I found this going through old pictures, and I’m pretty sure I need it. I have no idea what it is, which is going to make it harder to find. Hopefully someone will recognize it, and I’ll be on my way to ordering it, if I can’t find it around here. As long as it’s an unknown, and a girl can dream, I’m hoping the plant tag says something like:

Tough, drought tolerant evergreen spreading perennial for shade to part shade with inconspicuous white flowers in summer.

Anyone?

I have a gardening tradition. Each year, I wish so bad I could grow both the chartreuse leaved and black leaved ornamental sweet potato vines, in both the heart shaped leaf and the more palmate shaped leaf. In my mind’s eye, they are full and plentiful and spilling over the sides of all the beds, and my garden will look all finished, with no bare ground to be found. Then I buy 6 or so, plant them around here and there, and wait. And then, nothing. They are small and fade to weak colors and don’t do anything to make the garden look pulled together. So this year, I didn’t fall for them and their shiny fresh nursery leaves. Except one time, where I felt obligated to buy something somewhere on a nursery trip, so I got one. ONE! You don’t buy one of anything. Especially not an annual ground cover/filler plant. It was too late in the year to plant things, it was hot and dry, and I just plunked it in without a lot of thought and ignored it. And what does it do? Thrives. Sure, it has a couple slug holes, but it’s big and full and looks all happy, like it’s saying “What? I do this all the time.” I’m not saying I don’t want it doing well, but now I’m stuck looking at all the other places I could have planted more, where it would have tied together all the different areas by repeating a common element.

Blame my past failures on my impatience. Again. I’m so excited to get going early in the year, I buy the stuff the second it hits nursery shelves, and then I run home and plant that day, because it’s that, or let it sit on the back steps where it either gets stolen or eventually dies. I haven’t taken to heart the advice of a friend who grows a lot of annual flowers, because my flower snobbery had me thinking I knew better, but I think she was right. When planting warm weather performers, it’s better to let the soil warm up and the spring rain and cold nights pass before you put them in the ground. My load of alocasias planted early this year that never really showed up with their spectacularly large leaves underscored the lesson (If you look closely, you can see a wimpy alocasia planted behind the sweet potato vine above). Now, if only I can remember that and be patient next year.

I failed once again to stick to my pledge to wait until fall to start buying more plants. And my pledge not to buy something if I don’t have a place to put it yet. And my pledge to use the summer to plan and reflect. To be fair, it’s been looking fall like out, we’ve had rain, and the forecast shows us barely getting out of the 70s, so fall is right around the corner, right? Maybe?

I had no plans to buy anything this weekend, but yesterday, there was a little party out at a co-worker’s place in the country, where we rode horses, sat around the swimming pool drinking mimosas, and she sent us out into her huge dahlia garden with scissors and a vase to take home a bouquet of whatever we wanted. I came away with a monochromatic handful of huge white to peachy white flowers with amazing texture.

Leaving the party, out in an area I don’t really frequent, there was a sign pointing left to Portland, and a handmade sign pointing right to a “nursery liquidation sale - 2 miles.” I resisted for a good 30 seconds waiting for traffic, but at the last second, when I got up to the stop sign, I headed toward the nursery instead of home. Just to look. It’s research. I have to know these things.

So, River Rock Nursery in Clackamas, Oregon, is small place with an overwhelming array of plants packed into the lot surrounding what appears to be the house of the couple that owns the nursery, if I were to guess. Small trees, many maples, some conifers, a small but nice selection of cactus and agaves, blueberries, a few pots, all kinds of stuff in a small but wild maze of sale tables and greenhouses.

While the sale areas are bursting at the seams, the display garden is actually quite tidy and nicely pulled together, with a good representation of evergreens and plants with winter interest.

I was restrained. For instance, I did not buy one of their franklinia saplings, even though Franklinias are trees that make my heart race, with their leathery looking leaves turning brilliant fiery red in the fall, sometimes while the white flowers are blooming. The Franklinias were only $15, and I’ve dropped $70 for the same size in the past, but I’ve also already killed my previous two Franklinias, so I’m thinking it might not be meant to be.

