Posted on by tonytomeo · 17 Comments

Poppies

P71213+K1Not just any poppies; California poppies, the state flower of California.

So why the picture of an old cinder block wall on the edge of an unkempt and weathered parking lot behind the old County Bank Building? Well, right there in the middle of the picture, where the lowest course of block meets the edge of the pavement are a few weeds, and some of these weeds are poppies showing how resilient they can be.

California poppies are opportunistic. They grow fast and bloom when they can. For most, that means that they bloom as the weather starts to warm up at the end of winter. For others in irrigated gardens, they can bloom in phases through summer. Some do their thing quickly as soon as they get a bit of moisture from the first autumn rains or even dew. They know what time of year it is, and that the weather will not likely get hot enough to cook them; so they bloom and throw their seed for another generation in a few more months, or maybe many months from now. They adapt. That is how they live on the edges of forests of the Santa Cruz Mountain, to interior valley chaparral, to the Mojave Desert. They are a remarkable specie.

Remember the poppies in the Wizard of Oz? There are several theories about what those poppies represent, and why the put Dorothy, the Cowardly Lion and Toto to sleep without affecting Scarecrow and TinMan. Duh, Scarecrow and TinMan do not breath. They can not inhale the narcotic produced by the poppies. Even if they did, they lack the physiology to be susceptible to opiates.

There is a significance to poppies blooming today, the same day I wrote about the gingko, on December 13; but this ain’t Oz.P71213+K2

Posted on by tonytomeo · 9 Comments

Birthday

P71213This single yellow ginkgo leaf says a lot. It was found among the abundant cottonwood leaves on the broad walkway in Felton Covered Bridge Park (https://tonytomeo.wordpress.com/2017/12/02/felton-covered-bridge/). There are no ginkgo trees in the neighborhood that I am aware of. It must have come a long way to arrive here on the morning of December 13.

It really did not need to go through all the effort to get here. I need no help to remember the date. It is the birthday of a good friend who passed away last May.

Steven Michael Ralls is one of two friends I went to Oklahoma with late in 2012 (https://tonytomeo.wordpress.com/2017/11/19/oklahoma/). In the picture attached to my article about going to Oklahoma, there is a handsome gentleman to the left. That is me. The bronze guy in the middle was just standin’ on the corner in Winslow, Arizona. Steven is on the right. Gayle is on the sidewalk groping the bronze guy.

Steven did not know or care much about horticulture, but he knew ginkgo. It was his favorite tree; and it is the only tree that he remembered the botanical name for. There are a few gingko trees about Santa Cruz and elsewhere. He would sometimes point them out and exclaim, “Gingko biloba!”

I have not yet planted a ginkgo tree for Steven. At the spot under the Felton Covered Bridge where we scattered his ash, I planted a few canna seed that I brought back from Oklahoma, and some rooted cuttings of a pink brugmansia that I acquired during an outing with Steven to Santa Cruz. Neither grew enough to survive when the San Lorenzo River comes up this winter; so I will probably need to plant more.

Well, getting back to the single yellow ginkgo leaf. It says a lot. Today is December 13, the birthday of my good friend Steven.

Posted on by tonytomeo · 10 Comments

Holy Guacamole!

P71202.jpgHorticulturists have a way of making all those long Latin names sound easy to pronounce. Lyanothamnus floribundus ‘Asplenifolius’ – Syzigium paniculatum – Metasequoia glyptostroboides. I do not know why proper pronunciation of their names is so important. They have no ears. They can not hear if we simply call them ‘Earl’. Even if they could hear, they would not respond.

Communication with other people is probably more important. Yet, we are so often unable to spell something as seemingly simple as the sound of a palm frond falling to the ground. Does it sound like “whoosh”, or “splat”, or some combination of both? What do the Santa Anna Winds sound like as they blow through a grove of Aleppo pines? What does a red flowering gum full of bees sound like?

Heck, Brent could not even tell me what an incident that he heard in his own backyard sounded like. As he came home from work and was getting out of the car in the driveway a few days ago, he heard in rapid succession, a loud ‘CRACK!’ followed immediately by a loud ‘WHOOSH!’ and a big ‘THUD!’ and ‘BANG!’. Well, I was sort of clear on all that, but it was the finale that was baffling him.

He said it sounded like someone dumping out a big bucked of tennis balls filled with something to make them heavy. I did not ask how he knew what that sounded like, or what the tennis balls were filled with, or why anyone would fill tennis balls with anything, or . . . He was obviously unsatisfied with that explanation, so said it sounded more like a whole bunch of billiard balls bouncing off of the bumpers all at the same time, without bumping into each other. Well, that is some pretty talented pool.

