When The Going Gets Tough, Botanize!

A lot of the people in my life had very unusual holidays. Certainly the economy had something to do with it, as did the weather, and a sad variety of different illnesses.

Mine have been a bit "off" as well, but nothing that a little botanizing won't cure. So I'm headed to the Osa Peninsula in Costa Rica to lose myself (one hopes not literally) in the wilds of Corcovado National Park. I've never been that far south in the country but I've now reserved a hammock with my name on it.

And now for something completely different...

No need to alert the DEA, this is a field of wild poppies rioting in Turkey. The photographer who recently stood among them, Behzad Rahmati, would like to extend an invitation for people to come see the wildflowers in his country, too: Iran.

photo credit: Behzad Rahmati

 

For years now, I've had a hankering to botanize in Turkey and see the ancestral home of tulips, crocus, iris and who knows how many other genera that evolved in that part of the world. Lo and behold, this looks like the year I'm going to get there.

It's all due to a woman named Holly Chase, an NPR listener who heard I was laid off and immediately deluged me with ideas for recreating myself.

And while I can't say I'm ready for a major overhaul, one of Holly's ideas is now a reality. Turns out she's been organizing tours to Turkey for several decades, and guess who'll be leading the next botanical one in April?

It's twue! It's twue! WANNA GO?

2:48 AM ET | 12-29-2008 | permalink

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Camellias At Dusk In A Chinese Garden

If it isn't already on your radar for the trip you will inevitably take to my fair city, Portland, OR. (enough about theirs), do not choose between this and fill-in-the-blank: Powell's, Multnomah Falls, Forest Park, your sister-in-law's. The name of the game here in any weather is the Classical Chinese Garden.

The light was fading, the rain was falling and the leaves played like fish beneath one of the many pavillions that provide respite in the garden. Not a great many maples were still holding their leaves on this 1st day of December, but this little poser kindly obliged. Need sound? Give a listen to this story.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

I am no indiscriminate city booster. And never mind that my voice is on the audio tour (snore). I have watched this garden grow and mature since its opening in 2000 and I now consider a good many of its plants my personal friends. As such, I can think of no other garden open to the public where it's absolutely always a good time to visit (OK, so skip it when it's crowded). Of course there are richer moments than others -- particularly when fragrances float on the air -- but the garden is simply too complex to reveal itself in any single day.

The last fruit on a persimmon tree as shown off by a shower of weeping willow and the peaked roofs that take wing throughout the garden. I like to think of them as directionals to more celestial planes.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

I fear you're going to want to know the name of the persimmon tree above. The number of Diospyros species is frightening so as of this writing I can't say for sure, except that because it's in the Chinese garden, it ain't going to be one of our native trees.

It was probably 4:15pm when I stopped by to grab a few pictures, almost too late for natural light but high time for a tripod. Alas, none to be had. This low-growing camellia's blossoms were spread out in such a way that its flowers seemed to float along the ground.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

9:51 AM ET | 12- 2-2008 | permalink

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What Happened to November?

I know it's amusing when death takes a holiday (see: movies, books, musicals, The Sopranos, etc), but infinitely less popular when a blogger does the same. And I didn't even go anywhere, at least not physically, though I do remember enjoying myself with Florence Of Arabia. And unless it was a nightmare, I'm pretty certain I was burgled; certainly, all my jewelry's gone.

As for the garden, it too seemed to have missed November having opted to stay October an extra couple of weeks. That's over now. The gold, pink, orange and red that's been flying like confetti now looks as celebratory as moldy cardboard -- though the bite-size birch leaves do seem scattered like golden coins.

Hang on, something's just come back to me: a trip to the Chinese Garden here in Portland with my mom. Alas, though, I was without my camera, so I didn't think you'd want to hear about the sweet scent of small-flowered osmanthus or the delicate petals of fall-blooming camellia without
being able to see for yourself.

Forgive me if I was wrong and allow me to make amends. If there's still any light left after work today, I'll revisit the delicate camellia and ask her to pose...

2:32 PM ET | 12- 1-2008 | permalink

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Acres Of Sunshine

A ray of light and enlightenment from Flora: Four years ago, looking for a less costly product alternative to the soybean/corn grind, Dave Burt decided to try his luck with sunflowers, plants far better suited to his lean, mean soil.

Today, bird seed is his most lucrative crop.

Though demand and storage issues prevent him from expanding his sunflower operation, the man's poised to make some radical changes. That's a whole 'nother story but I daresay a remarkable one that fills this reporter with grade A sunshine.

