While much of the rest of the country prepares for winter dormancy, here in California it is finally time to get dirty. The best time of the year to plant in the garden is right now. Temperatures are dropping, especially at night, and hopefully more rain will follow. This is also the time of year for native plant sales. Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden has one of the largest, if not the largest, native plant sale in California. The sale is this Saturday and Sunday. Members can enter at 8 AM (memberships are available at the door), and the general public is welcome from 11 AM to 4 PM on Saturday. The hours on Sunday are 9 AM to 2 PM. If you cannot attend the sale, Rancho sells plants in their Grow Native Nursery on Wednesday through Sunday from 9 AM to 4 PM. Although the Garden now charges an admission fee for non-members, the plant sales are open free of charge. I will be helping out at the sale on Saturday also. For a listing of other native plant sales, check out the California Native Plant Society website. They have information on plant sales and nurseries who sell natives year around.
I spent all day Monday at the Garden helping out with the plant list and labels. You can register on the Rancho website to download the list. If you have trouble with this, try calling Rancho (909-625-8767), or let me know and I’ll see if I can email you a list. The list will continue to change right up until the sale, so check often. When I left on Monday evening there were over 15,000 plants on the 24-page list, with over 1,000 lines (there are often several lines for a given taxa representing different sizes and sources). I’d estimate there are many more than 700 taxa, including native and non-native plants. Some orders were not yet in, and the seeds and bulbs were not listed yet.
The other activity that has kept me from posting on Wild Suburbia was a talk I gave at the Los Angeles Arboretum, Lili Singer’s Thursday morning Garden Talk (as I mentioned in the last post I uploaded the talk on WeedingWildSuburbia).
Today I finally got to spend some time in the garden. I spent several hours chipping and shredding green waste. Here’s what we are up to now.
The deck – mostly torn out. Go Jim!
Chipper/shredder and a big pile of green waste.
Here I am all protected – except for my thumb, which got smashed really badly.
Got to go now – there’s coffee ice cream calling to me…
Christ lady… get your freakin' arm out of the chipper!
Thanks, Jim. Love your comment. And that is not how I smashed my thumb. I think it took some courage – self-confidence? stupidity? obliviousness? – to post this picture.
LOL @ Jim's comment!<br /><br />I love your house colors.
Sylvana and susie, to defend myself, the blade is at the bottom of the yellow tube. Reaching under the outlet could be real bad, but there's no way my hand can reach the blade from the top. Still I have an uncanny way of injuring myself – usually smashed appendages. <br /><br />I think the house colors show a bit bright in the picture, but they are fairly typical craftsman colors. We had the
I echo the first comment…but it still made me want a chipper! Love the house colors also….pretty daring, but I know they are also necessary over in your neck of the woods with all the beautiful old homes. Wish I could come to the sale…but we will be in San Diego for our daughter's 30th BDay party…..WOW am I that old?
You make me feel lazy. I always stick everything in the greenwaste toter and wait for the city to do the chipping….
Grace, I do have both hands and arms! Actually the whole picture was staged. I was shredding but not during the px. I set the camera on a tripod with the timer. I did wear all the gear while shredding though. It is really dusty so the mask is a must. It is also very noisy, and bits and pieces fly out occasionally. Like I said, it would be hard to chip one's hand from the top, though reaching
I've got the injury bug too! But I am usually tripping over dogs or something!
The blade is, like, way down at the bottom, isn't it? Next post: a photo of your right arm please, just so we'll all feel better. 🙂 I'm glad the weather is conducive to gardening.
I'll have to admit I had flashbacks to that chipper-shredder scene in Fargo when I saw your photo. I hope you're recovering! Does your chipper work pretty well? I bought an underpowered electric model many years ago that I spend more dangerous moments unclogging than I do shredding anything.
I'm having a lot of laughs on this visit to your blog! Our dump (and I think Town Mouse's) does composting so we can feel good about sending our green waste there. You can pick up free compost from the dump too. As a native gardener I don't have much call for compost but I mostly hear that it is good and pathogen free. I came by this morning to look at your chipper – ya I'd be
CM – I get what you mean. My little machine is okay for shredding bits and smashing fingers. I'm going to check with our city about how the green waste is actually handled. They will swear it is composted but I'll delve…
"Although our city does separate green waste from the rest (other garbage is separated into recyclables in a municipal waste recovery facility), I think green waste can go to the dump to be layered in with other waste and it still counts as recycling. Does anyone else know anything about this?"<br /><br />Yes. The words you are looking for are "alternative daily cover". My
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Brent, thanks for that info. I will see what I can find out about our waste management program. I sure would feel better about sending it off if I knew it was being composted and used – even with the expenditure of fuel for the trucks.
Yes, your hand in the chipper is a rather frightening picture. I see the demolition of the deck has gone further. Do post what you find out about the green waste disposal in South Pasadena. I don't trust it either.