Flashback Friday

Sunday morning, with border collie and barrels.

A kind and extraordinarily generous neighbor gave me this humongous golden barrel (Echinocactus grusonii) last week. To say I was flabbergasted doesn't even come close. "Are you sure? Are you sure?" He was. His dear wife — she passed away a year ago — had brought this cactus home when it was smaller than a grapefruit, had looked after it for decades, and my neighbor wanted it to go to a good home. I was moved and honored. You can see what wonderful care this barrel has received: it lived in (increasingly large) pots, sheltered from rain and snow, with filtered sun in the morning and shade in the afternoon, until it grew so big that its size and spines became a hazard. 

So how do you move a 200+ lb barrel cactus? Believe it or not, we didn't even need gloves. Three men and yours truly used a dolly to get this beautiful barrel into my yard and settled in its new pot, and we were able to do it because I'd had the opportunity to watch a master cactus-mover at work.

Rob Roy MacGregor is a Riverside plantsman and cactus maven, and back in April I watched Rob (with cactus fanatics Aaron and Paul) move big barrels like this one into the bed of Aaron's truck, using not much more than a long piece of old shade cloth. Rob puts the shade cloth around the barrel, and uses the loose ends to maneuver the barrel without risking life and limb, and without harming the cactus. It works! Two strong men with shovels had tried and failed to budge this beauty toward a wheelbarrow (never mind into the wheelbarrow) after it fell out of its old pot, but with shade cloth in hand, we moved it to my place with the dolly, potted it in its new, 24-inch container (with an essential plant caddy), and then potted up another barrel at my neighbor's. Note to self: always keep old shade cloth handy.

Before it came to my yard, this cactus lived for years in a big container at my neighbor's house, in dirt. Not potting mix or cactus soil with pumice added — just native clay soil. Wish I'd thrown a few handfuls into the current container.

So now the girl who swore she'd never have a golden barrel has four of them, three little ones and a very, very big golden barrel, all in my very, very small backyard. "Don't be afraid to use big objects in small spaces," right? One more photo, with Jasper yawning and stretching: 

I'm not in the habit of giving names to plants. Anyhow: golden barrels Huey, Louie, and Dewey are in the background. I'd kind of like to call the new guy Jonathan Gold, because he is blond and on the round side and sharp as a tack and thoroughly awesome. 

(Both these photos were first posted on my Instagram account. Here's a link.)

Season's Greetings

The Calliandra hybrid 'Sierra Starr' went from bare to blazing overnight. 
Click photos to embiggen.

I'm so glad it's spring. You all know what winter was like, and there are no words for how grateful we Californians are for the rain and snow. However. When the weather gets wet and cold (lowest this winter here was around 26 F), I need to protect some plants. And then I need to un-protect them when the sun comes out. Dozens are moved under the patio roof, and another dozen or so are moved inside. This is what my yard looks like, all frost cloth and plastic sheeting and upside down nursery pots, off and on and off and on, from November until early March:

Ferocactus kindergartners under there somewhere. 

Precipitation shots. These guys were on their own:

Agave x leopoldii

Mason Valley Cholla, Pink Teddy Bear Cholla

Cylindropuntia fosbergii

Opuntia basilaris hybrid 'Baby Rita.' 'Baby Rita' is standing up straight now. Some opuntias stage a swoon in cold weather.

"Opuntia sp. 'Old Mexico' appears to be a spineless selection of Opuntia gomei, a native just barely to the southernmost coast of Texas and more abundantly down into Tamaulipas. The cultivar name comes from Helen Wynans, a cactus dealer in Brownsville in the 1970's and 80's," says Mountain States Wholesale Nursery. 'Old Mexico' is a favorite of mine - this one was started from a cutting gifted to me at Riverside's legendary, now closed, much missed Mexican Hat Cactus Nursery. 

Lovely Aloe microstigma bloomed for me last year, but not this time around. I've given away all but a handful of aloes - they hate the winter here, and burn in the summer.

