The blessings it confers are incalcuable

I see a palm trees everyday. There are roughly 2600 spieces of Arecaceae, but not that many varieties in Los Angeles. Like the wait staff of many restaurants seeking fame in Hollywood, the palm trees aren’t even from Los Angeles. They were brought here 100 years ago or more from Latin America and other exotic lands. That was only a beginning. Hundreds of Mexican Palms, which look a lot like the Canary Island Date Palm and were planted throughout the modest neighborhoods of south Los Angeles to herald the 1932 Olympics, and are still thriving. Los Angeles is full of them. Local officials really don’t care for them. They look good on post cards and because they have become the universal sign for vacation the tourism boosters are big supporters, but those with a more practical point of view disagree. Their tall, bare trunks make them inferior when it comes to providing shade, and their scant leaves make them less effective at trapping air pollution. Stand next to an oak tree, feel the shade. Stand next to a palm tree or stand next to a telephone pole…no difference. The yearly clean up cost for palm trees in Los Angeles is about $350,000, but to really maintain them the right wat would cost upwards of $385,000. Its hard to predict their future in Los Angeles. The city doesn’t replace a palm that succumbs to fungal disease or those that grow into the power lines and are removed overnight, with another palm. You get a magnolia, maybe a jacaranda, . Twenty Five year ago I purchased four five gallon palms. One still is potted and is of somewhat manageable size. The other three, they went into the ground. Out of those three two were cut down by The Los Angeles Department of Water & Power (into the lines) the other one is amazingly tall and must be professionally pruned each year of the little date nuts that form in the stratosphere. Frankly I could do without the palms. But a worthless tree? In the age of supermarkets, hardware and clothing stores I guess they are low on the scale. But this wasn’t the case in the mid 19^th century. Read what travel writer Herman Melville wrote in 1846 about the cocoa nut palm tree.

“ The blessings it confers are incalculable. Year after year, the islander reposes beneath its shade, ( OK I know the shade, but in there never have been many oak groves in the Polynesian chain) both eating and drinking of its fruit; he thatches his hut with its boughs, and weaves them into baskets to smaller ones , with bowls for his pipes, the dry husks kindle his fires; their fibres are twisted into fishing lines and cords for his canoes; he heals his wounds with a balsam compounded from the juice of the nut, and with the oil extracted from its meat embalms the bodies of the dead.

The noble trunk itself is far from being valueless. Sawn into posts, it uphold the islander’s dwelling; converted into charcoal, it cooks his food; and supported on blocks of stone, rails in his lands. He impels his canoe through the water with a paddle of the wood, and goes to battle with clubs and spears of the same hard material.

In pagan Tahiti a cocoa-nut branch was the symbol of regal authority. Laid upon the sacrifice in the temple, it made the offering sacred; and with it the priests chastised and put to flight the evil spirits, which assailed them. The supreme majesty of Oro, the great god of their mythology, was declared in the cocoa-nut log from which his image was crudely carved. Upon one of the Tonga Islands, there stands a living tree revered itself as a deity. Even upon the Sandwich Islands, the cocoa-palm retains all its ancient reputation; the people there thought of adopting it as the national emblem.”

Obviously The Los Angeles City Council doesn’t see eye to eye with Melville’s thoughts as he contemplated the story of the great white, but they do have a point of view. Do we lose our iconic palm tree, is the symbol of Los Angeles destined to morph into a jacaranda? The world has changed and the palm’s values have died.

Phryganidia californica

Its the stuff science fiction movies are made from. Bleary eyed from an early morning flight, I walk outside into the hazy fog that only the Central Coast of California knows at 10 AM. The verdant oak tress are barren, the garden paths are paved in a yellowy powder, and every railing, tree trunk, Adirondack chair, is covered with thousands of one inch caterpillars with little red round heads. Avoiding sitting or stepping or squashing one with your hand is unavoidable. Too bad because these creatures ooze green when exploded by pressure.

But this is real, this is the oak moth.

Every decade or so, maybe in some places, more frequently (obviously my property), the California oak moth, Phryganidia californica populations explode and defoliate large areas of coast live oak. In 2007, parts of Monterey, Carmel and Del Rey Oaks supported an outbreak. This continued in 2008 and extended in patches inland to Carmel Valley Village. This is a natural part of the life cycle of the coast live oaks. But somewhat worrisome since it was only three years since the last population explosion.

My first reaction was that I was loosing my beautiful ancient oaks. It was tough for me when a 200 + foot specimen died of natural causes and I had to have it taken down. This would be devastating. I called my Carmel Valley nature guru Jon Augustitus who assured me this was part of nature and that the tress would all come back stronger. He also explained that in times of drought this was nature’s way of making the giant oaks less dependent on water. But now the caterpillars, and the yellow powder…what’s up?

