Plants in Wedgwood

Last night we went to Wedgwood to overnight-babysit our friends' 1-year-old while they celebrated their anniversary at a fancy downtown hotel. On the way, we visited a friend who wanted to watch the De La Hoya / Mayweather fight at Georgetown Liquor Company. She sells wine to the GLC, and she brought a bottle of some fancy premier cru Bordeaux. We each tried a glass while the first of the opening fights started, Bautista vs. Medina, and I could tell that Bautista was going to win before either of them even stepped into the ring. I could see it in his eyes.



We pass the Bettie Page house on the way to our friends' house.



And we pass a Ceanothus in bloom.



In the morning we go for a walk around the neighborhood. I'm reminded how Chuck once said, "I don't like Acer dissectum cv. atropurpureum (Laceleaf Japanese Maple), mostly because it's grafted, but also because it looks like the Cousin It of plants. And I totally acknowledge that it's pretty. Sometimes being pretty just isn't enough."

Japanese maple.



Cousin It.



I like this gate.



I like this fence.



Pretty Euphorbia.



I think I'd have put taller plants behind Venus, though I do like the blue at her feet.



Nice.



I like Japanese lanterns in other people's yards, though (like Buddha, like Venus, like the Virgin Mary, like Roman columns, like just about anything) they're too culturally specific for me to want to use in my yard. I think I only want modern and/or natural objects in with my plants. I can't even handle planters that aren't neutral monocromes.



Moments after I take this photo, a woman jogs past me with her dog and apologizes for breaking the rules.



Cute. (Though there will never be words in my yard.)



A beautiful trellis.



Look, it's local gardening personality Ciscoe Morris's house again.



The castor bean plant has grown a lot.

EDIT: This is not a castor bean plant. It is Tertapanax papyrifera "Steroidal Giant" (giant rice paper plant).





I've taken this shot before. Maple, Mondo, moss.







Smoke bush. Lovely.









Ciscoe's Ceanothus isn't blooming yet.



Bye, Ciscoe!



Someone's been hard at work.





Nice colors.



This is totally Seattle. A Japanese maple and a bunch of evergreens.



And I'll show you one photo of our charge, because she's kind of like a rock star, she's so perfectly cute.

Photos of Plants in Beacon Hill and Wedgwood

I liked the way the smoke tree's leaves caught the morning light yesterday.



Yes, another photo of my Ceanothus. It's just fucking killing me how close to bloom it is.



Here's a misleadingly cropped photo of the view of my living room from this morning. When you're actually in the living room, you see the top of mean neighbor dude's house right under this. But let's just look at the Olympics instead.



OK, off to Wedgwood. I believe this is where local gardening personality Ciscoe Morris lives.



He has one of the lushest planting strips in Seattle.





Moss, mondo, maple.



This is my friends' house.



They built this fence around their tree.