I thought the cold, wet weather would never end, and then, overnight, everything started to wake up. The foothills began to turn green - greener than they've been for years. I drove up to El Dorado Ranch Park for a morning hike with a view. (It was 33 F before the sun came over the ridge.) El Dorado Ranch is a beautiful open space preserve a few miles away off Oak Glen Road, with miles of hiking trails through the foothill chaparral. I still fantasize about having a little ranchito (horses, chickens, a donkey...) in a setting like this:

Friend Gerhard Bock stopped by on his way to Palm Springs, and we checked out the Jurupa Mountains Discovery Center and Granite Hill Nursery. Visit Gerhard's blog for great photos of Jurupa. I snapped a favorite - this is Ferocactus pilosus, the Mexican Fire Barrel:

On the way back to my place we stopped to visit Rob Roy MacGregor, a Riverside plantsman whose greenhouses are just... well, look at this beautiful specimen:  

Agave victoriae-reginae 'White Rhino'

Have to add a couple photos from other road trips. The ridiculous and the sublime:

Pottery Barn's display of plastic succulents, oy.

The most fiery Euphorbia tirucalli 'Sticks on Fire' I've ever seen, at a business off the 10 freeway in Yucaipa. Incredible winter stress color. I need to ask for a cutting (though I'm afraid the plant would freeze and die at my elevation).

The Meyer lemon tree lost most of its winter fruit to the cold and wet, but the tree itself is green, thriving, and ready to explode with blooms. Yesterday I heard my first-of-season bee. The tree will be roaring with them soon. I managed to salvage this trio:

The mission fig and the pomegranates are leafing out:

Agastache mexicana 'Red Fortune' is seen here leaning on a cactus I'm more and more convinced is a saguaro (Carnegiea gigantea). It was unlabeled but sold as a cardón (Pachycereus pringlei). For reference, that's a cardón to its left, much skinnier and actually just an inch shorter than its stouter pot mate. I need to repot that  cardón:

And here we are this morning. Birdsong, yellow Lady Banks (Rosa banksiae 'Lutea') in bloom, coffee at hand, and my good boy ready for his after-breakfast snooze. Oh spring, I love you so:

Outtake, from earlier. (Cat over there? Gotta scratch. Walker incoming! Plan for the afternoon: toss everyone in the truck and visit that good friend with an acre of lawn.) Hope your Sunday and your spring are wonderful!

Maguey with Virgen de Guadalupe

It's her day. (Read up on Mayahuel here.)

And Chet is eleven! Read Julie's wonderful post here. "Get outside. Smell the air. Look around. Cover ground." Heartfelt amen to that. Happy Birthday, Chet Baker!

Rainy, beautiful weekend

Must buy more pots! Story of my life. Agave gypsophila (with two pups not shown) and Aloe elgonica (five pups in the box) resting up before repotting.

It was a perfectly beautiful Sunday, after an overcast Saturday and a stormy Saturday night. Everything bright and glittering, dozens of hummingbirds, blue sky, white cloudlets. At some point I remembered that the Huntington Spring Plant Sale was this weekend, and it's a measure of just how perfect the day was, that I thought, "Oh, darn! Eh, whatever." Such a nice day.

There are two Giant Swallowtail chrysalides in the plastic box -- one is hanging on the side closest to the camera. Wake up, little dudes, it's spring!

Above the retaining wall. Most of the rocks in this photo have been in the family for the better part of a century. What can I say — we like rocks.

There were four of them at the feeder when I picked up the camera. Wasn't fast enough to get all of them, darn it. Major hummingbird activity this morning.

And finally, a video of my dog helping in the garden. No, really — he helps. Who's a good boy? You are, Jasper, yes, you!! Here's Jaspie helping his flu/cold/bronchitis-stricken human clean up her act, with cameo appearances by Smoky and Lulu. Good dogs all.

Our characteristic pose

Jasper on my lap, Lulu napping, Smoke, as always, holding the fort. 

