Glad I Have My Daffies

I keep some Daffodil bulbs in a planter next to my front porch.  It's a mixed planter, so at other times of the year, when other things in it are flourishing, the bulbs are all but forgotten, underground, awaiting their time.  This year they surprised me with how early they were coming up -- they had already made an appearance by the end of December.  Then, by the first or second week of January, I saw those buds that every year makes me wonder if they aren't Paper Whites, even though I know better.  They're a smaller, paler, less showy variety, as you may be able to see in the picture here, and not the big fancy bright yellow ones. 

Then, just as I could tell they were about ready to bloom, we got a weather prediction that here in SoCal is not too common -- a whole week of rain, a lot of it heavy!  I just knew that rain would beat them down, I had seen it before; so I thought, I'm not gonna miss 'em -- so I picked the whole contraption up, and set it down in my living room on the sofa end table with a plastic bag underneath.  And the whole week that it rained, instead of being outside where I couldn't see them and crushed to boot, they graced my living room with their cheer!  Yup, they all opened up.  They're just starting to look a bit crumply around the edges now.  But they sure did brighten up the place this whole dark, rainy week!

One Ranunculus, Two Ranunculi?

These are one of my very favorite flowers.  They make great cut flowers, absolutely gorgeous in bouquets; and the more you cut them, the more profusely they bloom.

A few years back, when my father passed away,  I surveyed with dismay the front yard of his house, since his house was where we were going to be having the funeral reception.  To say that it had fallen into some disrepair would be an understatement.  I thought the front looked liked the Addams Family might live inside. All the grass was completely dead.  It was awful! So, I went into emergency mode.  I enlisted the help of the gardener, had him tear out the whole front yard and lay down fresh sod, and my mom flew in from Kansas and arrived just in time to accompany me to the nursery, where we picked out a variety of flowering plants to place all around the borders.  Even though this is California, and the weather was nice, it was still the beginning of November and even here the selection of what is blooming is not all that tremendous at that time of year.  We got a few small Lavender plants and some Asters, but mostly what saved the day were Zinnias and Dahlias, which are quite colorful and cheerful and still blooming nicely at that time of year; although you all know how exorbitant it can be to buy already blooming plants in any quantity.  I think we were also able to find Pansies that were blooming, a childhood favorite of mine.  But while we were at it, someone convinced me to buy a whole bunch of Ranunculuses (Ranunculi?), even though they were just little green plants at the time, as something to put in with the rest of the border flowers so that we could look forward to some color in the spring.

And boy, did we ever get some color in the spring!  By then Dad's house had gone from looking the sorriest on the whole block to being the nicest front yard on the whole block, and those Ranunculus flowers put on the prettiest display you ever did see!  And I brought home great overflowing bouquets of them to my place every time I went to work on the house, so my home also looked beautiful and cheerful.  I got a great deal of pleasure from those flowers that spring.

So I recently got an offer from the Arbor Day Foundation  for a bunch of these in lieu of a contribution.  But they called them Buttercups!  I knew I was being nitpicky, but I called them on it.  After all, I thought,  the Arbor Day Foundation ought to know what the names of plants are, even if they aren't trees!  But when I called, the man humbly insisted that Buttercups was a correct name for them.   So I looked it up online, and sure enough, they can also be referred to as 'Persian Buttercups'!

But I put it to all of you -- when you see the flowers in the picture above, what do YOU call them?

And is it a field of Ranunculuses?  Or a field of Ranunculi?

Now is a Good Time to Prune Your Trees, But Take It Easy

Winter is a really good time to inspect and prune deciduous trees. (That means trees that lose their leaves completely.)  When the tree is naked like that you can get an easier look at what's going on with its branches, although it might be a little tough to spot which ones are dead.

It's important to make the cuts the right way, so that you don't risk harming your tree.  Here's a link to a really good guide on how to best go about this:


http://www.arborday.org/trees/nineThings.cfm
  
You could even use this as a pretty decent guide on how to properly prune some types of woody shrubs, or semi-deciduous trees, which is much more of what we have out here on the west coast . 

