Category : gardens

…is the beautifully warm-colored soft-textured stone that comes up with almost every shovel and trowel on my hill, which I covered my roof with as it was coming up from the ground in my early gardening days here – and these days re-working the land I first worked a decade ago, I’m making new terraced ..

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…is so much greener than just 6 weeks ago, when dry dirt ruled over a newly terraced landscape of meager seedlings – but today the wildflowers have taken recognizable form – like lupine, poppy, and clarkia – the succulents are taking root, and I’m starting to eye the strawberry blossoms and munch on the greens ..

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…(which I have been training around the house for the past 11 years) are a sign that we have entered the back side of winter, the surprising reminder that Southern Californian spring is here, or close, with things in the garden getting greener by the day – like the leafed-out California Oak and the orangey ..

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…are taking their time popping up their heads above the soil on the roof that I carefully prepared for them, after planting a few weeks ago – a combination of the Rainbow and Shady mixtures of native California wildflowers seeds from Theodore Payne, my local non-edible plant mecca….. Rainbow Mix: Clarkia amoena, (Farewell-to-Spring) Clarkia unguiculata, ..

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…here was a crazy out of control mess that I first established when I moved into the house 11 years – featuring a lawn, of all things, plus some experiments that didn’t quite work out (like the thirsty kiwi vines which lasted only a couple of years) that slowly evolved into a messed up combination ..

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…on the Venetian island of San Giorgio Maggiore is where I have come to visit an Italian designer friend (working with Michele de Lucchi on one of his many design projects for the foundation, whom we had the pleasure of sharing a dinner with tonight at a neighborhood trattoria in San Marco), exploring the ex-monastery ..

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