Okay, so it sounded like when you get into an elevator on the ninth floor of the Bank of America Tower, you know the big one downtown, and the bottom falls out of your big bag of ‘Eureka’ lemons somewhere between the fifth and fourth floors, and everyone is staring because it is noon thirty on Friday, and . . . well you know, . . . and then there was this . . . and . . . ain’t nobody got time for that!

Dude, just shut up! I get it.

Well, he went to the backyard to investigate. The source of the commotion was not immediately apparent from ground level. Everything seemed to be in order, maybe a bit sunnier, which might not have been noticed anywhere else after autumn . . . but this is Los Angeles. When Brent looked up to the deck on the flat roof of the office, it all became clear.

The big avocado tree in the neighbor’s garden dropped a big limb onto the deck. The last strange sound he heard was that of so many heavy avocados hitting the deck and scattering in every which direction, including down the wrought iron spiral stairs. All the patio furniture and cool potted plants up there got clobbered. Fortunately, there was no serious damage, and the avocado tree should be fine. Most of the fruit was in good condition. Only those that fell down the stairs were pulverized into lumpy guacamole.

Posted on by tonytomeo · 15 Comments

Anti-Community Garden

P71217Isn’t this a delightful meadow? It is located right across from the historic Felton Covered Bridge (https://tonytomeo.wordpress.com/2017/12/02/felton-covered-bridge/). The trail to the left goes up the embankment into the parking lot of the old County Bank Building, right downtown. On a warm day, it is a nice cool short cut to the Felton Covered Bridge Park, just over the San Lorenzo River.

You should have seen it a few years ago. It was not such a nicely inviting meadow, but was instead an excellent collection of small garden plots within a fenced Community Garden that deer could not get into. There were about nine small olive trees behind the fenced area. The stumps in the foreground and to the left were two small curly willows. People living in apartments or where the shade of the surrounding mountains and redwood forests prevented gardening could rent parcels here to grow vegetables, flowers or herbs. It really was nice.

Then it was destroyed.

Everyone who rented plots there was evicted. Surrounding oaks, box elders, willows and other vegetation were eradicated. Fortunately, the olive trees were relocated. The whole area was graded by bulldozer; and the Community Garden was gone. Now, the vacant meadow grows only a thicket of thistles that needs to get mown down every summer.

P71217++Apparently, someone thought that there might possibly be the remote chance of the potential for homeless people to maybe engage in activities that could perhaps be determined to be bad, right behind the Community Garden. If you look closely, you might be able to see them back there. Maybe not. (More accurate information can be found at the Facebook page of Felton League at https://www.facebook.com/Felton-League-520645548069493/ .)

Well, after making this observation, the expert on the sociology of the homeless, and self-proclaimed representative of the thousands of others in Felton, convinced the owners of the property to fix the problem. You see, only by singling out and targeting a particular segment of our Community can we put Unity back into CommUnity. Demolishing a Community Garden certainly helps too. It took a lot of hassling, and a lot of lies, but it was finally done. This is what we have to show for it, as proof that killing a Community Garden helps with homelessness.P71217+.JPG

Posted on by tonytomeo · 10 Comments

Frost!

P71208+K1Yes, we get it too. It took a while, but we finally got it just like most of everyone else in North America and the Northern part of the Norther Hemisphere. It is not much to brag about, but it is enough to melt the big feral pumpkin vine that I wrote about earlier ( https://tonytomeo.wordpress.com/2017/12/03/too-late-for-pie/ ). It has actually been frosting for a few nights. I just got around to getting this picture this morning.

Now that the foliage is melting and collapsing, a leak is now visible in the exposed valve manifold that was obscured in the previous picture. It did not get cold enough to freeze the pipe, so the water was dripping freely. This confirms the earlier theory about where the pumpkin vine was getting water from.

Two pumpkins are also exposed by the collapsing foliage. They were not visible earlier. Unfortunately, they are too under-developed to mature and ripen. A neighbor will likely take them and set them aside on the porch, just in case they are able to finish ripening. It would be nice if they did. The vine certainly put a lot of work into them!P71208+K2P71208+K3

While taking this picture, I was reminded why people who live with cooler weather dislike it so. First of all, and most obviously, it kills things. The season is over for pumpkin vines, which is not a problem. The problem is that so many of the citrus, avocados and other plants from mild climates that we grow so easily here get damaged or killed by frost in other climates.

The second reason to dislike cool weather is that it is too cool, maybe even cold. It is uncomfortable to be out in long enough to walk over and get these pictures of the pumpkin vine and pumpkins. I am glad that it does not get much colder here.

Posted on by tonytomeo · 10 Comments

Fire! . . . Again

P71018“It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature.” That old margarine commercial was lame back in the 1970s, but the quote is so true. Inadvertent interference with the natural process of wildfires has unfortunately increased the combustibility of the flora of forests and wildlands throughout California. No one really meant to interfere with the process. It is just what happens when we need to protect our homes and properties from fire.

