Yes, it is that time of year when the city goes purple. Or lavender.
The jacaranda trees go crazy for a while. There are stretches of several blocks long, Continue reading ‘Jacaranda Time!’
Archive for the 'flowers' Category
Another lovely one in the gladiolus family I think. These have started to put on a show Continue reading ‘Yellow Face’
This particular one -among thousands- called out to me while on the East coast a Continue reading ‘Still Magnolia’
Morning cup of tea, and short reflection - coming up for air before diving back in…
It’s a bit of a mess here, time-wise. Just not enough hours in the day. Everything totally fragmented. Yesterday was grueling… here’s some of it:
Up at 5:30am, finding that I’m immediately thinking about a physics project for a bit (I fell asleep doing so, having been the whole evening in the Casbah drinking coffee and doing the same) before having to break off to get ready, get to office early to start an insanely busy day. Answer a ton of email, and deal with other online stuff, planning to ignore it for the whole rest of morning. Note that flimmaker/journalist friend B has sent me an email with a list of comments and suggested changes to my script for the Video. Got to discuss it with A, my collaborator in Chemistry on this. Whenever are we going to meet in the next few days? Sigh. (Must remember to do blog post about this new project, and how I ended up involved with the Chemistry department!)
After some dithering, decided to drive in, since the plan was to stay super-late and probably involve driving someone home.
Cold as I walk to the office from where I parked on the street. Mostly in my mind, and Continue reading ‘Up for Air’
It was hard not to notice yellow all over Griffith Park this weekend. There were several Continue reading ‘Yellow Fields’
Spring is in full flow here, and there were lovely contrasts to see on my hike in Griffith Continue reading ‘Renewal’
No doubt about it: Spring has sprung. Whoever says there are no seasons in LA - and there are many who do - have no idea what they are talking about. The signs are in the air - there’s been a distinct change of the smell; lots of flowers are blooming. A parade of displays has begun. These are some of the poppies that are in various corners of the campus here at USC:
Here’s another shot….
I decided to do Griffith Park for my Sunday morning hike today. It’s been a while - I’ve mostly been doing Runyon. I thought it would be nice to see how things were doing up there since I last went and saw them dramatically spraying the hydromulch to protect the ground from erosion until regrowth from the fire damage (see here and here). The (very) occasional rain we’ve had in the last couple of months seem to have begun something wonderful - there are hints of green everywhere. I saw this beautiful photograph at one point - which sort of says it all - only to find that my camera (which seems to be on its last legs these last few days) had died again. So I had to take it with my camera phone, and so it is a bit below par:
I think this is wonderful (blurriness aside) - it has the striking image of the burned tree Continue reading ‘Hope Comes in Yellow and Green’
Time for a shot from the garden. Focus could be better. This is from six weeks ago, I admit. I forgot to post this back then. After we had that little bit of rain, various bulbs Continue reading ‘Glad’
I’ve been distracted by several things recently, and so (even more than is usually the case) there’s far more to report than there is time to report it. Among the highlights are, as already mentioned in the comments, a Saturday visit to MOCA (Geffen Contemporary) to see the Takashi Murakami exhibition. (Coinciding nicely with me about to embark upon reading “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle” by the other very well known Murakami: Haruki Murakami.)
His simplest motif - which he reuses again and again in many pieces - is the smiling flowers in various colours. The 2D version of the 3D flower box is one of my favourites, and here it is in a room that is wallpapered with the motif. There’s a more solemn one with a range of expressions on the flowers’ faces in an entire field of them (”Kawaii - Vacances”) (including one shedding a tear), but I could not find a good web reproduction of it. The below is a rather small version:
It’s only the second weekend since it opened here in LA and it is hugely popular, with tons of people in the exhibit spaces walking around excitedly and pointing at things. (This being LA, this included a lot of activity in the special Louis Vuitton room, which Continue reading ‘All in a Weekend’s Work and Play’
[Post reconstruction in progress after 25.10.07 hack (body, comments and images to follow)]:
Flowers on my San Pedro cactus (trichocereus pachanoi). (Click for larger view.)
