Many towns display a Town Christmas Tree in a prominent and centrally located public space.

The Town Christmas Tree in Los Gatos is a now mature but formerly feral deodar cedar that grew by chance next to the railroad tracks where they passed through downtown a very long time ago. As the railroad tracks were removed, and the rail yard was redeveloped into the Town Plaza, the maturing cedar tree survived the process to become the most prominent tree there. Because it just happened to be a symmetrically conical coniferous tree in the most prominent spot in town, it was a natural choice for the Town Christmas Tree. It gets lit up and decorated for Christmas, and is where children can meet up with Santa Claus.

The Town Christmas Tree in Felton is the Featherstone Tree, which is a mature coastal redwood tree that happened to be planted right on…

This would be a good topic for one of my rants on Wednesday, except that it is too silly for that.

Many years ago, before I started writing my gardening column for our local newspapers, my colleague Brent and I used to exchange funny newspaper gardening articles. Some were obviously not written for local climates. Some were just very inaccurate. Back then, it was done by mail, so the articles were added to anything that we happened to be sending to each other at the time. If I sent him some seeds, I would add an article or a few from the San Jose Mercury News. If he sent my cuttings, he would add an article or a few from the Los Angeles Times. They eventually became the inspiration for my gardening column, when Brent and others told me that rather than making fun of the inaccuracies of the articles…

From the same landscape that, last autumn, was so dutifully deprived of its elegantly cascading rosemary and soon to be fiery autumn color of Boston ivy, https://tonytomeo.com/2017/11/05/serously/ , I procured these disturbing images of what results from of a serious disdain for flowering crabapple bloom. These trees were mentioned earlier in that article, but without such images. Similar victims were discussed last spring, https://tonytomeo.com/2018/03/07/the-good-the-bad-and-theyre-both-ugly/ and about a year agohttps://tonytomeo.com/2017/12/06/sculpture/ .

The landscape where these trees live was actually rather well designed, and for a few years, had been well maintained. Seriously! The flowering crabapples were likely selected because they would not get tall enough to encroach into the utility easement above. There were pruned as much as necessary to prevent them from developing into a nasty thicket like young flowering crabapples typically do, but without significantly compromising the spectacular bloom. They really were spectacular!

About six years ago, a…

The tufts of small branches that so often develop where limbs were pruned from the trunks of a coast live oaks are sometimes referred to as ‘tumbleweeds’. They are about the same size as an average tumbleweed. By the time the get any larger, most of the smaller stems have subordinated and died out, leaving only a few more defined dominant stems, which will continue the process until even fewer or a single new branch dominates. Such tumbleweeds, as well as stems that originated from such growth, are weakly attached to the main trunks. They often get pruned off for the same reason that the limbs that were there before got pruned off, or because they are expected to be weakly attached. If they remain long enough, they can of course develop into new limbs.

Tufts of the same sort of growth on sycamores or other deciduous trees are known…

Is this Armillaria mellea, the dreaded oak root rot fungus? I really do not know. All the elements are here. The stump is that of a coast live oak. Bellow the stump there are the remains of roots. Those necrotic roots are undoubtedly decomposing as a result of rot. That rot is undoubtedly associated with this fungus. Furthermore, it fits the description of oak root rot fungus. The toasted spots were probably caused by weathering as the mushrooms started to develop while the weather was still warm and dry.

Now that the soil and rotting wood are damp from rain, this fungus is really proliferating. The individual mushrooms within the soccer ball sized mass were only about as big as those at the lower left margin of the picture just prior to the rain. They do not last long, and might become gooey black slop after only a few…

This is a recycled picture that still annoys me. There was another that I did not want to use because it happens to be from a landscape that I sometimes work in.
The picture that I did not use shows a variety of annuals in a half wine barrel that is set on cobble stone that fills a square that is about five feet by five feet that was cut out of an asphalt paved area.
So:
The area was paved to function as a patio.
A square was cut into the pavement perhaps because there was too much pavement.
The square was filled with stone because there was too much exposed soil where there should have been pavement.
A half wine barrel of various annuals was installed on top of the stone as if a square filled with stone was not adequately in the way.
The half wine barrel…

It is certainly not my favorite small tree. Actually, in most situations, I rather dislike it, which is why I sometimes accidentally spell it without the first ‘e’. It is a cop out; a micro tree that too often ends up where a larger and more respectable tree would be more appropriate. They are not shade trees. They are not not big enough for freeway landscapes or to be street trees on wide boulevards. They are not immune to diseases and insect infestations; and they commonly drop honeydew from aphid or scale infestation, and lose their bloom to powdery mildew. They are not ‘low-maintenance’, and really should be pruned more than they are, but will get you in trouble with the neighbors if you prune them as aggressively as they should be pruned.
They are popular because of their potential for remarkably flashy bloom, and because they do not get…

We do not get much frost here. This picture of the view through the windshield of one of the work vehicles was taken more than a week ago, while the humidity and the temperatures were still quite low. The sparse and angular pattern of the frost on the windshield is a result of the minimal humidity. There will be more frost later in winter, although there will not be nearly as much as most other climates get.
After a cool Monday morning last week, the weather got a bit warmer, or really just less cool. Rain started about midnight between Tuesday and Wednesday, and continued through the day and into the night. More rain is predicted to start after noon next Tuesday, and continue through Thursday. There will be no frost during this weather pattern. Frost happens here only between rainy weather. One might think that since we do not…

Stakes are temporary. That is what so called maintenance ‘gardeners’ do not seem to understand. Stakes should not stay any longer than necessary, so need to be removed sooner than later, depending on their function. Stakes that are left too long can interfere with the healthy development of the trees and vines that they were intended to help.
Nursery stakes are used either to straighten the trunks of developing trees, or to support climbing vines. They must be removed when the trees or vines that they worked for get installed into the landscape, or as soon after installation as possible. Some flimsy trees may need their stakes for more than their first year.
The problem with leaving trees bound to their nursery stakes for too long is that they rely on the stakes for support as they grow, so do not put much effort into supporting their own weight.
The…

For those who do not remember what ‘rain’ is, it is, it is those odd drops of water that fall so mysteriously from the sky in other regions. We get it here too, just very rarely, and almost exclusively within a limited season centered around winter. Rain tends to be affiliated with storms. The last storm moved through here last spring.
Rain may not be much to look at, and is nearly impossible to get a picture of, but it adds up to become a very important commodity known as ‘water’. Some believe that California does not have enough water. We natives know that there is actually plenty of water, but merely too many people in need of it, and a few of those many who capitalize on that need. Anyway, I did not even try to get a picture of the rain that is falling so nicely now, but…