Winter Dip Into Our Flickr Pool

A quick peek at what's going on these day on our Talking Plants Flickr group. The conversation went like this:

jesse.sexton: Cool shot, is this some variety of post processing or did you use radial blur or even a lens baby? Either way, very pretty.

pathos3: Thanks Jesse. Radial blur, b/w conversion, and sepia toning.

A shot taken at the Cathy Fromme Prairie, Fort Collins, CO. I'm sensing the beauty here in the process, not the plant.

photo credit: pathos3

 

Why not put your body (of work, anyway) in our pool; join the party.

9:30 AM ET | permalink

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Great American Garden Survives Santa Barbara Fires

When the Santa Barbara fire began last week in the community of Montecito, I thought of two people: T.C.Boyle and Ganna Walska.

I haven't contacted the author to see if his Wright-designed home suffered damage-- if it has, the last thing he needs is unsolicited e-mail -- but I do know he's spent the last decade not only churning out literature but pulling out weeds and establishing natives in his meandering woodland garden.

Eight years and a few lifetimes ago, I spent some seriously eye-opening time with Boyle. Step right up for a private radio tour of his place as heard on Morning Edition.

The Montecito garden I was really worried about is nothing less than my favorite private garden in the country, Lotusland, once the home and still the work of the flamboyant Ganna Walska, a woman whose greatest creation was undoubtedly her very self. I'm delighted and relieved to report that Lotusland was untouched by the fire.

This otherwise quirky, fantastical and over the top garden is balanced by a (very) few tame and romantic spaces, including the Japanese Garden (pictured above) and the huge, former swimming pool Madam Walska turned into a lascivious water garden.

photo credit: brewbooks

 

Lotusland doesn't actually get its name from the plant but from an evocative piece of music Madam Walska was particularly fond of written by the English composer, Cyril Scott (WRONG! See correction at end of story). You gotta hear it. Here it is as originally intended for piano (can anyone figure out who's performing?) and again as played by the great Fritz Kreisler who transcribed it for violin and piano. Shoot me but I like it best for solo piano.

A peek at the magical Aloe Garden at Lotusland, a place stuffed not only with eye candy but with a world-famous plant collection of cycads, endangered prehistoric plants.

photo credit: Van Swearingen

 

With all due modesty, I'd be delighted if you'd give a listen to this story about Ganna Walska. Not only was she quite a character, but her dramatic flair and idiosyncratic tastes have resulted in one of the most magical gardens I expect I'll ever know.

CORRECTION! Had I gone back and listened to my own story, rather than conjur it up from memory, I would have heard this:

Lotusland, one women's botanical fantasy, may be the most exotic public garden in the country. There's a chance you might even get to see it, should you make a reservation a year or two in advance. The place will leave you breathless--writhing aloes, ferns like fountains, valleys of prehistoric plants. Lotusland's Virginia Hayes(ph) likes to linger in the garden that gives the place its name.

Thanks to Virginia Hayes for alerting me that the Lotusland community was about to bust a pod and revoke my open invitation to heaven...

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Welcome To Candyland: Portland's Platt Garden

Maples, rhododendron, stewartia and fall crocus; tree bark backlit by warm, benevolent light. When last we visited the Platt Garden, my favorite of the plant meccas in this gardenesque town, even its often modest vine maple was feeling very fall.

Go ahead, pinch yourself. It won't change a thing. Life in this landscape is merrily but a dream.

In this ever-changing corner of the garden, the centerpiece is the four-season Stewartia, a tree with great bark, late spring flowers, and delicious foliage. The purple flowers in the forefront are from the so-called obedient plant Physostegia virginiana a long-blooming East Coast native, and a bit behind and to the right are the naked red legs of a shrubby dogwood.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

Among the genera championed by the late Jane Platt -- a tradition continued by the very present David Platt -- is the misunderstood rhododendron, a plant that is so much more than the average American landscape would lead you to believe. Admittedly, we're able to grow a huge variety of the shrubs in the PNW that might not thrive elsewhere, but my guess is there are still quite a number of the straight species rhodies worth a shot. (Straight species refers to plants as they appear in the wild, before they've been hybridized and "improved".)

