January 13, 2003

•      It is odd to think that this area can suffer from drought. But that’s what was happening recently. We have had no measurable precipitation yet this year, from about Christmas, until Saturday. I have been watering plants every few days that are in pots & watching my abundance of impatiens wilt badly.

  
  

       In my yard, the impatiens are actually weeds, having volunteered themselves onto about a third of my property. I have nearly every color imaginable, even one I call a peppermint candy color & a pure white! I snap-prune them back along my driveway, trying to force them to be more compact (they get 2-3 feet tall at times!). Then I get mad, because they encroach on my driveway & begin to smother my other desired plants, so I start yanking, tossing them in a heap. They make good soil very quickly.

  
  

       Impatiens are so prolific that they turn up in the crotches of my trees. I even have them turn up en masse on my old carport roof (the former owner used that as a shelter when they were building the house)! It’s hard to think of them as weeds, knowing that even here at our local Wal-Mart, people actually buy them. It is also difficult to think of them as weeds because of their pretty flowers, especially since they are nearly always in bloom.

  
  

       But, they do spread by both seed (the pod explodes when ripe, at the least touch… something I loved to play with as a kid ) & generating roots at notches in their stems when they fall over from being too ‘leggy.’ This means that they can be easily grown from cuttings & will frequently re-establish themselves when pulled out. They don’t require much soil at all (& do exceptionally well with leaf mulch), but they do love water! I consider them in the class of succulents because of their high water volume. Even when they wilt badly, all they need is shade from the sun & humidity in the air or dew to recover, until they are beat by direct sunlight again.

  
  

       Yesterday, I put in a couple more hours on my yard. The dumb thing is that I went outside to get my fresh cigarette pack I had left in the car after taking my son to the Farmers Market & then town, for skating. But, the cigarettes remained in the car, because I forgot that one task that took me outside to begin with.

  
  

       I had another small task that did get accomplished that I meant to do as well. I took a garden shear to snip a couple pieces of hapuu (tree fern) trunk & fiber to use as a planting medium for cuttings off a new orchid I bought at the market. It’s an epi, with tiny tri-colored blossoms of white, brown & yellow. The plant that I bought  is really a piece of an ohia branch that is loaded with the small orchids. The guy I bought it from & his wife said that he had originally affixed the orchid to the live tree & the orchid took off. Recently, a branch broke off that was loaded with the orchids & they are now in bloom (annual).

  
  

       He made several plants out of the broken branch & I chose one yesterday. I sat here, staring at the plant, noticing all the hundreds of individual sections & decided that I would make cuttings of it to attach to trees, leaving the original in the pot, so I can enjoy it in the house. I may even send some new starts to my sister & brother on the Mainland as gifts. The vendor promised to find out what species they are & let me know next Sunday. At the time I bought the plant, they couldn’t remember.

  
  

       I am an orchid freak. I just wish that I could afford some of the more beautiful ones (I adore catalayas, but they’re the most expensive) & a proper greenhouse & tables for them, so I can propagate them. My oldest brother used to be an orchid enthusiast as a teen, having an entire greenhouse filled with them & my dad’s anthurium propagations. My dad studied horticulture in college (more arboreolist, though, focusing on trees). My brother studied forestry for the 2 years he attended college. See where I get my love of plants from, so live in a jungle?

  
  

       Incidentally, my father was named in the 1965 Who’s Who in the West for his conservation & forestry efforts. He was also a world forestry consultant during that time & traveled to Australia, as well as many regions of the Mainland US (including Oregon, California & Washington State) in his consulting aspects. Besides conservation, he was a logger & lumberman, who practiced his belief in ‘cut one tree, plant THREE!’ What loggers in those areas have done since his death would probably have my dad rolling constantly in his grave, except that he was cremated & his ashes are in an urn in a mausoleum here, alongside my mom’s urn. (They both died in Texas.)

  
  

  
  

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       On a sad note, we say goodbye to Maurice Gibb of the Bee Gees, who died last Sunday. He joins his younger brother, Andy, on the other side, who also died (1988) from heart problems . Blessings, Maurice! You will be missed.

  • 11:24 pm
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