Donations of all sorts

Euphorbia rigida
(Donkey Tail Spurge)

Last week Jason from Flora Grubb emailed me to say he had a donation he'd like to make to the garden. I was all atwitter, naturally, since FG is to PG what HD is to TV! Well, sort of.

Yesterday morning I was scratching at the gate of Flora Grubb as they opened, mouth slightly frothing in excitement.  After a brief hunt, the salesperson and I were about to give up looking for the plants Jason hid somewhere for me, but luckily Matt was there and he spied them in a corner. They were:

2 Guadalupe palms (Brahea edulis)

1 other palm... what is it? Darned if I can remember.

1 exotically spotted Mangave, complete with one slug plus one snail (for some reason they love Mangaves, and I hereby swear I will do my utmost to protect this one from their hungry mouths)

1 Octopus agave (Agave vilmoriniana)

We also bought some lovely Euphorbias:

3 Euphorbia "Blackbird"

3 Euphorbia "Silver Swan"

Here's what Jason said about the Guadalupe palm:

"Brahea edulis is an unarmed fan palm from Guadalupe Island, off the coast of northern Baja California, where it grows in habitat with Monterey pine, ceanothus, and other signature members of the California flora. Guadalupe Island is considered the southernmost outpost of the California Floristic Province and we consider the Guadalupe palm to be the "true" California native palm due to its cultural preferences and ecological associations. Here's a blog post I wrote on it:

http://floragrubb.com/pbBlog/?p=218

Here's a set of marvelous photos of Guadalupe Island, an ecological recovery story in the wake of the removal of goats that had been devouring the native plants for 140 years:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/alanharper/sets/72157624102972478/"

We went home and marveled at our haul - it's always fun to look up plants online to see what they'll do, plan where to plant them, and just admire their shiny-newness. Thank you Jason and Flora Grubb!

Later on that day  I popped out to the garden and installed the new dog poop sign.  Donna helped make that sign happen, and it's quite a sturdy item. I had to place it way up high on the light pole to deter theft, and luckily Nate happened to pass by just as I was contemplating climbing on a trash can to reach.

Today I went out to plant the Euphorbias and ran into Jim, Gary and Emily with Bentley. We all chatted and after everyone left I planted three Euphorbias in the left bed and decided to save the other three for later.

Nice!

I also transplanted some little lamb's ears on the lower path, watered everything in, watered some of the potted plants in the back, and noted with a mixture of joy and annoyance that we've had two more donations recently.

The first is a couple bundles of very desirable branches for twig border making from a nice, anonymous neighbor - thanks!

The second is a bag full of someone's yard waste. No thanks!

Not nice.

I just know that this bag was left in a kindly spirit, but we already have a huge pile of that stuff, and built the new composter in order to make usable compost (vs the weed-filled pile). We're desperate for our huge pile to go away so bringing your yard waste to PG and dumping it is not something we want. Please put it in your green bin: the city can really use it.

Now, if you have kitchen food scraps, different story - put them in the open composter bin. They'll very quickly turn into something useful. Unlike your yard waste which will inundate us and take forever to break down. Yes, two of our bins are already full - that only took a couple weeks!