I have been eyeballing some large Japanese Umbrella Pines (sciadopitys) at Portland Nursery for a long time now. They’re evergreen conifers that stay fairly small (20-30 feet tall, 10 to 12 feet wide), can take part shade, and have these smooth soft needles I like to run my hands through. I really wanted the 5 footers, but they were several hundred dollars, so I decided I could be patient when I found a smaller version for $65.

I also couldn’t resist the sale tables. There were entire tables of $1 plants, but I got this little yucca for $3.50, because I can’t resist a plant that threatens puncture wounds when you try to plant it. It was a bargain, except that I’m definitely going to need to drop a couple grand on a greenhouse to overwinter it and my other non-hardy acquisitions I accidentally came home with this year.

Oh, I love the bamboo. It’s my favoritest. I love it so much I did my least favoritest thing, digging with a pickaxe, even though I can totally envision walking into the emergency room somehow having simultaneously gotten the thing stuck into my back and my foot. That scenario never came to fruition, but I did end up with several trips to the chiropractor as a result. The pickaxe was for digging the gi-normous holes, for the eventual size of the clump I wanted, which was smaller than I actually wanted, because I got tired of digging. I then filled said hole with this ugly stiff black bamboo barrier to keep bamboo from making it’s famous escape into the wild and taking over the neighborhood. The barrier sticks up a few inches out of the ground to keep the pesky runners from sneaking right over the top unnoticed. I did two of these monstrous things, one in the front yard and one in back, and I have the beautiful clumps of bamboo to show for it.

Three years after planting, both clumps of bamboo have put out shoots OUTSIDE of the barrier. Which is just plain rude. All the barrier digging was for nothing, except that I’m stuck with it, unless I want to dig it all up all over again. And this year? I didn’t have very many new shoots, and some of them were screwy. They came up about 2 feet, and different colors and shapes than the rest, and the tips died.

I happened upon this sad tale on Wikipedia the other day:

“The second way to control growth is by surrounding the plant or grove with a physical barrier. This method is very detrimental to ornamental bamboo as the bamboo within quickly becomes rootbound–showing all the signs of any unhappy, containerized plant. Symptoms include rhizomes escaping over the top, down underneath, and bursting the barrier. The bamboo within generally deteriorates in quality as fewer and fewer culms grow each year, culms live shorter periods, new culm diameter decreases, fewer leaves grow on the culms, and leaves turn yellow as the unnaturally contained rootmass quickly depletes the soil of nutrients, and curling leaves as the condensed roots cannot collect the water they need to sustain the foliage.”

The right way to plant and control bamboo is apparently to simply circle the clump with a spade thee times a year to cut off any runners escaping past the point where you want them.

Well crap. Next time I guess.

My friend, who prefers I change his name, to protect his identity, um, Ick, is trying SO HARD to make me host poker night with the guys at my house this Friday, and it’s just not going to happen (sorry Ick!). I’ve been on vacation, so I’m behind on the chores at home and don’t want people to see the place like this, and the cats did Bad Things to the couch while I was gone, and it is currently in the back yard, drying out from a good hose bath, and Justin has plans and doesn’t want a house full of drunk boys here ever while he’s not home, and my dogs are aggressive and will most likely eat someone, etc, etc. The emails have gone something like this:

I: How about drinks at Megan’s?

M: No good this week, let’s meet at a bar.

I: So we’ll all meet at your place on Friday then?

M: No, I have all the reasons…

I: The bar sucks! I’ll buy drinks at a bar Thursday if we can go to your house Friday.

I: Megan, don’t be f*ing lame and say no to hosting. I’ll get drinks but f*ing agree to host on Friday

I: I’m going to be really mad if you [back] out of hosting Friday. [Forget] you!

The other guys: *strangely silent - help me out here!*

I: Nevermind, I’ll still buy drinks on Thursday.

