Red, white, and blue

Happy birthday, U.S.A.!

This land is your land, this land is my land

From California to the New York Island

From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters

This land was made for you and me.

As I went walking that ribbon of highway

I saw above me that endless skyway

I saw below me that golden valley

This land was made for you and me.

I roamed and I rambled and I followed my footsteps

To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts

While all around me a voice was sounding

This land was made for you and me.

When the sun came shining, and I was strolling

And the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling

A voice was chanting, as the fog was lifting,

This land was made for you and me.

In the squares of the city, in the shadow of a steeple;

By the relief office, I'd seen my people.

As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking,

Is this land made for you and me?

Woodie Guthrie

 

Echinacea ‘Tomato Soup’

Echinacea ‘Fragrant Angel’

Chaste tree (Vitex agnus-castus)

 

Mojito, anyone?

How do you survive a heat wave like the one we’re having? Stay cool, do as little as possible, and relax with a refreshing drink. Next to the margarita, my favorite summer drink is the mojito. It’s quick and easy to throw together. There are many variations on the theme (this one claims to be the “real” mojito), but here’s how I make mine:

1 sprig of mint (about 6 leaves)
1 tablespoon baker’s sugar (aka caster sugar)
Juice of two limes
2.5 oz rum
4-5 ice cubes
club soda

 

Put the mint leaves in a highball glass and add the sugar. Use a muddler (the handle of a wooden spoon works well, too) to gently mash the mint leaves and sugar together; the idea is to release the essential oils in the mint, not to shred the mint to pieces. Add the lime juice, ice, and club soda. Stir briefly and decorate with more mint. This makes a fairly sour mojito, so add more sugar if you like.

 

Reading this post, you’re probably wondering if I’ve had a mojito too many. After all, this is supposed to be a gardening blog, not a Happy Hour guide.

Actually, there is a method to my madness. The mojito inspiration came from a trip to Green Acres nursery in Sacramento yesterday. My mom is visiting, and I wanted to show here what is arguably the largest nursery in the Sacramento area. At Green Acres, I found a plant I’d only read about: a new elephant ear (Colocasia esculenta) cultivar called—you guessed it!—’Mojito’. The leaves are absolutely stunning with their contrasting green and black flecks. The stems are mottled, too! Needless to say I ended up buying one.

Colocasia esculenta ‘Mojito’

I’ve never seen such beautiful leaves

The intricate variations are amazing

Can you tell how much I like the leaves?

The stem is mottled, too

I ended up putting my ‘Mojito’ in a large clay pot and placed it next to my variegata aralia (Fatsia japonica 'Variegata') and 'Shiroshima' bamboo (Hibanobambusa tranquilans 'Shiroshima').

Potted ‘Mojito’ in our backyard

Golden lotus banana is blooming!

While the golden lotus banana (Musella lasiocarpa) doesn’t produce edible fruit, it is very cold-hardy and produces what I think are among the most beautiful leaves on any large-leaf tropical.

In an earlier post I showed photos of the winter damage to our specimen and how it was starting to come back. In the three months since that post, it has positively exploded. The pups (offsets) surrounding the mother plant have been sending up leaf after leaf so the clump now takes up twice as much room as it did last year, making for a lush focal point in that corner of our front yard.

But the most exciting development is that the mother plant has started to flower. Check this blog post for a detailed description of the process. Unlike the plant in that post, ours looks much more lush because the central trunk is surrounded by a good two dozen pups in full leaf.

Here are some photos showing the development of the mother plant in the last month:

June 9, 2011
The two largest leaves on the central trunk are beginning to lower into a horizontal position. That was the first indication that something was up.

June 9, 2011
Instead of regular leaves (typically new leaves are larger than the ones before), the central trunk is producing short stubby leaves as the top of the trunk is beginning to swell.

June 11, 2011
More swelling in the center.

June 22, 2011
The flower structure is beginning to take shape.

June 25, 2011
First hint of color on the bracts.

June 28, 2011
Now you can clearly see the flowers amidst the bracts.