To be continued...

Greetings from Flora, Illinois!

photo credit: Dave Burt

 

9:43 AM ET | 09-26-2008 | permalink

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Cat, Roof, Neighbor, Ladder, Labor Day

It's 5:30 am Labor Day morning and I hear Lulah crying. Which is odd, because I let her out at 4:30am and left the door open for her return. The crying continues so I get out of bed and check all exits/entrances. No Lulah, more crying. It takes me a few minutes, but finally I find her.

Lulah against a morning sky with the delicate silhouette of Sophora microphylla, but we're not talking plants this morning, we're talking Lulah's inexplicable trip to the roof in what is the first time in our four years together.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

Now it's 6:00 am and I take out my only ladder. It's completely inadequate, i.e., total crap. I briefly consider getting out on the ledge below the roof to keep Lulah company, but having recently fallen down my own back stairs only to land on the basement concrete floor, I reluctantly forgo the risk.

I decide to e-mail my neighbor Paul, an early-waking walker who, like me, is often online. Never have I been more grateful for the invention of the Blackberry. Paul gets my message and goes into action.

Paul Anthony, generous neighbor and dependable early riser; elapsed time between distress call and response, 10 minutes.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

Lulah, bless her, stays put while we prepare for her rescue. For a moment I think she looks amused, but she's not that cerebral. Certainly she's stopped mewing and is no longer pacing in distress.

And so I ascend to her rescue on this well-named labor day. No doubt you'd like to see a better picture of our happy protagonists, but one of them had seriously bad bedhead.

photo credit: Paul Anthony

 

9:28 AM ET | 09- 1-2008 | permalink

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Miserable Gardener Needs Company

Loving your garden as I am? Then spare a generous thought for our fellow gardeners in Hades.

Came across this post from Zanthan Gardens in Austin and loved both the shout-out for sympathy and the outpouring of kvetching from fellow heat-stroked gardeners.

Also couldn't resist observation that some local gardeners were "eschewing plants altogether." I do love that word.

Here's a heart-breaking teaser from M Sinclair Stevens' post:

This summer just tied the third-place record set in 2000 for the most 100 degree days...

I'm not looking for encouragement or sympathy. I don't need uplifting speeches from people who live in more temperate summer climes...Nor am I looking for strategies to garden in this heat. There are many gardeners in Austin who are more successful than I am. Good for you...

If, on the other hand, you want to tell me how miserable you are, please join in. Misery does love company. I took a little walk around my neighborhood to see how other people were coping, or not. And it cheered me up.

Pathetic pix then follow.

Meanwhile, here in temperate heaven, I'm still buying and planting and mulching and watering. But I'm off to Seattle tomorrow to see an old friend and his garden and you better believe you are going to want to check back Monday and get the inside scoop on that...

1:39 AM ET | 08- 8-2008 | permalink

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TP Fall Photo of the Year

The dogs and I have survived another 4th with the help of Benadryl (for them) and two loud movies (for we three). Managed to get a hike in and saw our lovely native lily, Lilium columbianum. Always leaves me a bit wistful.

D'you garden? High time we started swapping notes about the living, the slugged and the dead.

But when last we met, I was in the midst of celebrating Talking Plant's first anniversary with an array of particularly fabulous photos that premiered on the TP Flickr site. And yes, I now realize I was largely celebrating alone.

Yet in the hopes you're still stopping by as things far more pressing compete for your attention, I thought you'd enjoy a memorable blast of vivacity from last fall.

Titled "Setting Them Free," the shot of this milkweed spilling all was captured by TP Flickr member Camera Slayer. As it turns out -- and I didn't know this until recently -- said Slayer is actually our own Harold Neal, who works as a web application developer for NPR. I asked him what camera he used for his wonderful shot; his answer, "a very thin Casio EX-V8 that I keep in my pocket for those 'unexpected' shots when I didn't bring my bigger cameras." Check out what he can do with his entire array.

photo credit: Camera Slayer

 

2:35 PM ET | 06-30-2008 | permalink

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Summer Eye Candy on our Anniversary

In August 2007, a gender-unknown person by the name of Cy Savino uploaded a stunning close-up of a bee in multi-hued buds. Almost a year later, I now know her real name.

Cynthia Savino spends her summers as a dance instructor at the Albuquerque Academy. She's also a fencing enthusiast talented enough to coach. And she belongs to a number of Flickr groups aside from Ketzel's, including Secret Life of Plants and The Flower Show.

