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Addendum

p90105kThere is much more to the landscapes at work that I wrote about earlier this morning at https://tonytomeo.com/2019/01/05/six-on-saturday-cabin-fever/ . Otherwise, my job would be quite boring.

I do not climb big trees; so any work that the redwoods need must be done by someone else. The big redwoods, as well as the ponderosa pines, Douglas firs and various oaks, are of course the most prominent and memorable features of the landscapes. There are also a few other exotic trees that were added to the landscapes years ago. My primary work with those that have grown beyond my reach is identifying problems for other arborists to correct or remove.

However, there is plenty at ground level to keep us very busy.

Our landscapes are simple and somewhat unrefined. They take as much work as they do because they are so big and dispersed over a large area. There seems to be only a few small beds of flowering annuals, but collectively, these flowering annuals cover quite a significant area. There are likewise only a few roses here and there, but they add up to quite a big collection.

This firethorn lives in one of the landscapes that we maintain that is more than a mile away from the pictures that I posted earlier this morning. It is an area forested with big ponderosa pines and chaparral plants. Unlike the deep and dark redwood forest, this area is warm and sufficiently well exposed for all these bright red berries to develop. It is a completely different climate zone, soil type, and landscape style. Because it is within the context of a much larger and rustic landscape, I do not notice it like I should. Now that it got my attention, I got its picture before the birds take all the berries.

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Posted on by tonytomeo · 27 Comments

Six on Saturday: Cabin Fever

 

Seriously! The flu!, or something like it. I was totally sick for days, with an awful fever. As if that were not bad enough, it happened while I was supposed to be relaxing and on vacation!

Neither was planned. Getting sick never is. The vacation was a total surprise too; a Christmas gift from one of the guys at work! It was totally rad, even if I was sick for it.

You see, we work at one of the most excellent places in the entire universe, where people come from all over for restorative retreats. That by itself is totally rad. What is radder is that we can rent unused rooms or cabins for out-of-town guests or for ourselves if we like. It is very affordable, and like vacationing at work. That may not seem like much fun for those who do not enjoy their work like we do, but like I said, this is one of the most excellent places to work in the entire universe.

So, my colleague got me nine nights in what is classified as an ‘economy’ cabin, but by my standards was very luxurious. I had stayed in a smaller newly remodeled cabin for two nights, and a hotel like room for a night, but had done nothing like this; nine nights in secluded luxury! If one must get sick, this is the way to do it!

Anyway, this is where my six pictures for this week came from.

1. This is the upward view from the front door. The black margin at the top of the picture is the edge of the eave. The trees to the left are canyon live oaks and a tan oak. The trees to the right are towering coastal redwoods.p90105

2. This is the same spot. Instead of looking straight up, this is looking outward from the front door. There is no refined landscaping here; only the native trees with the exotic English ivy that is cascading slightly over the old stone wall.p90105+

3. These towering coastal redwoods are outside a bedroom window.p90105++

4. These towering and somewhat darker coastal redwoods are outside the bathroom window.p90105+++

5. The artwork on the interior walls are mostly pictures of the local flora and wildlife. Most are rather artistic. Some are pictures of common but exotic flora that, although probably appealing to those who do not recognize them, are not the sort of subject matter that I would have selected. For example, one of the big framed photographs in the bedroom is a closeup of the summery foliage of London planetree, Platanus X acerifolia. Ick! I took this picture of three pictures that I found to be amusing. On the left, we have some interesting lichens and a bit of moss on what seems to be an apple tree. Okay. In the middle, we have foliage of California bay tree, Umbellularia californica. Odd, but again . . . okay. On the right, we have maces from the exotic sweetgum, Liquidambar styraciflua. Now, I would say that is weird, but it really is a cool picture!p90105++++

