Springtime

It's not really spring yet -- you can tell by the insane raking light in this early afternoon photo. But I celebrated our first real winter rain with a long night of rendering lard, preserving lemons, and starting this year's seed. I'm trying "the paper towel method" for stratification for the first time; it just seemed easier than trying to sterilize peat. Also, I had kind of a lot of seeds.

The "storm" was negligible here, but we got a nice accumulation of ~3.5 inches, which I figured out no thanks to the NWS, which has apparently abandoned its bay area weather stations. I also learned that we've had 400+ chill hours already this year, twice normal, which explains why my @#*! gas bill is so ridiculous, but not why the 'Double Delight' rose is still blooming when I should be doing its dormant pruning.

*

Anyway, although html tables aren't the best place to keep track of my germination rates, I'm too lazy/stupid to use Excel, so you can stop reading now. Unless you too are a huge dork. All from Northwest Native Seed.

sp.	AN	soak	strat.	germ.	Notes
Calochortus bruneaunis	NNS 05-121	1/6	1/7-2/5	2/3
C. dunnii	NNS 04-65	1/6	1/7-2/16	2/15
C. howellii	NNS 05-136	1/6	1/7-3/8	y***
C. invenustus	NNS 05-137	1/6	1/7-3/8	y
C. simulans	NNS 05-155	1/6	1/7-1/27	~1/26
C. striatus	NNS 05-157 (2)	1/6	1/7-1/20	~1/18
C. venustus	NNS 05-171	1/6	1/7-2/5	2/3
Dicentra formosa ssp. oregana D*	NNS 07-159	1/6	1/7-3/8	almost?!	3/8: seed coat split and radicle visible, though not yet emerged
Dicentra formosa ssp. oregana W*	NNS 07-159	n/a	n/a	[potted up 1/20 because of apparent mold on elaisosomes]
Castilleja applegatei var. pinetorum**	NNS 06-120	1/7	1/8-3/8	y
Dodecatheon poeticum**	NNS 07-169	1/7	1/8-3/8	? (too small)
Fritillaria biflora	NNS 05-345 (2)	1/7	1/8-3/8?	1
F. eastwoodiae	NNS 07-250	1/7	1/8-3/8	y
Ipomopsis aggregata var. aggregata	NNS 07-277	1/7	1/8-3/8	y
Lilium rubescens x L. bolanderi	NNS 06-338	1/7	1/8-	n
Lupinus microcarpus var. densiflorus	NNS 03-405	1/7	1/8-1/17	~1/14
Penstmon labrosus	NNS 05-548	1/7	1/8-2/5	2/3

* half the seeds stored dry, the other half moist and refrigerated (W). W moved to wet paper towel on porch for bright indirect light & diurnal temp var. 1/7

** damp sand in ziplocs; too small for paper towel.

Solstice

Not to be an asshole about it, but I just can't deal with these "blogging" "meme"/chainmail things. I've been doing this for a long time, and if I have something to say, I'll say it. So I have to apologize to Eurica for dropping her ball, but I do want to say this: it is easy to forget that there is anything good about the internet, but I am very thankful for the ability to learn about people on the the other side of the planet, and their amazing plants. Check out Eurica's awesome pictures of Aloe marlothii and her husband Rudi in a Namibian copper mine at the link above.

I also avoid the garden blog bloom day thing because this entire blog is about what's blooming in my garden. I don't need a special day for it.

Anyway, when you live somewhere buried under a couple feet of ice this time of year, you imagine that all you want is a little bit of winter color. And the lemon tree does fulfill that role admirably. But when you live here, you still want flowers, because you're an unsophisticated philistine who can't be content with the timeless grace of foliage when there's shiny sex organs to display. Those of you in colder climes might not be familiar with the flowers of the Jade tree, which looked like this in my neighbor's yard this morning. Yeah, I said tree: it's about 8 feet tall.

Anyway, when I was poking around this morning, I have to admit it suddenly hit me how amazing it is to have so many things blooming on the shortest day of the year: Abutilon, Bougainvillea, Brugmansia x candida, Fatsia japonica, Fuchsia, Gardenia [!!11!], Impatiens niamniamensis (ok, that finally dropped its floweres and looks pretty sad, but I swear it was blooming last week), the lemon tree, Passiflora manicata, a bunch of Salvias and the awesome Satureja mexicana that never stops flowering, Silene, Zinnias (still, though they look like crap now)... How lucky am I?

Not lucky enough, it turns out, to have a Protea flower yet. I got a little carried away by what is actually a bunch of leaves (though in my defense their hirsute emergent leaf margins look a lot more like nascent bracts than the glabrous mature leaves):

Hello world

Oh hi. You're still here?

Have you noticed that it's cold? Hella cold, actually. Not, of course, the oh-shit-I-might-die-if-I-go-outside cold of the rest of the country (much less the the oh-shit-I-might-die-anyway-if-they-don't-turn- the-power-on icestorm cold that I hope you'll survive to waste more time on the internets), but still, lows in the 30s, which is totally uncool. Dude.

