Posted on by tonytomeo · 13 Comments

Shady – MSDS – (yes, another sequel)

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As the Certified Pesticide Applicator working for the ‘landscape’ company that I wrote about earlier ( https://tonytomeo.wordpress.com/2018/03/18/shady/ ), I assumed several responsibilities pertaining to the pesticides and other chemicals that the ‘landscape’ company used. Among other things, I needed to inventory all the chemicals, monitor their use, submit use reports to the Department of Agriculture for each of the nine counties in which we used these chemicals, and provide MSDS binders for all of the ‘landscape’ company offices and vehicles within their fleet.

MSDS is for ‘Material Safety Data Sheet’. They are actually several pages each. Each MSDS binder contained two copies of the MSDS for every chemical the ‘landscape’ company used, or even had on site, whether it was actually used or not. One MSDS was in American English. The other was in Mexican Spanish.

So every office and every facility and every vehicle in the fleet of the ‘landscape’ company was equipped with an MSDS binder. Every binder was equipped with two copies of the MSDS for every chemical even remotely associated with the ‘landscape’ company. That is a whole lot of MSDS!

It’s the law.

I was required to provide all of this literature in languages spoken by anyone and everyone in the workplace, for all vehicles and facilities. Okay, so we’re clear on all that.

However . . .

There is no law requiring those using chemicals to be literate.

I certainly do not expect everyone to be literate in American English. They do not need to be able to read or write it. That is why there were copies of all the literature in Mexican Spanish. I could translate field notes from those who wrote them in Mexican Spanish. That would not have been a problem.

The problem was that many of those using the chemicals could neither read nor write in ANY language! At first, I though we could improvise. I instructed the accounts managers to inform their technicians to merely write down basic information, like the identification number of a chemical being used, the volume of the chemical used, and so on. Most of it involved copying information from the label, and the location from the work order provided to the accounts managers. It sounded simple enough. Sadly, it was not. Copying such information was too much to expect from those handling these potentially dangerous and polluting chemicals. The literature in the MSDS binders that I had so dutifully printed and provided was merely used as napkins and toilet paper.

By the time I could no longer be affiliated with this particular ‘landscape’ company, I had no idea where all of the inventoried chemicals ended up or how they were applied.

Posted on by tonytomeo · 20 Comments

Shady

P80310+++++Shady applies to more than trees. It applies to many of those who are hired to maintain trees and landscapes. In my career, I have worked for some of the best arborists, nurserymen and other horticulturists. In fact, some of my colleagues, particularly a landscape designer, two nurserymen and at least three arborists, happen to be legendary. I would say that I don’t mean to brag, but that would be inaccurate. I will write about some of them sometime. This here is not about them.

Sadly, I have had the misfortune to work with some really shady characters and businesses. They may seem to be more professional than the real professionals who take their professions very seriously, but it is all for show. I can tell you all about the brochures, and use all the buzz words, but it is all a lie. From sustainability and planting natives to save water, to diagnosing problems before they become serious, they are all lies. Their objective is to take money; as much money as possible, for as little effort as possible.

Even their contracts were not considered to be sustainable. I once informed an operations manager that the oleanders that were planted below a sign were not the dwarf oleanders that they were supposed to be, and that in order to prevent them from obscuring the sign, they would need to be pruned and deprived of bloom. He was not concerned, and told me that we have no idea who will be taking care of the landscape by the time that happens.

Sure, they would plant garden varieties of native ceanothus, supposedly to save water, but then water them so much that they would rot and die. In fact, they would put so much water on lawns that many established trees would rot and die. They would then charge a lot of money to remove the dead trees, and then charge more money to plant new ones, even though they were responsible for killing the originals.

I was once instructed to go look at a ‘Marina’ madrone that was a street tree in what had been the old Fort Ord, where some of the old homes, buildings and landscapes were in the process of being salvaged or renovated. I was only informed that the tree was in bad condition. Upon arrival, I found the single madrone in a well matched row of others, on a curving street. I was quite annoyed that the tree was so distressed from severe aphid infestation that it could not be salvaged. The subject looked as if it had been healthy for many years, but only recently became infested with aphid within the previous two years. The other ‘horticultural professionals’ at the site should have noticed the problem before the tree had deteriorated as much as it had. Now, removing the tree was going to compromise the conformity of the evenly spaced and well matched row of street trees. I wrote the report prescribing removal.

