Ready for our close up? Heck NO.

It's been two months since the last post! My son/builder/ranch hand Jorge and I have been feverishly obsessing over the look and feel of my funky garden for months. (That's Jorge building a new arbor over the staghorn fern.) Fool that I am, when the Fullerton Beautiful Garden Tour ladies came to my front door to see if I would participate in the 2006 program, I thought, Gee. That would be fun.

The garden is looking pretty good. Funky, yes, but my clan has a real strangehold on funky. We do funky to the max. Organized chaos is our bailiwick. My sister Vanessa had just the right solution for a problematic area in the backyard, and now things are nearing their quintessential chaotic best.

Since we had a frighteningly warm winter, followed by cold rain (and even one freeze that managed to kill off some young, newly planted coleus) some of the roses are going off with their big first bloom too early. ARGH! The new purple rhododendron has bloomed out and the camellias and azaleas are nearly done.

Last minute weeding, last minute obsessing about placement or elimination of naked statuary, replacement of bloomed out plants, fresh mulch and pea gravel (we LOVE pea gravel) and other manic over achiever-type preparations will all be accomplished by showtime, she said hopefully, 11:00 AM Sunday the 9th of April. Tickets info listed below. I have to keep reminding myself that perfection is a major yawner, not to mention impossible.

April 9 - Fullerton Beautiful's Annual Garden Tour,

11-4 p.m.; maps available at Fullerton College Horticulture Center (enter from Berkeley, near the corner of Lemon); 871-4156. Tickets are $10. Members are free. Fullerton Horticultural Center will be selling plants.