a mushroom chronicle, part 3

All has been quiet on the local yarnbombing front since I posted a mushroom chronicle, part 2 in April. Oh, there was one small episode when Mr. B spotted a REAL mushroom in his front yard and, at first glance, attributed it to me. We had a good laugh over that one.

Earlier this week, I was walking up our street to make a trade at the Little Free Library that's sprung up in the block north of us (talk about mushrooming!). Perhaps half way between home and the corner, I was surprised to see one of my crocheted mushrooms lying on the sidewalk. I quickly picked it up and put it in my pocket.

This mushroom was VERY DIRTY. The three crocheted mushrooms in Mr. B's front yard are nice and clean, because he waters that part of his yard frequently. The three I've placed in our parking strip, however, are in a clump of dogbane which I never water. It will 'green up' with the rest of the succulents as soon as the fall rains start, but meanwhile the soft, spongy yarn I used to make these mushrooms has absorbed a great deal of the street dirt thrown up by passing cars. In fact, I had been thinking of washing these mushrooms and 'replanting' them if the rains don't come soon.

So the errant mushroom was soaked upside down for a day in a dilute solution of dishwashing liquid, kneaded repeatedly against its wire frame to loosen the dirt, and then thoroughly rinsed. It took another day to dry, stuck in a glass and placed on our bistro table to get some sun.

I'm thinking about washing the other two mushrooms and then placing all three in a more sheltered location among the bromeliads or kalanchoes.

Of course I'm curious about how my mushroom migrated up the street. Not prone to suspecting foul play, I have hypothesized that it was picked up by the wheel of a stroller, tricycle, or skateboard and then fell off after being transported about 50 yards. Steve is convinced that "a little girl" picked it and threw it away after getting tired of carrying it. More likely her mother noticed it and told her to drop it because it was so dirty.

This is one of the many things we'll never know. I'm just glad I was able to bring the mushroom back home. "All's well that ends well," they say.

bloglovin'

With the demise of Google Reader, you may be shopping for a new way to keep track of the blogs you like to read. Like, this one!

If you go to http://www.bloglovin.com/ and copy http://postocc.blogspot.com/ into the 'search blogs' box, you can ask to be notified whenever I churn out a new posting. This assumes that you open a free account (with no privacy risk that I can see),

I keep track of a whole raft of blogs through bloglovin' and, though I organize them into categories, I like to whip through the combined list each day and read the individual posts selectively or 'like' them for later reference.

My list includes most of my local newspapers -- exciting reading now that we're in the throes of a divisive school board election campaign -- as well as numerous sources of free needlework patterns and recipes.

Check it OUT!

rain readiness

Today we are supposed to have new rain gutters installed. They will be red aluminum to go with our new roof, and will drain into our four rain barrels. I am not totally convinced that the job will be done on schedule. Steve and I were out of town last week, thus missing the contractor's confirming phone call on Friday.

Another reason for my skepticism is that a 50% chance of rain is predicted for today. Of course this means there's an equal chance it won't rain, but yesterday it really felt like rain, and so I took time to plant the Idaho daffodil bulbs I had dug up during the summer and stored on the front porch in a small paper shopping bag.

There were nine bulbs -- eleven after I separated two doubles -- and I planted them in a circular space as planned. The soil there, at the foot of our largest lavender 'tree,' was not very good. We're talking about the part of our front garden that had originally been a driveway and later a thick bed of ivy. I scraped away three inches of what passes for topsoil plus mulch, and then used a bulb planter to make the eleven holes: eight around the edge and three in the center. About an inch of a bulb-friendly potting soil went in each hole, then the bulb, and then a generous trowel full of the potting soil, followed by an inch of topsoil, a generous sprinkling of blood meal, and finally the rest of the topsoil.

If it rains today, I'll wait until afterwards to apply more mulch. If it doesn't rain today, I'll water the new bulbs and then try to spread as much mulch as I can. In either case, I don't suppose I'll want to be gardening while the rain gutters are being installed -- if, indeed, that happens. I have until noon before the workers are supposed to show up anyway, and may be able to "make hay while the sun shines" and/or the clouds gather.

Two surprises graced my bulb-planting project. Both involved freesias, the principal inhabitants of our bulb bed. I was astounded not to find any freesia bulbs in the space I had chosen for the daffodils. Granted, I'd identified it as a bare spot last spring, but the freesias are prolific in casting off tiny bulbs at the end of each flowering season.

The other freesia surprise was my sighting of the first freesia sprout of 2014's blossoming. If it rains today or tomorrow, more grassy-looking freesia foliage will soon follow this harbinger. I'll happily declare the start of fring and start watching for the first paper-white narcissus to appear.

you, alfred hitchcock!