6. Rhody was not supposed to be on the bed.p90105+++++

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 · 4 Comments

Horridculture – Clearance

P90102Many arborists mark certain lengths on their pole saws and pole pruners. When stood upright, these marks designate the standard heights for minimal clearance pruning. Not so many need to mark the height of minimal clearance for walkways, since they will prune away anything that is within reasonable reach with hand tools from the ground. The minimal clearance above parking spaces is not so easy to guess at, so is more likely to be marked on poles. So is the minimal clearance over roadways, where the lowest limbs must be high enough to be out of the way of campers and freight trucks.
Clearance to the sides is determined by the location of the curb, but even that might need to be modified at sharp turns, or where the roadway slopes significantly away from the center. Clearance must similarly be a bit higher over dips in a roadway, where the height of long freight trailers would be affected by the elevation of the wheels in front and back (outside of the dips). Clearance around street lighting, roofs, utilities and such is determined by the object that requires clearance, so no marks must be made on the poles for such work. (Clearance pruning of high voltage cables is only performed by those who are qualified to do so.)
Clearance pruning is serious business for arborists. They do not want their trees to hurt anyone, or to damage vehicles. Nor do they want their trees to be damaged by vehicles. Obtrusive limbs can be torn away by freight trucks. Even if not torn away, limbs that are regularly battered by freighter trucks are rather unsightly.
As someone who used to drive the delivery truck, I can tell you that clearance pruning is also important for some of us who use the roadways.
These three young Italian stone pines are healthy specimens that are probably well structured inside all of the outer foliage. It is hard to say, since I can not see inside through all the disfigured lower foliage that has been continually battered by truck traffic. They probably only need to be pruned for clearance above and away from the traffic. If pruned to establish a minimal ceiling just two feet or so above the obvious damage, and to remove all the lower growth to the side, they would be excellent street trees for many years. They will eventually need to be pruned again, as maturing branches sag from their own weight, but that is to be expected. The main trunks and bulky limbs within would probably be quite sculptural if they were to be exposed by pruning that is necessary anyway. It really would not take much.

Posted on by tonytomeo · 18 Comments

Electric Snow

P81230It was one of the more common types of snow in the Santa Clara Valley in the early 1970s.
In school, we made paper snow by folding paper squares in half and then into thirds (so that they were folded into sixths), and then cutting notches and slices out of them. They unfolded into the prettiest and laciest snowflakes!
In Westgate Mall, snow was blown by small fans about the new models of Singer sewing machines that were magically suspended in big acrylic spheres. We children could not get into the spheres, so were left wondering if the snow within was as cold and wet as we were told it was, and why it was necessary to demonstrate that the new sewing machines were resistant to weather. Our mother did her sewing inside.
We sort of suspected that the snow around the Nativity at Saint Thomas of Canterbury and other local parishes might be artificial because it looked like the stuffing of a pillow, which is something that all children seem to be familiar with. We said nothing about it, just in case our parents were not aware of the potential deception. However, it was rather disturbing to see so much of the same sort of snow at Christmas in the Park in San Jose. At that point, we accepted that either it must be genuine, or that we were committed to just going along with it.
Snow that was sprayed onto Christmas trees was rather interesting. It was neither wet nor cold, and sometimes it wasn’t even white. It could be pastel blue or pink, and was often sparkly with glitter! Wow!
Off in the distance, we could see snow on top of Mount Hamilton. Sometimes it was just on top. Sometimes, it was spread out from left to right, along the ridge. On rare occasion, snow appeared on the ridge of the East Hills, in front of the Diablo Range that Mount Hamilton is part of. We never saw who was up there folding and cutting all that snow, but they must have been VERY busy!
Snow on top of the Santa Cruz Mountains, right behind our part of the Santa Clara Valley, was closer to home, but did not look like much. The greenish blue of the forest was just a lighter hue of blue, with more mottling. It was exciting anyway.
Then, on February 5 in 1976, it actually SNOWED on the floor of the Santa Clara Valley!
It really was as awesome as snow was supposed to be. It was cold. It was wet. It was white. It was fun to wad up and throw at each other. It accumulated just like it would in a blizzard, and got almost an inch deep!
. . . but . . . was it really SNOW?P81230+

Posted on by tonytomeo · 14 Comments

Windows Of Heaven

P81229KOr . . . a close encounter of the third kind. Let’s just go with the former rather than the latter.

I am no photographer. The pictures that I post are merely illustrations for articles from my gardening column, and other articles. This picture just happened to make itself available while I was getting the first of the six pictures of the earlier ‘Six on Saturday’ post. The location is nothing special. It is not really out in the forest like it seems to be. A lodge building of six suites is directly to the left. A big ‘housekeeping’ building is to the right. There is a road in the background above, as well as below, from where the picture was taken.

Even the flora in uninteresting. The most prominent straight trunk in the middle is that of a young Douglas fir. The slightly leaning trunk with upward reaching branches to the right is some sort of cypress. There are a few nice small coast live oaks to the left. Most of the other trees to the right are black locusts that I really should cut down. The small shoots in the foreground are watersprounts from black oak saplings that were already cut down. There are some California bay trees in there somewhere, probably off in the background to the very far left.

The deteriorated colony of oak root rot fungus, Armillaria mellea, that was described too graphically in the earlier post was located in the foreground of the lodge building to the left. https://tonytomeo.com/2018/12/02/the-humongous-fungus-among-us/ . There was not much left of it then, so there would be even less now. . . fortunately.

Well, isn’t this way more information than necessary? I should have left this (too artistic for my ability) picture with just the title.

