Plant Kingdom
Despite the revolver, the man got out and tried to push the car. It wasn't until Jeanne fired a shot in the air that he stopped, got out of the car, and put the avocados back into the bin.
“Ice plant doesn’t use too much water if you maintain it right. If you want to pump water to it, you can, but it will build up so thick that the roots aren’t even in the ground.”
“And it’s important that the roses be picked at just the right point. It’s different for each variety, but if you pick them too early, when they’re not opened up enough, they’ll never open.”
During the next several days, the worms ate their way through my radishes, arugula, and beets. They munched happily — I watched them — on my sunflowers and on my moonflower vines. They ate the leaves in a clean, irregular fashion.
The sign on Steve Olson's office door says Olson Avocado Management. The logo on his jacket reads Olson Firewood. When you work in agriculture, you have to stay flexible. "Groves we planted 10, 20 years …
My husband, too, is a temperate, practical man, so the walls of our house are barren, but certain members of the vine family are making their greedy way. We planted two wisteria by the front porch.
Last year I pulled bucketful after bucketful of radishes from the ground. I sat on the patio and scrubbed them clean. I ate a few, but most times I’d forget to bring them inside.
The other trees in the neighborhood are flamboyant this time of year: blood-red pomegranates, nippled lemons, waxy persimmons, navel oranges, all of them still flecked with cinders that floated down in a brush fire.
"Most all Asian cultures eat bamboo shoots, and most all bamboo shoots are edible. The shoots of some varieties contain small quantities of cyanide, but that problem can be gotten around by cooking."
At lunch she is joined by her husband, Louis Welsh, whose parents, Frances and John Lloyd Wright (son of Frank Lloyd Wright), both now deceased, lived next door. Pat and Lou eat in the garden if it’s sunny.
Walter Anderson, Jr., who runs the landmark Anderson Nursery on Pacific Coast Highway, said he remembers a photograph in the San Diego Union, circa 1970, of Teresa standing on Harbor Drive between a bulldozer and a palm.
Sin recalls a disaster that struck San Diego before the war: When the water from Hoover Dam was first used in California, it was too salty and killed all the begonias and acid-loving plants.
Aller traced Kate’s early palms (including those on Horton Plaza, Sixth Avenue, and Orange Avenue in Coronado) to seeds acquired by a nurseryman from a South African conservatory 40 years earlier. That would have dated them to 1892.
Colin Wyatt suggests I talk with his colleague at Petoseed, Paul Thomas. Thomas is best known as breeder of gardeners’ now 30-year-old favorite, Better Boy. He also developed the tomato marketed locally as the San Diego Hybrid.
Years of drought and neglect led to a stunting of the tree’s growth as the thirsty roots searched beneath the asphalt parking lot for water. Vandals have defaced its intricate trunk with carved initials.