Yesterday on Facebook, Dollar Store Crafts shared a link to a picture of an elegant Halloween wreath made of black birds (they called them ravens). There was a detailed tutorial explaining how to hot-glue ten (10) dollar-store birds to a styrofoam wreath form. I don't usually do much decorating for Halloween, but this piece caught my eye.

Steve hates the noisy black crows that fly through our neighborhood most late afternoons and early evenings, often terrorizing smaller birds. He will sit at the bistro table in our front garden and fantasize about ways to kill them. Like, a water cannon. And so I knew that hanging some black bird effigies on our front door would appeal to him.

A digression about wreaths. My mother grew up believing that wreaths should be hung only to signify that there has been a death in the family, and that the body is still laid out in the house. Presumably when the hearse comes to take the body away, the wreath will be taken to decorate the church and, finally, the grave. Thus for me, hanging a wreath has that added frisson of childish rebellion.

So I went to our local Dollar Tree store and looked at all the items of Halloween decor. The black birds were tossed together in a big box on a bottom shelf along with other black things: unreal fluffy black owls, black plastic rats, and spiders of all sizes. I sorted through everything in the box and placed all the realistic crow-like black birds in my shopping cart -- then sorted those by shape and condition. Some had outstretched wings, while some held their wings close to their bodies. I selected four of each.

Dollar Tree was not stocking any styrofoam wreath forms, but Steve was quick to adapt a wire coat hanger, and seemed to enjoy stabbing it through the birds. We alternated the two bird shapes and added large black beads in between. An orange velvet ribbon set the whole thing off nicely, but I decided to forgo the dusting of black glitter.

If this wreath lasts until Halloween I'll be surprised, but I think its therapeutic value has been fully realized already.

the great green tomato worm race

Steve is not a sadistic person, but yesterday he showed some frightening tendencies in that direction.

I was at the computer, and he walked up to my desk with two long but not leafy stems from a tomato plant. One had a nice-looking ripe tomato at the end and the other one didn't, but what they had in common was that each bore a full-grown tomato worm: white stripes, red horn. and all.

This year, after two or three years of failure to grow a decent tomato crop, we took the plunge and bought some 'Topsy Turvy' tomato planters -- not only "seen on TV" but also featured at our local 99¢ Only Store. We're not inundated with tomatoes, as the ads seem to promise, but the ones we've harvested have been very good. And a Topsy Turvy  pepper planter has given us an adequate supply of jalapeno and serrano chili peppers.

We had not seen a single tomato worm until yesterday, when Steve brought these two bad boys into the house, and were thinking that maybe Topsy Turvy planters were immune from this scourge. Evidently not!

A few minutes after Steve walked off with the miscreants, I started wondering what he'd done with them, so I tracked him into our dining room, where he was calmly folding origami boxes. I asked if he had killed the tomato worms, and he said, somewhat diabolically, "No, I put them somewhere." I followed him to the front garden and there, in our cacti and succulent bed, the green tomato worms showed up in stark contrast against the tan background of our permanent mulch, made up mostly of dead leaves from our street trees: Chinese evergreen elms. These leaves are crunchy, small, and pointed -- with serrated sides -- not the smooth and shady green surface on which tomato worms generally spend their time.

It was fascinating to watch the tomato worms scurry around. They would seem to be making assaults on our giant cereus, but then would change their minds and rush off in another direction. The larger one walked between two stalks of a very spiny little cactus that I think may be a miniature cholla, but drew back after an inch of his body had tunneled through. The smaller one headed for the brick border of the bed. He thrust the front half of his body bravely over the edge, but then retreated back onto the carpet of crispy leaves.

How I wish I'd taken some pictures! I went back in a couple of hours and there was no trace of the green guys. Were they eaten by our resident crows or other birds? Were they on a long, dry trek back to the Topsy Turvy planters? Had they merely evaporated in the hot sun? We will never know. Unless we find more tomato worms and repeat the experiment under more controlled conditions.

The whole experience reminded me of a time years ago when we encountered an infestation of slugs. Steve was removing them with his fingers and setting them gently on the pavement. I was flicking them off the plants with a stick, and trampling them, along with the ones Steve had placed so gently. He said: "Isn't it interesting that you can't touch them and I can't kill them?"

I've killed many tomato worms over the years, and watched their liquid centers spill out. Steve didn't kill these two, but he certainly put them in harm's way.

I guess everyone has a sadistic side, whether we believe in treating our victims to a speedy death or a slow demise. Right now, I'm off to look for more tomato worms, and for sure I'm taking my camera.

with friends like these . . .

