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re: Hey...out there!!!

>From: "Paolo Mottola" <pmottola@thebrain.cz.it>
>Subject: Hey...out there!!!
>Sender: owner-medit-plants@ucdavis.edu
>Date: Sun, 9 Feb 1997 14:39:35 +1
>
> Hi Medit plants lovers,
>
> Maybe winter has frozen our list?
>
> We are supposed to live in a mediterranean climate or am I wrong?

Ciao, Paolo -

I agree.  Guess everyone suddenly got busy.  I know I've been awful
busy since the first of the year.

Well, at least the rain seems to have slacked off decisively here in
California!  Weeks ago, we all wondered if California would indeed
become the island that early European explorers once thought it was.
We've had a lot of sun the last few weeks, but it is still fairly
cool with occasional showers here in the San Francisco Bay Area.

My own garden seems uncertain about what to do.  Coupled with some
neglect on my part, and the low temps (possibly 28oF?) which turned
some items to mush, things are somewhat in disarray.  But some are
unstoppable - My Chasmanthe floribundas are starting to bloom,
mostly unaffected by the cold snap.  I have the yellow form called
'Ducketii', which is a nice change from the red-orange found in
almost every vacant lot in this area.  C. bicolor has also sent up
its spikes of flower buds, which arch delicately over like shepards
crooks - a charming feature.  I'm going to try and cross these two
plants again this year - might yield something interesting.

Westringia 'Wynnabie Gem' is STILL in flower after several weeks,
bits of tiny lavender sprinkled throughout the airy, grey-green
foliage.  Suffered from wind breakage from the storms, but soon will
be in good form again.  Our Abutilon hybrid 'Seashell' (from the
late local plantsman, Victor Rieter) has been blooming all along as
well, its normally soft, pale peach pendant 'bells', emerging from
dusty russet calyxes, becoming a deeper, soft salmon, overliad with a
claret-rose due to the colder weather (this is one of my wife's
favorites).  Below this esplalied shrub, I note the first flower of
a Helleborus seedling (last of a group I'd nurtured for some time -
squirrels can be real pests in my garden!) has opened, revealing a
very nice wine red flower (what I had hoped for!).

Some tree Aloes I saved (were 'thrown out' but someone in the our
neighborhood) are sending up unbranched spikes from wonderfully
bizzare octopus-like crowns of leaves.  I'll have to key this one
out when they reach their climax.  Aloes all over this area are in
flower, especially the common A. arborescens - a glowing coral red
spikes atop a densly branched 'bush'.  I recently can into cuttings
of a yellow form of this easily grown plant, as well as a softer,
paler coral.  I plant to combine them into one area of the Succulent
Garden here on Lake Merritt in Oakland, where I volunteer.
Hopefully they will produce some interesting hybrid seedlings.  I
enjoy the idea of increasing the range of plants easily raised in
our gardens - it can turn the common into something more desirable.

Meanwhile, various projects beckon, and my garden is in great need
of some pruning and weeding.  Enough cyber-gardening for today.  I
hope this recent quietude among our members is because they are out
there enjoying themselves in gardens!

 Sean A. O'Hara                     sean.ohara@ucop.edu
 710 Jean Street                    http://www.dla.ucop.edu/sao
 Oakland, California  94610-1459    h o r t u l u s   a p t u s
 (510) 987-0577                     'a garden suited to its purpose'
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