Heavenly Fragrance, Pretty Poison

Life is full of trade offs. We often put up with nuisances because they give us pleasure. Men often marry troublesome, labor intensive, high maintenance women because they are beautiful. The plant kingdom has it's share of prima donnas, too. Angel's Trumpet is one of them. Datura, or specifically, Brugmansia x candida is a member of the very large solanaceae family of plants that includes the tomato, various nightshades, brunsfelsia, petunias and wild tobacco. It's a very close relative of the Jimsom Weed, the "common name for a plant known botanically as Datura stramonium, which has been used as a medicine and intoxicant for centuries. The plant's main ingredients are the belladonna alkaloids atropine and scopolamine. Since Jimson weed is native to much of the U.S. (found locally in the high desert), it's most often used by young people in those areas unfamiliar (or familiar) with its reputation and unprepared for its side effects." Which are mostly bad. (Fast Facts, Do It Now Foundation) The cowboys didn't name it Loco Weed for nothin'!

If you have small children or puppies who like to taste anything and everything, don't plant Brugmansia until they get a little older and wiser. This is a plant to be appreciated for it's fabulousness. The night and morning perfume is euphoric, the large trumpet flowers, ridiculously baroque. The umbrella shape is perfect for a stunning focal point in your garden. Be prepared to tend to this beauty's every need and whim. This greedy angel loves water and food. It will have a tantrum, withering and dropping leaves, refusing to flower if you ignore it for long, making itself into a pathetic scraggly stick-like creature you'd rather yank from the garden than look at it another day. But if you lavish it with flower food, give it regular water and some shade in the hottest of months, you'll be positively giddy with the results on a hot summer, or November evening when you breathe in the intensely perfumed air provided your entire garden by Brugmansia.

Let's face it. We all have high maintenance friends or relatives.

But when you think about it, the ones who respond to your ministrations make life a little more lovely, a little more interesting, a little more beautiful.

Grow yourself a Brugmansia. Feed it often, give it sufficient water. Then breathe in it's perfume deeply at dusk, or early in the morning when you are out in the garden pulling a few weeds. It will make all that tending worth the effort.

Brugmansia is easy to propogate by either cuttings or seed. Allow the seed pods to mature on the tree, then plant in potting soil and keep moist. Plants will grow rapidly. Transfer to successively larger pots until ready to plant in the garden. Brugmansia will grow in pots with proper care.

Abraham Darby, One, Two, Three

According to Wikipedia, Abraham Darby (I,II and III--1698 to 1791) was/were noted for their contributions in ironworking. Builders of bridges and steam engines, they were also significant developers in the uses of energy that propelled the Industrial Revolution.

David Austin has memorialized them (collectively) and their contributions to the advancement of industry and practical science in this beautiful rose which continues to bloom in southern California in November. I have found that this English Rose does not like the full hot sun of a Fullerton summer, even when sufficiently watered. Rather, it thrives in the spring and autumn when the cooler wetter weather mimics, possibly, a British summer.

Hard to imagine why David Austin named this delicate, fragrant cabbage-like rose after these captains of industry. (Clip a few blooms and put them in a vase. Bury your face in them every time you pass their way.) Possibly because it is very hardy and disease resistant. Abraham III's cast iron bridge over the Severn was so important, it caused a city to grow up around it. I guess it was the "Bridge to Nowhere" of the 18th century. Maybe this is what Ted Stevens has in mind with his bridge from Ketchikan, Alaska, to an offshore island inhabited by 50 solitude loving souls. (Cost to taxpayers, mostly not from Alaska--$223 million)

The bridge building Darbys were peace loving Quakers, much like the Inuits who strongly oppose the bridge and all it will bring in the way of change.

Ah Progress!

Plant Nasturtiums for chaos and color

Buy a couple of packets of Nasturtium (Tropaeolum) seeds. Get a variety. Push them into the soil anywhere. They love sun, but will grow in some shade and reseed prolifically. In a few years, you will have nasturtiums everywhere, in your lawn, in all the flower beds. You'll want to weed them but don't. The riot of color will lift your spirits particularly after a sad day of reading election results. (Orange is, after all, the prefered color of revolutionaries.) Add some flowers, leaves or unripe seeds to your salad. They're peppery and pretty. The bees will cross pollinate so you'll have a huge variety of colors after a few generations. Heinz 57 Nasturtiums! Save some of the seeds and give them to your friends. (A little cross-pollination among friends will aid the bees.) Let them spill over your walkways and climb on your fence. When they get leggy and long in the tooth, pull them up and put them in the green waste bin or your compost heap. (Don't you wish it were this easy to get rid of politicians?) Fear not! You will have another crop before you know it. They'll spring up everywhere, even in the composter.

Second Law of Holes: Keep Digging

.... the first law of holes being "If you are in one, stop digging." The first law of holes would have us stop and look at our obsessive spiral downward. The fact that we are our own worst enemy. The fact that if we continue with our obsession it will be our demise, bury us in the hole we have dug, turn it into our grave. Possibly even get us indicted, un-elected or impeached.
The second law of holes is therefore not for the faint of heart. Bring a willingness to dig your hole to China if you must. Dabble in chaos, rioting, anarchy, horror vacui, iffy partnerships, clashing colors and all sorts of cross pollination, both literal and metaphorical. Better to replace yourself in that hole with a plant. Or a few hundred. (Be sure to add a little blood meal and some quick start fertilizer for best results.)

Welcome to my garden.