I LOVE my purple smoke tree - Cotinus coggygria 'Royal Purple' - I wait breathlessly for it to leaf out every spring. It has the most beautifully shaped leaves that emerge the deepest, velvety purple - and the veins are bright red! Magnifico!

I have one dilemma, however. You see, I grow this shrub for it's foliage, but the raison d'etre of the tree is to smoke - to bloom with pannicles of tiny flowers that look like puffs of smoke once the flowers are spent. But the leaves are bigger and darker if the branches are cut back to a basic framework - which sacrifices the bloom for that season. If the tree/shrub isn't cut, the branches tend to be bare at the base, with leaves and flowers toward the tips - a gawky look, but charming. What to do, what to do?

I pride myself on always trying to have my cake and eat it too. It practically never works, but I try! So with my Cotinus, I decided to cut back part of it to produce big leaves, and leave the rest of it to blossom and smoke. I know this won't be too kosher with my gardening bretheren, but I am here to play and discover. I may have discovered the perfect way to deal with smoke trees. This technique may come to be known in the future an 'Soler-izing'!

(- okay so I'm still a little off my game from the trauma of the toyon. Forgive my bad garden pun.)

I am so upset I can't even post a picture. I came home yesterday with a flat of corn starts to plant in my vegetable beds, and as I walked by my ornamental pomegranite (why couldn't the original owner of the house have put in a fruiting one instead? Sigh...) I noticed something was different. It took me a little while to figure out what it was - everything was off, though. Suddenly, I realized that the toyon that hangs over my fence and mingles beautifully with my pomegranite was gone. As in GONE - chopped down! My neighbors are building a fence, and instead of figuring out how to accommodate the beautiful California native tree, they killed it.

Now I know it was their tree, but it was a very important part of what gardeners call my "borrowed view". I even posted about it last year! Is it wrong for me to be hating on my neighbors right now? I know this isn't a big deal to them, what do they care about one tree or another? But they know I loved that tree. Just like they knew I hated the birches they planted in their front yards, feet away from my garden. (She asked me for suggestions on what trees to plant, but I was ignored) Whenever someone comes to look at my plantings, I always have to tell them that the sickly birch is my neighbor's, not mine. Silver birches in Southern California? Please!

I am so frustrated, because I can't hate on them too hard. The reason they are building that fence is to keep their crazy dog from attacking my fence and inciting Sadie and Dexter to riot. I do appreciate that. But there was a way to save that tree. I saved my pomegranite when my fence was built ... it cost a little more, it took some planning and brain power, but it was doable. Now we have a fence that keeps the peace between the dogs, but the lovely native tree with the deep green leaves that covered itself with berries in the winter, and was a source of food and shelter for our neighborhood birds, is nothing but kindling.

I am so, so sad.

A week ago I was in San Diego, and while having a grand ole time I stumbled across this building absolutely covered in Black Eyed Susan Vine. It was right in the middle of downtown, and it was for sale. I wanted it. I have no use for old bungalow apartments in San Diego ... but that vine! How exquisite! How extravagant!

I have Black Eyed Susan Vine (Thunbergia alata) on my fence, but it isn't anywhere near as luxurious. Of course, this San Diego vine has probably been growing for decades upon decades, while mine is but a babe. And while I love my orange one, the yellow looks so much fresher, cleaner, prettier ... I think I need to add a yellow Thunbergia to my fence.

When you garden, inspiration is everywhere; I often find it in plants still flourishing in abandoned buildings or houses in older parts of town. Sometimes you'll see something that was lovingly planted and tended by someone generations ago growing wild, truly expressing itself ... really going for broke. I love seeing things like that. One of the gardens I've made that is closest to my heart was for a dear friend, and we decided that we wanted the garden to look like it was left alone for a hundred years. This vine would look perfect in that garden.

Many gardeners really like their plants to behave, to stay in bounds - and I understand why ... invasives are a big problem. But I am always seduced by an exhuberant plant that takes it to the limit. I mean think about it, what could be tougher than a plant that kicks ass with no help at all - one that thrives on whatever nature feels like giving it?

That is a plant I want in my corner!

A monster Aloe named Willard in my back garden. A plant that sprouted an alien beast as it's bloom spike in my front. And now, on the fence above my baby vegetable garden - the biggest grasshopper I have ever seen. And we know that grasshoppers are evil denizens of gardens and yards everywhere - descending like marauding hoardes, devouring every desirable plant in sight. And this one has the gall, the temerity to just sit there on my fence, chewing lazily on my Passiflora 'Coral Seas'.