My mom and I have laughed a lot over the years about, well, a certain type of men that somehow feel they must cut everything back to a bloody nub.  There are a lot of those men out there and men, you know who you are.  Overzealous would be a euphemistic way of putting it.  In fact, my dad, may he rest in peace, was one of them.  You put pruning shears in their hands and it becomes a deadly weapon of mass destruction.  The problem is, they just can't seem to stop!  Once those first cuts are made, they just keep cutting, chopping... probably in their own minds they're 'just neatening up the edges'... until.... all that's left is some kind of a pitiful, nubby stump.

As someone who has seen a lot of those poor, overly-shorn victims over the years, I will say it is a testament to their durability and resilience, because they usually seem to come back anyway... but perhaps some of you might be prevailed upon to show a little mercy and be a bit more, uh, restrained in your pruning efforts the next time around... think about how you would feel if you were that bush or tree!

The Patience and Persistence of the Fire Poppy

Chaparral covers about ten percent of California.  It's tough stuff, made to withstand heat, drought, and poor soil conditions.  For many years I rode my beloved Arabian mare, Joy, through the bushy green scruff.  (My little sweetheart, who I always said looked like a Unicorn without the horn, passed away at the ripe old age of 31 last June, may she be galloping free in greener pastures now.)  Actually, it's not really accurate to say that I rode through the chaparral per se-- it's way too dense for that (although Joy decided to experiment with that a few times despite my protests, and to the great detriment of my clothing and exposed skin.  I think she found it terribly funny and also a great way to scratch sweaty itches on a warm day.) We rode on trails that had been carved out and cleared through the chaparral.  I confess, I never learned very well how to differentiate between most of the different plants that go into that category, which all had a scrubby, shrubby, woody, and, to my eye, rather non-descript appearance.  But now, in the aftermath of all the terrible fires we had here in California last Autumn, I have a growing respect for these things, which burn easily because of their resinous foliage, but have an amazing capacity to resurrect themselves, Phoenix like.  Chamise,  Mountain Mahogany, Scrub Oak, Coffee-Berry, some types of Manzanita and Ceanothus, and, unfortunately, Poison Oak, all have the amazing ability to re-sprout from their unburned roots -- and have already begun to do just that. 

But then there are the "seeders".  Some, like the Sages, Yerba Santa, and Gooseberries, are already part of the chaparral landscape and just need a little rain for their dropped seeds to sprout back up anew to replace their burned parents.  But most extraordinary of all are the plants, like the Fire Poppy, that ONLY grow after a fire.  These miraculous plants have seeds that lie dormant, sometimes for 50 years or more! waiting for the next fire to bring them to life. Fire opens the dense canopy, giving sunlight and space where there was only shade and congestion before.  The seeds of the Fire Poppy and others like it require the heat of the fire to scarify the seed coats so that with the rains, and the newly admitted sunlight, they can then sprout.  Then, especially in the first spring after the fire, and usually for one or two years after, they carpet the burn areas, along with other "fire followers" such as Whispering Bells, White Pincusion, and some Phacelias and Lupines; and with some of the other more common wildflowers such as Wild Canterbury Bells, other Lupines, Fiddleneck, Suncup, and Popcorn Flower, which seem to grow in greater profusion after a fire;  giving a spectacular show and providing some of nature's own protection against soil erosion!

I have heard that there have been Lotus seeds that have sprouted after 2,000 years; and that is a story for another day;  but when I think of the little Fire Poppy, waiting even fifty years for its time to shine,  I am encouraged in my own life, that I still have time left to shine, that even though we fear that our time has come and gone and it may be too late, maybe what was really required, just like the Fire Poppy, is to burn away all that stands between lying dormant in the dirt and shining brilliantly; that sometimes that perfect convergence of circumstances required to blossom fully may be some considerable time in coming.

And so, thinking of that, I will renew my hope and patience and persistence; and I hope to encounter many Fire Poppies and their brilliant friends this spring, and be reminded, once again, that I, too, can still shine.

