faboo mama

Image by fabooj via Flickr

Yesterday, driving in Pasadena we drove past the California Cactus Center (see my blog post on LA Metblog for a review of the store) and dropped in to check it out.  If you’ve ever shopped for succulents or cactus, you know expensive they are.  We saw some really beautiful and small plants that were flirting with the edges of $90!  Happily, they did have 3″ pots that are comparable to watch you find at any nursery, with the added advantage of actual healthy and happy plants.  I already have enough cactus for my small needs and I went agave and echevarria crazy last year.  Now, my goal is more crassula.

But first, this photo is of the baseball plants (Klipnoors) we got, we saw a few of them that were pretty nice and big and $$$, these tiny guys were affordable.  We also got living rock, but the focus are the new crassula, I’ll just post the pics and let you drool:

I can’t wait to put them in their spots and watch them spill over the ground.

How awesome am I? I grew irises all by myself. Sure, you may think, “Big whoop!”, but for someone completely intimidated by bulbs, this is HUGE. I just found out though they only last for like 5 days, so I’d have to say I’m completely unimpressed. After all the planting and 3 months of leaves, 5 days of flowers isn’t worth it. I guess that’s why they suggest you plant them successively.

Live and learn, eh?

Remember this:

Well it looks like this now:

Pretty nice, huh?

On Saturday, we went to Descanso Gardens for the World of Good Weekend. (see photos here)I had never been to Descanso Gardens before, but I heard it was more like the Arboretum than the Huntington and it was. In theory. Even though the Descanso gardens has a lot of different kinds of gardens and pathways, I prefer the Arboretum.

The one thing at Descanso that was truly impressive were not just the number of lakes and ponds on site, but the different layout of them all. It is a beautiful place that seems more like a large nursery than a place to study plants. Sadly, there is also a severe lack of customer service onsite. From the moment we got there until we left, no one who worked there knew anything about what goes on 4 feet beyond them. The guy at the ticket booth didn’t know procedure on if we give our receipt to the lady or what. The lady at the entrance had no idea if they sold sweaters or jackets in the gift shop. “You can ask”, is what we were told. The little girl had to go to the bathroom. We hiked all the way up the hill to the Boddy House couldn’t find a bathroom. I asked two people who worked there where it was and neither of them knew. I’m expected to believe that they were up at the top of the hill, working, and had no idea where the bathroom was? I could say that you get what you pay for, but the Arboretum and the Zoo both cost the same and the workers at both places are unnervingly friendly and helpful that you almost believe they’re robots…or not from LA.

One of the most wonderful parts of Descanso was the lilac garden. Yummy. It was like heaven with that scent in the air. Every time I found a lilac that was beautiful, I found another that was even better.

The camelia forests were also nice. I wasn’t too dazzled by the California garden and was very underwhelmed by the succulents and cactus there. The iris garden was amazing and most of the irises hadn’t even opened yet. I should go back to see the other hundreds of cultivars available. There were only about 10 open this weekend.

The kids loved the little train and even Daddy thought we should get one for the back yard (yeah right). Oddly enough, I loved the tulip garden. That was outstanding.

At the entrance of the park, there is an installation titled Edible Estates. As you know, I’m virulently anti-grass, especially for Southern Californians. We are slowly getting rid of most of our lawn and had considered giving it over to food. The subject came up again, as my husband tried to convince me to move my veggie garden to the front yard so we can put the pool in the backyard. The Edible Estates installation, prodded us a little closer to that goal, though I still need more sun than I get in the front yard.

The artist, Fritz Haeg, will be back at Descanso on May 17th for a book signing and artist’s reception. I believe he’ll unveil his summer theme at that time too. (Brasil Brazil is also playing that weekend, so I’ll definitely be there!)

Well, you know it’s time to see half-naked people in the City of Angeles just based on the events happening. This weekend is the unofficial kickoff to Spring in LA. So many things to do, I’m wondering how I’ll sleep this weekend. The best part: Most of them are free.

Obviously, we’ll be at LACMA celebrating opening night of Jazz on Friday night. I heard that Les Claypool is also playing tomorrow night. Who knew he was still around?

Oh and the Getty’s Friday off the 405 series also starts on Friday night.  Since my idea of fun doesn’t include being anywhere near the 405 on a Friday night, I won’t be here, but I’ll try to make it one day.  It’ll be like me cheating on LACMA.

The Brewery kicks off their spring ArtWalk on Saturday, April 5th. If you haven’t been, you’re missing out on some kind of wonderful. The restaurant onsite is overprice, but the last times we went they also had someone grilling burgers.  We’ll be doing this on April 6th and grilling afterwards.  We live nearby, so if you’re willing, come on by.