This grasshopper is a female, because they are bigger ... the biggest one on record is 11cm, and this one is easily 9cm... so I'll bet you anything she has laid a grip of eggs all over my gardens and they'll hatch in June, just when the salvias are looking their best and the roses are hitting their stride and those little hopper nymphs will eat up everything. So how do I get rid of these things? Yes, I have adopted a live- and- let- live approach to gardening, but sometimes a gardener has to draw a line in the compost and say ENOUGH! You can push me this far and no farther! (or is it further?)

So I did a little research on killing grasshoppers and was horrified to find out that arsenic was the accepted method of execution not so long ago. Not very organic, that arsenic stuff. What else... horticultural oils and insecticidal soaps? I don't know - I've never had much luck with that stuff. My preferred way of killing varmints is with a strong jet of water.

I did read about this stuff called Nolo Bait. It's some kind of demon spore that you mix with bran flakes (like cereal? Kellog's All Bran? Yuk.) and spread around where the hoppers congregate. They'll gobble it up, and the spore will activate and kill the grasshoppers from the inside out. The females pass the spores on to their eggs, and that way the next generation becomes Nolo'd, too. And as a bonus, the grasshoppers that live cannibalize the dead and become infected, and more death ensues! A slaughter!

This genocidal stuff is supposed to be completely benign to all the other things that eat grasshoppers - mice and owls and hawks and others... but I'm not convinced, so it's a big NO on the Nolo for me. I'll have to stick with the strong jet of water, or I could do what an acquaintance of mine does - when she sees one, she whips forward with her pruners and chops them in half.

EEEEEEWWWW!

Here's a better image of my Passiflora 'Coral Seas', for Pam of Digging. If you haven't stopped by to check out her marvelous spring blooms, what are you waiting for?

YIKES!
Lock all your doors and windows! The Beschornia is in it's final stages of bloom and it is freaking out my whole neighborhood. Someone rang my doorbell to ask 'what on earth that thing' was. Sadie barks at it every time she sees it. I saw some neighborhood teenage hooligans giving it the hairy eyeball - I hope they don't cut down the bloom stalks and smoke them or something!

Next week I'll post the final images of the Beast, in it's fully expanded glory. And then - Off with it's head!

I haven't been peeking in on my front garden for a few days, not wanting to start some hair-brained dialog - but today I took a moment to dawdle there and see what's new. And what do I see but the most beautiful irises with their ruffled petals spread out like the petticoats of dancing cowgirls.

Like I said last year when these beauties popped up, I don't remember planting them. I might have been the lucky victim of a guerilla gardner.

I sometimes think about sneaking in to people's yards and planting what I think would look good - but more often I threaten my gardening friends with late night garden sabotage. I tell Michael, who works with me at Elysian Landscapes, that one morning he will wake up and his entire garden will be underplanted with pink alyssum. Judy fears the day I break into her back yard and dig up the Dracena draco I covet so very much, only to replace it with a pom pom boxwood topiary. One of my neighbor has perfect, tidy front borders - I have fantasies of replanting everything upside down and backwards.

Thank goodness I don't have the energy for guerilla gardening forays (I can barely keep up with my regular, everyday plant chores) or I would be a marked woman. I am glad that others aren't as ornery as I, and that they'd think enough about my garden to collaborate with me in secret.

They even picked my favorite color!

(In the interest of full disclosure, Jan thinks he remembers me planting the irises... but I truly, truly don't! I'm positive it was a guerilla, or maybe elves - pixies, even. Gardeners are supposed to believe in magic, right?)

For months I have been trying so hard to capture a hummingbird on camera. There is the most beautiful hummer that has recently set up shop ... it is obvious he considers himself the mayor of my garden. He has the brightest red throat, and he seems to have tinges of orange here and there, with an iridescent bluish strip down his feathery green back. He's a looker, this guy is! And what an attitude! He will fly so close to me and taunt me - posing on an aloe blossom, sitting ever so fetchingly on the tip of an agave - he dares me to photograph him! I swear he even winked at me once! But I never have my camera when I see him, and if I go to get it, off he flits. Once I did happen to have my camera on me when he came at me with his antics, and as soon as I rased it up to shoot, he screeched to a full mid-air stop, turned on a dime, and raced off as fast as those tiny furious wings could take him. Then he turned to stick out his tongue at me. What a tease.

