Sunday, May 6, 2007

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.

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

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And we pass a Ceanothus in bloom.

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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.

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Cousin It.



I like this gate.

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I like this fence.

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Pretty Euphorbia.

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

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Nice.

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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.

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

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

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A beautiful trellis.

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

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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).

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

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Smoke bush. Lovely.

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Ciscoe's Ceanothus isn't blooming yet.

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Bye, Ciscoe!

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Someone's been hard at work.

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Nice colors.

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

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

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2 comments:

chuck b. said...

Ciscoe Morris rocks me. Thanks for the more pictures. You're going to get an interview, right?

I'm thinking that's not a castor bean now. Is it? I've never really seen one before. It seems to big for what I that plant was. But I don't know.

What's that beautiful tree with the weepies hanging over the ceanothus?

I'm surprised there's so much ceanothus in Seattle. I would think it's too wet there for it to do well.

The blue at Venus' feet is nice! because she comes out of the sea on a halfshell, right? So the blue looks like water. Well, it's a cool effect at any rate.

Guilty pleasure: I love the tacky/vulgar/lowbrow extreme fighting matches on TV now. I put a couple on the TiVo, but I'm certain Guy deleted them thinking it was some kind of computer glitch.

JvA said...

If I ever see Ciscoe in his yard, I promise I will talk to him. I found out later he was on TV the morning that we were poking around his planting strip. And I will ask him if that is a castor bean plant.

I don't know what that tree is -- I was hoping you would identify it for me!

There is tons of Ceanothus in Seattle. Now that I know what it is, I see it everywhere. I should rename this blog "Ceanothus in Seattle."

Yeah, I was thinking that the blue represented the sea, though, as I recall, the sea in that painting is green. I bet the perennials behind her get taller over the course of the summer. If I visit again this summer, I'll take another photo of her.

I found out that Bautista did indeed kick Medina's ass.