yeah right…) I did notice a couple of little proofreading glitches with the pamphlet. There’s a photo of something labeled “coyotoe bush,” but the plant is something altogether different. Also, there’s a typo in the plant lists that calls something a “bush gerimander” instead of a “bush germander.” (It seems to be a typo somehow befitting a booklet produced by a political entity: a plant that’s the linguistic hybrid of a germander and a political district drawn by gerrymander!) But those are minor quibbles.
It’s the time of year to look back on summer to see which of the new plants were good additions to the garden. Once of my favorites of the year is Euphorbia hypericifolia ‘Diamond Frost’ (usually sold simply as Euphorbia Diamond Frost).
Introduced around 2004, the plant is getting to be very commonly available, even hitting my local Home Depots this season. The individual flowers are tiny and nothing to write Martha about, but the plant is covered with them all season, making it look like a cloud of white vapor.
It’s listed as a filler plant, but I think it’s best used as a single accent plant near where you’d walk by it and appreciate the white mist of flowers. Also, since the individual flowers are so tiny, I like it combined with other plants that have smaller flowers or have a more delicate plant texture. Here you see it paired with the small-scale but spiky Dianella revoluta ‘Baby Bliss,’ pink Gaura lindheimeri, and the red-and-white Salvia microphylla ‘Hot Lips.’
Overall height with a year’s growth: 18 inches.
Overall width: 24 inches.
Use: front border, in pots.
Exposure: sun to part shade.
Water needs: dry to average to regular.
The plant is listed as an annual except in zone 10, with a minimum recommended temperature of 40 degrees. My plant went in the ground last November and made it through a typical San Diego coastal winter of occasional light frosts but no serious freezing. The plant sat sulking and leafless through the worst of it, but come warmer weather it put out leaves and began to flower. Once the nights reliably topped 50 degrees, the plant began to flower its head off.
Here’s a little helping of some of what was blooming in the garden today.
I wanted to have a little more fun with the pictures than showing you a slideshow of the garden. Only the first one, Camellia sasanqua ‘Cleopatra’ with an attendant ant, is a basic straightforward shot. The rest are cropped and then collaged together. See if you can guess what everything is.
There’s an answer key at the end.
The answers (top to bottom, left to right):
Camellia sasanqua ‘Cleopatra’
Paperwhite narcissus
Alyssum Plectranthus verticillatus (Creeping Charlie) flowers
Epidendrum hybrid, red Solanum pyracanthum
Thai basil blooms
Strawberry blossom Melampodium Derby (volunteer from last season)
Epidendrum hybrid, orange Salvia microphylla ‘Hot Lips’ Cestrum elegans Gaillardia pulchella (Blanket flower) Salvia nemorosa ‘Snow Hills’ Rotheca myricoides ‘Ugandense’ (Butterfly bush)
Heliotrope
Zinnia volunteer from 2007 season, finally showing itself Salvia cacaliaefolia (Ivy-leaved sage) with caterpillar Strelitzia reginae (Bird of paradise) from below Salvia sagittata (Arrow-leaved sage) Oxalis purpurea
As my recent cold began to fade I began to put away the garden picture books and reach for a book that I knew would require a little more focus and reflection. I’m not that far into it yet, but Peter Coates’s American Perceptions of Immigrant and Invasive Species: Strangers on the Land is proving to be a surprisingly lively read for a book that seems aimed at an academic audience.
With interesting histories of “invading” plants and animals set against historical debates over human immigration, it’s a volume that could be interesting for many thoughtful gardeners and birders. Here are just a couple passages that touch on some of the issues in the book:
“Without question the most deplorable event in the history of American ornithology,” declared William Dawson in 1903, “was the introduction of the English Sparrow.” This may sound absurd to those acquainted with the passenger pigeon’s fate. Yet Dawson insisted that the notorious extinctions of the pigeon and the great auk … were mere “trifles” compared to the frightful repercussions for various small native birds of the “invasion of that wretched foreigner.” A dramatic remark of this sort from a century ago serves as a welcome corrective to the unreflective tone of current literature on bioinvasion, which frequently intimates that today’s level of concern in unmatched.
Those who speak of ecological nativism … give the impression that antipathy toward exotic species and the simultaneous championing of native biota have been particularly robust in the United States. This view usually emerges by default: commentators simply neglect to reflect on other national experiences. [Mark] Sagoff, [in “What’s Wrong with Exotic Species?”] though, directly compares American intolerance with a more relaxed European “cosmopolitanism” that “tolerates porous borders” for immigrant flora and fauna. He sees this as a reflection of different New and Old World conceptions of nature. Whereas Americans are dedicated to the “idea of pristine nature,” as enshrined in the related concepts of wilderness and indigenous species (native plants and animals, by implication, being biotic citizens of a terrestrial Eden), these notions, he claims, lack cultural, spiritual, and historical meaning for Europeans, who prefer their nature to be a blend of the nonhuman and the cultural. The alien organisms Europeans worry about and are keen to exclude from their countryside and farms, he explains, are genetically modified crops (mostly born in the United States).
I swear that I’m not trying to look like Annie Liebovitz or some wacked paparazzo, but I often drag a camera along when I go looking for plants at nurseries.
I used to take a pad of paper and a pen, but this method has started to prove a lot more useful. I can quickly “jot down” the names of plants by taking a picture of the signs that most nurseries thoughtfully provide.
Those signs often have interesting cultural information as well. And if I’m taken with a plant I’ve never seen before, it’s easy to commit it to pixels and bring the photo back home to think about whether the plant could possibly have a place in an already overcrowded garden.
And should Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie stroll through, I can discretely snap their picture for the next installment of Access Hollywood. I’m sure the world wants to know what plants they want to have in their garden.
Speaking of bamboo, it was an interesting bit of coincidence that the night before I’d attended a concert by the Hillcrest Wind Ensemble, a band that John sometimes plays in. The venue was the Neurosciences Institute in La Jolla, a nice piece of architecture by Billy Tsien and Tod WIlliams, with striking landscaping done by the San Diego County firm of Burton Associates. The grounds feature this amazing long rectangle filled with golden bamboo that must be my favorite single planting of bamboo anywhere. (The planting is even more impressive by day, but that’s not when I was there…)
The bamboo connection goes even further. The architects of the Neurosciences Institute designed an exhibition at the National Building Museum devoted to concrete as a building material. Part of the space included these forests of steel reinforcing rods, rebar, that are used to strengthen concrete. At least to my eyes the installation bears more than a passing resemblance to the bamboo planting at the Neurosciences Institute. Or am I just delusional? (This photo by Frank Oudeman [ source ] )
And here’s one final picture. The museum was part of a civic center complex designed by the architect Charles Moore. The very comfortable, human-scaled buildings take their design clues from Irving Gill, San Diego’s most daring architect of the early 20th century. Gill used the Spanish-inspired arches of this region and stripped them down to their essential geometry: tradition and history meets modernism.
San Diego
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