There is NO news regarding the tiny Memorial Tree in Felton Covered Bridge Park that I so frequently provide updates for. It did not do much this year. I probably already mentioned this when it was busy not doing much in spring. It is in a difficult situation, where too many dogs do what dogs do to tiny valley oaks that are busy not doing much more than trying to survive without regular watering, out in a harshly exposed island in a parking lot. Once it gets going, it should do fine. It is only slow now, but is not unhealthy. It is doing exactly what it should be doing this time of year. By late autumn, it will try to defoliate. Valley oaks are never in a rush for that.
This angel’s trumpet is more interesting because it was seemingly deceased. As you can see, it is trying to recover . . . just in time for autumn. Unfortunately, there will not be sufficient time and warm weather for it to mature enough for the new stems to survive even a mild frost next winter. At least it will get a bit of time to recharge the roots so that it can regenerate a bit more vigorously next spring.
There is of course the possibility that it will not get frosted too severely in winter. It is somewhat sheltered by the canopies of nearby trees. We may even try to protect it under a box on the coldest nights.
Realistically though, the loss of such minor growth would not hurt it much. As it matures, it will likely lose much or most of its outer foliar growth annually each winter, and then replace it with new growth each spring. The priority for it now, or at least next spring, is to develop substantial stems that are above where ‘gardeners’ will cut it down with a weed whacker. Once it does that, it will have a relatively permanent framework of resilient trunks that it can get frosted back to.
The main problem since it was installed was not the frost, but unskilled labor with weed whackers. No matter how emphatically we explain to the ‘gardener’ that it is not a weed, his crew cuts it down a few times annually when no one is there to stop them.
Naked ladies continue to bloom all over the region. These happen to be in the parking lot of Felton Covered Bridge Park. Several that were surplus in a neighbor’s garden were planted in the corners of the various islands. Unfortunately, because of their locations, most of their flower stalks get trampled and broken off. The picture below shows how exposed they are within an area of substantial traffic. The foliage that develops later does considerably better. It is too substantial to be trampled and ruined completely, and it gets a bit more substantial every year. However, the substantial foliage is not here yet to prevent the flower stalks from getting trampled.
By the way, if you think that I wrote this post because of the (former) lack of a horticulturally oriented topic for today, you are correct.
Dogs
It is now September 2, the day after both the feastday of Saint Fiacre, patron saint of gardeners, and the first anniversary of this blog. It is also the anniversary of the only day in the last year that I did not post anything. Yes, the second day of the blog was the only day without a post. Early in those first few days, I posted the only article that was irrelevant to horticulture, and an explanation that I would not make a habit of doing so. I wanted to try it just once to see if I could do it like so many others do. It was overrated. Nonetheless, after almost a year since that naughty diversion from my self imposed discriminating standards, I want to try it again. After all, I have not yet posted a horticulturally oriented article on September 2 within the context of this blog, so why start now.
This is Privet. He passed away on December 1, 2004, after about eleven years of devout service since about 1993 or so.
Privet was a feral dog who lived in Thomspson Creek behind a retail nursery in the Evergreen District of San Jose where I worked temporarily in the early 1990s. Late every afternoon, he commuted down Thompson Creek to a neighborhood pet store where food was left out for him. Aster and Yarrow, two angry guard dogs who lived in the nursery, would thrash about on the inside of the enclosing cyclone fence as they tried to get to him, but only damaged the merchandise inside the fence. I would cuss at him and threaten him through the fence. He would just stare at me blankly, and keep a safe distance.
One day, Privet was noticeably absent. He was likewise absent the following day. In fact, I did not see him again until several weeks later when we went to the Humane Society of Santa Clara County to adopt a cat to help with the mice in the office. We happened to go through the wrong door to where the adoptable dogs were. There he was! As usual, I cussed at him and said all sorts of mean things to him . . . .until I noticed that his time was up. I asked someone who worked there what that ominous date on his placard meant, only to be told something too unpleasant to repeat here. They were understaffed, so had not gotten around to it yet. Well, the next thing I knew I had payed the adoption fees, and Privet was sitting defiantly next to me in the Buick as we drove away real fast. We never spoke of it again.