The Brewery ArtWalk is a twice annual open studio weekend at the worlds largest art colony. Each artwalk, over 100 resident artists participate. During this event, you will have the opportunity to see new works, discover new favorites, speak with the artists and purchase artworks directly from the artists at studio prices.

The Brewery Art Walk takes place:
April 5th and 6th, from
11:00 am - 6:00 pm

Admission is free and so is parking. Come support LA’s finest artists, take home some great works and and dine at the onsite restaurant. If you have questions or require more information, please contact us via email (click here)

The Brewery is home to over 100 artist-residents and the art you see is usually for sale.  So if you see something you like, feel free to ask a price.

Over in Little Tokyo is the annual Cherry Blossom Festival.  It’s going on all weekend too.  Parking stinks so plan ahead.  The event is free to enter.  We caught the tailend of this a few years ago and have sworn we’d go back to see the event.

Descanso Gardens is having A World of Good Weekend.  It’s $7 for adults, $5 for kids 5+.  You get to enjoy all the festival happenings and the gardens.  The happenings:

APRIL 5 & 6: A WORLD OF GOOD WEEKEND
This is your personal invitation to enjoy acres and acres of spectacular
Gardens, health-conscious salad-making demos, kid’s crafts, world music and fun
for everyone.

Salad Days: Salad Making Demonstrations
Saturday and Sunday, April 5 and 6 - 11 a.m. to noon
Magnolia Lawn
Chef de Cuisine Tiana Driggins tosses in her knowledge and celebrates Descanso’s 2008 Center Circle Edible Estates Demonstration Garden with a delicious and interesting salad demonstration.

Kids’ Veggie People Craft Table
Saturday and Sunday, April 5 and 6 - noon to 3 - Main Lawn

Music: Robby Longley
Saturday, April 5 only - 1 to 3 p.m. - Under the Oaks Theater
A beautifully orchestrated fusion of neo-classical/flamenco world music will be here for your enjoyment.

Music: Banshee in the Kitchen
Sunday, April 6 only - 1 to 3 p.m. - Under the Oaks Theater
Don’t miss the combination of traditional Celtic music, spiced jazz and rock.

That’s just a few of the big and interesting-to-me things going on.  If you’re in LA, I hope you can make it even just one of these events.  Otherwise, stay tuned because you know I’ll have pictures galore!

Puttering around in the garden…that sounds calming to many people. There are people who only wish for the time to tend flowers, grasses, succulents. I not only have the time, but I have plants. Over 235 varieties in my yard. I’ve learned so much Latin in the past year that I think you could drop me in to Rome 300 B.C. and I can have a wonderful conversation–provide it’s about gardening.

I live in an area with a very long growing season. I don’t need to overwinter things and considering how bad I am with tearing out long dead plants, that’s a good thing. Right now I’m tackling the front yard. Sigh. What a mess. A few weeks ago, I finally pulled up the grass along the sidewalk. The recent rains along with some tilling loosened up the soil enough to actually dig. Now, the shovel cuts through the soil like a hot knife on frozen ice cream.

I realized yesterday that it was the first day of winter. What? Wasn’t it just September? The problem (I have) with gardening here, is that gardening books tend to be generic. So, when the author writes, it’s more useful to someone in Missouri or Ohio. There’ll be a sentence that says, “This plant doesn’t do well in freezes.” What does that mean? Fine, it means what it says. However, when you live in LA, “freezes” is like 60 degrees. So you have to adjust. What can live in the full sun in Montana will burn up and die here. Plants than need shade in New Hampshire, need to be indoors in LA.

What has tripped me up recently is the, “in mild climates plant in fall”. Do I live in a mild climate? I think I do. But it can also reach 85 degrees in November If that’s too hot for the plant in Wyoming, shouldn’t I wait? And wait? And…uh…wait? So, I wait…and I just when I think it’s a great time to plant…it rains. And rains. Ah, winter in LA. All that free water falling from the sky and my plants are still in pots or packets.

Then I really get panicky. If I don’t get them in the ground right now, then they’ll miss out on all that free rain (saving my water bill), but they will get cold and maybe die. If I wait, it may be too hot for them to establish themselves (raising my water bill) and may get leafburn!

drool

My solution was to just go for it.

Yesterday, I installed my plastic edger, which doubles as a conduit for drip irrigation. I had already planted the rose bush and the grasses, so all that went into the ground yesterday was some aloe, bacopa, a divided society garlic clump and the purple fountain grass. This morning, I went to town. I got in the pygmy date palm, the giant bird of paradise, greek oregano, gladiolas and iris bulbs, lamb’s ears, lime thyme, the cape honeysuckle and way too many seeds.

Yay me!