Earlier this week, I started a long overdue project of decluttering the bench beside our front door. When we moved here in 1975, this bench was a brick planter harboring a giant split-leaf philodendron with thick roots that were trying to undermine the foundation. I soon pulled it out, and ultimately Steve filled the cavity with concrete.

Over time, the bench had become a dumping ground for empty pots, cuttings waiting to be potted, garden tools, gloves, watering cans, etc.

My first task was to remove empty pots. Plastic and plain terra cotta pots, if not damaged, were sorted by size and put in containers bound for their new home on the back patio, where I hope to establish a work area for potting. Decorative pots were placed on or near the bench. There was some repotting done, but I'm not going to talk about it now.

Let's get on to the friends I mentioned in the title of this piece: spiders! Steve and I love spiders. Noiseless, patient spiders! Indeed we venerate them. If we see a web blocking a garden path, we will give it a wide berth. We have been known to feed spiders by throwing stunned houseflies into their webs, and we are great fans of the Spider Pavilion at the L.A. County Natural History Museum.

Few habitats are more beloved of spiders than your common empty flower pot -- plastic, terra cotta, concrete, porcelain, or metal. While sorting the pots, I gently relocated myriad spiders (dead and alive), as well as their silken egg sacs, into the mulch on our garden beds.

So now I have two questions:

• why must I be suffering from so many spider bites (at least seven on my left leg alone)? 
• with friends like these, who needs enemies?

stabat mater spuriosa

In January 2012, I posted cyathea mater epiphiticorum to describe how, during the previous November, I had started tying epiphitic plants to the trunk of a dead tree fern in our front garden. (Let's call the spurious tree "CME" for short.) Then in March 2012 I posted tree revision to celebrate the appearance of new growth on a cutting of basket plant (Callisia fragrans) which topped the dead trunk.

Since that time, the pastiche of plants has had its good times and its bad times. Dead epidendrums have been taken down, while live ones have been admired. One tillandsia has not only survived but also multiplied and produced a spray of tiny blossoms -- purple with touches of yellow and white at the tip. I don't think the Spanish moss was alive when I tied it on, so after almost two years of denial I am admitting that I had essentially draped the tree with tattered crepe.

Today, citing the 13th-century hymns Stabat Mater dolorosa (a Good Friday text) and Stabat Mater speciosa (a Christmas text), I celebrate the fact that my secular foster-mothering tree still stands in spite of recent affronts to her dignity. The drooping Spanish moss would not be appropriate even if it were healthy. I think of how religious statues periodically receive festive new garments, and resolve that CME shall wear a mantle of pale pink or white basket-plant blooms and a skirt embroidered with tiny orange or magenta orchids.

My faith in CME's future is based on her survival after being badly battered while a new roof was being put on our house. On each of three long workdays beginning two weeks ago, huge plastic tarps were spread all around the house to catch a sequence of off-fallings: old shingles and wood, new foil-coated plywood scraps, sawdust, and trimmings from new shingles. At the end of each day, the tarps were removed and the whole area was cleaned with heavy-duty blowers.

Initially, I thought that our bromeliads, which I had been in process of transplanting (a story for another day), had suffered the most damage, but then I noticed that CME's topmost tuft of basket plant was gone. Fortunately, I found this sprig of vegetation on the ground and stuck it back under a strip of the terrycloth toweling I had originally used to tie it to the tree.

Late yesterday afternoon, I decided to take some pictures of CME so that I could post them with a description of the devastation. First, however, I used a fluffy duster to remove some of the sawdust that clung to the remaining leaves, and thus inadvertently knocked off the same leaves I had recently put back in place, and, adding insult to injury, broke off yet another section.

While replacing CME's treetop once again, I was delighted to discover tiny new green leaves on the broken stem. This was a 'photo op' for sure, but it turned into a 'photo flop' because the sun had gone behind the house.

This morning, conditions for photography have been better, though I'm afraid a picture is not worth a thousand words when it must be explained to the viewer. From the perspective below, the basket plant's stem looks like the trunk of a palm tree, but in fact the assertive green buds at the top are less than a quarter inch in height. I like the way they stand out against our dark red soffit, however. The arching of the mature, red-tinged leaves contrasts nicely with the straight lines of chimney and roof, while patches of "blue skies up above" promise a fine summer day ahead.

Looking at CME from the other side, against a backdrop of Chinese evergreen elms (the straight line is a downspout), we can see three tiny new buds along with a better shot of mature leaves, plus the speckled terrycloth along with the fibrous tree fern trunk at its very tip.

"Fall rains heal all," I wrote years ago to close a poem about getting through a dry and difficult year. In the meantime, frequent spraying and perhaps a foliar fertilizer should speed the process and let the new growth know how welcome it is in spite of fractured Latin and a barrage of building materials.