The longer the vegetation is deprived of fire, the more overgrown and combustible it becomes. If deprived of fire long enough, many plants start to succumb to insect infestation and disease, and they become more combustible as they deteriorate and die. To make matters worse, so many of the exotic (non-native) plants that have been introduced into California are just as combustible, and some are even more combustible than native flora!

Combustibility is certainly no accident on their part. It is part of their ecology. Very few woody plants that are native to California even try to survive fire. The two specie of redwoods protect themselves with thick noncombustible bark so that they can recover from fire, even if much of the foliage gets burned away. Desert fan palms also recover after fire, after fueling it with their very combustible old fronds in order to incinerate competing specie. They are experts on this sort of ecology!

Most plants specie are neither so determine to survive fire, nor so creative in exploiting it as the desert fan palm is. They just live and die with it, only to regenerate and start the process all over again. Many release their seed as they burn. Some pines protect their seed within thick cones that open to disperse seed afterward. Seed of some specie need to be scarified by heat to germinate only after fire. Everyone want to be the first to exploit new real estate freshly cleared by fire, and they are always working on techniques to give them an advantage.

The problem with these processes is that they are not compatible with our lifestyles. As several big wildfires continue to burn throughout Southern California, another fire started early this morning just east of the Sepulveda Pass of the San Diego Freeway in Bel Air.

Posted on by tonytomeo · 9 Comments

Sculpture

P71206

I use the term loosely. Okay, so maybe I use it mockingly in this context. This sort of thing really should have no connection to the works of Calder, Rodin or Brancusi. It might be worthy of a few fancy adjectives, such as ‘severe’, ‘unusual’, ‘dramatic’ and ‘bold’. Horticulturally though, we might be thinking more like ‘disgraceful’, ‘abhorrent’, ‘ridiculous’ or ‘just plain sad’.

There is nothing wrong with pollarding, that severe sort of pruning that almost all other arborists will tell you is wrong. It involves pruning trees back to the same distended terminal knuckles every winter. Only a few trees are adaptable to the technique, and technically, sweetgum happens to be one of those few trees.

The stipulation is that once pollarded, they MUST be cut back to the same knuckles EVERY winter. A small stub or maybe two can be left on knuckles to allow them to elongate a bit annually, but that is about all. Pollarding is severely disfiguring, and ruins structurally integrity for all growth after the first growing season. Without this annual and aggressive maintenance, pollarded trees are very likely to drop limbs and possibly disintegrate faster than they can recover.

Sweetgums are not often pollarded because they are usually grown for their autumn color. Secondary growth that develops in response to pollarding is too vigorous to color well. The foliage stays green well into winter, and then falls without much color at all. Pollarding sort of defeats the purpose of growing a sweetgum.

The real problem with this particular tree is that it was not pollarded correctly. For one, it was probably cut like this because someone thought that it was too big. It should have been cut much lower if someone was going to put the work into pollarding it at all. Now, the secondary growth that must be pruned away will be very high, and take much more work to prune away. It will also be more exposed to wind. Limbs that break away will fall from higher up, so will fall farther away, and with more inertia.

Secondly, the pruning technique really was ‘abhorrent’. Small stubs are acceptable on established knuckles in order to direct growth. Long stubs that are expected to develop into knuckles are also acceptable. The weird stubs on the trunks of this tree are both too short and too stout. Because they are too short, they will be too shaded to develop into knuckles. They are too stout to compartmentalize or ‘heal’ (if they do not form knuckles) so are likely to decay, and spread decay into the trunks.

Thirdly, this tree was pollarded in summer, which is why the secondary growth is so stunted and underdeveloped now that the tree should be going dormant for autumn. The stunting should not be much of problem, since new growth should develop in spring. The problem is that the lightly colored bark likely scaled when it suddenly became exposed to sunlight by the removal of all of the foliage in the middle of summer. The scalded areas will eventually decay and become open wounds, which will spread decay into the main trunks and limbs. Even if secondary growth is healthy, and the tree gets pollarded correctly every winter, the limbs will eventually become unable to support the weight of healthy foliage.

This is one of the many reasons it is so important to procure the services of a qualifies arborist. Someone payed a significant amount of money to get this valuable tree ruined, and will eventually need to pay more money to have it removed. It would have been much less expensive to pay a bit more to get the tree pruned properly, or to have it removed completely.

Posted on by tonytomeo · 6 Comments

Too Late For Pie

P71203Just a few feet downhill from where the old valley oak had lived for centuries (https://tonytomeo.wordpress.com/2017/09/11/goodbye-to-an-old-friend/), a pumpkin vine appeared shortly after the big oak stump was ground out. That was in late September, so was much too late for it to do much; or so I thought.