I was in San Diego for a few days this week, and I spent an afternoon in lovely Balboa Park, one of my very favorite places. In the parking lots, they have enormous sweeps of one of a plant we've discussed recently - Pride of Madeira, and they look absolutely sublime. I was snapping away, trying to get some good close-ups to post, when what do I see before me but a lovely hummer, one who was so kind as to hang around for a picture. My first hummer photo! No, this isn't my garden's Bad-Ass Hummingbird Mayor, but now that I've caught one of these little birdies on film, I have a renewed self confidence. I will have a picture of tiny Bad-Ass soon. Mark my words.

The Beschornia is growing. And growing. Every day it stretches out a little more, and I must admit to being a little frightened of it. If there is a plant that will one day come alive and announce to the world tht it is really an alien beast from another universe, it would be a blooming Beschornia. I mean, it acutally has a face!

Yikes! I think I am going to give myself nightmares. But look - it has all the attributes of a classic Sci-Fi monster! I really want to do a 'Monster' Garden one day, using really scary plants. Only the most hardcore would qualify. Definitely Willard the Aloe will be there. And Proteas - a Monster Garden must have proteas. What else?
Hmmmm... now this is going to be a fun garden to design - even if I don't have a place to plant it yet.

What would you put in my Monster Garden?

I don't know if anyone remembers, but last year I was severely traumatized by a freeze - they only hit the LA area once every 20 years or so. The worst thing that happened was the horror film-like death of my prized variegated Agave attenuata - I bought it about eight or nine years ago at a cactus and succulent show. It was ridiculously expensive, but I had to have it. In fact, I had to have two, but the second one died within a month. I had a coronary - it was a $150 plant - gone. I know, I know... serves me right for paying such a ridiculous amount of money for a succulent in a one gallon pot.

Before you think I am an easy mark (well... okay, maybe I am), the variegated Agave attenuates were very very hard to propagate, and they almost NEVER have pups, which is what we in the biz call the little baby offsets that grow at the base of the plant. That is what I was told, so I handed over my three hundred bones and walked away with two precious, beautiful striped agaves. After one died, the last one became my favorite plant, not only because it was extremely beautiful, but because it represented the biggest single investment in a plant that I had made at that time.

It grew beautifully - you can see it in some of the posts from the first year of the blog. And then came the freeze. Not only did it die... it melted. It became a puddle of ooze. I was so devastated I cut the melted leaves of ooze from the stem and stuck the pot somewhere in the dark recesses of the garden.

I stumbled upon that pot yesterday. Look at it. Pups. Plural. Meaning more than one. And gorgeous. Am I happy? Yes, of course! Do I feel like a total sucker for paying a crazy amount of money for a tiny succulent? Absolutely! Would I do it again?
... hmmm.
... Yes. I would. Silly me?

I LOVE roses. I do. Most gardeners in my neck of the woods turn their noses up at roses - too much water, too much fertilizer, so NOT green, in the environmental sense. And pretty ugly, aside from the showy flowers. I mean really - if roses had no flowers, whould anybody plant them?

I understand all the reasons to dislike these shrubs, but there are also reasons to like them, even love them, and use them. One of those reasons is Rosa 'Altissimo' - probably the best climibing rose around. Every year when my Altissimo bursts into bloom I fall in love all over again; the velvety red flowers- the color of blood and atomic red-hots - the green foliage that never goes spotty, and then, later in the year... HIPS! Rose hips! Who doesn't want nice big rose hips?

If you follow my rules about roses, you will learn to love them, too.

1- No Hybrid Teas. Those are the fussy, ugly shrubs with the huge elegant flowers that make everyone crazy. If you want those kind of flowers, be kind to your garden and get them at the florist.

2- Unless they climb, stay small. Let plants with more consistant ornamental value be big and focal. Personally, I think 3-3 1/2 ft is the perfect size for a rose, unless you want it to scrable over a fence or arbor.

3- Go casual. The roses I love are a little on the wild side - floribundas, polyanthas, groundcover roses. Many of these do very well with no special care at all, just compost and water along with the rest of your garden. I even plant roses and succulents together - they are suprisingly drought tolerant once established.

4- De-segregate! Don't put your roses all by themselves in a 'rose garden'! YUK! Mix them up, create vibrant associations ... let your roses play with the other kids!!! They'll be so much healthier - I promise!

At the moment I have 3 roses in my garden, but I want more. Right now, I'm into single flowers, like Altissimo - they are so simple and elegant - but I also love a ruffled blossom here and there. Hmmm... now that's a fun project, selecting roses for my garden. I am, of course, open to suggestions...