Awaiting the Crapemyrtles: Meet the Arbor Day Foundation

For a few years now, I have belonged to a wonderful organization that you should check out : the Arbor Day Foundation-www.arborday.org.  As the name suggests, they are pretty much all about trees.  They can help you identify trees, they will sell or give you trees; and at any time, (this is especially useful around Christmas for those hard to shop for folks) you can make a donation and have trees planted in whoever's name.  They try to plant those trees in places that have suffered deforestation, particularly burn areas.

So, when I received a letter from them some months back, promising 5 little Crapemyrtles in exchange for a modest donation, I thought, "such a deal!".  If you are not already familiar with them, you can see from the picture here how gorgeous they can be!  They have wrinkled petals like crepe paper, and also come in all the other varied shades of pink from the shocking pink pictured  here to the very palest pink, and even in white; although here in Southern California where I live, most are the bright, bright pink.  They seem to love the heat, because I notice that while they are pretty on "my side of the hill" (I live about 2 miles from the ocean, more specifically, the famous or infamous Venice Beach!), in the San Fernando Valley, which is always at least 10 degrees warmer in the spring and summer, and with global warming, is enduring more and more days of 100+ degree weather each year, the Crapemyrtles just go bananas over there, with great clouds of gorgeous blossoms.  Apparently they are also quite drought resistant, once established. Now the interesting thing about these "trees" is that they aren't exactly.  They're really bushes, but they get so big and woody, (sometimes up to 15-20 feet) they can be (and usually are) groomed to look just like trees.  It's the same with Oleander, you know.  Growing up, we had at least four different colors/varieties of Oleander that we never bothered to groom into tree forms, so they just stayed like gigantic bushes, but they reached up to about two stories high!  (Try explaining to a four year old that the pretty, pretty flowers are a no-no because they're deadly poisonous -- I always wanted to pick them and bring them in the house for bouquets!)  But here, just a couple of blocks from where I live, are a whole bunch of Oleanders pruned into little trees, and it always looks a bit odd to me since I grew up thinking of them as bushes.  At any rate, back to the Crapemyrtles, apparently they grow in a number of different parts of the country, but it takes less time to grow them here, since they die back in winter in places where it snows, and with no snow here -- they just keep going and growing!  By the way, because pruning can directly affect cold hardiness, you should try to have it completed by early August if you're trying to achieve the tree effect.

Now, I knew there was no place for the Crapemyrtles right here where I live, but I have a friend who is very involved with her community garden, and since they are about 10 miles east of us, it gets a lot hotter there than here in the warm weather; and I thought what a lovely gift they would make.  I also wanted to set aside one for some friends of mine in northeast L.A., (also gets cussedly hot there in the summer) who are undergoing the trials and tribulations of home renovation; everything is all torn up around their place, but they are avid gardeners and I figured when the dust (or soil) settled around their place, this would make a pretty addition, even if you can't eat it.

So.  I eagerly waited.  And waited.  Then, in early Fall, a letter arrived informing me that they would be shipped sometime between October 15 and December 10, since they had to go dormant first.  OK, I thought, I understand.  So I waited some more.  Finally, around December 15,  I called, demanding to know where were my danged Crapemyrtles, since Christmas was coming on and I was afraid I would look cheap to my friend Veronica (the one with the community garden) since those little trees, or bushes, or whatever they are, were to be her Christmas present.  They told me what with global warming, everything had been pushed back later, because the warm season had extended far longer than it was supposed to, delaying the plants' dormancy, so they were a little backed up, but they were working hard to get them all out now.  Soon, they promised me, any day now.  And I believed them.  Yes I did, because it did stay far warmer for far longer than it "should" have this year; and as my brother likes to say, try telling the melting polar ice caps that global warming isn't real.

So, finally, three days before Christmas, (which coincidentally was the last time I was going to see Veronica before Christmas), just as I had given up all hope and thought I would be made to look like a cheap bastard, at the last moment, they arrived!  At first glance, I thought there was only one; and in a bit of a rage, after waiting all this time, I tore open the bag, cursing as I went; but then I discovered there really were five, they were just little skinny twigs of things... but no matter, because I know those little skinny guys will grow to be magnificent!

So hooray for the future gorgeous clouds of pink, and Happy New Year!