The current issue of Orion, one of my favorite magazines, features “World Without Violets,” a scary little essay by Robert Michael Pyle. A mother in Britain discovered that the editors of the current Oxford Junior Dictionary, in their zeal to… Read More »some missing words
Yesterday’s big garden task was to take out a big bird of paradise that we’d planted twenty years ago. Left: The “before”… …and the “after”… The plant had some good things to recommend it: big splashy flowers (if you’re into… Read More »bye-bye birdie
My last post has me thinking more about the backgrounds that plants grow against. I was getting excited that the San Miguel Island buckwheats(Eriogonum grande var. rubescens) that I’d grown from seed were coming in to bloom. But standing back… Read More »background check
Photographing a tree can present some challenges. You can walk around it to select the best angle, or pick a time of day with the best lighting conditions, but you still have to deal with the fact that the tree… Read More »one way to photograph a tree
Here are some of the pitcher plants growing in my guilty pleasure bog garden, a small concrete container in which I have more than a half dozen of these sarracenias and as many sundews. The guilty pleasure part of this… Read More »my swamp creatures
Not long ago one of John’s friends, a florist, stopped by the house for a visit. She brought with her a single long-stemmed red rose in a tall vase. When I came home there was the flower, huge, red, perfect… Read More »it came from the florist
Summer…tomatoes…hornworms… It seems like you can’t have one without the others. Jenny, friend of the blog, over on the other coast, sent me this photo from her garden, a tobacco hornworm that has been parasitized by a wasp. Here’s an… Read More »parasitized hornworm
It’s not a proper graywater system, but we’ve gotten used to showering with a bucket below us, both to catch the water before it gets warm enough to use and to catch whatever water splashes into the bucket. We still… Read More »pleasures of hand-watering
Water restrictions went into effect here in San Diego on June 1. So far there’s a short list of thou-shalt-nots, and the water district has primarily targeted landscape irrigation, the low-hanging fruit, with directives like: no watering between 10 a.m.… Read More »how the neighbors are coping
There are some things I just don’t get. Waffles topped with fried chicken and syrup, for one thing. Crested succulents, another. A trip to a cactus show or nursery site for succulents will likely turn up a section devoted to… Read More »deformity or biological wonder?