I needed to visit the site for another problem a few weeks later, and when I drove by where the tree should have been removed, I noticed that it was still there, and very dead. Interestingly, a tree next to it was missing. That made me wonder. I radioed in, and was informed that the tree had been cut down. You can guess where this is going. They had cut down the wrong tree; a perfectly healthy ‘Marina’ madrone. Why didn’t the crew removing the healthy tree question the removal of such a healthy tree next to a dead tree? Who knows. I wrote another report prescribing the removal of the dead tree, which was removed the second time around.

The client was charged for the removal and replacement of BOTH trees, the dead tree, and the healthy tree that was removed by ‘mistake’! The replacement trees were large boxed trees that better matched those that were removed!

For those who do not know, madrones should be planted while young, and will rather efficiently grow to match the others. Boxed trees get too distressed from the transition to recover right away, and wait around for years before they resume growth. By the time a big boxed tree starts to grow, a smaller tree would have already gotten established and grown larger. Boxed madrones are really for those who want to charge more money than they could get for smaller trees that cost much less.

So, the landscape company charged a lot of money to maintain the landscape, so that trees would not die from negligence. Then, they charged not only for the removal and replacement of a tree that died as a result of their negligence, but also a tree that was killed by their stupidity. As if that were not enough, they charged for the the most expensive replacement trees available. They were shadier than the trees that they killed.

Posted on by tonytomeo · 22 Comments

Poppies . . . again

P80317+This one is different though. It is not the characteristic homogeneous bright orange that California poppies should be. The orange in the middle is what the entire flower should look like. The outer yellow hallow is not typical.

California poppies used to much more common than they are now. Not only did they grow wild, but they grew wild in abundance. Some of the East Hills were blushed orange with them when poppies bloomed this time of year. The lower hills just to the east of Highway 101 to the south of San Jose were more than blushed. There seemed to be almost as much orange as there was green. By the spring of 1985, those same hills were neither south of San Jose, nor quite so orange. They were within the suburban sprawl of San Jose, and were mostly green with invasive exotic grasses. Only wispy swaths of orange bloomed down low and near the top of the western slope. Those same hills are now devoid of orange, and are part of an urban neighborhood.

California poppies just do not grow naturally like they used to. Those who want them must sow seed for them. Their environment is so different from what it once was.

Even the flowers are different. They were naturally the most perfect orange, with perfectly simple petals. When we could find pale yellowish white or lavender poppies (known as purple poppies), they were something very rare and special.

California poppies are now readily available in a variety of colors, including the once very rare pale white and lavender, as well as various hues of yellow and red, some with swirled patterns. Some have fluffier double flowers. It all seems to be so unnatural for a flower that needed no improvement.

Posted on by tonytomeo · 16 Comments

Six on Saturday: Infirmary

 

Some of the plants that get recycled at work go to a small nursery next door to the shop until they find a new home. Many are out of season annuals that are really perennials. Some were not performing adequately, so got replaced. Some just needed to get out of the way for something else. Because most plants must recover from transplant, or whatever happened to them out in the landscape, the nursery is more of an infirmary. Only a few plants were recently purchased at a nursery for installation into a new project.

1. Primrose blooms in many colors besides white – the sequel to the sequel – https://tonytomeo.wordpress.com/2018/03/03/six-on-saturday-my-favorite-color-ii-the-sequel/P80317
2. African daisy works well in the sunnier parts of our unrefined landscapes.P80317+
3. ‘Sunset Gold’ breath of Heaven is a new acquisition for a newly landscaped area; but was not my choice. This picture makes it look even worse than it really is.P80317++
4. Wallflower will go with the ‘Sunset Gold’ breath of Heaven.P80317+++
5. Forsythia is rare here. Besides this one, there is only one other in the landscape. This picture was taken earlier, while the forsythia were still blooming.P80317++++
6. ‘Black Lace’ elderberry is starting to foliate. I really want to try the berries from this ornamental cultivar, if it fruits, to see how they compare to the native blue elderberry.P80317+++++
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/

Posted on by tonytomeo · 54 Comments

Timmy in the Garden

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Tim Buck II, pronounced like ‘Timbuktu’ in Mali, but known simply as ‘Timmy’, came to live with us while he was just a baby fawn. Mr. Tim Buck Senior left Mrs. Buck to raise little Timmy alone as a single mother. Mrs. Buck then vanished, leaving little Timmy enfeebled on the side of Highway 9 south of town. No one knows what happened to Mrs. Buck. She might have been hit and killed by a car. She might have been eaten by a Mountain Lion. Somehow, she was not there to raise little Timmy.

