garden

I have absolutely nothing against itsy bitsy spider and its friends and relatives. Spiders neither repel me nor do they elicit high-pitched shrieks when I come across them (well, if a large one landed on my face in the middle of the night, things might...

While the Davis Food Coop has been our favorite grocery store since we moved here, it’s not exactly the go-to place to buy plants. They do sell small vegetable starts in the spring and the occasional potted plant, but nothing that would rival even th...

This past weekend was filled with cactus excitement. Four of my cacti, fairly plain-looking most of the year, flowered. Actually, “flowered” is too lame a word to capture the magnificence of this event. “Exploded” is more like it. It was a flor...

As I was driving to the public library last week, I noticed a group of trees covered with orange blossoms. I couldn’t quite tell what they were from the car, but they looked unusual enough that I decided to go back for a closer look. These are tall s...

Dr. Norman Klein blends in – comfortably in this image but not always so – with his cactus garden at his home in Rancho Cordova. "Once you start, it's truly an addiction – you can't get enough," he said. "I got hooked – litera...

About six weeks ago I bought a bunch of plants for a raised bed in a corner of the front yard. This included three Asiatic lilies: two cultivars called ‘White Pixels’ and one called ‘Lollipop’. This is what the label for ‘Lollipop’ looks li...

Last month I got all mushy over the California poppy (Eschscholzia californica). But it isn’t my only poppy love. I’m just as nuts over the Matilija poppy (Romneya coulteri), which is at its peak right now. There’s a large clump in the park near ...

About five years ago an online plant seller included a freebie in an order I’d placed. It was labeled Agave parryi and it was a bit of an ugly thing from the beginning—the runt of the litter, you might say. I stuck it in a pot and even though I gav...

I can’t speak for other states or countries, but schools in California are suffering from ever tighter budgets, forcing cuts to programs that are deemed expendable. Often these are disciplines like art and music which have a far lower priority than E...

Every year in mid-May there’s a spellbinding sight not far from our house. Yesterday I grabbed my camera to capture this fleeting beauty. Planted in front of a nondescript apartment building is a blue jacaranda tree (Jacaranda mimosifolia) and it�...