Rogue blooms

It's summer now. Or fall. I mean middle of winter, but the temperature during the day is hot enough for summer clothes. Perpetual spring, or a harbinger of summer? For about a month, poppies have been blooming as if it were April on two separate lots on the corner of York and Nolden, holding their orange heads up high over neat expanses of closely clipped grass. Who would have thought that California poppies and lawns could be so compatible? Could it be possible that a judiciously timed mowing might have induced bloom for poppies interspersed with lawn grasses? Subject to further research, from the York Boulevard Poppy Lab.

It's been over a year since the first poppies were sown, and I've chosen to tend the poppies only minimally this year, if at all. Let the poppies tell us themselves where they are meant to grow.

 

Wildflower hotline: Urban wildflower tour scheduled

Sunday April 6, 10:30 am

In the California tradition of "going flowering" in the spring, please join us for an urban flora tour through Highland Park, South Pasadena, and San Marino. We will look at places poppies are blooming, and places they were removed. We can gossip about wildflowers and weeds, as we compare the public spaces of these diverse communities.

Starting point:

parking lot of York Boulevard Post Office

5132 York Boulevard

Los Angeles, CA 90042

The tour should last just over an hour. We'll start out with a bit of walking, so remember to wear comfortable shoes.

Wildflower hotline: The poppies are talking

The poppies are talking to us. Their petals open wide as the day begins. They curl tightly shut as the day ends. Contrary to what people say, California poppies make great (but delicate) cut flowers, and will continue to open and shut even when indoors. Mark time with the poppies.

Warm weather has brought out more flowers. Most of the South-facing sites planted in Highland Park are now blooming (on the North side of the street). A couple full-sun sites on the South side (North-facing) are blooming as well.

Good spots for urban poppy viewing are the North side of York between 55 and Nolden, and the entrance to South Pasadena Nature Park, just east of the 110. I've been told these poppies will become larger and more floriferous over the years, if they are allowed to remain in place, like the jaw-dropping poppies on the Southbound entrance of the 110 at York, which are growing out of cement cracks.
Not all the sites I tended are blooming. This artists' studio below was one of the first sites prepared and planted. Despite that many seeds germinated, and that it was one of the sites were I spent the most weeding hours, including reseeding and even transplanting from other sites, no poppies grew. I wonder if this local bird can tell us why? He was having a great time pecking at the ground.

As I was checking on the flowers, I met this group of girls, who were making themselves comfortable on this incredibly well manicured landscape in front of Super A. (A landscape which was too well maintained for poppy growth).
I complimented them on making good use of a very nice lawn in a neighborhood where the nearest park is.... Hey, come to think of it, there is no nearby park.

A couple locations in South Pasadena are blooming, though the majority of sites will bloom much later, if they survive at all. Generally, the sun in this area is filtered through the many non-native sycamores lining the street. (Hot and dry York Boulevard, in contrast, is planted with the sparsely canopied native sycamores, which were once an indicator of intermittent water sources, but are now used as an abuse-tolerant street tree.) 

This ivy-covered yard was the very first site planted. This is one of the few instances where there is clear communication between the very kind property owners and their gardener. Though it's in full sun and is well-tended by the gardener, only a few flowers are showing. So far.

The large plot which promised to become my most impressive show of poppies in South Pasadena was mowed in February, due to a communication mishap with the gardener. Will the poppies recover?

When I first sought permission to plant most of these sites, almost half a year ago, countless property owners told me, in the very same words, "Don't worry. No one will weed out the poppy shoots. The gardener is too lazy. He doesn't do a thing!" In fact, in most of these sites, I had to reseed the poppies when the "lazy gardeners" turned out actually to be very  on top of things. It is surprising how common it is to have so little communication between property owners and their "help"-- this happened in both Highland Park and South Pasadena.

This super wonderful property owner arranged the rocks like this just for the poppies.

For an even bigger show, involving California poppies among myriad compatriot California plants, look around the corner on Milan Avenue!

Next time: A report from a local governmental branch, which is gradually morphing into a guerilla community garden; and words from an underground oak woodland.

