Front yard living space

The plants now separate the spaces as intended: New Zealand flax separates the deck living area from the play lawn under a magnolia. The shrubs now have enough mass to separate the deck area from the street. The dymondia has filled in, as has the germander, softening hard edges and binding the landscape together. PlantsContinue reading “Front yard living space”

Red Yucca (Hesperaloe) from seed

The new fancy varieties may not set seed, but if you have the normal, tall apricot-pink type you should start seeing nice black seeds sitting inside recently split brown seed pods. Good news: they’re easy to start. Bad news: they take forever to flower. Growing the seeds Place the seeds in a pot, lightly coverContinue reading “Red Yucca (Hesperaloe) from seed”

Deer Grass: a pollen source for honeybees!

Grasses are supposed to be wind pollinated, so bees should ignore them, right. Actually, no. Our local honeybees have discovered that deer grass produces lots of usable pollen. They come in numbers to gather pollen, storing on their back legs as bright yellow balls. Another funny thing is that deer grass is native, but honeybeesContinue reading “Deer Grass: a pollen source for honeybees!”

Grow your own sculpture!

Learning to sculpt beautiful things from base materials is hard. It takes a long time to learn, you play with sharp tools and can easily hurt yourself. Or worse, you might create something really boring and be stuck with it basically forever (you would never throw out your first sculpture, would you?) Agave salmiana TheseContinue reading “Grow your own sculpture!”

Plant Truth. Find it at the University of California.

How do you know those marvelous promises about a plant are true? That slick-talking bloke had you barking up the wrong tree in the past, so where is the truth? At UC Davis, in the plant testing field! They test selected plants, using high, medium and low water use. The truth is out there, inContinue reading “Plant Truth. Find it at the University of California.”

A modern landscape for a modern house

The house had been remodeled into something wonderful, but the exterior spaces needed some love. They’ll be getting it soon. The main themes are swimming, vegetables and living spaces for people, and habitat for hummingbirds and butterflies for nature. The problems are leaking pipes from an irrigation station and possibly from the water supply toContinue reading “A modern landscape for a modern house”

Possibilities in the Vosges, France

The home gets a bit better every year, as old fixtures give way to modern comforts, like hot water. Outside, the mill pond glistens, the choking vegetation removed, the mill races restored, even though there’s no mill. But… maybe it could be even better… This concept blocks access to the pond from the street, orContinue reading “Possibilities in the Vosges, France”

Annette goes digital

Today, Annette grabbed her iPad and jumped into a design, taking notes, sketching and finally creating a schematic site plan. Mike shot measurements with a laser rangefinder, created a base plan and beamed it to Annette, who then went a bit wild. You might call it a gyre, a circling over of what she learnedContinue reading “Annette goes digital”

Smooth WordPress sailing again!

All is well, after some stormy passages where it looked like this blog was heading for Davey Jones’ locker! This started with a simple message about old, slow PHP. Then I noticed I could use SSL and get rid of the scary browser messages about being a potential threat to humanity. Too bad clicking thatContinue reading “Smooth WordPress sailing again!”