The girl's got an eye for plants and invertebrates, for sure. Congrats, Cynthia, on being named TP Summer Eye Candy of the Year!

If you'd like to know more about Cynthia's macro photography, stop by her Flickr page and drop her a friendly, "Ketzel sent me" line.

photo credit: cy_savino

 

A bug in a bud has got to be worth at least two in a blog -- which brings to mind one of the best-loved creature pix of Talking Plants' first year. It dates from September 2007 and was credited to Judie Dunn (alas, we haven't had any submissions from her in a while). The title of that day's blog was Beautyberry and the Beast.

The identity of the spider caused quite a stir when the post went up. The last word went to Bill Barber, a spider expert and TP friend: "I think I can agree with Phidippus spp., but I thought (from the B.J. Kaston book) it's the male (not female) of the genus that have the vertical 'eyebrow tufts.' From this photo it's hard to tell if the chelicerae are iridescent, which would further suggest male." We are so beyond hip ...

photo credit: Judie Dunn

 

We've had so many wonderful summer pix in the last year, to pick one is certainly not to diss another. We've featured a few of them on the NPR homepage billboard just in the last week, but you never did get to see the one below in its entirety.

I was pretty sucker-punched by this white peony and its pink belly button until I saw the photographer's name. Ah yes, Aleth11, I should have known. She's one of the most frequent contributors to the Talking Plants Flickr Group and her stuff just gets better and better. I couldn't help but notice that her grandma BJ was one mean photographer, too.

photo credit: aleth11

 

There's still a little time left for you to nominate your favorite of our first year's TP Flickr Pix. But if you're not up to the challenge, come back tomorrow for more of the best of the best ...

2:33 PM ET | 06-30-2008 | permalink

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If You Lived Here...

...you'd understand why my garden is minus a gardener. It's not that I've crossed over to the dark side so much as I've become a zealous devotee of the wild side.

Every spring, sometimes as early as March, anyone listening can hear the call of the flora as it breaks bud along the Columbia Gorge. After twelve years living in the NW, that call's become deafening.

According to the field book I'm packing these days, Wildflowers of the Pacific Northwest, we've got FORTY-ONE distinct species and varieties of penstemon, and that's not counting the scads of varieties sold and grown in NW gardens. (Portland area's Joy Creek Nursery offers almost fifty). So forgive me if I don't stick my neck out and i.d. this one, which is out by the gazillions amidst the balsamroot in the upper meadows of the Tom McCall Preserve.

Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

It didn't used to be this way. Time was, nothing could get me out of the garden come spring, particularly when I was gardening in D.C. where the race was on to finish everything before the weather turned like a rabid dog.

But as gentle NW rains continue to fall on my garden, lulling me into a false sense of of calm re: planting and mulching for the summer to come, I am nobody's gardener. Instead, I am a grateful witness to a miraculous if fragile world.

Here's an overview of that balsamroot -- rioting here with lupine -- on the relatively steep hike to the top of the Preserve. We've got eight species in the NW; this one's Balsamorhiza deltoidea

Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

Of course not all the flowers in the Columbia Gorge are so bold and gregarious. Because of the continued wet and cold, a number of species remain reluctant to bear their souls.

A bashful monkshood (it is, isn't it? I thought delphinium, but it's too robust), one of hundreds now shuddering at the top of Multnomah Falls, waiting for the right moment to unfold. Now that I think about it, I'm not entirely sure this is the native monkshood. Damn! Guess I'll have to climb back up after work today, just to be sure.

Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

4:00 PM ET | 05-28-2008 | permalink

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Too Hot to Hike

A heatwave descended on the Pacific Northwest this past wkend and it has not been kind to people, pets and plants. Fortunately, a friend and I got out to sunny Catherine Creek on the Washington side of the Columbia Gorge before the wildflowers fried and the heat nailed us to the wall.

I often blog about botanizing in the Columbia Gorge but I'm not sure I ever showed you an overview of the place. Looking west along the Columbia River from the Washington side, sitting daintily amidst blue lupine, meet my piano teacher/plant buddy Megan Hughes.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

Although the weather's been a crap shoot here and everywhere these last eight weeks, it's been very kind to native plants. I've been lucky enough to follow the entire wildflower progression in both the pouring rain and the odd moment of shine. The shine, of course, is hell for photographs (most of you are way ahead of me, based on your Flickr pix), but I now have a camera that can take it...as soon as I figure out how to point it.