Wildflower Hotline: Stray blooms

The first stray blooms appeared about ten days ago in Highland Park, appropriately, in a cactus planter outside an artists' studio. This week more locations are showing poppy action--Child's moving company, The Rock Church-- all south facing sites on York Boulevard in Highland Park. 

In the several weeks since the last rains, the weather has warmed up dramatically. Though it's been relatively dry, the poppies have been growing exponentially faster than before. Unfortunately it's not just the poppies growing. Dave Pisley told me today, that in his own garden, weeds have been appearing by the "thousand-fold." Gotta get out and put in some more weeding hours this weekend...

South Pasadena Wildflower Update

This is one of the sites that was planted earliest, and where the poppies had been doing well. The owner is supportive of the poppies, but it's not clear how well the gardener understands the project. It looks like the poppies have been mowed! They are surviving, but shorter.... I'll need to call to find out what happened.....

Highland Park Wildflower Update

The poppies are utterly on their own now. I only pitch in with a little weeding every once in a while.

Next week, look out for the South Pasadena Wildflower Update.

January Rains

It's been two months since the first seeds were sown. 

Some poppy shoots took off immediately, unimpeded by hard soil, harsh exposure, lack of care, weeds. In the easiest sites, the sprouts are lush and green, vegetal looking. I haven't touched them since they germinated, except to thin them out. In plots of the densest ground, the sprouts are lean and tiny by comparison, often bluish-green. Sprouts that germinated under the shade of larger weeds are pale, long, and stringy.

I've lost a couple plots of well-developed plants to diligent (but invisible!) maintenance people. I've also gained a couple plots just in time for this recent deluge. Several plots have been razed and then replanted. (Some of the folks who allowed me to plant were not aware of how diligent their gardeners can be. I also learned that the people who maintain the parkways are not necessarily in communication with the formal "owner"...)

People ask; "Why are you doing this?" Are you from the city?" "Then, who is paying you to do this?" "Oh, I see, it's a hobby! Your own yard must be very neat!"

The skeptical nod politely when I explain how to recognize the poppy shoots, how the first hair-like leaves pave the way for larger lacy poppy leaves.

The first month, watching for new shoots was exhilarating. After a day of tending the shoots, my subconscious would blossom with kaleidoscopic lacy foliage all night long.

In a couple of the largest Highland Park plots, however, the rains brought waves of weeds as well as poppies. First, there was the filaree. After I'd labored to save some poppies from filaree, mustard suddenly appeared, denser in some cases than the filaree had been! I attempt to battle the mustard, but cannot fight the oxalis, which also appeared with no warning. The poppies' delicate shoots and their roots are so easily damaged by weeding. Now all night long, images of tiny poppy shoots overwhelmed by the steroidal growth of hefty annuals flash through my mind.

Yesterday, I was astonished to come across this scene, which I sketched above, which reminded me of huge trees, fallen from storms or winds, which begin to grow again, with new main trunks ascending skyward from the downed trunk. The entire scene was not more than an inch and a half high. I'm drawing from memory here, so the forms of the leaf of the sprout might not be botanically accurate...

Everything is still alive

In Highland Park, many of the plots I am tending are no bigger than a tree well, or a crack in the cement. It is incredible how much trash can accumulate on these sidewalk plots even during the course of a day. Imagine what the streets might look like if many of the business owners weren't clearing this trash every single day. "I do this every day because I love Highland Park," the owner of the Party Goods store told me.

To weed the plots, I push aside old cups, bottles, packaging, dried doggie doo. Reaching deep into the soil to pull up filaree roots without breaking them, I fear the occasional shard of broken glass buried within.

At the same time, reaching into the soil is always a turning point. Is the soil moist and rich? Is it the kind that appears hard as concrete, but which is just sandy granules packed tight? The initial repulsion fades. Instead, I wonder about the soil's capacity for holding moisture, or nourishing plants. Has it nurtured plants in the recent past? Is there sign of recent chemical use?

I have heard inklings that parts of York Boulevard once were, and other parts were crossed by intermittent streams. I would guess that the wide range of soil types I encounter gives some clues about where water used to run.

These are speculations. But I do know that each plot of soil holds a trace of many events in the past. Where it came from (if moved from elsewhere), what got mixed with it, what water washed into it, things that grew in it. 