Traffic was stopped on Highway 9 as little Timmy staggered about, either anemic, or starving from the absence of Mrs. Buck. He could barely walk, and certainly could not bound up or down the steep hillsides to leave the Highway. Most of us who stopped knew that he would not survive, and just accepted it as part of nature. However, we could not just leave him there with a few concerned children also stopped in the traffic with us. I loaded him into the back seat of the pick up and took him with me so that the children would think that he would be taken care of. I expected him to be deceased by the time I got home.

Instead, like a scene straight out of ‘Tommy Boy’, Timmy survived. He got up and was looking at me in the rear view mirror. Now what? Barbecue? I took him home to ask the neighbors.

That was too much help. They gave Timmy goat milk and groomed him of ticks, and a within a few hours, Timmy was bounding about the yard and playing with Bill the terrier, and Melly and Chewy the two cats. By nightfall, the entire herd wanted to sleep in my bed!

Timmy grew very fast and consumed quite a bit of goat milk. He craved more than milk though, and started eating my roses. (This was later in spring.) When I yelled at him to stop, he just looked at me quizzically, and continued eating. The roses did not last long. Timmy then ate the leaves off the fruit trees. Then he ate some ornamental grasses. There was not much that Timmy would not eat. When I tried chasing him off to eat in the forest, he just came right back to play with his friends and eat more of the garden. When I kept the door closed, he just came in the cat door and found his way to my bed. When I took him across the creek and down the road a bit, he just followed me back.

The funny thing is that everyone liked Timmy! He was so nice and polite, even as he destroyed the garden. That was a very bad year for gardening!

By the following spring, Timmy was spending almost all of his time out in the forest. He had depleted everything in the garden, so needed to go farther out to find vegetation within reach. He had grown very fast into a tall and lanky young buck. I slowly resumed gardening in early summer, with only minimal nibbling.

I sometimes wonder how Timmy is doing. I am pleased that he is no longer in my garden. I can enjoy growing roses again. The only thing I enjoy finding in the rose garden more than a nice healthy rose is a bitten off stub where there was about to be a rose.

Posted on by tonytomeo · 33 Comments

Bat

P80311KHe or she; let’s just go with ‘it’ – has no name that I am aware of. It might be an acquaintance of Pepe. ( https://tonytomeo.wordpress.com/2018/03/04/pepe/ )

It showed up in a conference room at work, and needed to be removed. The young lady who found it motionless on the floor did not want to handle it, so I took it outside and laid it on top of a utility panel, hoping that it might fly away. After only a few minutes, it was gone. I did not see a cat or anyone else who would have eaten it; so I am hopeful that it flew into a nearby riparian area to find some insects to eat, and to recover from being trapped inside.

I have no idea what happened to it, or how it ended up in such a bad situation. It was on the floor below a skylight window, like a dazed bird who crashed into the glass while trying to fly through the window. However, bats do not try to fly through closed windows. Their sonar informs them that the glass is there, even if they do not see it. Someone I was working with at the time said that it might have been trying to find a way out near the window just because of the sunlight there, and because it was higher than the other windows. Perhaps it just got exhausted while flapping around trying to find an exit.

Bats are mysterious here. I do not even know what kinds of bats live here. They are nocturnal, like Pepe, so they do what they do while most of us are not up and about or outside to see them doing it. Even those who are out at night do not see much of what bats do because nighttime is rather dark. I think that is what makes it nighttime. Bats are dark too, so are not easy to see without sunlight.

I know that the small bats like this one eat mosquitoes. Since mosquitoes follow people about, and bats follow mosquitoes, bats seem to follow people. We see them every once in a while as they dart about. Yet, almost all of their activity goes unnoticed, even if it is only a few feet away. They are small, dark, silent and fast. Even if we are not aware that they are about, and they are not very concerned about us, they make our time in the garden after sundown a bit more tolerable by eliminating so many of the otherwise bothersome mosquitoes.

