Mark
Home gardener & plant fetishist
Berkeley, California, USA
Long time no see!
23 Feb '08 6:10 pm It has been winter here in California. Overcast, wet, rainy, cold ... you know, winter. My Aeonium finally started to bloom so I went out expecting poor lighting and what do you know. The sun came out. So I went around like mad shooting everything I could find in bloom. Here are the fruits of my labor from today, Feb 22.
Mark
Home gardener & plant fetishist
Berkeley, California, USA
That's it, Christopher, don't hold it in.
24 Feb '08 9:23 am You can easily tap into my climate guilt. I try not to flaunt it. I try to be sensitive to the feelings of the climatically challenged. I really do.
I know I don't deserve the benign climate in which I garden. When I moved in twenty five years ago I thought the big yard was a * lot of bother as I hadn't yet been bit by the gardening bug. I certainly didn't do any investigation and then save up everything in order to move here to take up gardening. Nope. I just lucked out.
When I think of you still snowed in and the snow Liza sometimes gets on her roses and another gardener, Helga, I've met on line who gardens in Iceland, it occurs to me that we should probably have a different word for what you guys do in the garden versus what I do. Certainly the amount of knowledge and experience needed here in coastal California is miniscule by comparison with what you all must know. Still I'll bet I've killed more snails in a night than the lot of you have seen in your lifetimes to date.
Brattily yours, Mark
jack two
nominate your own title
The new improved Jack Holloway v.2
Is benign boring?
24 Feb '08 8:14 pm Usually it is - no seasons, no struggles. Two of our gardening friends have proved it need not be, in very different ways. Both are plantaholics, filling every available space with a huge variety and then studying their plants intimately. Jacqueline in the tropics and Mark in the coastal warmth have created gorgeous gardens by using plants at home with them. Keeping them alive might not be difficult, showing them off to maximum advantage takes more skill than those in a climate where the plants jostle happily for attention in a short, impressive summer.
Well done, Mark! I get ever more joy from your garden! (And Christopher: I ice over at the thought of what you have to deal with!)
Mark
Home gardener & plant fetishist
Berkeley, California, USA
Thanks Jack
25 Feb '08 5:08 am you have always been very supportive. (And you too Christopher. I was having so much fun with our exchange that I forgot to thank you for your kind words.) I think you and I are having similar years gardenwise Jack. We've both been busy with school and chagrinned to be so unproductive in our gardens. It almost seems like gardens build up momentum. We've put the plants we want in a position to be successful and so now they do alright without us .. at least for a while. A new corrollary to the laws of physics:
A garden once set in motion will continue in motion until .. well, not forever but at least for a while so long as the gardener doesn't stay away too long.
