It's raining, it's poring, The Germinatrix is snoring...
Sorry about the lack of posting the last few days - a demon has taken taken residence in my stomach and has been forcing me to re-create Linda Blair's tour de force performance in "The Exorcist".

Too much information? Sorry!

It's too bad I feel so icky, because I love the rain so much and it happens so infrequently. I want to sit out on the front 'porch' and watch the rain fall, smell the mix of wet leaves, wet dirt, and wet concrete - which I think is one of the best smells in the world. It should be bottled and sold as perfume - "Wet Earth". I'd wear it!

One thing that is very important about rainy weather and the landscape - if you have an automatic sprinkler system - don't forget to adjust it for the season! It is surprising to me how many people forget to do this - don't lose any plants to winter drowning.

And for those of you in the northerly places... enjoy the winter break from dirty fingers.

I am CRAZY about passionflower vines - I have about five different varieties and am looking for places to put more. Most of these are new - I lost 3 varieties in the freeze last year, so I've had to re-plant. I have a beautiful unknown variety with small lilac colored flowers, and right now it is being devoured. And I mean really devoured. The culprit? Agraulis vanillae incarnata, the caterpillar of the Gulf Fritillary butterfly.

As you can see, these spiky-backed wigglers are hungrily feasting on my vine, the very one that is supposed to climb up an eight foot pole and camoflage the wires of my amber fiesta lights. But do I go nuts and reach for an arsenal of sprays and anti-pest potions? No. Instead, I Google. And I learn that the Gulf Fritillary only eats members of the passionflower family - it is their only food source. So this caterpillar is not going to dessimate my garden; it will only chomp on my favorite vines.

And you know what? That's okay. Because the beautiful fluttering Fritillaries live here, too, and they add alot to my garden. So in order to be a truly organic gardener, I need to adjust my vision so that I don't mind (very much) that my passionflower vine is a tangle of chewed-up, skeletonized leaves; afterall, it's only for a little while. The caterpillars will soon turn into chrysalis (or pupa), and then into butterflies, and the devouring of the leaves will stop for the season, replaced by orange and black fairy wings zipping around the garden. The passionflower leaves will grow back, and the vine will grow longer and stronger - a better home for next year's hungry spiny wormy eaters. And the cycle of life continues...

In honor of Thanksgiving, I thought I'd do what a few of you asked a while back and show you a bit more of the inside of my house.

This is my kitchen - Jan and I renovated it about four years ago - it used to be three rooms; a small kitchen, a breakfast nook, and a mudroom that lead out to the backyard. We raised the dropped ceiling - you can see some of the origami effect we get because the ceiling now follows the contours of our pitched roof. Whereas the rest of the house is dark and cozy (before air conditioning, the way to keep cool around here was to put in lots of smaller windows for cross ventilation and plant shade trees to block out the hot sun), the kitchen is bright and sunny, and we usually keep the sliding doors open so that Dexter and Sadie can run back and forth between Jan in his office (the re-done garage) and me in my office - which is of course, the kitchen.

My refrigerator gets alot of attention - it's a Northstar from Elmira Stoveworks, and I've wanted one for at least ten years. It's small inside, but there are only two of us, and I'm really not the Sub-Zero type. I am, however, the Wolf stove type ... although after seeing Kate F's incredible white Viking, I want one of those, too!

I impulsively collect vintage enamelware, and have never met a Dansk or LeCreuset pot or pan that I didn't love. Jan put a moratorium on me buying more of the stuff, so I have to find ways of sneaking new purchases into the house. My old line of " That one? No, it's not new - we've had it forever!" isn't working anymore.

I hope everyone had a lovely Thanksgiving Day, and shared it with the ones you love the most!

Gobble Gobble,
Germi

I can't believe that I have tall, blooming Canna 'Tropicanna' right now, two days before Thanksgiving! Tropicanna is a shocking, preening streetwalker of a Canna lily - and I do mean streetwalker! Plant this baby and give her regular garden water and she is running down the block in a matter of seconds, grabbing the attention of everyone who passes by.