In the same cumulative way, everything about our everyday environment is mutable. It is something that has to be recreated every day by us in a thousand seemingly uneventful decisions. The choice between driving by and ignoring, OR deciding to slow down. The choice between thinking "it's just that way" OR thinking "It's that way because I allow it to be that way."

Today, I bumped into Jeffrey Chapman, who told me about different native plants which he had seen relatively recently, growing on untended lots in the vicinity of the sites I've been tending. Shooting stars (flowers), Nassella pulchra, White sage.... not your usual urban "weeds". I could not believe that native perennial grasses existed until recently on a hill in my own neighborhood. I knew that the original plant ecosystems were decimated early on by the grazing of livestock brought by Europeans. But evidently the contemporary urban environment, even with all the weedy annual grasses introduced by the Europeans, doesn't have to be seen as the polar opposite of a "natural" ecosystem/environment.

A seed of a shooting star flower might still find a patch of untended dirt in Highland Park a promising place to grow.

Thousands of little poppy sprouts are now coming up in Highland Park and South Pasadena. Each of these seedlings appears as four delicate hair-like leaves, so slender one can hardly see them, except where they have been seeded too densely. In places where twenty or fifty seeds rolled into the same depression and simultaneously germinated, the sprouts collectively have so much upward lifting power that they push weighty chunks of bark or clods of dirt to float off the ground!

Some of these sprouts have another gargantuan task: mustering energy to push their roots through dirt that is a hard as a rock.

Ironically, the biggest threat to the poppy sprouts is now gardeners. In their habit of neatening things up, they might tear out any unfamiliar plants.

I'm now making up a flyer to spread the word, that at least for the span of this project (through the spring), that poppies are desirable. They are not a "weed." They are among the things that would have grown here, before any of us arrived. And also to spread the word, incidentally, that everything is still alive.

sowing seeds, giving thanks

Everything is still alive involves planting native california poppies Eschscholzia californica on any patch of exposed earth along my commuting route, which cuts from Highland Park, via South Pasadena, to San Marino. Along this route, the landscape shifts from the sun-baked concrete and graffittied York Boulevard, to the well watered private lawns of South Pasadena and San Marino.

The first European settlers in California vividly described seasonal fields of wildflower color-before the land was subdivided and overbuilt. Sowing native poppy seed was a popular beautification strategy during the first half of the last century. But in contemporary urban space, the patterns revealed by the bursts of orange will indicate something about the character of each of these different neighborhoods.

On Thanksgiving, a group of us prepared ground and sowed seeds for the poppies in several locations in Highland Park, and on one lot in South Pasadena. The poppies were blessed with a group of five women (Jennifer Murphy, Orchid Black, Ann Kaneko, Donna Conwell, and myself), lots of tools, and water. Thank you, friends!

One of the poems I read at the planting, was read by Jeffrey Chapman at a guided wildflower walk at the Arroyo, about a year ago:

In the next century or the one beyond that
they say,
are valleys, pastures.
We can meet there in peace
if we can make it.

To climb these coming crests
one word to you, to
you and your children:

stay together,
learn the flowers
go light

— Gary Snyder, from Turtle Island

As we worked, some people stopped by. One of the most common comments I get when tending the plots in Highland Park is some variation of: "In the past we planted lovely flowers here, but some kids just tore the plants out. There are some very destructive people in this neighborhood." On this day, however, one man expressed thanks that we were doing something to take care of the site. He offered us a box of latex gloves to protect against the black widows on the ground. A young woman asked us for advice about growing poppies. In South Pasadena, some curious neighbors invited us to plant on their very gorgeous property, under the roses and well-trimmed hedges.

It's been about ten days since the first seed planting. I've been tending the plots every two days.

Yesterday, as I heard rain drops falling before dawn, I immediately prepared for more seed sowing. It was pitch dark and cold. Wunderground predicted an entire day and evening worth of rain, followed by several days of cool cloudy weather. This is a stunning development for anyone planning for wildflowers after two years of drought. The December rains are on time! I seeded a couple choice areas at daybreak, and another plot in the dark, after work. There might not be another opportunity so perfect for wildflower seeds this winter!

Thank you sky!