Visiting with your favorite deceased horticulturist

The redwood has embraced this gravestone.

This is an early start to thinking about this year's Días de los Muertos. Maybe these are thoughts you have when you take out the old tomatoes and start thinking about planting fava beans.

Last week our landscape drawing class had a field trip to the Mountain View Cemetery. On the way up the hill, Bryn and Robert and I had a conversation which, because we were in a cemetery, it was only slightly morbid. Where did we want to be parked when we are done with our earthly bodies?

Over the years of taking care of the older folks, I have decided that I want to be sprinkled about in some of my favorite mushroom hunting grounds. I'm hoping to hitch a ride up and down the xylem and phloem of a redwood until I settle into a ring of wood. That redwood might be long lived enough that I could spend some time there before being made into a fence or a mole den.

So that's what I said - I just want my folks (whoever they are at that time) to sprinkle me up and down the coastal forests. [and that includes some local ones which shall remain nameless]

Trees of Katie Elder

Earlier this year we watched The Sons of Katie Elder. It was a great classic Western. In the final shoot-out, however, the forest really stole the show. The trees were huge and the roots gnarly. They were clustered at water's edge and (in the movie) growing near a triple waterfall. Surely this place must be famous. The movie poster, here, integrates the trees into the action. WOW!

Where is that forest and what kind of trees are they? Time for some forestry forensics!

The Undecidable Woods - Le Bois de Lauzelle

Le Bois de Lauzelle is located in Louvain-la-Neuve in Belgium.
The trees may be beeches.
I will look through my pics to see if I can confirm.
Photo by M. Balk

When Little Bart was in Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, she posted this picture of le Bois de Lauzelle on her blog. The photo of green trees and red forest floor immediately resonated with something that I had seen before. I pictured a horsewoman, gliding in and out of the trees, at least sort of, but in an odd way.

Sequoiadendron giganteum...Who named it first?

"Hermit and Burnt Tree" from Calisphere.

The "Big Tree" has had many names and there is much interesting controversy over how it was named and claimed. This is but one of many articles that I have found in google books and Internet Archive and other archives.

What I have read elsewhere is that the English scooped the Californians in describing the tree now known as Sequoiadenron giganteum. To the Americans it must have seemed very nervy and audacious when Dr. Lindley named our great tree after one of the English military greats, the Duke of Wellington. How much sense did that make? Apparently it's ok if you are the first one out of the gate. But not surprisingly there was a bit of fallout and controversy. And as you know, it didn't stick, except in the U.K. where you can still see signs for the "Wellingtonia".

Stripy Rainbow Tulips at Holland's flower garden, the Keukenof

At an early age, I must have decided that flowers
could be stripy rainbow colors.
Orbiting above the flower and the earth,
I think it might be John Glenn,
also in rainbow color.
Our TVs were black and white
but our imagination was in color.

Keukenof is world famous for its spring flowering bulb displays. Their English landscape style garden near Amsterdam is huge. It takes a couple of hours to see the gardens.

In my family, flowers are not necessarily everyone's favorite thing to look at in large quantities, but luckily it was Mother's Day when we visited. And so I was able to cash in on that happy circumstance. I am so glad we went. It was the last weekend they were open to the public and many of the beds had already finished up. There was still an amazing display of flowers.

Branch Studies

Oak tree branch and rocks and hills

Whenever I hike in our local parks, I see the scenes that Eyvind Earle painted. (No, silly, not Sleeping Beauty's castle)

His landscape pictures capture the look and feel of the coastal hills of California - coastlines, green or golden rolling oak hills, long shadows of cattle or trees. Many of his pictures have a tree branch in the foreground. I have wondered about those tree branches. 

Thirty-Six Views of Mission Peak

Many of us Fremont-ers treat Mission Peak as our Mt. Fuji.
Wherever we go we have our own "Where's Waldo?".
This view is from Sabercat Creek.

I really love the  Thirty-six Views of Mt. Fuji. Each picture has Mt. Fuji in it somewhere, either prominently or somewhat hidden. When you look at each picture, it's like looking for a friend in a crowd or .... a "Where's Waldo?" game!