What all the Platt gardeners know -- there are three generations plus a Buddha-like one year old -- is that leaves can be just as astonishing as flowers. And while the garden does have ample rhodie flowers each spring, the best rhododendron foliage holds its ornamental own year-round.

These silvery blue leaves are covered in what's known in rhodie language as "indumentum", a soft and thin layer that can be rubbed off (not a suggestion, just a description of its texture). This particular species is R. pachysanthum (I think; I'm awaiting confirmation), a showy sophisticated shrub which has matured to a 3.5' x 3.5' size.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

Many of us gardeners are collectors; I've got a couple of nice species rhodies myself. But the genius of the Platt Garden is the placement of its specimens with an eye towards the combination of texture, color and size.

Sounds like a simple formula but if you're a gardener you know how easy it is to get it not quite right (I don't believe any attempt in your own garden is wrong). If you're like me, you just let the plants do the talking and hope the conversation's interesting but in a garden this large you're talking cacophony if the leafy choir isn't in synch.

In this tapestry, the explosion of stewartia color (there are several in the garden) is now off to the left; the rich purple and plums of a mophead hydrangea dominate the bottom right. This is one small corner of the rock garden (see rock) which is loaded with miniature treasures in spring and lots of year-round evergreen muscle.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

Speaking of tapestries, you don't need a whole lot of material to create one. Not if you know how to play with plants.

Here's the tableau up by the front of the house, featuring a spectacular weeping cedar (Cedrus atlantica 'Glauca Pendula' ) spilling over and around the golden foliage of the royal azalea (in truth a rhododendron), R. schlippenbachii. For scale, see that 6'2" Hunk'O'Man, my irresistible friend Kevin Teller.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine

 

With any luck, we'll hear from one of the Platts shortly, if only to tell me that I've gotten a plant i.d. wrong. Kailla, Buddha-mother? David, slave to Flora? Hope you guys'll stop by!

11:41 AM ET | permalink

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An Autumnal Peek At A Great American Garden

The campaign promises are over; now to deliver the sublime, as we throw open the gates of a private Portland garden on the headiest day of American democracy we are ever likely to know.

Welcome to the Platt Garden, the realized vision of one of the city's late great gardeners, Jane Platt. This three-acre specimen-rich paradise passed from wife to husband (the gentlemanly John Platt is now 96) and then to son. David Platt has been tending the landscape's botanical treasures for almost a decade, often collaborating with his daughter, Kailla Platt. Full disclosure: all three generations of Platts are dear and cherished friends.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

The Platt Garden owes a great deal of its design beauty and plant palette to another of Portland's best places for plant nerds, The Gardens of Elk Rock at Bishop's Close. The plant passions of that garden's founder, Peter Kerr -- who scored plants regularly from the East Coast and England -- have resulted in a number of tree and shrub species that are the oldest of their kind in the PNW. Kerr had two daughters, both of whom gardened. The younger one was named Jane.

Fall-blooming crocus come in dozens of species and rarely do I see them with the same punch and presence as their chubbier spring-blooming cousins. For that reason, I found this small stand in the Platt rock garden a stand-out; I'll have to get back to you whether it's C. medius, C. cartwrightianus or for all I know C. spp. (the last of which translates as 'some species but who the hell knows which one').

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

One more teaser pix before the tour continues tomorrow. It's an image you've likely seen in one form or another before, because when it comes to pure sensuality, few things can beat a stewartia shedding its bark.

Behold the exfoliating surface of Stewartia monadelpha.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine

 

11:14 PM ET | permalink

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The Sun Break Season

Election Day 2008 and the city of Portland feels particularly benevolent today. The sun broke through an hour ago after a long hiatus and is now illuminating the considerable remains of what's been an autumn worthy of the name.

The mood here at my coffee house feels friendlier and more buoyant this morning; here in this bubble, there was never any contest how this town was going to vote. This state, either (as viewed from this bubble, that is). After considerable eavesdropping, I can't say anyone's talking about the election, but I would like to think all my ersatz young office mates are intensely aware of what hangs in the balance.

