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Go to 2006 Tour
Go to 2007 Tour

 

PART 1: Our Move and Where We Landed
PART 2: The Creative Place
PART 3: The Amazing Big White House
PART 4: Birds and Critters
PART 5: Fog
PART 6: Plants
PART 7: Earth Wind and Fire
PART 8: The Galexis Business
PART 9: Travel
PART 10: Autumn Adventure with Patricia Bragg
PART 11: Health Changes
PART 12: LA, the Future?


Part Six; Plants

     My focus on nature has most often been the plants. After all, birds keep moving and are hard for me to see. By the time I pick up my binoculars and focus in on them, they are often gone. However, plants are conveniently stationary and can be approached closely, examined, and communicated with. In Florida, my passion was connecting to the native plants, although urban Florida counties are dominated by the shrubs and flowers brought from other parts of the world for landscaping. To my disappointment, the same is true here, and many of the ubiquitous landscaping plants are familiar. In the spring, wild grasses are mostly wild oats. Now we understand what the phrase “sowing wild oats” means!

     The native plants here are part of the scrub natural to the Mediterranean Climate and like Florida, subtle in color, varying from greens and olives to grays. Sprawling scrub oaks, wild lilacs or Ceanothus, vigorous sumacs, asters, poppies, and other natives create varieties of textures and shades that I find beautiful.

     In the spring, Daniel and I went on a native plant tour in Malibu, to explore the growth of plants following a burn (the Malibu fires of October 2007). We were introduced to many natives and I began to feel more connected to the nature and the plants here.

     The spring was glorious. Flowering began while it was still cold, but came in earnest March and April. Both the cultivated landscape plants as well as the natives put on a phenomenal show! We hadn’t seen spring like this in decades! After all, Florida is subtropical with a year-round growing season. With extra rains after the Malibu Fires, everything was greener than usual – our good fortune. I spent many hours photographing spring flowers and the garden, feeling all the time the inner spring excitement I’d remembered from my youth; a new activation of vigor, life and passion.

click on thumbnails below to view pictures