Posted on by tonytomeo · 8 Comments

Six on Saturday: Shrooms

 

It is unlikely than any of these are related to ‘shrooms’ or ‘magic mushrooms’, the psychedelic mushrooms Psilocybe cubensis; but this is Santa Cruz County. I would not know one if I saw one. I think that #4 looks like pancake; and #6 looks like a strawberry. All except #1 were found within only a few feet of each other. They showed up immediately after the rain, in spot that had been dry all summer.

If #1 looks familiar, it is because it is the dreaded oak root rot fungus, Armillaria mellea. It was was at an adjacent building where another less developed colony of the same was featured in ‘The Humungous Fungus Among Us’, https://tonytomeo.com/2018/12/02/the-humongous-fungus-among-us/ . The colony that was featured earlier developed into mushrooms just like those shown here, but by the time these pictures were taken, had deteriorated into a sloppy puddle of chunky goo from a bad 1980s horror movie. It looked like someone ate a bucket of chocolate covered olives, and threw up. To make matters worse, the whole mess was shimmering with the squirming of maggots, and exuded an aroma that was appropriate to visual aspects of the situation. Wow! I am grossing myself out, and I experienced it already.

When I compare picture #1 of the more developed colony of oak root rot to the earlier picture of the less developed colony. I sort of wonder if some of these other pictures are redundant to each other. Could #4 be a more developed form of #3? Could #5 be the deteriorating phase of #2? Well, I don’t know. I am just a horticulturist, not a mycologist.

1.)81229

2.)81229+

3.)81229++

4.)81229+++

5.)81229++++

6.)81229+++++

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 · 10 Comments

Horridculture – Promiscuity

 

71206Nomenclature of the botanical sort was so much simpler back when we studied it back in the 1980s. It was intended to be like that. It was how the various specie of plants were identified and classified. There were certain rules that simply made sense. After ‘family’, plants were classified into general ‘genera’, and then further classified into specific ‘specie’. Some specie were further classified into ‘varieties’ and ‘cultivars’. (Cultivars are simply ‘cultivated varieties’ that need to be perpetuated by cloning because they are too genetically unstable to be true-to-type from seed.)

The genus name is always first. The species name is always second. Because they are Latin, they should be italicized. Any variety or cultivar names are last, not italicized, and in semi-quotations.

Back in the 1980s, there were a few specie that did not quite fit into such neat classification. Intergeneric hybrids (between two parents of different genera) were designated by an ‘X’ before the genus name, such as X Fatshedera lizei, which is a hybrid between Fatsia japonica and Hedera helix. Interspecific hybrids (between twp parents of different specie) were designated by an ‘X’ before the species name, such as Platanus X acerifolia, which is a hybrid between two different specie of the same genus of Platanus. Then there are different species that hybridize freely, but are still designated as separate specie, such as Washingtonia robusta and Washingtonia filifera, but that is another story.

Nowadays, with so much weirdly promiscuous breeding, it is difficult to know what specie or even genera some of the modern varieties and cultivars fit into. Consequently, species names are often omitted, and genus names are sometimes changed. It is getting difficult to know the differences between the two formerly distinct genera of Gaillardia and Rudbekia.

What is even sillier is that all this is happening while ‘sustainability’ and gardening for ‘bees’ are such fads. Weirdly bred specie . . . or whatever they are, are likely unable produce viable seed, so are just the opposite of sustainable. They only sustain their own marketability by ensuring the need for replacement. Some make no pollen for the bees that visit the flowers expecting to find some. Some make pollen of questionable nutritional value, or serve it in complicated flowers that might be difficult for bees to navigate.

There certainly are advantages to simplicity.71129

Apologies for the delay of posting ‘Horridculture’, which is normally posted on Wednesday. I was unable to write, so advanced the article that was intended for today to Wednesday, and finished writing this rant for today.

Posted on by tonytomeo · 12 Comments

Winter

P80110We are now two days into it. Is it any different than three days ago, the last day of autumn? Not really. Even in harsher climates, the changes from one season to the next are gradual. Like the phases of the moon, the seasons are constantly phasing out of the previous, and into the next. The dates of the first and last days of each season, which are determined by the position of the Earth within its orbit around the sun, are technicalities.
Seasons in the Southern Hemisphere are of course opposite of what they are here. That seems odd to me. The calendar is the same there as here. It seems obvious to me that winter and all seasons should be determined by the same dates there that they are determined by here. If winter began last Friday here, it should have done the same there, on the the same date. Longer days and warmer weather are consequences of location, south of the Equator. It is hard to imagine that January and February are summer there.
It also seems odd to me that all maps are oriented with North directed towards the top. Shouldn’t South be at the top South of the Equator? Must Australia be the ‘land down under’ to those who live there? Things would be so much simpler if Columbus has just stayed home, and the World was still flat.
Anyway, we do not get much winter here. The weather gets a bit cooler, and we will eventually get more rain. When I went to Oklahoma six years ago, I thought that I would finally get to experience a real winter, but we left just before New Year’s Day, while the weather was still somewhat mild. This little bit of snow was about all we got.

