My self-editing segues into a lovely garden

[gurdonark]

I deleted two tries at the story of the Republican Activist who sat next to me on the Airplane, and instead interrupt that potential programming to discuss Descanso Gardens. I had some time to kill today, in La Canada, California, so I headed to Descanso Gardens. Descanso is a beautiful public garden bracketed by the Verdugo Mountains.
The highlight of the garden is the immense camellia tree forest, but all year round, it's a fascinating place. My wife and I lived just twenty minutes from here, and neary every weekend I'd come here and walk.
On Saturday mornings, deer would shyly hop away as
one approached. Each Thanksgiving, all the leaves on the giant gingko tree would turn a bright yellow and fall off just in time for turkey. The gardens are always lovely, and they are in some very personal way very much Home to me. A home I now live 1400 miles away from, admittedly, but home nonetheless.

May Day is past the best California camellia bloom--the three main "brands" of camellias bloom in December, January and February in Southern California. Still, the last fading camellia blooms could still be seen on many trees. The rose garden was a marvel--roses of every shape and hue everywhere.
The native plant garden was filled with golden California poppy and fairyduster--that scraggly, almost ethereal desert bush that has "featherduster" red blooms a few months a year. I took a throwaway camera roll of photos, to be affixed to corrugated plastic (corruplast) cards and sent out as mail art. I only had thirty five minutes in that garden,
but to me this sort of time is Eternal Life.
I have seen the gateways of Heaven open, and they are in bloom....

Comments

I love roses

[geekturtle.livejournal.com]

I can't wait till my roses bloom. The first blooms are so beautiful. I only grow fragrant roses and after reading your post, I am impatient for them. The smell of roses, especially ones I have grown and cut are the sweetest.

A toast to flowers!

Re: I love roses

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

Although marigolds are my favorites--so simple, so golden--I love roses, too. The fragrant ones are the best. I live about 100 miles from Tyler, Texas, which is a major regional rose center. I can hardly wait until late May early June when the roses really get going in the municipal rose garden there....

Last November, I tried a case in which I represented a wholesale LA flower company. It was fun learning about how the BEST roses come from Ecuador, where roses grow perfectly....

[mouchette.livejournal.com]

Oh I do love 'organised' gardens. There's an amazing tiered garden of the most exotic flowers and shrubs in Haifa in Israel. It's one of the things I think about when I can bear to think of Israel at the moment.

Do you have sun too?

public gardens

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

I love public gardens also. I wish that the local one
where I now live was a few minutes closer to our house.

Sun is definitely not a problem here. When I landed in Dallas yesterday, the temperature was 92 degrees (what, something like 30 C.). La Canada, CA, by contrast was some 60 degrees F., which was very nice indeed.

Camellias and such

[gregwest98.livejournal.com]

I had never seen a camellia until I moved to California. They were worth seeing. Another thing that always amazed me were the immense oleander bushes everywhere which also had some amazing flowers.

There was a ginkgo down the street from here until recently (unfortunate victim to some of Oklahoma's frequent high winds). I also used to look forward to the fall change of color. I took a leaf scanned it on my cheap flatbed scanner. It looked great. (You can scan almost anything - half of the stuff I scanned wasn't photos.)

Re: Camellias and such

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

You know, we had camellias in Camden and Gurdon, but the common name for them is "japonica", which is one of the 3 main braches of camellias, but which was applied indiscriminately to all camellia-like things other than azaleas. I remember japonicas as mostly white, mostly
fading, and very humidity-tossed. Descanso Garden, by contrast, is a treasure trove.
Christmas for me will always include foggy day walks through new-bloomed camellias in that garden.