My niece named this cool dude Willow, but we just called him Bill because I was told that Willow is a girly name. He was not planned either. In about 2008, I saw his picture on the website of the Peninsula Humane Society in Burlingame. Without thinking, I drove up and adopted him on the spot. On the way, I telephone a friend who I though would try to talk me out of it. He did not. Those working at the Humane Society asked if I would like to interview other dogs. I told them who I was there for. Bill was a several years old when we met. He became blind and deaf in old age, but was still happy until he passed away on December 4, 2016.
Rhody arrived only a few months later, early in 2017 and in the traditional unplanned manner. I can not imagine why he was available for adoption for several months in Santa Cruz. It was not my idea for him to come live with me. It was his. I could not talk him out of it. He seems to be remarkably happy with his simple lifestyle, although I can not imagine why. I wish I could provide better for him. Like Privet and Bill, he has more friends than he can keep up with. Privet was a Pontiac man. Bill was an Oldsmobile man. So far, Rhody seems to be a simple Chevrolet man.
Blackjack does not live with me. He is not a dog either. He is a big kitty who has enslaved one of my colleagues, although my colleague does not seem to be aware of it. Cats are of course masters of mind control techniques. Blackjack did not get his name from the blackjack oak. It is just a cool name that suits him well. He is not really as demonic as he seems to be in this picture. Nor is he trying to fly upside down. He just happened to yawn while laying on his back and stretching.
Of course, only the names are horticultural. None of these guys cares about gardening. I sort of feel guilty about not writing about a horticultural topic today, but perhaps I will get over it.
Saint Fiacre Day
Today, September 1, was the Feastday of Saint Fiacre, the Patron Saint of gardeners. I would not have known if I had not earlier seen this very thorough and informative article written by Doctor David Marsh of the Gardens Trust;
https://thegardenstrustblog.wordpress.com/2018/09/01/st-fiacre/
In all my writing, I had mentioned Saint Fiacre only once, and only in regard to garden statuary. I described how Saint Francis, who happens to be the patron saint of animals, is popularly believed to be the patron saint of gardeners because his statue is so popular in gardens, often in conjunction with statues of frolicking animals, but that statues of Saint Fiacre are very rare.
Besides the Feastday of Saint Fiacre, this September 1 also happens to be the first year anniversary of my blog. I have now been posting articles from my weekly gardening column, as well as other elaborations, for an entire year. With the exception of September 2, the day after establishing the blog, I have posted an article daily. Since participating with the Six on Saturday meme, I have been posting two articles on Saturday. There were even a few days in which three articles were posted.
Unfortunately, back in February or March, my weekly gardening column was discontinued from the Silicon Valley Community Newspapers, which was the first newspaper group that I started writing for nearly twenty years ago. Silicon Valley Community Newspapers still has access to the articles, and can use them if they choose to; but I am no longer employed with them. Because I write for several other newspaper groups, I did not want to stop writing my weekly gardening column just yet. I enjoy it too much. I will have been writing it for twenty years in October, but blogging is still new to me.
Different Time Zones
If the flower on the left is a four o’clock, is the flower on the right a five o’clock, or perhaps a three o’clock? Is one a.m. and the other p.m.? What about the flower of the same species that I featured twelve hours ago? What about those in another picture that I will share next Saturday?
Of course, only the colors are different; not the name . . . or the time.
What is odd about these two seemingly different flowers is that they are on the same plant. In fact, they are on the same stem, separated only by a few inches.
Four o’clocks can be odd that way. Individual plants typically bloom with exclusively pink, red, white, yellow or orange flowers. The shades and hues of these colors are variable, but are typically homogeneous throughout each entire plant.
Some plants bloom with flowers of one color that are spotted or variably striped with another. Their flowers are not as homogeneous as those that bloom with only one color, so some of their flowers might be uniformly one color or the other, without spots or stripes. Some plants bloom with a few different colors!