The vine grew very quickly! It is hard to say if it got water from a leaking pipe. A valve manifold that is visible in front of the stump in the original picture is completely obscured by the foliage of the vine in the second picture. With all the heavy work that was done right on that spot, it would have been very easy for a pipe or exposed valve to get damaged. (Water from a previously leaky pipe or valve could have contributed to the demise of the tree, by promoting the development of excessively heavy foliage that caused the large limbs to break and fall.)

Despite the vigor and size of this remarkably healthy pumpkin vine, no fruit developed. Only a few undeveloped fruit can be found now, and the weather is getting too cool for it to mature. The foliage and flowers are already starting to succumb to mildew and decay, and will eventually get frosted. If there is any fruit obscured by the foliage, it will become visible when the foliage collapses.

Regardless, the pumpkin vine really seemed to have fun while it had the chance. How many of us get to grow pumpkin vines this big through an entire growing season? It got plenty of sunlight, and must have been getting water from somewhere. The soil is good there. As you can see in the picture, it had plenty of room to grow.

What is so special about that spot? If there is not a water leak that needs to be repaired, what else could be grown there next year?!P71203+

Posted on by tonytomeo · 15 Comments

Felton Covered Bridge

04Now that I have been watching a few other blogs for three months, I notice that some people write some very interesting or at least entertaining articles about topic that are not directly related to the main topic of their respective blogs. Most are just like old fashioned slide shows (remember those?) with cool pictures from around the neighborhood, travels, home projects, or whatever might be interesting. I have not done this yet; but I happen to have a bit of free time at the moment, so thought that I would post these three pictures of the historic Felton Covered Bridge. Although I am technically from Los Gatos, my home is in the Santa Cruz Mountains between Los Gatos and Felton. I also have history in Felton, since my grandparents and my Pa used to live here.

In an attempt to keep this post relevant to horticulture, I should mention that the trees to the right of the Felton Covered Bridge are a colony of the common box elders that suddenly died this past year. ( https://tonytomeo.wordpress.com/2017/10/04/what-is-killing-the-box-elders/ )We still do not know what killed them so suddenly. Perhaps later I can post pictures of this same area when it was flooded. I just do not have that file here right now.05This is the southwestern of the four sidelight windows on the Felton Covered Bridge. If crossing from the end in the upper picture, it would be on the left side toward the far end. It is the best window in the house. Rhody to the lower right might be mistaken for a rodent ( https://tonytomeo.wordpress.com/2017/10/14/rhody/ ). My parents have a picture from about 1970 of my older sister (from War of the Worlds – https://tonytomeo.wordpress.com/2017/10/03/war-of-the-worlds/ ), my younger brother and and I looking out of this window. My brother and I were just tykes at the time, and were to short to see out of the window, so we were standing on the lower rail. Our sister was pointing at something in the distance.06This is the view from that same window. That wet thing below is the San Lorenzo River. The black spots in that wet thing below are ducks. Once the rain starts, the San Lorenzo River really looks more like river than a creek. This last spring, in the San Lorenzo River right below the Bridge, we scattered the ashes of a good friend, Steven Ralls, with whom I went to Oklahoma (to the right in the illustration – https://tonytomeo.wordpress.com/2017/11/19/oklahoma/ ). Most of the vegetation out there is native. The trees straight ahead are common cottonwoods. However, the tree to the left is a weeping willow. No one knows how it got there.

Hey, this was fun. Maybe I will post more pictures on those memes later. I don’t know what a meme is, but I suppose I could figure it out.

Posted on by tonytomeo · 7 Comments

‘Green’: The ‘Other’ Autumn Color

P71202After reading so much about the exquisite foliar color that most everyone else in the Northern Hemisphere gets this time of year, I must admit, I can get rather envious of those who experience four seasons instead of just two. The abundance of spring in the Southern Hemisphere does not help. Why have I not found a garden blog from Ecuador or Indonesia so that I have something to point and laugh at? It just isn’t fair.

Well, now I have something to brag about.

I found this bright red leaf on a crepe myrtle in town. Isn’t it pretty? Go ahead, you can tell me. It is gorgeous, RIGHT? Go on; say it! Say it NOW! LOUDER!

Soon, all the foliage behind it will be turning red and orange with maybe a bit of yellow. Can you see it? I think some of those leaves are starting to consider turning color right now! I just love this time of year!

There is other foliar color. I just happened to take a picture of this single leaf first. REALLY! There IS autumn color here.

In fact, most of of the foliar color here this time of year is a very different color from what is so common elsewhere. It is known as ‘green’. Have you ever heard of it? Yes, of course! It is that color that you saw so much of in spring and summer!

‘Green’ is such a splendid color! It looks particular exquisite on palm trees. Do you know what a palm tree is? Of course not. Well, we can talk about that later. For now, I will just post this spectacular picture of a rich ‘green’ sweetgum tree! Can you remember the last time you saw one in ‘green’? The fallen leaves on the ground remind us that this is autumn.P71202++