One of the last gasps of tall, starry camassia in this wildflower reserve: a wet shaded depression with filtered light and your basic, moss-crusted, picturesque stump. You know the moment, just your basic reason to live.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

This documents my last '08 trip to Catherine's Creek. It's time to move back into the forest and get ready for the next wave of bloom. On lower elevations we'll soon be seeing Lilium columbianum, our wild orange lily. On higher elevations I'll get to relive what I've already seen.

But I count on Catherine Creek for two serious sun-lovers: purple penstemon on west-facing cliffs, and bitterroot, which turns hot rock into moonscapes of bloom.

Bitterroot was collected by Meriwether Lewis (get it, Lewisia?), who shipped home dried roots of the plant. This sweet thing's ability to come back from what appears to be a dessicated death explains its second name, R. rediviva, (Latin, revived), though feel free to argue it was also named in honor of the the Columbia Rediviva.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

I wish I could put into words for those of you who don't or can't hike in wild places what it means to revisit the same wild populations year after year. Even the Obama campaign can't deliver this kind of hope.

1:58 AM ET | 05-19-2008 | permalink

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Not Too Late for the Poppy Reserve

Just a quick note, a gorgeous pix, and a big thanks to TP member Hugh3of5.

If you're anywhere in the southern CA area and you've never been to Antelope Valley, the time is NOW. Admittedly, I've just read that the poppies have peaked, but there's still plenty to see.

Kent writes: These were all taken just outside the Antelope Valley Poppy Reserve in the high desert in the northern edge of Los Angeles County. Make a note for next year, as this shot was taken two weeks ago.

photo credit: Kent Roberts

 

Another no-brainer for you So CAL flower power types...here's a number for your cell phone: (818) 768-3533. It's the Wildflower Hotline sponsored by the Theodore Payne Foundation. Let me know if you get somewhere gorgeous and whether I should knock myself out to go, too. I could make it next wkend if you say it's a must.

2:40 PM ET | 05- 2-2008 | permalink

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I Sing the Wildflower Blue

The aqua-tinged, smoky-blue bud tip of native camassia.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

Never mind the body electric, mine doesn't seem to much sizzle and sing anymore, but it's no small compensation to have the time, patience and appetite for hanging out with wildflowers which, this very week along the Columbia Gorge, have burst into audacious blues. We're talking a color wave of genera that includes nothing less than lupine (a dozen different species!), forget-me-not, larkspur (a half dozen!) and pools of multi-hued camassia which I most enjoy in bud.

Doing its very best to impersonate a delphinium, behold the Northwest native Camassia. We gotta million of them. Question: is this simply C. quamash or subsp. breviflora? The pictures/descriptions in my wildflower guide don't quite settle the dispute.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

Camas is the Pacific Northwest for many people, certainly for my neighbor's mother who saw fields of them when she arrived in Oregon (a young woman traveling alone from Arkansas) and decided this was where she belonged. And camas has kept untold thousands of indigenous people alive over the millennia, even the not-so-indigenous as described in this excerpt from the Encyclopedia of Northwest Native Plants for Gardens and Landscapes:

On their trek to the west coast, Lewis and Clark saw vast meadows filled with the blue flowers of camas, noting that they looked like lakes in the distance. The hospitable indigenous people rescued the expedition from starvation offering them, among other foods, baked camas bulbs...Humans cannot easily digest raw camas blubs, so they were always cooked first...No matter how they were prepared, poor Meriwether Lewis found the bulbs indigestible, but they helped keep the Corps of Discovery alive...

...unlike the meadow death camas, Zigadenus venenosus, which is also blooming this week. One of my field guides, Wildflowers of the Pacific Northwest notes that much to their later upset, members of the L&C expedition ate this bulb as well.

So, I showed you, now you show me. Natives in the woods, on the roads, by the stream? Post those pix at the Talking Plant Flickr Group and I'll share the best on the blog. If you're not flickr friendly yet, here's how.

1:04 PM ET | 04-15-2008 | permalink

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Landscape Under Glass Glows

Some breaking news from that blogger's best friend, NPR's Andy Carvin...

Conde Nast has just published its list of the seven wonders of the architectural world, and the Kogod Courtyard at the National Portrait Gallery is on it.

If you were around in February, you might have taken refuge with me there, DC's most-see glassed-in garden.

12:30 PM ET | 03-26-2008 | permalink

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Hummer of a Baby!

Just spotted the baby that hatched a few wks ago outside my living room window. Actually I can't see much but a fast-beating fuzzy lump, and a picture is impossible without pruning the obscuring foliage. So forget that...