I can say for certain he’s going to be disappointed, although hopefully in the sober morning light, he doesn’t take it too hard, because my house is in no condition, and all the stuff from before. So far, this has very little to do with the picture of the moss garden above, but just watch, it does. Sort of. Ick is always asking what his parents can do about their lawn, which refuses to grow well because it’s shady and moist and it keeps dying. Why anyone would want lawn when they have the perfect conditions for a moss garden is completely beyond me. You don’t have to mow the moss, you just keep it swept off, and it’s something like a million-hundred-big-numbers times prettier. Will this excellent advice appease the friend and make up for the lack of a home poker game? Probably not, but it’s still damn good advice, and it goes for everyone with the same lawn dilemma. Oh, and also for the people who power wash the moss off of everything. If you’re lucky enough to have it, don’t waste your time trying to get rid of it and replace it with something else that won’t be happy anyway. Look at how beautiful it is!

I figured I’d come away from my trip to a different garden zone wanting some plant I really shouldn’t have here, and I think I did. I didn’t feel like any of my pictures did them justice, I didn’t really get the feathery texture and the black flowers the way they looked in person, but they were gorgeous.

I’ve never seen any of the rhodacomas around here before, but I’ve been looking them up, and I can’t believe they’re not more widely used, even if they’re not all proven to be reliably hardy in our zone. They have the effect of being a cross between bamboo and a big feathery grass. There are different varieties, some small, and some 3 meters tall and wide. I want the drama of one of the bigger plants, if I could just find a suitable sunny spot for one. In the San Francisco Botanical Garden, there was a whole bed of fine textured rhodacomas, all about one meter tall and wide. I think these would be just stunning anchoring the back corner of my garden that is currently bare, where they would catch the light at sunset. It would be worth the extra effort to build a little greenhouse around them in the winter to protect them from the coldest nights.

One thing I love about gardening is walking through it daily looking for little surprises. The changes are especially evident after a week away. I left town in mid summer, and returned to signs of fall setting in. It may still be mid-August, but the remaining summer days are numbered, and I say good riddance.

My peony from the Berry Botanic Garden’s sale, with unusual rounded leaves and single flowers which were supposed to be white, but turned out striped bright pink, has put out this jewel of a seed pod.

Back in what’s left of the wild weed patch in the back of the garden, this mystery seed pod has appeared.

My Rosa Glauca ‘rubrifolia’ is the first one in the garden to start changing colors for fall. The leaves are yellowing and the hips have turned from burgandy to an orangey red.

I wasn’t sure my toad lilies were going to do anything this year, but now there are buds that look like they’re about to bloom, so I’ll have some odd little spotted fall flowers.

In the Golden Gate Park Conservatory of Plants, the highlight for me was seeing what I think is Tacca chantireri, the bat plant, which I’ve never seen in person before. I would be a bigger fan of flowers if more of them looked like this. It’s a good true black, not just a dark purple like most flowers that claim to be black, with brown undertones, and long whiskers.

My other favorite was the impressive carnivorous plant collection, with the oddball spotted pitcher flowers.

If I could take something home with me from this trip, it would be the store X-21, my fantasy glam/macabre home store. At least they list their inventory on their site, which will do in a pinch, but this is for sure going on my must see list whenever I come back here.

Pteronadon skeleton

Animal head light fixture

One of many stripped and polished industrial metal storage units

The mechanical bull I didn’t know I needed until yesterday

I have until dinner time tonight to wander the streets of San Francisco, and by midnight we should be home. As much as I like vacation, I get homesick when I leave the house for work, but it kills me when I don’t begin and end my days with my guys. Looking forward to getting back home.

Lonely looking koi in the pond in the Japanese Tea Garden: 2

Hummingbirds: like, 10? Did you know they eat acanthus nectar? I didn’t.

Turtles sunning themselves on rocks: 5. Turtle swimming in the pond: 1.

Mama quail with one of those curly things on her head, just like the cartoons: 1. Baby quail chicks (not pictured, they are hard to get out of the bushes): at least one

Gunneras taller than tourists in hats: a whole bunch.

Agaves in bloom with a 20 foot flower: 1

Moss covered rocks: not enough

Dead trees left standing but still look good: 1

Thank you to everyone who gave me ideas of what to do with myself here in San Francisco. I’m heading out to check out your suggestions today.