Dedicated to the memory of Chess, a purebred border collie, late of the wise, wry, and excellent blog the miserable gardener. It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer. Chess was both. [Pace tua, E.B. White.]

Photo from this past October.

Smiles of a summer night

God only knows how many photos I've taken of dogs on this bed. You can see my big cur-dog Smoke, for one, at the top of the left sidebar. I took this photo of Jasper late last night. [As always, click to embiggen.] We're at the family cabin south of Big Bear Lake, in the San Bernardino National Forest.

I'm organizing a related Flickr set. Two, count 'em, two photos so far! Here's the link: Dogs on the bed.

Monsoon season

Every summer here in the San Bernardino National Forest we have stretches where the humidity rises along with the heat and there are thunderstorms in the afternoon: monsoon season. This is the beginning of such a stretch. It was steaming hot yesterday with no breeze at all, then cooled down late, after midnight, the night so still I could hear the flying squirrels as they navigated the trees outside. Right now the sky is slate gray and getting darker and the sun is behind the clouds for good. We're making ourselves comfortable inside. [That's my boy Smoke in the photo above.]

There used to be a giant white fir about twenty feet from our cabin, and a few years ago lightning hit that tree and hit it hard, all the way to the ground. Big parts of the tree — branches and trunk — were scattered over two acres. One jagged, javelin-shaped piece of wood about six feet long came through the cabin roof from the east, which was crazy because the tree was west of the cabin. What with all the other big trees nearby — it's the forest! — I tend to await thunderstorms with a certain amount of suppressed feeling, as T.H. White wrote once. The collies are edgy. Cur-dog Smoke is indifferent.

Some linkage:

Many falconers and birders, and falconers who are birders, know of the legendary falconer and ornithologist Frances Hamerstrom. [She used poison ivy to hide her adventure stuff when she was a kid. I love her.] On the right is a photo of Fran with eagle celeb Ithaca and James Grier with Ithaca's parents.  [More on Ithaca, and more photos, at Fran's granddaughter's blog.]

This isn't news, exactly — Frances Hamerstrom died in 1998, and Ithaca lost his battle with West Nile in 2009 — but a line from Wiki caught my attention: "Frances Hamerstrom was also known as a cook, publishing a wild game cookbook near the end of her life. Her secret for pie crusts was the use of bear lard, and her readers occasionally sent her bear lard as a by-product of their own hunting experiences."

Which made me think of Hank Shaw's new book Hunt, Gather, Cook: Finding the Forgotten Feast. And this: "The core of each stop on my book tour is a special dinner that highlights the wild foods of that region in that season." Note to self: Hank will be in San Diego August 18. Here are Hank's thoughts on hunting, and cooking, Ursus americanus, from his excellent blog Hunter Angler Gardener Cook.

Check these out:
Grand Theft Toboggan.
Bird Fight Club.
Awful time sink, that site. This one is too late for Mother's Day, and I know it's supposed to be funny and all, but it made my eyes puddle up. [Watch that bad kid make himself scarce...]

Sad science: Mange Is Linked To Squirrel Decline. For the record, I have not seen any gray squirrels in the mountains so far this year. Not one. Squirrelpocalypse [weeps]. "It is really a huge loss over a large geographic area," says David Myers of The Wildlands Conservancy.  I haven't seen [or heard] any coyotes, either. Two summers ago there were coyotes everywhere. Last summer, hardly any. This year, so far: nada.

Report a Dead Bird or Squirrel. Just what it says.

Cool science: People Keep Making Einstein's Greatest Blunder. I love Starts With A Bang. [The physics of fireworks!]

Politics: my homeboy James Fallows was [is] spot on:

[T]he laziest and ultimately most destructive form of political coverage came when journalists seemed to imagine that they were theater critics or figure-skating judges. The what of public affairs didn't interest them. All they cared about was the how.

Finally, a post from Dipper Ranch with some sorrow in it, and much beauty. Read Scales on My Sleeve and enjoy a rare encounter with the loveliest snake in California.

West wind just whipped through, and I can smell the rain now.