Watch out! She's alluring, she's seductive, and she definitely isn't for the faint of heart. Tropicanna's bright red leaves are striped with purple, dark green, coral, and a little yellow ... and as if that wasn't enough, the flower is a big, loose ruffle of screamingly bright orange. This plant's motto is "I'm LOUD and I'm PROUD!", and many gardens can't handle such a scene-stealer. To me, cannas make excellent partners for (guess what?) succulents and other drought tolerants, even though they are fairly thirsty themselves. How can that possibly be, you ask ... well, controlling their water is one way to control their growth habits - by keeping the water set to meet the needs of my low water garden, these attention-grabbers are forced to stay in bounds. That is a good thing, because as hot as Miss Tropicanna is, too much of her can be way, way too much - and she'll start to get on my nerves.

There's only room for one diva in my garden, and guess who THAT is?

Snap!

I did something I've been wanting to do for a long time - I put up permanent party lights in my garden!

Now, this is controversial amongst my pals. Some say it looks "downscale". Well - poo on downscale I say! I LOVE my new amber night lights. They make me feel like I'm in a happy place, like a beergarten in Bavaria, or Night In Old San Antonio (which is a rolicking good time of food and beer that happens during Fiesta Week in my Texas hometown) Hmmmm.... I see a throughline. Beer!

There is an issue of the lights and wires being visible during the day, which yes, isn't totally desireable but isn't bothersome enough to make me take them down. I've planted passionflower vines at every post that holds the rectagle of lights aloft, so I'm pretty certain that by next summer, I won't be seeing too much of the wires, but the lights will still be able to illuminate the space. And having a rectangle of vines floating in the air is pretty exciting!

I can also use the posts and wires to put up a colorful shade cloth in the heat of the summer ... so I think my "Party All Night" lights are a very good thing. And they make me smile! What more can a person want of their outdoor spaces?

After giving a friend some cuttings of a spectacularly smelling scented geranium, Pelargonium 'Mabel Grey', and telling him the easiest way to root the babies would be to simply stick them in water and wait for the magic to happen, I found this email in my inbox:

hey my geranium isn't growing any roots. i put it in water and have been monitoring the plant health and changing the water but nothing's happening except some yellowing of the leaves. what's the deal?
I tried to make it all simple and breezy, but now I have a confused friend who doesn't capitalize. So I'll break it down and let everybody know what the "deal" is.

Some plants root super easily, and scented geraniums (really pelargoniums) are in this group. So are Coleus, Plectranthus (Swedish Ivy), and the ultra-dramatic Brugmansia (Angel's Trumpet). With these plants, it is enough to stick fresh cuttings in a glass of clean water - you can add a pinch of sugar for its nutitional and antibacterial qualities - and kick back, letting nature take over. It is important to change the water every few days, and to make sure there are no leaves under the water line - they'll get slimy and rotten and smelly and muck up the whole thing.
That's it. That's all you have to do-
Except wait.
Rooting takes a while... have patience. Yes, some of the lower leaves will yellow - don't panic! This is normal. The cutting is, after all, in a stressful situation - it is trying desperately to LIVE! Unfortunately, not all of the cuttings will make it - 60-70% success is what you can expect in the best circumstances. It isn't a reflection on your skills as a water-rooter.

So once your cuttings have a nice little spagetti-like cluster of roots, you can take them out of the water and pot them up in a snazzy little container full of nice, fluffy potting soil. Don't use straight compost - too dense, won't drain water - and (although I know NOBODY would do this) please, don't use dirt from your yard. That's just craziness.

Nothing is more satifying that propagating your own plants - it makes you feel like Mother Nature herself, with thumbs so green you could hitchhike a butterfly!

What is it with me and the color red? I have to try really, really hard not to buy everything in red or burgundy. If a plant has a red flower, I want to plant it. If it has a red leaf, I'm determined to plant it. Over the years, I've learned that in a garden, a little bit of red goes a long way - but in my own garden, I indulge myself. Red red everywhere (and not a drop of pink).
The weather is cooler (no fires for now, thank goodness!) and we in California are having our typical second spring. I've had a very unexpeted repeat of my beautiful Daylily, 'Acapulco Nights', and seeing it next to my beloved red Plain Air daybed and my new stripe-y Fermob chairs from Plastica make me so happy!
Martha Stewart doesn't like red flowers in her garden. Well, what a buzz-kill she is. If flowers are nature's way of laughing (a little saying I heard once...), then red flowers are nature's fit of giggles. How can anyone be against that?