Anyway, enough stalling. On the outside chance that you've noticed, I've been gone more than a week.

What with my beagle's week-long disappearance, then -- three days later -- the burglary at my house (the dogs and I were sleeping at a friend's) and the unrelated but simultaneous burst of my water heater (a day after I'd moved my entire downtown office into my basement) followed in lock step by the inevitable invasion of my body by a vicious flu that has yet to release me, I've been AWOL from Talking Plants.

But I've a new lease today, in no small way due to this morning's sun break, which shines all that much brighter in a soothing (fine then, gray) climate like ours. And when that light illuminates the leaves of maples, stewartias, euonymous and aronia, you wonder why we're not all walking around dumbstruck by the inherent beauty of this world.

So here's my own campaign promise, before the votes are counted: join me tomorrow for an exclusive tour of one of Portland's finest private gardens and I guarantee -- whatever the outcome of the election! -- an invitation of limitless faith.

Go ahead, you skeptics, Google the Platt Garden! I guarantee you won't find another candidate who's got what I got for you...

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Exclusive Interview With Runaway Beagle

Hi, I'm Brooke Gladstone, host of On The Media. Ketzel has overdosed on so many M&M's during this last week of worry over Starlet, her beagle, that I suggested she pass out for the weekend and let me do the heavy lifting. My involvement's not all that far-fetched since I am a distant relative of said beagle. Ketzel is my second cousin and our grandmothers olev hashalom were sisters.

And while I too like dogs very much, having grown up with a memorable Great Dane named Eurydice, I don't exactly share my cousin's sometimes excessive allegiance if not over identification with animals. I'm hoping this detachment will play in my favor, as I ask a few questions that may help us fathom why Starlet Blue Levine left home.

Poised somewhere between disdain and apathy, Starlet (left) wonders why she and the thing (Zoe Mae, right) are being addressed.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

BG: Hi there Starlet, thanks for getting on the sofa.
SB: Are you here too? Are you eating something?
BG: Actually I wanted to talk to you about your recent disappearance. I understand that you took off Monday evening while Ketzel was out of the house.
SB: Does she have food in her pockets?
BG: In fact she does. Ketzel left and Zoe Mae opened the side door by putting her paws on the handle and jumping. Is that what you remember?
SB: Does she have a bowl outside?
BG: Yes, her bowl is outside. Is that where you were going?
SB: She smells but not much. But there is a smell. I remember now. And the smell gets closer and then it goes in a direction and I go in a direction.
BG: Right. Now from what we've pieced together from eyewitness reports, it seems you were following smells for about two hours before you were picked up. Do you remember where that was?
SB: BIG. SMELL. EVERYWHERE. I eat the smell.
BG: Exactly. You were eating garbage at the KFC on NE. MLK Blvd. Do you recall the people who picked you up and put you in their car?
SB: Are they here too?

Joyce Crabbe and Mike Smith found Starlet at a KFC and brought her to their home. A few days later they took her to the vet's office to be scanned for a microchip, having worried that if they brought her to Animal Control the dog might be confiscated. Turned out Joyce and Mike used the same vet as Ketzel, and so! another victory for the kindness of strangers.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

BG: Do you recall anything about your four-day stay with the people named Joyce and Mike?
SB: Cat. Food. Drawers. Vomit.
BG: That's what they tell us, too, that you had issues with their cat and that you went through every cabinet in their kitchen. My guess is that you found food and ate it but that it didn't agree with you so you threw up. Does that ring a bell?
SB: Are you here? Do you have food in your pockets?
BG: As a matter of fact, I do have a little something, a blue peanut butter M&M I picked up off Ketzel's bedroom floor. But let's focus for a sec on you. Since coming home and hearing about your friends and family's sleepless nights, the hours of searching, the hundreds of lost dog posters and the paid ads in The Oregonian, what do you think you've learned about running away?
SB: (Stretches.)
BG: Starlet?
SB: (Grunts, circles and lands, curled. Looks at interviewer out of one eye.)
BG: Indeed, Starlet. From your mouth to God's ears: There is no place like home.
SB: (Snores).

