Spring Garden

Spring has sprung here on California’s central coast. My urban container garden is getting an early start this year.

The clivia’s budding

& I woke to find that this little succulent had burst into flower

& the dwarf lilac that I’d given up for dead had shot out little leaves overnight. Nature rocks!

Cactus Flower

Hey, my cactus is really happy! It put on it's own little show this week. Here's a three day time lapse.....

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

 Bouquet! 

They're super fragrant & have cool details.

This is the first year that it's produced more than one flower. 

Here's what it looked like last year, & the story behind it. 

Summer gardens.....

Tree Down

I had a great big tree outside my apartment. 

It was huge, & old & wise,

& provided a home for many birds. It was beautiful. I enjoyed listening to it's leaves rustling in the wind, & I'd wake to singing birds in the mornings.

It was deciduous, providing sunlight in the winter, & much needed shade in the summertime.

I enjoyed the play of light it's leaves & branches created on my walls

& windows,
& looked up to it from my second story kitchen window while doing the dishes & cooking.

I woke up to chainsaws & chipper shreders instead of birdsong this morning.
It took several men about five hours to remove my friend the tree. 
I wonder how long it took for it to grow that big, & I'll miss it more than I can say.
Thanks for all the comfort & pleasure you provided, my friend the tree.

Little Cactus

Big flower.

Huge fragrance.
It's spring!

Several years ago I worked in a nursery with a super enthusiastic eighteen year old who possessed an encyclopedic knowledge of esoteric botanical information. He used to bounce up & present me with his "useless fact for the day".

We shared a passion for fragrant plants, happily wandering around tending to plants with pollen on on the tips of our noses. 

One day he brought me a little three inch lump of a cactus pup & told me, "Full sun. You're gonna have a six inch flower that you can smell from ten feet away!"  I was skeptical, but as usual he was right. As long as this little guy is in the sun he happily heralds in spring each year.

A bit of botany

 

Archival quality prints available here

Art & Garden Links

My last year of college I had an assignment to research artists that had inspired me. I had a great time delving into the library & pulling all that inspiration together helped me to focus.

Collecting links for this blog was similar, though things have changed somewhat over the years. I found that while there are a tremendous amount of images & information available on line, there is not always one link that represents an artist well. For example, William Morris, whose amazing work is very well represented in his coffee table books, & has inspired me for years has retired, & his website doesn’t do his work justice. I couldn’t find a site for John McQueen either, but did include the links that I could find for both these artists.

Other searches led to new discoveries. While searching for a good link to Constantin Brancusi’s work, I discovered But Does It Float, a site dangerously full of inspiration where I could easily become lost for quite awhile.

Others have become more accessible over time. Years ago I discovered the designer Andree Putman while rooting about in the ASU architecture library, & have since found that her books are hard to come by. I was pleasantly surprised to find her fittingly elegant website.

More links on the right. Enjoy!

It's a Palm's Life.....

I noticed the palm trees flowering over the weekend.....

& remembered collecting these palm seeds over ten years ago.....

 I moved to the coast & planted one. It didn't grow much.....

I don't think it liked the fog.

One day I came home & found it's pot empty.

My landlord's gardener had planted it next to a fence.....

I re-potted it & eventually moved back to it's hometown

where it made friends & seems happy.....for now.

Last weekend I went looking for its parents

& think that I found them..... 

Looks like someday my friend the palm will outgrow me.....

& I'll set it free :  )