After a great day exploring the Anza-Borrego Desert wildflower super bloom, I decided to head back out to Borrego Springs a week later to hike Palm Canyon to see the Washingtonia filifera oasis. To enjoy Anza-Borrego’s most famous hike, it needs to happen in the spring before it gets too hot. The weather worked in my favor…
So unless you have been living without the Internet the last month, it would have been impossible for someone living in Southern California not to have heard about the “wildflower super bloom” happening out in the Anza-Borrego Desert. It has been all over the news and social media since February. The “wildflower super bloom” wasn’t just making…
A rainy day garden: often a curse in the tropics, but a rare treat in Southern California. I can honestly tell you that I have never said, “Oh, darn. It’s going to rain” while I have had my garden here in Vista, California. If you do not live in a low-rainfall Mediterranean climate, you can not really understand why rain…
I have written a few blog post over the last two years showing off some of the amazing gardens that members of the Southern California Palm Society (PSSC) have created. Recently I had the opportunity to tour what is most likely the nicest of all of them in Southern California: the beautiful “Cuesta Linda” garden estate…
This past week I gathered the wife, kids and dogs and loaded up our trailer for a camping trip to the Kern River. The long-range forecast when we planned the trip months prior didn’t show that it would be over 100 degrees Fahrenheit each day we were there. Let’s just say it was a very hot week, but the temperature…
As part of the second leg of the International Palm Society’s biennial group trip, Singapore was the next stop after Sarawak, Borneo. The IPS had planned three palmy locations to visit while we were in Singapore. Gardens by the Bay, Singapore Botanic Garden (topic of next week’s post) and McRitchie Reservoir. Gardens by the Bay was first up. Before…
For as long as I have been traveling to Southeast Asia, I have had a bucket list of things to do in that region. One item on the list was to summit Mount Kinabalu on the island of Borneo. While it is not the tallest peak in Southeast Asia, which is a commonly shared falsity amongst travelers, it is…
Gardeners know how easy it is to add color to their landscape. The choices nowadays are truly endless and the list expands daily. What a great time to be a gardener. Red, orange, yellow, green, white, brown, purple, pink. All easy. Getting black and blue in the garden, however, can be a different story. So why is blue…