June 30, 2005
Summer Night
Love can transpose to form and dignity.
Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind;
And therefore is wing'd Cupid painted blind.
Nor hath love's mind of any judgment taste;
Wings and no eyes figure unheedy haste:
And therefore is love said to be a child,
Because in choice he is so oft beguil'd.
- Wm. Shakespeare, Midsummer Night's Dream
Posted by Sue at 06:45 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 29, 2005
One Hit Wonder
Tsuki Yorine Shisha (British transliteration), or
Tsuki-Yori-No-Shisha (American transliteration).
I've been told the name means, "Messenger of the Moon."
Crazy sturdy lanceolated flowers, perfect for the SFV's variable weather.
Information from Dahlia.org:
1996 ADS Classification - 281;
White; Approx. flower size 6-8" (B);
Originated by Kumagai in Japan, introduced in 1953.
I can't find any information on Kumagai, however. Did s/he develop other varieties?
Dahlia sites provide an abundance of info about conformation, horticulture, pest-control ...
but little about the people who love and work with dahlias.
Posted by Sue at 09:59 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 28, 2005
Anemone Dahlia / Dahlia Anemone
Star Surprise.
From the bottom of the sea.
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June 27, 2005
Honest, Officer
Not contraband! Just dahlias in winter storage.
Last year I dug up the dahlia tubers and stored them in plastic bags in the garage.
None resprouted.
I'll be trying the American Dahlia Society's saran wrap method, later this year.
Posted by Sue at 06:56 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Over 50,000 Varieties
A collarette dahlia in my garden ... floppy, fading, and gorgeous.
I actually gave up on this Slug Salad Bar last year.
Dug it up, but must have left a bit of tuber in the ground. It's now a volunteer in the hot peppers section of the garden.
(Actually, all sections of the garden are now the hot pepper section...)
Over 50,000 cultivated dahlia varieties have been introduced since the early 1800's, and this guy wants to name them all.
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June 26, 2005
Damned Dahlias
They're a Sunset Magazine "favorite flower" ... but what a pain in the @#*!! they can be.
Floppy, straggly, a magnet for slugs and earwigs, they quickly tatter and fade in the intense San Fernando Valley sun.
But what a beautiful flower -- such variety!
Every year I pour over the catalogues and dahlia fever sets in. This year I concentrated on semi-cactus forms ... figuring they already look a bit blown, so some blasting around the edges won't be noticed.
Lost the label for this orange mini, so I can't tell you the variety -- but it's good. Short, strong stems, lots of flowers that hold up in the heat.
Keeper.
Posted by Sue at 12:27 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 24, 2005
Almost no bees this year.
The culprit? Probably varroa mites:
The Varroa mite, officially known as the Varroa jacobsoni, is a crab-shaped arachnid the size of a pinhead that attaches itself to a bee and sucks its blood for sustenance.
Eric Mussen, a UC Davis Extension bee expert who provides scientific guidance to California's bee keepers, says the Varroa mite is now resistant to all registered pesticides. And that means big trouble for farmers and their agricultural commodities that depend on honeybees for pollination.
"If for some reasons we were to lose all of our honeybees, California would be out about $4.4 billion worth of crops," Mussen said. Our daily diets would change dramatically, he added, "because about one third of the food we consume every day is the product of honeybee pollination."
The immediate future for bees is bleak. However, scientists are continuing to look for both biological and chemical control agents that will work against the Varroa mite. The challenge for researchers is how to kill one invertebrate -- the mite -- without harming another -- the bee.
I've counted no more than 10 honeybees in all of 2005. I'm contemplating putting mason bee and/or bumble bee hives in my backyard. These native bees are much smaller and much friendlier than the honey bee. Still, my neighbor with the steaming backyard jacuzzi might get even more steamed about a bee metropolis close by...
Posted by Sue at 01:28 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 22, 2005
Tabasco flower
This is the plant of the familiar Tabasco pepper. Currently it's about two feet tall, and a remarkably beautiful plant. The flowers will be turning into peppers soon.
Posted by Bob at 08:39 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 21, 2005
Historical Sunflower
The sunflower (pdf) was domesticated in North America as early as 3600 BC in the Southwest region, and later spread to the rest of the world.:
When Prince Alexander Phillip Maximillian visited the tribes of the Upper Missouri in 1832, he was impressed enough by the Mandan, Arikara, and Hidatsa sunflowers that he took them back to northern Europe, where they were further selected to provide vegetable oil for candles during Lent. Ironically, these selections came back to the northern Plains as “Mammoth Russians” just before World War II, and virtually replaced the Native American sunflowers remaining there. Within three more decades, the same usurpment occurred on all but three of twenty-four Indian reservations in the Southwest where tribes formerly grew their own heirloom varieties.
… After World War II, sunflowers became an important oilseed crop worldwide, but they were grown in monocultures where they became vulnerable to many pests and diseases. In the early 1990s Havasupai Indian Sunflowers were found to be one of the only sources of resistance to rust diseases devastating Australian sunflower crops. This resistance has now been bred into commercial industrial varieties scheduled for release in Australia, but benefit sharing with Havasupai has not been fully realized.
Intellectual property rights: finders keepers, losers weepers. A fine American tradition.
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June 18, 2005
White Sage
I grew this from seed. It's about two months old, a foot tall, and was not plant-napped from the nearby Santa Monica Mountains where it grows native! (It is now virtually endangered because so many people steal the plants and leaves.)
White Sage, used by native Americans in smudging ceremonies, is hard to grow from seed, this is the sole result of about 200 seeds. Soil and heat are a factor, more recent attempts have produced many more seedlings. The weather is warmer and we used seedling potting soil.
Posted by Bob at 12:58 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Earth Box hot peppers
Five species of peppers growing in the ever-handy Earth Box.
To start with the Earth Box, put in dirt and fertilizer, cover it with the plastic, make small slits, and plant the seedlings. Then just water it through the spout daily. Nothing else needs to be done. We're also doing tomatoes and okra in Earth Boxes.
PS I'm only growing 15 species of hot peppers and can stop ANYTIME I want to. Yes, 15... Three types of Habaneros, Wenks Yellow Hots, Isleta, Tabasco, Bulgarian Carrot Pepper, Bolivian Rainbow, Hildalgo, Laungi, African Bird Pepper, and a couple of others!
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June 16, 2005
Sunflower
Over ten feet tall, and it's just started blooming. This species is native American and grows at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. We got the seeds from NativeSeeds
Posted by Melody at 04:40 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Artichoke Flower
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