Posts Tagged ‘huntington botanical gardens’

An entry from last year

First of all, thank you to my friend Alice for point­ing out that the Rose Parade is never on a Sun­day; there­fore it will be held Mon­day, Jan­u­ary 2nd. For those of us who like to see sparkling fresh flower cov­ered floats, I rec­om­mend going out to Pasadena Sun­day night some­time after about 9pm. All the floats are pulled up on Orange Grove Avenue in front of the Wrigley Man­sion wait­ing for the parade to start the next day. (What did you think, they wait until the last minute?) They are spotlit and it is a fes­tive scene…and you can get really close and see the detail. I took these pho­tos last year between about 10:00pm and 1:00 am. I can only tell you my expe­ri­ence, and hope that noth­ing has changed. I drove north on South Arroyo Park­way and parked as close as pos­si­ble to Orange Grove Blvd. between East Col­orado Blvd. on the north and East Del Mar Blvd. on the south. The streets are closed off to the east so you will have to walk up a hill but you will see some great old homes. Take some hot choco­late, have an adven­ture and let me know how it goes! Happy New Year to us all!!!

Another 2011 float

On the Web:

• Thurs­day, 1/​5, Los Ange­les Cac­tus and Suc­cu­lent Soci­ety talk on “Places you’ve never heard of, plants you’ve never seen” 7pm @ Sepul­veda Gar­den Cen­ter, Encino (www​.lacss​.com)

Sat­ur­day, ¹⁄₇:

- Rose prun­ing work­shop @ Los Ange­les County Arbore­tum, Arca­dia (www​.arbore​tum​.org)

- Hunt­ing­ton Gar­dens sem­i­nar held in Pomona on Sam Mal­oof exhibit and sea­sonal gar­den­ing (www​.hunt​ing​ton​.org)

A 5 foot baby!

I took this on my recent tour of the Low Coun­try with my sis­ter, Mary Lynn. Not a great photo, but I didn’t want to get any closer. As per Wikipedia, since 1948 there have been more than 275 unpro­voked attacks on humans in Florida, of which at least 17 resulted in death. There were only nine fatal attacks in the U.S. through­out the 70s, 80s, and 90s, but alli­ga­tors killed 12 peo­ple from 2001 to 2007. In May 2006, alli­ga­tors killed three Florid­i­ans in less than a week. This photo was taken at Mid­dle­ton Plan­ta­tion out­side Charleston, South Car­olina. I was thrilled to see this guy out of the water as I had seen 3 in the water pos­ing as float­ing logs — not very excit­ing. I think he (or she) might be more of teenager than a baby. There were all sorts of fam­i­lies stand­ing around which didn’t phase him, but some­one closed the top on their stroller and bam, he was out of there!

An inter­est­ing fact: the range of alli­ga­tors is increas­ing north­ward along the Atlantic Coast towards Vir­ginia. Look out, Wash­ing­ton, DC! Our politi­cians may not be at the top of the food chain much longer!

And finally, I leave you with these words of wis­dom from nat­u­ral­ist and TV per­son­al­ity Jack Hanna: “The best thing to do is just leave them alone. Alli­ga­tors want to be away from you just as much as you want to be away from them.”

On the web:

Sales:

• The Theodore Payne Foun­da­tion for Wild­flow­ers and Native Plants Annual Native Plant Sale, Octo­ber 14 — 15 in Sun Val­ley (San Fer­nando Val­ley) (www​.theodor​e​payne​.org)
• San Diego Botan­i­cal Gar­den, Encini­tas: 29th Annual Plant Sale, Octo­ber 15 — 16 (www​.sdb​gar​den​.org)
• Jun­gle Music/​Encini­tas: owner Phil Bergman has posted a “new arrivals” sec­tion on his web­site show­cas­ing new palm trees, cycads and trop­i­cal plants (www​.jun​gle​mu​sic​.net)

Classes, etc:

• Hunt­ing­ton Gar­dens, San Marino: every­thing you wanted to know about Gingko, Oct. 11/ Iris: the Rain­bow Flower Talk and plant sale, Octo­ber 13/​Flower Arrang­ing: the Crafts­man Esthetic, Oct. 15/​Orchid Sale and Show, Octo­ber 14 — 15 (www​.hunt​ing​ton​.org)
• Des­canso Gar­dens, Flintridge: In Praise of Grasses event and Paint your Gar­den with Wild­flow­ers lec­ture, Octo­ber 15 (www​.des​canso​.org)
• Potted/​Atwa­ter Vil­lage is spon­sor­ing a weekly con­test for best ter­rar­ium with a grand prize of $500.00 (www​.pot​ted​store​.com)
• Los Ange­les Arbore­tum, Arca­dia: lec­ture on Nat­ural landscapes/​Garden Spaces with Amy Net­tle­ton, Octo­ber 12 (www​.arbore​tum​.org)
• Fuller­ton Arbore­tum, Fuller­ton: Eat the yard: Organic Edi­ble Gar­den­ing Part I, Octo­ber 15