Distinctly bright pink (but not light pink) flowers seem to be the most fragrant and the least variable, typically devoid of spotting or striping. They may be more closely related to the wild species, as it would have been found in its natural range in the Andes, prior to breeding for more interesting colors. Perhaps, after enough generations, other four o’clocks would eventually revert to the same characteristically fragrant bright pink flowers, just like many varieties of nasturtium eventually revert to standard bright orange and yellow. It is hard to say now, while naturalized four o’clocks have yet to do so.
Six on Saturday: Not My Garden
My garden really is not much to talk about. Really. It is just a bunch of redwoods with a bit of other native vegetation dominating the few items that I added into the mix. There are fourteen stock fig trees, but they are very small and mostly obscured by the underbrush. The elderberries, currants and huckleberries are the same as what grows wild, so they do not look like much either. Even the cane berries look very similar to the native blackberries. There is a quince tree, some rhubarb, and some small prickly pear, but they are barely visible amongst the other vegetation. Well, that is enough talk about why my garden is not much to talk about.
These pictures are from one of the gardens that one of my colleagues maintains.
1. Hibiscus is probably the flashiest bloom in this garden now. I have no idea what cultivar this hibiscus is; and I am not even certain about the species. It sure is impressive though. This flower is more than six inches wide!
2. Red honeysuckle is something that I really want to grow, but can not justify it. I mean, it does not exactly ‘do’ anything more than look good. It is not fragrant like Japanese honeysuckle is. This one took a while to bloom.
3. Zonal geranium happens to be one of my favorite perennials, even if others consider it to be too cheap and common. I do not know if this one is pink, peach, salmon . . . or one of those odd colors that only girls can see.
4. Mandevilla is my best guess. Again, I do not know the species. Did I mention that this is not my garden? I do happen to like this one though, because it is so perfectly white. Otherwise, I am none too keen on mandevilla.
5. Morning glory is quite happy here. This one is annual of course. There was a perennial white morning glory known as a moonflower nearby, but it succumbed to frost last winter. Hope for its recovery ran out months ago.
6. 4:00 (four o’clock) is a prolific naturalized exotic species. I would not say that it is invasive, but merely prolific. I do not know if this one is 4:00 a.m. or 4:00 p.m., but I do know it will not be the last. More on that later.
This is the link for Six on Saturday, for anyone else who would like to participate:
https://thepropagatorblog.wordpress.com/2017/09/18/six-on-saturday-a-participant-guide/
Horridculture – CH CH CH CHIA!
Skyscrapers are already very efficient. They fit more usable floorspace into their ‘footprint’ than any other type of building does. They conserve energy that gets used for heating and cooling by exposing less of that floorspace to the outside weather. For all that usable floorspace, they need only a single roof.
Think about it. A relatively short ten story building contains as much floorspace as ten single story buildings that occupy the same area individually, but collectively occupy ten times as much area! Nine of those stories loose heat during cold weather, and collect heat during hot weather, only around the exterior walls. Only the top floor loses and collects heat through the roof, and only if there is not an upper utility ‘attic’ floor that insulates it. Ten single story buildings of the same area are all exposed on top, as well as all the way around. Of course, ten single story buildings of the same area need ten roofs comparable to the single roof of the ten story skyscraper.
Skyscrapers certainly need more infrastructure to support all of their floors, and they lose a bit of their floorspace to that infrastructure, as well as to the elevators needed for access to the upper floors. It also takes significant energy to pump water up to upper floors. Regardless, skyscrapers are still the most efficient of buildings. They have nothing to prove to the treehuggers who dislike them so.