Moths, like butterflies, are part of the order Lepidoptera and thus have a similar life cycle. Females lay whitish eggs in clusters on twigs and leaves; the eggs turn reddish or brownish as hatching approaches. I must admit I never saw this coming. The eggs hatch into tiny black caterpillars or larvae. The mature larvae are 20–30mm long and are olive green with black and yellow longitudinal lines along the back and sides and have a reddish head. These are the monsters that defoliated my oaks. When they are ready, the larvae enter the pupa stage. The pupae are white or yellow with black markings and are found hanging from bark, leaves, and branches. When the pupa is mature, an adult oak moth will emerge. And this is what I have to look forward to; as many moths as there are caterpillars!

Ok so this explains the bare trees and the creepy little crawlers that by the way fall from the trees into my hair, on my clothes; one even took a dive into my small batch bourbon. What about the yellow powder?

It’s the frass. When oak moth caterpillars begin feeding they drop frass. Their frass is small and golden brown in color. What’s frass? Simple, frass is the indigestible part of my oak leaves. Frass is caterpillar poop. I am just amazed at the amount!

In situations like this my knee jerk reactions is to call someone; some kind of exterminator. This time though I am going on what I am being told. It’s part of nature’s order. I am able to bask in her beauty so why not follow her rules.

I will report back and let’s not forget the moths that are due in thirty days or so.

Secret Garden (Back Garden Update)

Alexis suggested this update. In April of 09 I posted that I wanted to get rid of my back lawn and install small pebbles, redirecting my irrigation to the perimeter narrow gardens. I had Sloane and a friend scrape the grass, had a dump truck unload a lot of tiny pebbles, and Jan wheel barrowed the rocks into place. Done. No. In September of 2009 Jan and I went to New York for three months. On our return a grassy weed has taken over the pebbles. Tony and the boys came in, shoved the pebbles to the side, pulled the weeds, and covered the earth with a black cloth that lets rain through but not vegetation. This black cloth was something that I had originally considered but thought I might dodge that bullet. Nope. It is an important element. Even the lengthy walkways in Carmel that are covered in small pebble, have to be majorly weeded every spring after the fall rains. If you want it maintenance free the black cloth is a must. Jonathan Henry came over for dinner last week and settled back in the back garden casually calling it a secret garden. He didn’t realize what a compliment he paid me.

Brighten the Day

We spent the last weekend of April at the Jazz & Heritage festival in New Orleans. I spent the early 70’s there in college and have visited many times since, but this was my first trip back since the devastation that came down during Hurricane Katrina. On the quick flight from JFK I made a mental note that I would refrain from asking anybody about “the storm”. I did have a million questions, but hadn’t these people been through enough? I figured that they’d been asked the same questions by every visitor who’d been there since that morning of August 29, 2005.

My resistance to asking questions was moot. No sooner than I had gotten my hand on a cool Albita the talk began. The people of New Orleans want to discuss the devastation. They call it Katrina, The Storm, The Failure of the Levy System, but what ever they call it…they definitely want to talk about it. The gallery owner on Royal Street, told me about the ruined floors in his home but smiled that his gallery was unscathed. My college pal Patricia Schrieber told me about her father’s Lake Ponchatrian home that had been in her family for generations had succumbed to the raging waters. It was Patricia who over dinner at the uptown local eatery Clancey’s explained how the levies failed and eventually the lake (Lake Ponchatrain) flowed into the city. There were countless stories of rotted food, spoiled rare vintages, and lost loved ones; either killed by the waters or whose spirits were killed and abandoned the city that had been there shelter.

Katrina serves as a time line landmark. “Johnny’s first communion, was that before or after the storm.” Vince when were you here last, before or after Katrina.”

As I ate very expensive and very delicious seafood in the French Quarter, Smokie, the chef at Charity hospital, vividly told me about her attempts to keep the food services going at the hospital, feeding the infirmed and staff as the evacuation carried on, and then her airlift by helicopter from the roof of the abandoned institution. As we walked out of the restaurant, Smokie told me about what she found an interesting phenomenon. Sunflowers. Months after the waters receded and the debris was slowly cleared, Sunflowers started popping up all over town. Smokie painted a vivid picture of this sudden, random blooming. The neutral ground where the then temporarily shut down trolley made its downtown to uptown voyage had sunflowers breaking through the barren soil where grass once flourished. Flower boxes that held the remnants of ornamental evergreens sprouted the blooms and in the middle of garden district lawns sunflowers appeared.

Was this divine providence or the hallucinogenic imagination of a woman, who after days of feeding frightened hospital patients, needed to see a bright spot?

Perhaps all of these factors contribute to the sunflowers that are popping up in New Orleans, but I did uncover one definite one. 



Project Sprout an environmental group, recently planted its first test plots of sunflowers in New Orleans, These plots of land were essentially vacant lots which had been turned into dumping ground for all kinds of debris. In addition to all the list of horrific aftermath problems Katrina contributed to, the ph levels of the soils show inordinate amounts of heavy metals. Research has shown it may take as much as a thousand years to actually clean a heavily contaminated plot in New Orleans. But there's also some research that comes out of Dillard University that has shown that in a couple of growing seasons a lot in New Orleans moved from being unsafe according to EPA standards to a safe level for alternative uses. "

Once the plants take out the toxins, they are themselves contaminated, with most of the contamination held in the stalk. When sunflowers are planted in soil with high levels of lead, the stalks need to be treated as a biohazard.

