slide projector sought-health update
- To: m*@ucdavis.edu
- Subject: slide projector sought-health update
- From: M* B*
- Date: Thu, 06 Apr 2000 16:33:44 -0800
Dear
Planters,
4/6/00
It will soon be one year since my spinal chord injury and subsequent
hospitalization.
4/23/99 was the date I posted "I'm back." So many of you welcomed me
and prayed
for me that I want to thank the entire group. Your positive thinking
and encouragement
helped me to where I am today. You'll remember when I came home I still
could not
stand or walk. Today I stand and walk with Canadian crutches and no
longer need the
wheelkchair at home. I have even begun to investigate my garden and am
almost sorry
to say it's done just fine without me. Darn it.
Today in addition to working on my pathetic income tax I will plant a
group of
Aeonium undulatum outside the back door where I can watch over them. I
will also pot
up a group of vireya rhododendrons from my huge collection.
Which brings me to my most exciting news. I will be featured for two
lectures at
the annual International Convention of the American Rhododendron Society
the end
of May in Boston. My first lecture will be on landscaping with
rhododendrons,
empasizing their role in the landscape 49 weeks a year WHEN THEY ARE NOT
IN
BLOOM. I never allow a client to meet blooming rhododendrons since
bloom is so
ephemeral and bark, foliage, indumentum, tomentum, foliage bracts,
habit, speed
of growth, buds, seed pods and eventual size are 52 weeks versus a
three week
period of bloom (in a good year). These principals are just as
important to a Medit
designer and gardener. I will be emphasizing my very controversial
views on the
use of color (in all honesty my views of the world are
controversial-startling news!).
I will also discuss the role of scent but her we Medit woodlanders have
real advantage
as the majority of wonderfully fragrant rhododendrons (and azaleas which
are simply
incognito rhodies) are subtropical and/or epiphytic.
My second lecture on Sunday ends the convention. It is on vireyas,
tropical rhododendrons which can only be grown out of doors in sheltered
SF gardens,
and with lots of work in So Cal in areas entirely free of frost... After
years of
hybridizing Abutilon x hybrida (my 'Barclay's Creamsicle' has been a
best seller and
has survived three freezes in Nor Cal I am slowing down on these showy
but old
fashioned plants and am now concentrating on vireyas---breeding for form
(with
containers constantly in mind), colors and above all foliage and scent.
Twelve years ago I grew from seed goodenoughii X konori (white) and when
it bloomed
I named it for my mother on her 80th birthday, R. 'Lillian'. This year
we selfed her
and got a ton of seed---If you'd like to try and raise some I'll be
sending out packets
momentarily. Just send me and email followed by a SASE and I'll send
you several
hundred seeds. The pick of this selfing will be called 'Lillian's
Nightingale' as in
"A nightingale sang in Berkeley Square". This will continue my bird
series---the Cox's
already have one but I will concentrate on tropical birds, especially
hookbills. I'm
about to register a complex pink hybrid of (leptanthum x konori) selfed
X konori
'Pink'...she's to be dubbed 'Barclay's Rosella'---Rosellas are pink
australian kakatoos
with great beauty.
My lecture's title came from a Strybing button made years ago, "Prepare
for Global
Warming, Start Growing Vireyas Now!" In addition I will talk about this
group
which represents 35-40% of all rhododendrons and is so little known and
the fact that
their habitats in SE Asia are being destroyed faster than we can collect
and author new
species---most depressing---boycott Mitsubishi!
If you've survived this far I am finally getting to my point. I would
like to buy the
best used slide projector I can find. Do you have one you no longer
use/ Has high
tech taken you to jpeg making slides irrelevant. I have never been able
or willing to
photograph my plants and gardens and have "always depended on the
kindness of
strangers" when asked to lecture when the lecture requires slides. I
much prefer
to use living plants creating vignettes and whole gardens in front of my
audiences.
Obviously both these lectures require the use of slides hence my
request. If you don't
have one to sell perhaps you can direct me to a dealer in such things.
The sooner the
better. As I am not Dan Hinckley or Robin Parer I will be a new face
and name to the
majority of my audience and want to dazzle...to be rainbow high as all
I'm living
on at the moment is SS of $ 521.34/month...a total joke and focusing on
opera and
garden lectures on the net and in the flesh seems the way I've got to
get a good
projector, learn how to use it and get a digital camera and do the same.
>From what I can see my garden looks wonderful---camellias in bloom,
rhodies in
bloom and bud, a host of hellebores from niger "Pottter's Wheel" to a
true inky
blue-black blushed bottle greed. Abutilons hang like rare tropical
fruits in every
color and huge stands of cotyledons are carrin long Victorian lampshades
in orange
and vermillion. Vireyas on the back patio look like an ethnic wedding
in pinks,
salmons, golds, yellows, whites, reds and some blue lepidotes mixed
in. Ah,
spring in a Mediterranean climate.
With warmest regards, Michael Barclay
Cal Hort Council, Fieldtrip Commitee
and AMBULATOR!