‘Green roofs’ on top of skyscrapers are a fun concept. They utilize space that is otherwise useless, and they really do help to insulate the top and most exposed floor of big buildings. However, they are no more ‘green’ than landscapes that are at ground level. In fact, they necessitate the incorporation of extra infrastructure into their respective buildings in order to sustain their synthetic environments, and to support the extra weight of the soil, water and flora. Pumping water to irrigate green roofs takes more energy than irrigating landscapes at ground level. Generally though, they are probably worth the effort, as long as they are not too elaborate,
Chia Pet Skyscrapers are what happens when they get too elaborate. The vertical landscapes incorporated into the facades of these buildings consume more resources and energy than they conserve. Although less energy is needed for cooling the buildings during warm weather, more energy is used to pump water for irrigation. Not only must the buildings be constructed to sustain these landscapes, but they require much more specialized maintenance than conventional skyscrapers need. Because the flora in these vertical landscapes can not disperse roots into real soil, the growing medium must be fertilized very regularly with more synthetic fertilizer than conventional landscapes in the ground need, and all this fertilizer eventually leaches into the drainage systems of the landscape. Insects might enjoy these vertical landscapes, but the necessary regular maintenance would prevent much other fauna from getting established like they could in conventional landscapes at ground level.
Although the skyscraper within this spectacular Chia Pet Skyscraper benefits the environment, the vertical landscape that adorns the exterior only benefits those who live and work in and around it.
Scarlet Pimpernel
It is pretty but pervasive. Actually, I do not really find scarlet pimpernel to be all that appealing, but this is how someone who reads my gardening column in the Santa Ynes Valley News describes it. Embarrassingly, she requested that I discuss scarlet pimpernel while it was more of a problem back on June 7, but I only recently read the message. By now, it is already dying back for autumn, and is completely deteriorated in dry and hot exposed areas. It will be back next spring, and will bloom with tiny peachy orange flowers so that it can throw tiny but ridiculously abundant seed by summer before anyone notices. Flowers can be other colors in other regions. The sprawling stems can spread more than a foot wide, and can get up to about ten inches high if sprawling over other weeds. The tiny and soft leaves are arranged in opposing pairs. Scarlet pimpernel may not seem like much of a threat now that it is deteriorating, but new seedlings will be profuse early next spring, and can compete with seedlings of more desirable plants.
Control of scarlet pimpernel is not easy. If application of herbicide is an option, it does not stick to the foliage of scarlet pimpernel very well, even with a wetting agent. Hoeing eliminated larger plants, but does not kill the seed that the larger plants have already tossed. Scarlet pimpernel starts throwing seed so early that it must be pulled as soon as it appears in very early spring. Like I said, it is not easy. The small plants are not even easy to see. The process must be repeated at least weekly for a while, just because some seedlings will emerge after the first batch is gone.
Fortunately, scarlet pimpernel is not very vigorous. If it comes up through mulch, only a few plants will survive, and they will be easy to pull. They do not compete with other more vigorous plants well either. Many simple ground covers will simply shade it out, although it can mingle with and ruin some of the finely textured ground covers like baby tears and thyme.
I am sorry that I do not have any more information about scarlet pimpernel than is commonly known. I am speaking primarily from experience, and my experience has not been as bad as with other more aggressive weeds. Scarlet pimpernel always seems to be around, but is not so much of a problem that I am too worried about annihilating it completely.
Big Trees
They are the biggest. Giant redwoods are revered for their age and size. It was not always like that.
Many of the biggest giant redwoods were killed merely for bragging rights. Whoever discovered the biggest got to arrange to get it cut down, and then pose on the stump for photographs. Some trees were cut down just so the rings could be counted. Many felled trees were just left to rot where they fell. It was not practical to transport the lumber out of the remote regions of the Sierra Nevada where the trees lived. That was at a time when ‘sportsmen’ shot from trains into herds of wild buffalo, only to pose with the biggest dead carcass they could find in the aftermath, and then leave all of the deceased to rot on the prairie.
So, at about the same time in history that the related coastal redwood was being harvested so indiscriminately for lumber, the biggest of the giant redwoods were killed primarily for sport. Even in regions from which lumber could have been transported from, no one could figure out how to get such massive giant redwoods onto the ground without fracturing the lumber within. Because their wood is so brittle, smaller giant redwoods that were harvestable were simply cut and split into shakes, grape stakes, and fence posts and rails. Young and healthy specimens of the biggest trees in the World were used for the smallest and most unglamorous forms of lumber.