July 1, 2011
More bracts are peeling off the “artichoke” in the center.

July 1, 2011
Flowers

According to Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, the lotus-like inflorescence lasts up to 250 days. At some point after flowering the mother plant will die, leaving the pups to carry on. I don’t really know if the trunk will simply rot away—that’s another one of those exciting discoveries gardeners like us get to make on a regular basis—but I’ll be sure to keep you posted.

June 28, 2011
Entire clump with flowering “artichoke”

June 28, 2011
Looking at this photo, it’s easy to see why Musella lasiocarpa is revered as a sacred plant by Buddhist monks in Southern China.

Roadkill cactus

Yes, that is its actual name. Whoever named it certainly had a sense of humor. It’s called roadkill cactus because the pads are so flat that it looks like they’ve been run over by a car.

I had never seen a roadkill cactus before, but when I spotted this one at Lowe’s a couple of weeks ago, I had to have it. There are actually two plants in the pot, and they do look a bit like cardboard cutouts of a cactus drawn by a child.

The current Latin name of this cactus is Consolea rubescens. From its former name, Opuntia rubescens, you can tell that it is related to the prickly pears of the American Southwest. Roadkill cactus is native to Florida and the Caribbean and can take more water than its desert-dwelling cousins. The downside is that it’s much less cold hardy (zone 9b) than the prickly pears but I think that mine will be fine in its spot on the front porch.

I just love my roadkill cactus!

Roadkill cactus (Consolea rubescens) after I repotted it. It’s currently 18 inches tall (not counting the pot) but it has the potential to grow to 10 feet. I wonder how long I will be able to keep it in a container?

The marks on the pads resemble tire tracks left by a car

In this photo…

…and in this one you can see how flat the pads are

Wordless Wednesday

Sacramento Valley from the air

On Monday I had the opportunity to go flying with our friend B. who is visiting from Australia. I had flown with him several times before, and I was only too happy to do it again. The world is so different from the air—what looks familiar on the ground sometimes isn’t all that easy to identify from above.

We flew from University Airport here in Davis up to Willows, about 60 miles north, had breakfast at the airport diner (yes, there is such a thing even in Willows, population 6,000), and then flew back. It wasn’t a long flight, but I was mentally exhausted—in a good way—when we landed because I had done so much looking and photographing.

The Sacramento Valley is a major rice-growing region. The rice fields still have lots of water in them so the reflections of the sun were phenomenal. Just as impressive was seeing the geometry of fields and orchards, and the juxtaposition between irrigated areas—green and lush—and non-irrigated land—brown and parched.

Just before landing in Davis, we made two passes over our neighborhood so I could take pictures of our house. Coincidentally, my wife and daughters were in the front yard as we flew over, and they actually heard and saw our plane. In one of my photos, the three of them are visible when you magnify it enough!

While this post has absolutely nothing to do with gardening, I hope you’ll still come along on this visual journey. It’ll give you a better idea of the part of California that I call home.

Our Cessna 172

Interstate 80, looking west towards the Bay Area

Rice fields off Interstate 5 north of Woodland

Check out the patterns of the levees

More rice fields

Intriguing looking bodies of water—no idea what they are!

Rice fields (top) and Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge (bottom)

Man-made landscape vs. natural

In some photos, the rice fields looked like they had received a dusting of snow

Interesting patterns

Yuba City

Sutter Buttes, the world’s smallest mountain range

Orchard and tilled field

Giant orchard and fields

I love this photo—wonder what is at the end of this road?

Edge of a circular field—check out the saw-blade edge!

Row of oleander bushes separating the north- and southbound lanes of Interstate 5 in Willows

Road intersecting with an irrigation canal

Orchard and rice fields

Crazy pattern quilt

Amazing contrast between irrigated parcel and the parched landscape around it
(Dunnigan Hills)

Our neck of the woods (our house marked in yellow)

Another view of our house

Close-up of our house.
You can see how small our lot actually is.

Landing at University Airport