[Post reconstruction in progress after 25.10.07 hack (body, comments and images to follow)]:
We had rain again! Quite a big deal here. Well, this meant that some rose bushes that I’d been letting grow well out of control were bent over with the weight of the water. So lots of pruning yesterday. Here’s one of the sweetly scented blooms I harvested along the way:
Close shot of what’s been happening all of a sudden on my giant cactus plant since Continue reading ‘Green Towers’
So the mexican sage (salvia leucantha) has started its new crop of flowers. The purple bobs pictured below right 
(click for larger - yes, there is a little bee resting quietly on a leaf there for some reason) will turn into long purple fronds with lots of individual bells containing flowers. Soon they will come, and they will keep coming. They’ll come and examine each flower closely and attentively, and I’ll be waiting for them, since they are so magical - appearing suddenly and dramatically as though dropping out of warp, with a wonderful and powerful hum. I’m talking about hummingbirds, of course. They love these flowers, and come and feed on them regularly.
The warp reference? They are fast - incredibly fast, and they can accelerate and decelerate astonishingly effectively. So if you’re lucky and standing still at the right point, there’ll be a hum and suddenly one Continue reading ‘Soon They Will Come’
-cvj
Some of the results of last Saturday’s wanderings. The wildflowers are in evidence nearly everywhere you look. Hiking through entire fields of them stretching off into the distance is such a pleasure:
The view toward Snowmass lake (you can just see it) that you can get from being on Continue reading ‘Clearing Out’
Love these. They always look like a clockwork design… But look… five fold symmetry Continue reading ‘Clockwork, No Orange’
Always a big event for me. The first buddleia (or budlea) of the season, in the act of opening up (click for larger):
It should be finished with its grand opening of each of those tiny buds in a few days. I Continue reading ‘Purple Grand Opening’
Fantastic hike yesterday. More later, perhaps, but now I want to write about a couple of other things. In the meantime, here are some lovely butterflies that obligingly posed for the blog on some (type of sage?) flowers:
These are quite lovely, aren’t they? I always have great difficulty getting these giant structures (whole thing is about a metre long) down from the tall palm trees that produce them. I take them down because they produce a huge mess over the rest of the garden as they develop. Not the lovely tiny yellow flowers but the little palm nuts (tiny scale model (large grape-sized) coconuts, essentially - same family) that result later, one nut for each of those tiny yellow buds that you see!
So I cut them off. Sad, I know, but there it is.
I do it early because they have to fall. Where do they fall? All over the plants below, doing a lot of damage if I am unlucky. Better to have the much lighter blooms fall (still bad enough) than the Continue reading ‘Yellow Fibre Bundle’
It’s Mother’s Day in America… but it can be Mother’s Day everywhere!
(Rose from my garden earlier this week. Made a card out of it for my mum…)
One of the marvellous things about gardening is the variety of pleasant things that develop as a result of your work, again and again, while you are off doing other things (like your day job). It’s a bit like teaching, in a way: You do your best and hope that Continue reading ‘Pink Explosion’
Babiana. (Click for larger view.)
This will serve nicely as my Easter greeting to all who readers care to be greeted in that way (Happy Easter!), but especially to my mum and sister who actually sent me Easter greetings cards in the post. Thank you!
I picked the lovely Babiana because (besides loving the name …this led to an ichat conversation with my sister about whether or not I’d name somebody this, to which I replied (not fully seriously) that I happily name a daughter Babiana… only to withdraw that when my sister suggested that the name would be shortened to Babs… and I was immediately put in mind of Carry On movies - I mean no offense whatsoever to any Babs in the readership, of course)…. because these were planted, partly with mum’s help when she was last visiting here, and so she gets to see how they are doing. They are in the same batch as the gladiolus plants I mentioned about two or three weeks ago, and I still have yet to get to tell you the story about my getting these bulbs, which is sort of interesting, Continue reading ‘Happy Easter’
No, not the name of a new Jazz singer as far as I know. Instead, it is the single most powerful source of a sweet scent in the garden. What has been happening is that the Jasmine has steadily crept up one of the palm trees, and is engulfing it in hundreds of tiny flowers. (Click for larger view.)
