DryStoneGarden

People in Yosemite: A TimeLapse Study from Steven M. Bumgardner on Vimeo.

“I’ve lived and worked in National Parks for almost 20 years, and as much as I love landscape photography, I also like looking at the human footprint and the human experience in our national parks.” Bumgardner

This showed up on the Daily Dish just before I left town, so folks might have seen this already, but it merits posting anyways, among other reasons because the rock climbing at 2:30 is on the Stately Pleasure Dome in the Tenaya Lake area, which I posted about last fall. Very cool to see a time lapse of climbs I’ve done. Yosemite must be the most photographed valley in the world, but as far as I’m concerned there can never be too much Yosemite photography. I like that this collection focuses on the multitudes of people in the park, a significant part of the Yosemite experience; if you want to enjoy the valley, you have to come to terms with how many other people want to enjoy it, too.

— Update 7/13 — A recent link I felt like keeping track of, a map of the rock that makes up El Capitan, and more info from the map project.

the east side of the sierras, near mono lake

A little while back someone corrected me about referring to our mountains as “the Sierras,” claiming that Sierra Nevada means “snowy range” and should just be shortened to “Sierra,” no plural. Well, I was skeptical — I’ve called it that all my life and thought everyone else did, too — but before I embarrassed myself with incorrect usage on this blog, I tried to check it out. The best authority I found was a 1947 Sierra Club article excerpting a 1927 article by Francis Farquhar — author of History of the Sierra Nevada (which Anita and I carried with us on the John Muir Trail five years ago and read cover to cover during a snowstorm) and purportedly “the authority on Sierra place names” (he has a book called Place Names of the High Sierra, so it might be true) — who writes:

‘The SPANISH word sierra means “range of mountains,” and is usually found in combination with other words, such as Sierra Blanca (White Range), Sierra Madre (Mother Range, or Central Range), and Nevada (Snowy Range)… The Sierra Nevada is distinctly a unit, both geographically and topographically, and is well described as “una sierra nevada.” Strictly speaking, therefore, we should never say “Sierras,” or “High Sierras,” or “Sierra Nevadas” in referring to it. Nevertheless, these forms are so frequently found in the very best works of literature and science that it would perhaps be pedantic to deny their admissibility. It becomes, therefore, a matter of preference, and for our part we rather like to keep in mind the unity of our great range by calling it simply “The Sierra” or “The Sierra Nevada.”

Having thus promised not to look askance at “Sierras,” we may perhaps be spared the pain of hearing “Sierra Nevada Mountains.” Surely one does not say “Loch Katrine Lake,” “Rio Grande River,” or “Saint San Francisco.”’

I don’t have Farquhar’s authority, but I would say that we’re speaking English, not Spanish, and when we capitalize Sierra, we make it a name and create distance from the Spanish meaning. Just about every other mountain range gets the plural: the Whites, the Rockies, the San Jacintos, the Alps, etc… And one does indeed say Loch Katrine Lake in California. For instance, with the Loch Leven Lakes, in the very same Sierras. You have to go to Scotland to just call it Loch Katrine or Loch Leven.

But the 1948 author, who cites this 1927 Farquhar article, knows all about a person like me:

‘The name “Sierras” is still stuck to by a few recalcitrants who probably concluded that logic has nothing to do with the acceptance of place names, and who could cite, in accepted nomenclature, many redundancies such as Little Chico Creek (Little Little Creek).

‘We cannot argue logically with persons who deprecate logic; nevertheless, we can call them names. So we aver that the man who will say “Sierras” will also say “Frisco,” and is probably on a par with the printer who would letter-space lower case type. Such a printer, said Goudy, would steal sheep.’

To which I say: Hey, below the belt. I would never say “Frisco.”

Anyways, now that I’m paying attention, I notice some people saying “the Sierra” and some saying “the Sierras.” Both seem acceptable. Neither group seems like they would steal sheep.

— Update —

I found a stereoscope by Edward Muybridge from around 1870 that labels them the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Though he predates Farquhar, Muybridge was from England and at one point tried to plead temporary insanity at a murder trial, so I’m not sure he should be seen as an authority.

Stereoscope by Edward Muybridge, c. 1870

the wisteria shower

I swear this is the first time I’ve ever posted a photo of a man taking a shower on the internet.

This is our wisteria shower. Most of the year it’s a bamboo shower, but in April you get to shower with the wisteria blooms cascading around you. The shower is on our front porch, but so far no one has walked in on either of us and the bamboos in pots around the shower do a good job of screening. Guests are usually a bit skeptical at first, but they become hooked as soon as they try it. We have an indoor shower, too, but it’s much nicer to shower outside, especially when the wisteria is in bloom.