The O’Keeffe com­pound, Abiquiu, New Mexico

I had a deli­cious expe­ri­ence vis­it­ing the Geor­gia O’Keeffe stu­dio in Abiquiu, New Mex­ico this past week­end. Located about an hours’ drive north­west of Santa Fe, the Span­ish colonial-​era com­pound was the painter’s per­sonal home and stu­dio; Ms. O’Keeffe also painted nearby at Ghost Ranch. As the brochure states: “ Tour­ing her per­sonal home and stu­dio in Abiquiu gives you a remark­able, first­hand glimpse into the way she lived and views of the land­scape she loved. She cre­ated some of her most famous and iconic works here.”

Geor­gia O’Keeffe’s studio

Geor­gia O’Keeffe, who died in Santa Fe in 1986 at the age of 99, was one of the most impor­tant artists in the 20th cen­tury, and a pio­neer of Amer­i­can Mod­ernism. I espe­cially love her flo­ral paint­ings and land­scapes. She was coura­geous in her con­vic­tion that women could paint as well as men, a belief not widely held when she started painting.

The court­yard she painted so many times

A favorite quote of Ms. O’Keeffe’s:

When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it’s your world for the moment. I want to give that world to some­one else.

On the web:

• Sept. 1 — 11: The Pot­ted Store/​Los Ange­les: Storewide Sale (www​.pot​ted​store​.com)
• Sept. 2 — 4: City Farm­ers Nursery/​San Diego: Mas­ter Chain Saw Carver George Kenny carv­ing demo and auc­tion (www​.city​farm​er​snurs​ery​.com)
• Sept. 3: Hunt­ing­ton Library and Gardens/​San Marino: 28th Annual Suc­cu­lent Plants Sym­po­sium (www​.hunt​ing​ton​.org)
• Sept. 5: Des­canso Gardens/​la Canada: Redis­cover the Cal­i­for­nia Gar­den talk and tour (www​.des​canso​.com)

Where did you say they put that garden?

One of the last fron­tiers of gar­den­ing? You guessed it, the top of a New York City bus! One of the recent arti­cles in a favorite blog of mine, Urban Gar­dens (www​.urban​gar​densweb​.com), car­ried this story about NYC designer Marco Anto­nio Cas­tro Casio. He wrote his grad­u­ate the­sis, “Nomadic Urban Archi­tec­ture” fea­tur­ing mov­ing gar­dens like the one you see here.

“If a gar­den were planted on the roof of every one of the 4,500 buses in the city’s bus fleet,” cal­cu­lates Cosio, his busses could add 35 acres of new rolling green space in the city. That’s as much as 4 Bryant Parks. Meant for the pub­lic bus sys­tem, the first gar­den was installed on the BioBus, a mobile sci­ence library. In this photo the gar­den is 5 months old and com­prised of suc­cu­lents. Next? How about a veg­etable and herb garden..and they say there is noth­ing new under the sun!

Site for Marco Casio: www​.bus​roots​.org

On the web:

Thurs­day, Feb­ru­ary 17

• Plant Favorites from the Hunt­ing­ton Nurs­ery with Shirley Kerins @ the Arbore­tum: A spe­cial pro­gram for plant nuts! Our guest speaker will dis­cuss and show a range of flow­er­ing and herbal flora eas­ily grown in South­ern Cal­i­for­nia gar­dens. The morn­ing ends with a plant sale. Shirley, a land­scape archi­tect, is nurs­ery man­ager, man­ager of plant pro­duc­tion and plant sales and cura­tor of the Herb Gar­den at the Hunt­ing­ton Botan­i­cal Gar­dens. She also designed the Kallam Peren­nial Gar­den at the Arbore­tum. 9:30 — noon, $20/​class — (626) 821‑4623 or jill.​berry@​arboretum.​org

Sat­ur­day, Feb­ru­ary 19

• Ship­ley Nature Cen­ter: A Fam­ily Cel­e­bra­tion to Save the Mon­archs, 10am — noon, Pup­pet show, crafts and more @ Hunt­ing­ton Beach Cen­tral Park, free park­ing @ 17851 Gold­en­west St. near Tal­bert, info: (714) 842‑4772 or www​.ship​ley​na​ture​.org
• Square Foot Gar­den­ing Work­shop @ the Arbore­tum: 10am-​1pm; Square foot gar­den­ing uses only 20% of the land space of a con­ven­tional gar­den and saves both water and time. There is no till­ing of the soil so any­body can do it. Learn how with Jo Ann Carey. $25/$28 non­mem­bers
  Pre-​registration required, call 626.821.4623