Mother hummer has been increasingly absent; I now suspect she's on a shrub or tree nearby keeping watch. She was quite dutiful the other day during a particularly wet downpour; I'm happy to report that today's looking sunny (if chilly), altogether a good day to be a newborn in a snug nest.

Mama Hummer was valiantly unmoved during a horrific downpour the other day. I took this wing-wet pix with my friend Mar's lovely camera but alas, she's taken it back.

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

11:56 AM ET | 03-24-2008 | permalink

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F-E-C-U-N-D!

I admit the word doesn't have quite the energy of R-E-S-P-E-C-T — a la Aretha — but I could spell it out and shout it out all the same. After a month in D.C. (and I loved every minute of it), I am back in the Pacific Northwest. This place is moist, lush, dense with smells and is excessively, embarrassingly, unrelentingly fecund!

Having spent a good deal of time in Dumbarton Oaks, I was doggone delirious to walk my own Penninsula Park and discover so many of the same fundamental design strengths: exquisite proportions, elegant paving patterns, bold lines (primarily boxwood), and a strong sense of identity.

On top of that, all the beautifully pruned specimens in the sunken rose garden were breaking bud (leaf bud, that is), and the huge formal fountain was throwing off fireworks of water and light.

Yes, and the sky was dark blue (the cusp of evening), the old-fashioned street lamps were aglow, and the air was swooning with the fragrance daphne. Shrubs of the stuff are tucked throughout the park and as with all daphne, I could smell them without knowing where they were.

Plus, not a soul was in the park but me and the beasts. I still have to pinch myself that I live a few blocks away.

HOWEVER ... as I write from the isolation of an office where my only colleagues are canine, I am now keenly aware of the trade-off ...

AND SO ... given that the great joy of living here is the green of this Northwest world, I am recommitting myself to my long-neglected garden (I had back surgery a year ago and just never made it back into swing).

INTRODUCING: The Great Garden Makeover. Photos, interviews, step-by-step instructions, all here in the weeks to come on TALKING PLANTS! I'm collaborating with a few people and my first meeting is tomorrow, so I'll post notes shortly after.

11:22 AM ET | 03- 3-2008 | permalink

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Talking Forest

So let's talk about the forest.

Forgive my earnesty, but I'm increasingly aware that outside of my loved ones, there's nothing more important to me than the forest. Admittedly, not a particularly striking revelation coming from someone who loves plants. But I wasn't like this till I moved to Oregon, and now wherever I travel, I seek out the region's deepest woods.

The forest works for me because I need the relative silence of the woods to shut me up, shut me down, help me connect to what I think matters (that is, the forest itself). That's why I prefer hiking alone unless I'm with an equally willing silent partner (the dogs do nicely). I need the girth of trunks and the filtered atmosphere to see exactly what's in front of me -- which then makes it possible to tune everything else out.

What wild places keeps you sustained, sane, balanced? And what are you doing to help protect them?

This is a genuine question; no imperious tone here. I'm just curious what organizations you support, how you support them (money counts, most assuredly), plus what recommendations you have for others who want to give back to the plants, trees, forests -- but don't know where to start.

Boy I'm boring when I'm earnest...

7:32 PM ET | 10-29-2007 | permalink

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When It's Time to Talk to Plants

You know you've lost it after traveling all day and finally landing at a spectacular B&B, and instead of kicking back and breathing in the view, you spend three hours on the phone with Tech Support trying to get your laptop online.

Yes, I really lost it and alas, not for the first time. It tends to happen when I'm on assignment, running around collecting tape. (Make that "tape"; my hands haven't touched the real stuff in a long, long time).

But I am not a complete idiot. I do have a better self. And she's the one who yanks my head out of my hard drive and says, NATURE, GIRL. GET THEE TO NATURE.

So after I said goodbye to my last interview yesterday, an extraordinary forest historian named Charlie Cogbill who'd waltzed me through 18th century tree archives in Calais, VT, I got dropped off several miles short of the B&B and walked back home in the wonder that is northern Vermont.

Did you know that sugar maples do not turn red? I didn't realize that till I came to Vermont to report on climate change and the future of this beloved tree (headline: it's quite bright, thank you). The fiery red to the left is -- get this! -- a red maple, (Acer rubrum), and the orange/gold/peach concoction to the right is the sugar maple (Acer saccharum).

photo credit: Ketzel Levine, NPR

 

I leave you today with a final word for the hard-working during this unfolding fall:

Get Over Yourself and Get Outside!

11:47 AM ET | 10-10-2007 | permalink

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