The other day, while re-potting a container that hasn't been touched in a couple of years, I clearly saw why the soil level goes down in pots over time.
First of all, it is incredibly hard to get a root-bound plant out of a round pot. It took two of us, one on either end of the pot, pulling in opposite directions, for the variegated aloe arborescens to finally pop out - I almost fell on my butt like a stooge. And then I heard MZ yell like a tarantula was crawling up his leg. I looked up and saw him holding the plant with a mass of spiraling roots and a clump of tiny white pellets in the center - but NO SOIL! No soil in the container, either. In MZ's defense, it did look creepy.

Upon further inspection I realized that the tiny pellets were perlite, the stuff they put in potting soil to lighten it, make it more porous. The plant had eaten all the nutrient rich soil and left the inert material behind. My poor aloe was starving!

Now if you'll remember, just last month, on Oct 18, in "Time to Get Dirty", I made a somewhat snotty comment about 'so many of us letting the soil in the pot disappear without replenishing it...'. Well, I have to call myself on it. Because I have let many, many of my pots go soil hungry. And these pictures are proof! I don't want to be a hypocritical Germinatrix! Caring for a garden day to day isn't easy work - and it can get away from anybody. Even me. Maybe especially me.
I'm going to put together a schedule for re-potting so this doesn't happen again. And now I have to tackle some mighty big plants that are rootbound in some big-ass pots.
Help!

Today, I got an email from Debra Lee Baldwin, author of Designing with Succulents, which was published this year by Timber Press ( there's a photo of my garden in it! )- I had to share a part of her note with everybody:

"Last week, Suzy Schaefer, owner of the garden on the cover of my book, Designing with Succulents, emailed me, "Succulents saved our home. The fire came within 6 feet of the house, but the garden saved the house from burning."

I went there and saw how wildfire had blackened palms and eucalyptus in the canyon adjacent to the Schaefers' Rancho Santa Fe home and, sadly, consumed a house across the street. A stand of Aloe arborescens had shielded the corner of the Schaefer house closest to the canyon; the plant cooked but did not catch fire.

In the south Escondido community of Del Dios, an area hit hard by wildfire, I saw aloes, agaves, jade, ice plants and prickly pear cactus still green near homes reduced to ashes. And no wonder -- succulents, which by definition are plants with fleshy leaves and stems, are like well-sealed water balloons."

- Pretty cool, huh? Succulents to the rescue! While we in Southern California live with the constant threat of fires, we aren't the only part of the country susceptible. Serious wildfires have occured all over the US, from Washinston to Florida, so thinking about landscaping as a way to help mitigate the threat seems pretty smart to me. There are succulents for everyone, no matter where you live!

Here is another wonderful thing my much beloved builders, my erstwhile Minions, left me - an amazing built-in seating configuration on my side porch (which was in desperate need of some sort of attention). As is their style, they built a thing that is two thirds seating and two thirds sculpture. But wait - that adds up to more than ONE, you might say! Yes, I reply, because the things they make are very, very EXTRA.

And now, meet-

THE PARALLAM

We call this built-in unit "The Parallam" because it is built from a type of wood composite called ... you guessed it - parallam. Parallam is wood chips pressed and held together with lots of glue. It doesn't sound so great, but MJ saw its potential in the lumberyard, and asked for the okay to build with it. It will look like an exotic hardwood - like zebrawood (Is there such a thing as zebrawood?). We gave the go ahead, and the boys designed and built it - and I never expected it to look as cool as it does. Well, I expected cool, but ... you know...

The photos don't really do Parallam justice, because the texture and grain of the wood is so incredible, and the light kind of washes it out. Whenever there is a cut end, you see the cross section of wormy-looking wood chips tightly layered in the glue. I LOVE that!
The Parallam is designed for maximum chatting potential- the main bench is angled rather than straight, so people can sit on it and face each other. There is even a little table set into the bench - it goes all the way through, with a little butt end jutting out the back. I love THAT, TOO!

The guys decided to leave it it's natural color, but they sealed it very well - it's right next to a newly planted garden area and gets some sprinkler overspray. It is so chunky and beautiful ... and it defines space that was always a little hard for me - everything I tried here always seemed too 'forced'. For all its angles and sturdy profile, it still looks light to me; it doesn't overwhelm the porch - those boys did it again.