In other regions, and perhaps here as well, bats interact with plant life as well. Some eat soft fruit, such as prickly pear, and distribute the tiny seeds within. They do what birds do for brightly colored berries. Since bats are not impressed with bright colors, the fruits that want to attract them use sweet fragrance and flavor. Unlike small brightly colored berries that birds eat whole, fruit that is designed for bats is large and squishy, with tiny seeds dispersed somewhat homogeneously throughout the pulp, so that small bats can eat the seeds just by taking small bites of fruit.

Bats also pollinate some types of flowers. Many types of cacti that live in desert regions bloom at night while their flowers are less likely to be desiccated by harsh desert weather, and also while nocturnal pollinators are active. Flowers that rely on moths are smaller and paler, although they are brightly colored and patterned with ultraviolet color that moths can see. Those that rely on bats for pollination are wide and faced upward so that bats can land on them if they want to take their time eating the abundant sweet nectar. Sweet floral fragrance is easy for bats to follow.P80311K+

Posted on by tonytomeo · 11 Comments

Median Landscapes

P80311Medians are nice on the widest of boulevards. They break up the expansiveness of otherwise contiguous lanes. They make a four lane boulevard seem more like a pair of two lane roadways. Berms and other obstacles within medians limit the potential for head on collisions with traffic from opposite sides of the medians. Trees shade and cool some of the pavement when the weather gets warm. Besides all that, medians that are modestly landscaped simply look nice.

Notice that I said ‘modestly’ landscaped. There really is no need to get carried away with landscapes in medians. No one is really looking too closely at them anyway. People are driving past them, and really should be paying more attention to the road ahead rather than what is blooming to the side. Even passengers who are not driving probably are not seeing much of what goes into median landscapes. Color in such landscapes is nice; but no one cares if the color is provided by plants that are expensive and consumptive to maintain, or plants that can more or less survive on their own. It other words, resources should not be wasted on medians. Expensive and consumptive public landscapes should be installed only in parks or other places where they can be seen and appreciated.

Then there are those who must perform the maintenance. It is not safe for them. It will of course be necessary for crews to go out to maintain medians sometimes, and sometimes they might need to block a lane to do what needs to be done; but they should be out there as little possible. They should not be out there deadheading roses, pruning wisteria or planting petunias. They certainly should not be mowing lawns that no one can use! High maintenance features, like formal hedges, fountains, espaliers, trellises, arbors and beds of seasonal annuals, have no business out in medians! Such features require too much attention from those who must interact with traffic to attend to the maintenance.

Turf uses too much water anyway. It is useful in parks and athletic fields, but should be limited to situations where it can actually be useful for something. It is not useful in medians.

Trees are perhaps the best features of median landscapes, but even they are often not well thought out. They should be proportionate to the roadways that the get installed into, and get high enough for adequate clearance above truck traffic. Vertical clearance is not important if small trees can fit between the curbs of wide medians, but such wide medians should probably be outfitted with larger and taller trees. Trees in medians should exhibit complaisant roots that are less likely to damage curbs and pavement.

Landscape design takes serious work; and there is a lot to consider when designing landscapes for medians.

Posted on by tonytomeo · 39 Comments

Look What The River Washed In!

P80224KWhat is it?!?

Is it alive?

Was it alive?

Is it moving?

Should we roll it back into the river?

Can we eat it? Someone actually asked that.

It really is as big and ugly as it looks. That is a size 11 boot next to it to demonstrate how big it is. We can not eat it. There is no need to put it back into the river. It is not moving. It was alive, and still is. It is the distended tuberous root of a wild cucumber, of the genus Marah, which is also known as ‘manroot’ because of how big it can get. That stub protruding from the top (toward the top of the picture) is the remnant of a stem. A few thin roots protrude from the lower half, with thicker root stubs at the bottom.

This picture was taken last winter after the San Lorenzo River flooded and then receded. There has not been enough rain this year to wash more than leaves and a few pinecones downriver.

If this tuberous root had not been unearthed and scoured clean by floodwater, it would have been actively growing through winter. The surprisingly thin and wiry vines appear in autumn and climb with tendrils over shrubbery and small trees. The palmately lobed leaves are rather fragile, and tear easily. Loose clusters of small pale white flowers are followed by weirdly spiny round fruit that ripens from light green to greenish yellow. Each fruit is about the size of a golf ball, and contains a few big seeds. As the weather gets warm in summer, the vines die completely to the ground, leaving the drying fruit dangling from whatever the vines grew onto earlier.