A final word: It may be that no one understands Starlet better than the cat who watches her every move. So it's not all that surprising that literary agents are all a-twitter about rumors of a manuscript now making the rounds Watch these pages for more news about STUDIES IN ATTACHMENT DISORDER: My Life With A Beagle, by Lulah Levine.

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The Beagle Has Landed

That's the headline, the happy ending details TOMORROW!!

8:45 PM ET | permalink

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Where The Hell Is My Dog? Day 3

The excitement of hammering up posters, buying print ads and filling out online Missing Dog reports is over. I am now in limbo.

My dog Starlet's absence -- in any permanent way -- doesn't seem real enough to consider...yet I'm clueless as to what to do next. I am not proud to say I have temporarily given up on Day 3; I'm just sitting her paralyzed with lethargy hoping to simply konk out from so many sleepless nights.

(Don't worry, the money you've just pledged to your member station isn't going to get wasted on my sad self-indulgence. I'm taking a personal day.)

We're heading towards 72 hours of missing dogness. I don't think I've ever had an animal go missing this long before. And I can assure you that the non-ringing of my phone (and this with my number plastered everywhere) has never, never seemed louder.

Are lost dogs and cats like lost socks? Do they just disappear, never to be found?

5:41 PM ET | permalink

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Starlet Still Missing Day 2

If you read yesterday's blog, you'll know that my 9 yr old beagle Starlet is missing. And if you're among the kind people who wrote w/advice and various OMG's!, I thank you from the heart.

I don't believe she's dead, but I do think she's with someone who might not know about microchips. That would explain why she hasn't shown up on anyone's radar. Actually, she has shown up -- I've gotten a few calls in response to the posters around the 'hood -- but they're all telling me where she was last seen, not where she is.

Starlet and I on one of our botanizing trips; doesn't she look the quintessential devoted animal? NOT!

photo credit: Troy Nave

 

Anyone with a beagle will not be surprised to learn that Starry was last seen by the dumpster of a nearby convenient market. So the good news is that whether she's still free-range or tied up in someone's yard, she's still very likely within a half-mile of home.

Cascade Beagle Rescue is coming over this afternoon to help canvas the neighborhood.

4:19 PM ET | permalink

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Starlet The Beagle Is Missing

Not that I think it will help me find her since none of you reading this blog entry are likely to live in my Killingsworth Ave/North Portland neighborhood, but since I can't think about anything else, I thought you should know that my beagle has been missing for 15 long hours.

This is Starry, aka Starlet, the beagle I rescued two years ago. She's often mistaken for a puppy because she's so slim and jaunty, but in fact she's probably 9 yrs old. I was out for a few hours last night (serves me right, not taking the dogs with me, how could I even think of having a life?) and when I came home, my big dog had managed to open the French door in the dining room (she's learned to jump up and land hard on the long handle) and the little one was nowhere to be seen.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

The worst of it is, she's not wearing her collar. It was in the wash. My one chance of seeing her again is that she's microchipped. Now I have to pray that whoever's found her (and I bet someone has, she's awfully adorable) knows to have her scanned.

Meanwhile, I've done what a good owner's supposed to do: gone to various websites, filled out online forms, called all the local vets, called the microchip company, and put up a few posters along the nearby busy street.

What I hadn't expected was the unsolicited e-mail that's resulted from my online search. I shouldn't be surprised. The "TOP LOST PET TRACKER IN THE US" is now in my inbox, plus a special offer for PREMIUM SERVICE from the otherwise free Petfinder.

Of course if I'd been registered with THE PET RESCUE INTERNATIONAL REGISTRY premium service would be free. But the fact remains ...

WHERE THE HELL IS MY DOG???????

Starlet is definitely the kind of beagle to stop and smell the lilacs...plus anything, everything else.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

I don't suppose you know someone who knows someone who's seen Starlet?

2:57 PM ET | permalink

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