The scent from this is huge. For better or worse, the web does not allow communication of scents, and so I can do no more than offer this rather odd picture (the tree is quite tall, and so it is an odd one to take, and hard to get the right sense of the situation while letting you still see the plant), and leave the rest to your imagination.
The only downside to this wonderful scent is the fact that it is close to the group of Continue reading ‘Jasmine Tower’
The flowers from one of the earliest of the bulb varieties I planted late last year have started to emerge. Here’s gladiolus tristis:
Lovely aren’t they? There are many stems of these, with more and more opening every Continue reading ‘Light Yellow’
Big rainstorm coming, and so I don’t think this beauty will be here in 24 hours:
These flowers are quite large compared to other roses I’ve shown from the garden - Continue reading ‘Pink and Orange’
Last week Saturday morning, I stepped out to the garden to do maybe forty-five minutes’ worth of much needed pruning. Sometime late in the afternoon saw me finish. Things just got way out of hand. More and more tools were assembled:
…there was much in the way of climbing of ladders and parts of the roof, and I’ve now got about three huge piles of stuff to deal with -here’s one:
…and one tiny garden waste bin that the city to picks up (I cannot compost much of this) each week. At that rate, cleanup will take about a month or so… By then, half the stuff will have grown back.
It’s all in a good cause though. It is what ensures that I can share all those photos of Continue reading ‘Trimmings’
Well, that flower that so many of you - like me - enjoyed so much a while back has opened up very nicely. So I thought I’d share an update photo of it:
-cvj
The final rose or two before the big prune back, methinks. ‘Tis the season. These bushes are way taller than me now, and stretched a bit too thinly.
-cvj
I’d like to wish a Happy and Successful New Year to all readers, whether you be regular, occasional or first time visitors! In a very short time, you’ve all helped make this blog into a pleasant, informative, and fun place to visit (certainly for me).
I’d hoped that this could be -and it has indeed become, with your help- a place that Continue reading ‘Happy New Year!’
Some Winter gifts from the garden:
-cvj
Spotted in Griffith Park on a quick hike:
I’m thinking that this is a variety of bindweed (but see below*). I’m not sure though. Thoughts anyone? (Convolvulus sepium, that is.) Bindweed is a sort of wild morning glory, and this really Continue reading ‘White’
Super long day of meeting after meeting. Call after call. Email after email. With that and all the rest… I’m super-stressed.
When I can, I try to make some meetings happen outside. Walk while conversing. That way I get to see things like this:
The corn has matured (they’re less full because of low volume of watering while I was away… but that’s ok… they’ll taste great!), and I’ve got a huge corgette/zucchini for my trouble. Must get around to harvesting the peas soon.
Upcoming…. that flower promises a tasty patty-pan squash in my future…..
-cvj
I’ve temporarily forgotten the name of this beautiful flower. I’ll let you know when I recall it. [Update: Athena worked it out and reminded me….Scaveola, or fan flower] Its blue is more dramatic than the camera has captured. It nods somewhat more to purple than is suggested here. It grows reasonably fast and close to the ground, and is drought tolerant, so I used them as a quick ground cover to repopulate a part of the garden. They’ve done very well since I planted them in the Spring.
One thing I love about them is the asymmetry of each individual flower. Look closely (click on left image) and you’ll see that there are five petals on each, but the five are on only half the flower. Very asymmetric on that scale, but on a slightly larger scale, symmetry is restored by arranging a five of these “half-flowers” around a central leaf cluster to make a sort of larger, symmetric super-flower.
Very elegant.
-cvj