One of the many rewards of having a dog is you end up spending time just standing in one place, looking around at the trees, and the plants, while your dog takes care of doggie business. I hadn’t noticed these trees in the park near our home until one day when Lila found something interesting nearby that had to be investigated.
Thanks to
nest maker’s mom, Patricia, I found out they’re Spanish Chestnut trees, also known as Sweet Chestnut. All my life I’ve loved to collect chestnuts in the fall; their colors are so rich and warm. I checked back recently to see what these trees were producing. Cool huh?
And they add a little touch of fall at home on the mantle. Or once you’ve accumulated enough they look so pretty in a bowl.
Evidently this is the variety of chestnut that is edible. People have been swarming the park and collecting them as they drop.
Have you ever eaten a roasted chestnut? One winter while I was living in Seattle the Four Seasons Hotel hired a roaster at Christmastime to roast them at a cart on the street, and give them away in paper cones. How romantic I thought, how cosmopolitan. How disgusting! Not a taste I ever want to taste again.
Lila decided if I was going to stand around and take pictures then she’d just go ahead and lie down and enjoy the sun. Smart girl.
Back September I posted about a
group of trees that caught my eye. A couple of keen readers identified them as Dawn Redwoods and alerted me to the fact they would take on beautiful color in the fall. I checked back yesterday and found this…
Close up color, but over all still very green. I’ll keep a watch.
On a tree in the same park as the Redwoods, this sign appeared a couple weeks ago.
It reads (in part) "This Oregon white oak tree, a longtime resident and honored citizen of Willamette Park, will be leaving the neighborhood soon. If you look closely at the base of the trunk, you will notice fruiting bodies (conks) of a disease fungus. Additionally, there are areas of decay along the main stem and surface roots. Pathology tests and examination of this tree by certified arborists have determined that the root rot disease and the structural defects make this tree vulnerable to failure.…..This tree is scheduled for removal during the week of October 12, 2009."
These are the fungal growths referred to. Yuck. Poor tree.
It’s was a tall beauty don’t you think?
Now there is just this…
I potted up 5 tiny agaves that I brought back from California in these little orange pots, and had them setting in the window. Andrew thought they looked like pumpkins. So he added the jack-o-lantern faces (don't worry it's a dry erase pen so they'll come off). Since I am pathetically out of tune with the calendar I hadn't even managed to buy a pumpkin yet. These will do nicely.
The agaves came from this bloom on the mother plant in Santa Barbara...cool huh?
Enjoy the holiday and don't eat all the candy at once!
These are heavy cement pots, tipped over by the wicked winds.
One of them shattered. Yikes.
Okay so I guess the storm packed a bit of a wallop after all, maybe this was extreme. 
Amazingly it was even better in person and still looking fresh and vibrant. Something I worry about with vertical gardens…how do they look over time? 
For some reason I envisioned the nursery location being very suburban, maybe north in Corte Madera. Not the case, the nursery is located just south of downtown in a fairly industrial area. Everything was so colorful and well tended. There weren’t many people there early on a cloudy Monday morning so we had the place pretty much to ourselves. 
There was so much color everywhere we looked!
I've dubbed this the "Marmoleum Cactus" - doesn't it look like Marmoleum?
Flora Grubb does stock tanks! 
And more metal...lots of metal!
A display for 
Luckily I ducked in the powder room, what a great green wall behind the loo! I love it when areas like this are considered and part of the overall aesthetic of a place, not the scary restrooms that you sometimes discover in a retail location.
Imagine yourself relaxing on these lounge chairs. They actually are very comfortable! If you find yourself in the Bay Area...check them (and the nursery) out for yourself!
The Tetrapanax leaves are also starting to turn gold. But the Echium is hardly fazed (it's the big green mass below with the pointy leaves). Unfortunately it’s going to take a very mild winter for this one to make it till spring. but a girl can hope. Can you believe I brought this plant home from the NW Flower and Garden show in Seattle on an airplane? In a small tote bag?
The Solomon’s Seal has turned golden…
And the Peony foliage… 
Eucomis Oakhurst falling every which way.
And this one remaining upright… sort of...
This silly Abutilon has more blooms and buds on it now than it has had all summer!
The same for this fuchsia, which I bought on a whim three years ago, and it refuses to die.
I left town thinking the Canna maybe frozen mush when we returned, not the case.
The same for this Ensete Maurelii. I have given up trying to winter over this plant and just replace with a new one in the spring. This one hardly seems to notice summer is over and is going strong. Perhaps I’ll try, just one more time, to winter one over.
There are still a few green tomatoes hanging on. I realize they are never going to ripen but they look so full of possibility. 
And the Fatsia Japonica blooms are looking so “sputnik”…I love them at this stage.
All in all things weathered the two weeks without me just fine. The garden has progressed effortlessly into fall, now I need to catch up.