 The sunflower seeds can be used to make biodiesel. Its important to remember that it takes quite a few sunflower seeds to make a tank of fuel for the average automobile, but their heart is in the right place.

I love the idea of cleaning the soil by planting flowers (I understand that the canola plant has the same cleansing effect.), but I also feel that when you pass a mass planting of vibrant sunflowers it makes you happy and gives you a jolt of hope that failed systems and politics just can’t.

Garden Update October 2010

I started out writing a 2010 gardening update…

2010 will go down as the year that didn’t for my gardening efforts. Of the hundreds of Zinnia seeds I sowed in the spring in Toluca Lake, two plants finally emerged. In April I planted amazing tomato varietals seedlings in Carmel Valley. Deer that passed through the garden, also freely munching on roses and rhubarb, ravaged the adolescent plants. The highlights of the 2010 efforts were amazing roses and one very prolific heirloom pineapple tomato plant in Toluca Lake, and a lovely basket of delicate Meyer lemons from Carmel Valley. Not even the great botanist Hans Sloane got every seed to grow and the deer, well its their land really so who is the invader? I am at peace in the garden and pleased to be here.

Then I thought I’d review my 2010 gardening pictures to find a good one to illustrate the doom and gloom. I had forgotten about the volunteer Morning Glory in Toluca Lake, The amazing wildflowers in both Carmel Valley and the San Fernando Valley. The delicious miners lettuce that was the subject of my March posting and the amazing 12 foot tall thistle that took over a hillside of the Carmel property.

I am still at peace in the garden and happy to be here, and with this exercise, satisfied.

Sutter's Mill Salad

At the end of 1848, 20 thousand miners had migrated to the western gold fields surrounding Sutter’s Mill. Not to be left out, New York native, Michael Shea had several options to get his piece of the action. After rejecting the 2,000 mile overland trip that risked disease and Indian attacks, and the 16,000 mile trip around Cape Horn to San Francisco he opted to take the 6,063 mile route to Panama across the Isthmus connecting to a steamer from Panama City to San Francisco. After weeks in a 4x6 foot “cabin”, weeks being transferred up the Chagris River by natives and a very long wait in Panama City for the next steamer he finally arrived in San Francisco and made his way to the action. When Shea arrived at the end of 1849, 100,000 men were in the gold fields and by 1852 that number had more than doubled. The overwhelming population in that relatively small area made healthy nutrition hard to come by. The most debilitating result of this problem was the outbreaks of scurvy. When spots on the skin, spongy gums, and bleeding from the mucous membranes started, not all the gold in California could help. Shea and his newfound friends found the solution to this plague from the local Indians; claytonia perfoliata.

This plant that became known as “miners lettuce” is indigenous to the cooler climates of Northern California’s central coast region. You can imagine my surprise (and embarrassment) when I realized that the pesky, white flowered plant that withers and dies when the spring sun gets strong and that I had been randomly removing from our property in the Carmel Valley has been the delicious, nutritious, Miner’s Lettuce.

Nutritious? How did it save Shea and his fellow miners? Why some 160 years later do the foragers search it out? Vitamin C! We take the supplements, we drink the juice, but few of us know that this wild grower is loaded with Vitamin C. Three ounces (and by the way 3 ounces is a lot of lettuce) had more, much more vitamin C than most fruits and vegetables.

Look at this table:

Good Sources of Vitamin C per 100 g

Red Pepper (raw) 190

Guava 100

Miner’s Lettuce 120

Kiwi 90

Broccoli (raw) 89

Brussell Sprouts (raw) 85

Papaya 60

Strawberry 60

Orange 50

Lemon 40

Cantaloupe 40

Cauliflower 40

Grapefruit 30

Spinach 30

Cabbage 30

By the looks of this chart my Miner’s Lettuce salad has more vitamin c than a fresh fruit salad. With large fleshy leaves, miner's lettuce is a small succulent annual plant. It’s hard to make a mistake in the garden when looking for it. At the top of its slender stalks are saucer-shaped leaves that completely encircle the stems, appearing to be one circular leaf. Small white to pinkish flower clusters appear slightly above the unique leaves. Oblong-shaped leaves grow near the base of the plant. It’s all edible! I pinch it off from the bottom and it has the feel of spinach. Lately I have been using it like any kind of lettuce, spinach, or arugala. The real foragers tell me that if the miner’s lettuce isn’t too close to automobile traffic it shouldn’t be washed at all. I’m not buying into that! I wash it and give it a ride in the salad spinner. I haven’t steamed it yet but I will soon. I am heading back to the valley this week to pick another large bunch. Now that the temperatures are rising, Miner’s Lettuce is getting ready to shrivel up until next year.

What else am I getting rid of in the garden that I could be eating?

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