The veggie garden is ankle- to calf-deep in miner’s lettuce this time of year. It began with a single generous packet of seed a few years ago, and now it comes back reliably–if by “reliably” you mean “with a vengeance.”… Read More »miner’s lettuce season
Happening now on our local coastline: Tuna crabs roiling in the surf and washing up in huge numbers on the local beaches. Pleuroncodes planipes lives in the warmer waters in shallow water off the coastlines of Mexico to Chile. But… Read More »invasion of the crabs
So there I was, a couple years ago, walking the quiet galleries of the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art, when I encountered this patch of urban decrepitude: Weeds! Growing in the cracks between the walls and floors! Well, of… Read More »they’re everywhere
Part of this weekend’s tasks was to help install signage at a couple of the gardens that will be on the Garden Native garden tour this weekend. How many times have you gone to a garden and seen the perfect… Read More »garden signs of the times
It all seems a little surreal. Less than three weeks ago I was on a plane landing in a very snowy Denver. Waiting for transit to downtown required a 50-minute wait in 8 degree weather. Before that the coldest temperature… Read More »out of the beer cooler, into the fire
This weekend I had a chance to revisit five of the twenty gardens that will be on the 2015 Garden Native Tour on March 28-29. One cool sighting was the new CNPS sign that features a monarch butterfly feasting on… Read More »getting close to the 2015 garden tour
With several days above 80 degrees this week, it’s feeling like spring. And surveying the garden, it’s looking like spring too. Lest any of you in the lands of blizzards and crazy snowfall think I’m gloating, let me show you… Read More »almost spring
What kind of vegetable gardener are you? Do you spend winter charting out rows and developing timetables for when things needs to go into the ground? Or does chance play a big part in what’s in your veggie garden? Here’s… Read More »the random veggie garden
It’s only recently that I’ve gotten back to posting, and there’s close to a year’s worth of stuff that might have been blog-worthy. Here’s a short, redacted list of 2014 highlights: All Year February Atlanta Botanical Garden. Oops. Sorry. No… Read More »2014: a year in pictures
The coyote bush (Baccharis pilularis) that I grew from wild-collected seed a few years ago is now a pretty major heap of greenery, something on the order of ten feet tall and even wider. The plant is a reliable, bright… Read More »the gloriously messy coyote bush