Why can’t the river bring us something useful?

Posted on by tonytomeo · 20 Comments

Six on Saturday: Blackwood Acacia

 

Blackwood acacia, Acacia melanoxylon, happens to be one of my least favorite trees, but it does happen to be rather interesting. Mature trees have no leaves. Really. I don’t mean that they defoliate through winter and refoliate in spring. Only juvenile growth has bipinnately compound leaves. As growth matures, leaves are smaller, and are outfitted with distinctively winged petioles. As growth progresses, the winged petioles, known as ‘phyllodes’, become more prominent, and lack vestigial leaves. Therefore, once mature trees outgrow their juvenile growth, no leaves remain.

I dislike blackwood acacia because it is an invasive exotic species, like Acacia dealbata, but not as invasive. Mature trees sucker profusely from roots to form groves of several straight and vertical trunks. Where they are not a problem, groves of mature trees are rather handsome, but do not last long before they start to deteriorate. Foliar liter has an herbicidal effect that inhibits weed growth, but also inhibits the growth of desirable plants. It also produces an objectionable aroma.

1. Juvenile leaves are bipinnately compound, like those of Acacia dealbata.P80310
2. Leaves become more diminutive with distinctively distended petioles as growth matures.P80310+
3. Adult foliage is comprised exclusively of phyllodes, without leaves. The phyllodes function and look just like simple leaves.P80310++
4. Blackwood acacia flowers are not much to look at. Even in full bloom, they are grungy yellowish white.P80310+++
5. At least the bark is handsome.P80310++++
6. The best blackwood acacia is a dead blackwood acacia.P80310+++++
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/

Posted on by tonytomeo · 14 Comments

the Good, the Bad, and they’re both UGLY!

P80307Pollarding and coppicing are bad words to most American arborists. These extreme pruning techniques are considered to be synonymous with topping. Yet, both have been around for centuries, and have actually kept some trees alive and productive significantly longer than they would naturally live.

Rather than redundantly explaining what pollarding and coppicing are, and why they are useful arboricultural techniques, I will provide this link to an article I wrote about them earlier: https://tonytomeo.wordpress.com/2018/02/12/pollarding-and-coppicing-pruning-techniques/

I am one of the rare American arborists who not only condone pollarding and coppicing, but I also use these techniques when necessary. I will be coppicing red twig dogwood soon so that it produces more vigorous red twigs next year, and also because we can not allow it to grow wild as a thicket. Some of my fig trees will get pollarded to make vigorous shoots for cuttings, and also to keep them contained in their minimal space. Both techniques are very effective if done properly.

I must stress the word ‘properly’.

Improperly executed pollarding or coppicing really is disfiguring, and can be disastrous. Yet, it is done quite often by those who get payed to maintain landscapes!

The picture above illustrates a remarkably well pollarded flowering pear tree. It was obviously done by an arborist who knows how to pollard in the English style. Although it is difficult to see in the picture, the knuckles were pruned back cleanly last year, leaving no stubble. The vigorous secondary shoots developed mostly from the knuckles, with only a few stems emerging from lower on the main limbs. When this tree gets pollarded again (and it may have already been pollarded since this picture was taken last week), it should get pruned back to the same knuckles.

The pictures below show some sort of magnolia that was severely disfigured by maintenance ‘gardeners’, probably for no other reason than it was within their reach. A magnolia can not bloom if all of the stems from the previous year get pruned off by pollarding. This magnolia happened to bloom with a few distorted flowers only because the pollarding was so poorly done, that long stubs remain. These flowers are really nothing to look at within the context of all this unsightly disfigured stems. The long stubs can not be compartmentalized as the new growth develops in spring, so will remain as open and decaying wounds as the tree matures.

So, what is the point of this magnolias even being in the landscape? It contribute nothing. It can not bloom. It can not grow into a tree, but is unappealing as shrubbery. It will always be disfigured. The disfigurement will eventually compromise its health. It would be best if it were merely removed, or at least coppiced and allowed to regenerate. Even if it is a grafted tree, and gets coppiced below the graft, the resulting growth would be an improvement, and might actually bloom if the ‘gardeners’ do not ruing it again.P80307+P80307++