If you can't have sun, at least enjoy the palm trees. Here we have Washingtonia filifera, the only palm native to Alta California, which I used to think strikingly ugly, as I am fond of neither palmate leaves nor persistent ones. This one is kind of cute though -- it reminds me of an ice cream cone. Check out palm canyon to enjoy this species in all its splendor, such as it is.

Right around the corner from that tree is its cousin W. robusta, the Mexican fan palm. This one's at least 80 feet tall (behold the power lines in the lower right), growing out of a small cut in the sidewalk. Again, not my favorite, but at least admirable for the sheer height. They can hit 120 feet.

I've been too busy/cold/lazy to do much in the garden except follow the progress of my S. African seed. Freesia refracta was the first to germinate, followed by the Babiana and at least 3 of the Romuleas. I'm still waiting for 4 or 5 species, with a surprising amount of patience: a few weeks ago I pulled an unruly epazote from the herb bed to discover a diminutive oregano that turned out to be the za'atar I'd broadcast and given up on at least a year ago. yay!

Horticultural therapy

Winter may have been mild so far, but don't try to tell that to my Agave attenuata, which looks about as vibrant as The Ohio State University's offensive line right now. Sorry, had to sneak a little football in there. Anyway, the agave will probably survive if I can manage to cover it before it gets really cold later this week, but it's not long for the open garden. I'm accepting suggestions for a hardier agave or aloe to replace it. Moderate spines only please.

Winter is a garden season here like any other, and though I'm pretty short on winter-flowering plants in my own garden, I went for a little walk the other day to see what's blooming. Most dramatic are the deciduous magnolias, of many varieties, with their huge, purple-flushed flowers on naked branches. There's some kind of rhododendron (I think) that I see all over the place). Camellias, of course, and aloes, particularly Aloe arborescens which seems to love it here. As far as traditional "winter interest" (i.e., not flowers) goes, there's the classic red-twig dogwood (Cornus sericea), one of which I noticed in the same yard with a "Sango kaku" Japanese maple, in a bizarre pigmented-branch smackdown.

Then my walk took a sinister turn. Whole lots carpeted with the monotonous pale yellow of Oxalis pes-caprae. This is the scariest weed I have ever dealt with. It goes to seed in days, and produces an apparently infinite number of corms ("bulblets"?) which instantly separate from the root if you try to pull it. Basically, any attempt to remove it succeeds only in spreading it. I have two weedy Oxalises: a dull yellow that I think is O. stricta, and a fleshy purple thing whose name I forget. The latter is particularly irritating, but it's nothing compared to the dreaded goat's foot. I'm fully prepared to nuke my neighbor's yard if it shows up there.

Anyway, despite the possibility of gardening, it's catalog time here just like the rest of the northern hemisphere. I thought I did pretty good to resist the blandishments of the (web-) famous Meliodendron xylocarpum (rare! beautiful! difficult! ... no room), until I moved on to the seed catalogs. Let's just say I bought an endangered penstemon endemic to Utah oil shales at 6000' [scroll down to P. grahamii]. That's going to love my yard. But the beauty of seed is that your failures set you back $3, not $30. And I'm hoping the endangeredness will inspire me to try a bit harder with the seeds this year. I need all the help I can get with seeds. (Of course, my source is cultivated plants, not the dwindling wild population. I'm not an animal.)

Mr. frostee

Originally uploaded by akiruna.

That's not really what you want to see in the morning. The words "record lows," also not ideal. Although I'm pretty sure we did not get below around 35 (the coldest spot I could find was 38 when I went out around 7:30 with my meat thermometer -- yes, I need to get a better measuring device), the path was definitely crunchy. Or rather, part of it was: there appear to be about 15 different nano-climates in my tiny yard.

Thankfully, the crunchiest area is mostly plant-free, and no actual crystals were visible on leaves, but I have a feeling the Hedychium was not amused. Certainly I will have to lower my already diminished expectations for those flower spikes, which haven't budged since I noticed them a month ago. There is also some question about the Agave attenuata, which, though "hardy to 28," cannot be too happy either.

Although there's been a fair amount of gardening activity, I haven't had time to write about it, so I'll see you next year, which will commence with rose pruning, barring catastrophe.

Advisory

So cold. There was actually a frost advisory last night. What the fuck is a frost advisory? Are you Californians so weak you need the nanny state to hold your hand every time water might leave the liquid phase?

Well, yeah, we are. I've been pretty preoccupied with how cold I am for a few days. Wondering incredulously how I lived without central heat. The old days, when I was a kid in NE, and temperatures like this were cause to wear t-shirts and shorts, those don't really register anymore.

But now there's a garden: it's not about me anymore. I have responsibilities, which I fulfilled by covering my tenderest plants last night: Passiflora manicata and Deppea splendens. There were plenty more things I could have worried about, but I knew we weren't going to get a real frost: the nearest weather station (on the internet) didn't even fall below forty.

Still, it's an odd feeling, the sudden possibility that you could lose some plants overnight.

The only thing I'm really worried about are the nascent flower spikes on the Hedychium (we're up to 3 now), which I'm pretty sure are feeling considerably more petulant about producing actual flowers than last week.