Last year we got a much better bloom and two winters ago we had a frosty winter that had the wisteria covered in blooms. It’s an old, well-established wisteria with plenty of space to ramble so we’ve been slack about pruning it, but this year we’ll probably motivate. You prune wisteria twice a year to create spurs and it’s generally a good idea to stay on top of your vine, show it who’s boss. The Monster, in Sierra Madre, CA, is the most extreme example of what happens if you let your vine run wild. That wisteria, a single Chinese vine planted to cover a house, eventually swallowed up the house and caused it to be demolished, took over an entire acre of land, has an estimated weight of 250 tons and blossom count of 1.5 million per year, branches over 500 feet long, and is listed as one of the seven horticultural wonders of the world. The town now has an annual festival celebrating it.

Our wisteria isn’t quite at that level, but it’s one of the great features of our garden. We have two vines in our yards, a younger Chinese vine, Wisteria sinensis, and the Japanese one over the shower, Wisteria floribunda. Chinese wisteria is the more commonly planted variety around here, but the Japanese one is more fragrant and has longer flower clusters, so we’re glad it’s the one over the shower. Our landlord is the one who planted the wisteria, and he did it before he even added the porch, let alone the shower, but it turned out really well. I think one of his motivations for the shower, beyond mere aesthetics, was that the bathroom is old and somewhat poorly ventilated, and it would generally be a good idea for the house if we showered outside, but, whatever the reason, he added a great feature to the house, one we’ll probably try to recreate in any other house we might ever move to.

EwaintheGarden has a great gallery of wisteria photos.

ryan 4/19

Castilleja Seed

If you’ve ever wanted to see your seeds magnified by an electron microscope, check out the slideshow of seeds and pollen from the Kew Millenium Seed Bank Project. They look otherworldly and very cool. The stated goal of the Kew project is to collect seed from 25% of the worlds plant species by 2020. Pretty ambitious and staggering goal.

— Addendum 12/10/09 —

There’s a beautiful gallery of pollen with an accompanying photo essay in the latest National Geographic.

— Addendum 8/24/10 —

National Geographic has another nice collection, this time of butterfly eggs and a stinkbug, by the same guy who did the pollen, Martin Oeggerli. The online collection doesn’t have any more photos than the print edition, but they do have a short video of him. A day to isolate the egg, he says, a day to do the scan, and up to 40 hours to add the color. A lot of work, and a beautiful finished project.

— Addendum 11/12/12 —

Smithsonian has some more photos from the Seed Bank.

Sproutopia Display Garden

I’ve noticed that mainstream media articles like to describe flower and garden shows as a sneak peak at the future of outdoor garden design. Personally, I think it’s more of a sneak peak at what will be showing up in garden shows, rather than the overwhelming majority of actual gardens.  For instance, I read two articles talking about how all the colors at the northwest show were hot colors, especially oranges and yellows, and that there were no blues, and that this signals a move towards bold hot colors in the future, but I remember reading the same articles last year and I think it just represents that the designers have an understanding of what looks good at the garden show. I can say from experience that orange and yellow are the two colors which show up best in the indoor lighting at the shows, and that blues completely disappear. Last year we had some Nemophillas (Baby Blue Eyes) in full bloom, but they were invisible in our garden, while a rather garish red Alonsoa meridionalis suddenly became the plant that everyone wanted to have, once the plants were indoors and the lighting had dialed down the colors several notches. Anita and I’d never attended a garden show before, or we’d have used more oranges and yellows and hot reds and pinks ourselves, and if I ever do one again you’ll see a a lack of blues, even though they include many of my favorite flowers. It’s a testament to how much influence site will always have on a design, even when the site is a complete blank slate like in a garden show.

In any case, my skepticism aside, in the spirit of offering a sneak peak at the true future of garden design, I present several design improvisations from Sproutopia, the garden show playland where tomorrow’s garden designers explore their design ideas today. As you will see, the best of the displays show an acute sensitivity towards site and material, a love for mixing different hardscape elements including stone, an interest in the architectural forms of succulents and conifers, and that the concept of “outdoor rooms” seems to have caught on with the next generation of designers. My apologies to the designers for not doing a better job of photographing their work, and a salute to whoever at the garden show is responsible for Sproutopia. The kids I saw were having a really good time. Enjoy.

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In the beginning Ryan said that BuenoLuna needed a blog.