Besides the stupid rose bush I dug up, all the other plants I put in were drought tolerant or natives. Okay…I got a whole stand of tropicals going in, but I think I’ve devised a way to put them in and get them loads of water without killing my water bill. Then, doing it backwards again, we’ll put in a walkway. We were going to put a little patio in the front yard, but with the sideyard, backyard and front porch, I don’t think we need yet another place to lounge around.

Obviously, I’m more than a little tired. I really want to sleep, but my neighbor is having birthday party today (mariachis will be here!) and it starts in 45 min.

Should I stay or should I go…Yesterday, I got crackin’ on the front yard. I had already tried to pull up the grass on one corner. I started that back at the end of September. All this time, I had one corner of clay/dirt just sitting there. I’ve been inspired to get my front yard done, and I have a ton of plants in the backyard I want to bring to the front, so it was time.

The grass in the front yard is is horrid condition. It’s grass and weeds on top, with about 1 - 5 inches of thatch below. All of this is sitting on top of soil that is more pure clay than anything. Logic says that I should have tried to get the soil condition better when we bought the house a year ago. I also should have covered the grass and let this really hot summer kill it. I didn’t do any of that. So it was up to a rake and a tiller.

That’s 20′ x 6′ swath cleared away. It took me about 2 hours (with cigarette breaks and childcare) to get the grass up. I filled up our compost bin and have a tarp full of grass sitting on my driveway now. I spend another 5 hours tilling, clearing huge chunks of clay, amending the soil with gympsum and compost and generally being annoyed at Adrian. Needless to say, I was quite tired at the end of the day. I went to bed at 9:30pm.

I woke up at 5am, in pain. Every muscle on my body, save those in my head hurts. My hands hurt so bad, I can hardly pour the kids milk. My toes hurt from tilling on the slope. My back, which isn’t in the best condition anyway, is in the most pain ever. And I want to go to the gym. I really, really, really want to. Yet my body is saying, “Are you out of your non-pained mind??? Give it rest crazy lady.” Because I was sick with what seemed like the flu all last week, I didn’t go to the gym at all. I missed it and feel like I need to make up for that.

My plan for this morning was to go to the step class (and die), then do half an hour on machines. Come home, clean up and do some billing, then go back to the gym in the evening. What’s more likely to happen is that I’m going to take the kids to the museums (I want to to the California ScienCenter and Ilia wants to go to the Natural History Museum…luckily, they’re next door to each other) and we’ll come home, nap and I’ll start cleaning up the back yard until it gets dark.

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Jade plant blooms, originally uploaded by fabooj.

The story of this plant:
We moved into our Hollywood apt. back in ‘99. It wasn’t until ‘02 that I realized this plant was behind our building. About a two years later, I learned that it didn’t belong to my next door neighbor. So I adopted it. I had no idea how to care for it, but I know that he laundry bucket it was in, wasn’t cutting it, so I repotted it. I had no experience with succulents at that time.

It wasn’t until last year that I learned what the plant was called AND that it bloomed. Seeing as how I had never seen a flower near it, I thought it would never bloom. Imagine my surprise when I saw the buds appear a few weeks ago. Now, I’m completely thrilled to see them opening. What a beautiful plant!

Well, it’s been almost a year and I’m pretty impressed by what’s grown back there. Here’s some pics taken yesterday. Here’s my old post on my garden:

Looking to the southwest of my backyard

Looking east

Looking northeast-ish.

As always you can check my flickr page to see how it all started out back in Feb.

Sigh.

Our neighbors changed their garage to be a back house. It was like that when we moved in and it didn’t bother me. Until last week. Last week, they decided to add a window on the garage. A window that is 14″ from my backyard. Now, I feel like they’re watching me whenever I’m back there. I have plants along that side of the yard and need to trim/prune and water them every 2 days. I feel like a voyeur. To make it even worse, now when we’re in the backyard, we can hear them yelling in the garage AND their TV was blasting yesterday.

My plan is to pull one of the cape honeysuckles from along my garage and plant it right in front of their window. Right now, it it’s about 7′ tall and maybe 5′ or 6′ wide. I was thinking of letting it go a little longer and then pruning it into a tree like shape. The downside is that this means, I’ll have to move my Mexican feather grass and blackberry plants and I have no idea what will be a good place for them as they both need full sun. Perhaps the front yard?

I could talk to them, but with winter coming up, I know we’ll spend less time back there. We were talking about putting in some bamboo panel fencing, but that’s really pricey for the kind we want.

Or, I could go my other route and put up the curtains around the perimeter I was thinking about. The neighbors in the back have an exceedingly whiny little brat for a kid and he will literally just sit back there and watch us for hours. It’s freaky. I put a wisteria right where he usually sits and I’m just praying for the bamboo over there to grow big this winter.