Posted on by tonytomeo · 12 Comments

Red Sky At Morning

81222K.JPGRed sky at morning; sailor take warning. Stormy weather is to be expected.
Back before modern meteorology, there were all sorts of ways to predict the weather. Some of the ways to know what to expect in the short term were obvious, such as simply observing what was happening off in the distance in the direction from which the weather comes. For the experienced, it is easy enough to feel changes in humidity and temperature in an incoming breeze.
Halos around the moon or sun, as well as the color of the sky at sunrise, provided a bit of insight about what could be expected a bit farther out than the short term. Some techniques were not always accurate, and some were not accurate at all.
Flora and fauna are better at predicting the weather than we are. Horses, dogs and cats get extra fluffy if they expect the winter weather to be colder than it normally is, and they shed early if they expect an unusually warm summer. Sycamore trees are so responsive to the weather that what they are saying about it is not always obvious. Are they browning and defoliating just because the weather got too hot and arid late in summer, or because autumn is going to be extra cool? Experts could tell, but because of modern meteorology, there are not many experts left here.
This red sky over Mount Hermon occurred at sunrise last Sunday, just prior to the storm that finished early Monday morning, and provide picture #6 for my earlier Six on Saturday post. I tried to avoid the streetlamp at the bottom of the right edge. I did not see the bird when I took the picture. The tree to the left is a golden honeylocust.

Posted on by tonytomeo · 16 Comments

Six on Saturday: Rain On My Parade

 

Actually, this rain ‘is’ the parade. In parts of California, we do not get much of it, so when rain happens, it is worth celebrating. Although this side of the Santa Cruz Mountains gets significantly more rainfall than the chaparral on the other side in the Santa Clara Valley, there are not many more rainy days here. What that means is that when it rains here, it does so with more volume than in the Santa Clara Valley.

Rain is not easy to get pictures of. The first four picture just show water from one of our first major storms of the season. The fifth pictures does not even show that much. The sixth picture is from the most recent storm that came through Sunday night and finished on Monday morning.

1. This waterfall was flowing both through and over the deteriorated and also clogged gutter on the roof of the shop building across the driveway from the gardening shop at work. The gutter is so deteriorated that I would have expected all of the water to just flow through it. Incidentally, the big roll-up door to the lower left of the picture happens to be that of the plumbing shop.P81222

2. This waterfall was flowing through a storm drain on the Mount Hermon Road bridge over Zayante Creek, East Zayante Road, and the railroad tracks in between them.. This section of Mount Hermon Road is known to some as ‘the Bypass’ because it bypassed the older Conference Drive in picture #5. What is not visible in this picture is that the upper part of the waterfall lands in the ditch on the side of East Zayante Road below. It might have seemed like a good idea when the bridge was built, but so much water falls from so high up that it erodes the ditch, and splatters gravel onto cars driving by. The lower part of the waterfall flows into a ditch on the edge of the railroad tracks, and then under the tracks towards picture #3 below.P81222+

3. This waterfall was flowing out into Zayante Creek from a culvert just downhill from the culvert under the railroad tracks mentioned in #2 above. It is the same water that was falling from the Mount Hermon Road bridge.P81222++

4. These two waterfalls were flowing from the roofs of the local supermarket and adjacent drug store and pharmacy, and onto the newsstand below. What is disturbing about this picture is these drains are merely back up drains that do not allow the flat roofs surrounded by parapet walls to fill with too much water if the main drains get clogged. The main drains are likely at the rear of the building where they can drain discretely and out of the way. These back up drains are on the front of the building so that they get noticed if they start to flow. All this water flowing out of them indicates that the main drains are clogged, and that the roofs are flooded.P81222+++

5. This is the Conference Drive bridge over Zayante Creek, East Zayante Road, and the railroad tracks in between them. It is the bridge that was bypassed by the Mount Hermon Road bridge in picture #2. The big greenwaste pile where I dump debris from the landscapes is directly below the southern edge of this bridge, which is to the left in this picture. You can not see it in this picture that was taken before the rain started, but a bit of water drains from this bridge onto the greenwaste pile. It is not much, but it is enough to be a bother when I am unloading debris in the rain. It falls from so high up, that even if I am avoiding the spot where the falling water lands, the wind can blow it all over me. From that height, any bit of road gravel that falls with it can give me quite a sting.P81222++++

6. The most recent storm finished early Monday morning, after dropping two and a half inches of rain.P81222+++++

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/