BERKELEY– The Arts Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley presents the first public reading from a new theatrical adaptation of Michael Pollan’s book The Botany of Desire on Friday, April 24 at 5:30pm in Wheeler Auditorium.Feast your eyes here all you Pollan lovers!
Among the happy primulas in their garden is a shimmering blue P.obconica caught right at that delicious twilight hour when it's possible (for me, anway) to get a reasonable facsimile of blue.
Here's the deep purple Croatian primula 'Wanda' that was cavorting in a spring bacchanalia near the foot of an Edgeworthia, my current favorite among late winter/early spring flowering shrubs, Z7.
Here's a double-flowering red Peter picked up at the grocery store (is that right, Peter?). It's known as a hose-in-hose because one flower seems to be inserted right in the throat of the other.
This is Starlet's awfully good imitation of what it feels like after eating too much unleavened bread. I dread to think what would become of her tummy if she did succeed in getting into a box. Something I'd like to do but don't know where to do it since I'm down in Berkeley that whole week. Anyone want to fatten up this stray vegetarian Jew?
Beyond the matzoh horizon, mountains are filling up with wildflowers. Once again, Zoe Mae and I submitted to their siren song. Already, last week's grass widows are fading as the yellow bells reach deafening pitch, enough to wake the genus Erythronium (pictured here) now lifting its shy head.
If you're just hearing about Log House and are curious what this ahead-of-the-pack company's up to, you might consider signing up for its newsletter and check out its list of new introductions.
So back to the headline all you "Citizen-Farmers!" Check out Spin Farming brought to my attention by new blog follower Sarah Spitz from KCRW Santa Monica, a woman who would really rather be gardening. And no, that is not Sarah. That's a spinner.
Finally, the living room coffee table:The Obamas will feed their love of Mexican food with cilantro, tomatilloes and hot peppers. Lettuces will include red romaine, green oak leaf, butterhead, red leaf and galactic. There will be spinach, chard, collards and black kale. For desserts, there will be a patch of berries. And herbs will include some more unusual varieties, like anise hyssop and Thai basil. A White House carpenter who is a beekeeper will tend two hives for honey.
Rather than throw a whole lot of inadequate superlatives at you, I'm going to just stack up some of my best shots (most featuring the blue grass widows Olsynium douglasii) and let you wander through our day on your own. 
Be sure to double click on this last picture to get a really good view.
Thanks to Sondra for her follow-up comment about car tires for the young and trendy. For a mere $200 (act now! discounted by $13!) you too can have car tire planters courtesy of Design Within Reach. 
So guess what I just stumbled into on the Huffington Post? Tire planters for green homes, the latest from Barcelona in European eco-design. 
The sun's AWOL today but it kept the big dog and I company yesterday during our hike along Eagle Creek, forty miles east of Portland in the Columbia Gorge. Very few flowers and that's the way I like it right now, my need to BE THERE and SEE IT HAPPEN so incredibly overwhelming I'd just as soon find nothing in bloom if only to know I haven't missed anything.
The path is narrow and the drop-off steep during the first mile of the hike so looking up is done at one's own peril. Nevertheless, there are places along the path where the view up is the view to beat, as drops of water like chips of diamonds sprinkle down from overhead cliffs, seeping into the emerald wall of an awakening spring.
So who's the shmuck now?
Traveling across this southernmost part of the country involved a grueling three hour road trip during which my my lower vertebrae felt fused with molten lead. If you’ve suffered with back pain yourself you’ve likely discovered the only cure is walking, so after a gently medicated night I set out the next morning to explore the jungle paths surrounding El Remanso, a quiet paradise resort. 
The jungle surrounded us on all sides allowing borrowed views of the Pacific. Visible tree tops swayed with the odd cluster of monkeys; up close you’d likely see bark-toned lizards and bright-beaked birds. The transition from the resort’s manicured green to the jungle’s leafy chaos was immediate as I found myself transported into a leafy netherworld where I felt much as I do when hiking in NW forests: Safe.
What could be more idyllic? Sustaining? Benign? As it turned out, even dinner with Dick Cheney would have been safer than my walk in the woods.
Meanwhile, it ain't no wildflower, but here's the view at hand. I realize animals in the bed are an acquired taste, but I think of Starlet more as a bedwarmer than a dog. In which case, there are none finer. Goodnight, all...
It's at this early time of the year as the low elevation California landscape has begun to wake up that I find myself almost desperate for some floral sign that renewal is on its way. Although there will be far more flowers in late March and April, more diversity and more amazing masses and mixes of colors and scents, it's the first wildflowers each season that mark my personal internal calendar and affect me the most.
First flower scape of Muscari macrocarpum, mid January; note second scape emerging on right.In the garden, it's the same craving that attracts me to the earliest flowering bulbs, shrubs, annuals or perennials. Among my favorite is a lovely bulb from Greece and SW Turkey currently called Muscari macrocapum ‘Golden Fragrance’. I’m not sure if the cultivar name, ‘Golden Fragrance’, is any different than the species; I suspect it's just to give the catalogue descriptions more “sex appeal".
Regardless, when I first saw it about 10 years ago I assumed because it was rare back then that it must be very hard to grow. I was mistaken. I grew it in my Berkeley CA garden, then in our Sebastopol, CA garden,and now in our Calistoga garden, but it is only here that I’ve used it in mass (the price of bulbs came down significantly in recent years).
It's a winter bulb in our climate, starting to show foliage in December and flowering in mid-January, and will continue at least into late March. It loves our summer-dry climate, but also does well in beds with routine water. In fact it has come up in every spot I’ve planted it from sun to light shade (deciduous and evergreen trees), rock, gravel, garden soil, clay.
Here's Muscari macrocarpum in mid-February with second set of flowering scapes. Another sequence will follow into March.Sometimes called the yellow flowered muscari or grape-hyacinth, it's actually a complex color, starting off a dull bluish purple and then quickly changing to a chartreuse-yellow in primary flower. But its biggest plus (I would grow it even if the flowers were 1/10th the size or colored brown) is its intense sweet fragrance.If you want to read Roger's stuff without my interference (sorry about the editing, Roger), ask him to add you to his e-mail list at roger@planethorticulture.com
I’ve planted drifts throughout the garden so wafts of the fragrance fill the winter air on still days and even days of mild breezes. You loose track of the number of times you stop whatever you are doing to say to yourself, “What a lovely fragrance!” You don’t even have to be near the plants, the fragrance just drifts around.
Unlike paper-white Narcissus, it has none of the chemical smell that makes some folks gag. The fragrance is clean and sweet, reminding me of Daphne or hyacinth, potent yet pleasant. And the flowers appear in a sequence over many weeks, so it’s not one of those one-shot wonders like tulips. This four-star marvel's available from almost all the bulb companies.
And so it begins, as it does every spring, at Catherine Creek, WA., a 75 minute drive from Portland (for you, 90) and the best place to watch the wildflowers unfold. It's grass widow time; the sisyrinchium are about 60% in bloom.
I'd like to take you deeper in the details but 'm determined to get to sleep soon so let me leave you with a classic moment of lichen, moss and sweet, clean air from Catherine Creek.
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