The biggest of the giant redwoods are of course protected now, mostly within national parks. They are quite accessible to those who want to visit and admire them. I got this picture with one of my esteemed colleagues in front of the General Sherman tree in wintertime back in the early 2000s.
Six on Saturday: Redwoods Again
Redwoods are such interesting trees. There is always something to write about them. I happen to live and work within the native range of the coastal redwood. I often work with very big redwoods, both in the wild, and in landscaped areas that were formerly wild. There are no other trees that are comparable. The giant redwoods in the Sierra Nevada are bigger, but they are also very different.
1. In most home gardens and landscapes, trees that get cut down get recycled into greenwaste and firewood. Not many are big enough to get recycled into lumber. Even fewer are big enough to get milled into big timbers. This milled redwood lumber is drying before getting milled again into timbers and smaller sizes of lumber that will get used to repair and remodel some of the historical old buildings. A bit of pine lumber is also obtained from the big ponderosa pines nearby.
2. Limbs, foliage, bark and parts of the redwood trees that can not be milled into lumber get chipped. Chips get used as mulch in landscaped areas. After taking this picture, I realized that it is not really a pile of chipped redwood, but is instead chipped wood waste. Chipped redwood is typically green with foliage. Oh well, you get the idea.
3. The Ewok Village of ‘Star Wars IV – Return of the Jedi’ was in a redwood forest near Fortuna. This is not really an Ewok Village.
4. It is a Redwood Canopy Tour. People (not Ewoks) can be seen on a platform in the yellow rectangle just above and to the right of the center of the picture. Someone on a zip line can be seen in the white rectangle just below and barely to the left of the center. It looks crazy to me, but many of my colleagues do crazier things at work.
5. Most of us have seen pictures of massive redwood trunks. Most of us have seen pictures of redwood forests. Not so many of us have seen what the foliage looks like.
6. This perennial pea has nothing to do with redwoods, but needed to be included as a token flower for this week. Besides it is cool. It is softer pink than the bright purplish pink that is so typical, and is blooming very late.
This is the link for Six on Saturday, for anyone else who would like to participate:
https://thepropagatorblog.wordpress.com/2017/09/18/six-on-saturday-a-participant-guide/
Here are a few links for some of my brief articles about redwood:
https://tonytomeo.com/2018/08/17/dawn-redwood/
https://tonytomeo.com/2018/08/12/general-sherman-tree/
https://tonytomeo.com/2018/08/04/albino/
https://tonytomeo.com/2018/08/04/six-on-saturday-bits-and-pieces-ii/
https://tonytomeo.com/2018/07/14/six-on-saturday-redwoods/
https://tonytomeo.com/2018/05/12/six-on-saturday-tree-ring-circus/
https://tonytomeo.com/2017/10/15/redwoods/
https://tonytomeo.com/2017/10/05/big-tree-in-a-small-town/
Horridculture – Agave
When they became a fad in the 2000s, it was one of the very few fads that was actually sensible for California. Agaves certainly are not for every landscape, and certainly do not suit everyone’s taste, but they are ideal for the climate here. In some regards, they are more practical than the more popular of the native specie that tend to be scrubby looking and short lived. Agaves really should have become trendy a long time ago.
The problem with the fad, like so many other fads, is that it caused the object of desire to be overly popular for a while. Many agaves consequently got planted into situations where they did not belong. Landscape designers often forced them into the gardens of clients who did not know what they were, or did not even like their bold style. To show them off most prominently, designers often put the agaves next to walkways, driveways and doorways, rather in the background.
Those who know agaves know that they belong in the background because of their nasty foliar teeth! Technically, they are neither thorns not spines, but they are so wicked that they are known by both terms. These teeth are remarkably sharp and stout. Next to walkways and doorways, they can inflict significant injury to anyone unfortunate enough to bump into them. Next to a driveway, they can puncture tires! The foliar teeth of agaves are so dangerous that they do not belong anywhere in the gardens of homes where children or dogs live.
What is worse about those that are too close to walkways and such is that they grow! Landscape designers are notorious for installing small agaves that grow large in tight spots, merely because they were so cute and innocent when they were small.
