Month: February 2012

Landscape & Gardening

What’s Blooming Now

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Carolina jessamine. The jessamine vines are blooming right on schedule, and if it weren’t for my allergies, I would be able to enjoy their sweet scent. Last winter’s extreme and extended freezes damaged most of that year’s blooms. And then with the past year’s four months of triple digit temperatures, I lost two vines while another two were partially wasted. Considering the setbacks, the survivors are giving quite a show.

Candytuft. This one was just planted this past summer, so I’m not sure if it’s suppose to be blooming now. According to what I read on the internet, this perennial is considered to be a late-spring bloomer, but there are some folks who say theirs bloom before the daffodils. The Candytuft is an extremely hardy evergreen sub-shrub that prefers full sun, but will tolerate some shade as long as it’s planted in well-drained soil. If you’re curious to know what it looks like, click on the link below.

Interior Design

Peekaboo (part 7)

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Four brand new and custom designed dining chairs have arrived. And I can thank Charley McKenney for their beautiful design. I’m still waiting on the table, which will be here sometime the first part of March. Since my dining room—which also serves as a library—is basically square, a round dining table was the best option for the space. With a 48 inch diameter, the number of guests that can be seated comfortably at this table is four, hence the reason for ordering only four chairs. Once the table arrives, I will then determine if I can fit two additional smaller chairs for a total of six guests. All in good time. If your curious to see some leg, click on the link below.

Contemporary Art

Water Tasting, Whale Sightings

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Andrea Goldman at The Reading Room. Madness Q & A: The Watery Part of the World, a video and related work by Andrea Goldman will open at The Reading Room on Saturday, February 11. You’re invited to join us for the reception with the artist from 7 to 9 pm. The exhibition will continue through March 10 and can be seen by appointment.

Goldman creates videos, drawings and songs that enact dialogues between brilliant animals, canonical authors, children’s choirs, ideological bodies and other doppelgangers. Her characters use humor and dialogue to investigate and upset dichotomies. TRR will present a work that engages Melville’s Moby Dick, Foucault’s History of Madness, and a family vacation. Reason, history, philosophy, politics, medicine, and otherness are examined in a playful manner.

Goldman’s work has been shown at the 2011 Texas Biennial, 500X Gallery, Apex Art New York, Performing Arts Chicago, Swarm Gallery Oakland and in collaboration with the performance group Goat Island. She received an MFA from The Art Institute of Chicago and currently lives and works in New York City.

The Reading Room is a project space dedicated to the intersection of visual and text based culture.

Landscape & Gardening

My First Two Winter Bloomers

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(top) Leatherleaf Mahonia (Mahonia bealei); (bottom) Camellia
(top) Leatherleaf Mahonia (Mahonia bealei); (bottom) Camellia

The Leatherleaf Mahonia (Mahonia bealei) started blooming two weeks ago. I like to call this plant the Grape Holly, because beautiful blue-purple-grape-like berries replace the yellow flowers during the spring months. But this is not correct, because there is a Mahonia from Oregon that owns that name. Mine originates from China.

My Camellia shrub’s formal name is unknown to me. I have to be vigilant from December through February and keep it protected from below freezing temperatures, but this winter has been mild so far. This is the first time that the buds are pure white without any burned edges.

Landscape & Gardening

And Here’s the Plant Menu

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Click on the image above to get a much larger version.
Click on the image above to get a much larger version.

The proposed plantings for my front garden. If what they say is true, and La Niña will be with us through May, then now is the perfect time to transform my front garden. This will give the new plants plenty of time to become established before things heat up into the triple digits this summer. All of the plants listed above in the drawing are suppose to do well in shade, be okay with too much water and/or too little water, and endure extreme heat and cold.

I recently learned some heartbreaking news about my existing Miscanthus sinensis ‘Adagio’ . They are the three large white circular masses you see in front of the water feature (actually to the left of the pond in the above drawing). There is a mealybug native to China with no known natural predators that is killing off these ornamental grasses locally. And nothing can be done about it. By pulling the grasses apart and looking down into the crown, we found one nasty critter, which indicates the whole group is probably infected. So my three clumps will gradually decline over the next few years. They have been so glorious for the past ten years. Boohoo.

When the project is close to beginning, I will post a photo of how the garden looks now and over the next few months keep you up to date with the transformation. But first we need to send these construction drawings out to bid.