Maladora - a Beastly Beauty

Well, glad to be back, I just couldn't find the time to write a post while I was working on a project. I'm eager to catch up.

A few weeks ago one of the Corpse Flowers, Amorphophallus titanum was blooming at UC Berkeley Botanic Garden. I just happened to have a couple of spare hours the day it was in full bloom so I thought I'd go check it out. While the flower is open for a day or two, it emits an aroma that is compared to the smell of rotting flesh, wafting out in waves and drifting far. The Corpse flower's blooms can reach 10' tall and unbelievably the plant wasn't even discovered by Western botanists until 1878 (how did they miss it?). Hailing from Sumatra, these giant arums must be grown in tropical greenhouses around here.

Before the flower opened, the Bot garden had a naming contest for this bloom and the winning suggestion was Maladora. (Why didn't I think of that!?) Anyway, Maladora was a real beaut. The lovely ruffly cape of velvety red opens to expose the rotten egg-stinky upright spadix. And the odor was quite powerful. It reminded me of a dead body with sugar on top. After being in the greenhouse with Maladora for 10 minutes or so I came out feeling quite nauseous. I feel sorry for the volunteer docents that are in there for long periods answering questions.

After checking out Maladora I headed out to investigate a few more freakish plants in the Arid House. Sorry for the lack of names. I was too busy enjoying the crazy shapes and textures to memorize names.

I get up to the Bot garden so infrequently, it was nice to wander around and check out what was happening.

Here's a few views around the garden:

I love this grass! It looks like a white water river flowing down the hill.

Illustrated History of Landscape Design

One evening last week I went to see Chip Sullivan and his partner Elizabeth Boults speak about their new book Illustrated History of Landscape Design, presented by The Garden Conservancy. The lecture was titled "Creating Mystery in the Garden". I hadn't had a chance to check out the book before the lecture, but having enjoyed Chip's two earlier books, I was eager to have a look. Plus when he signs a book he always draws a really cool illustration to go with it!



Chip was a professor of mine (my favorite I dare say) at the Landscape Architecture program at UC Berkeley. His lectures and projects were always fun and he was one of those professors who would go for a beer with a group of students after class, encouraging impromptu coaster illustrations amid discussions of landscape theory. His life-long fondness for comics and illustrative arts were strong themes in his teachings. We felt very free to experiment with design and materials in his studio. I did some of my favorite projects in that class, ones that still influence me today.

Liz Boults teaches Landscape History at UCDavis and was responsible for the text of the book. Based on the idea of a graphic novel, the text is still an important aspect and she is succinct yet thorough with the descriptions. With Liz's text and Chip's illustrations they have put together a unique presentation of landscape history.

Chip began the evening's lecture stating that one can often get a clearer idea of a space from a drawing than a photograph. At first I disagreed with his statement, but after seeing a few slides of the book's illustrations, I began to see his point. And that is one of the best features of this (mostly) graphic novel. In Chip's capable hands one is able to understand the space and flow of many well-known gardens throughout landscape history. I've seen photos of many of these gardens before but the combination of the illustrations and the accompanying text made clear ideas that I had previously not been able to see - forced perspectives, axle relationships, and how one moves through and views the gardens at different points. The drawings eliminate distractions and simplify the spaces into the main themes. (I of course prefer to think this simplification and clarity is the result of good illustration and descriptive text, rather than my mind's inability to concentrate on long verbose garden descriptions that I've read before and not gotten much from.)



Many of the gardens in the book are able to create a sense of mystery or surprise by directing the path of the viewer, creating interest and opening to views for dramatic effect. The mystery of the garden is when one realizes that it not as it seemed when first viewed - the destination is not as near as one thought, the path is more circuitous than it seemed. I don't know if the topic of garden mystery was completely covered by the lecture, but I was OK with that. I attended mostly to hear about the book and was not disappointed in that respect. The book and lecture, in fact, de-mystified these gardens with clear drawings and descriptions so that one could understand the designers' intent and execution, and possibly learn from them. Of course, many of these landscapes are on a grand scale and may be hard to translate into the average residential design. But even then, Chip's illustrations make the book valuable enough to me. They are excellent examples of graphics one may strive to emulate.



Chip also passed around a multi-layered landscape diorama that I would love to try as a presentation tool for clients. Of course they would take forever to make, but the layered drawings really created a sense of depth to the scene and could allow for easy interchanging of elements.



On a side note the location of the lecture couldn't have been better. At the new Disney Family Museum in the Presido, there were vintage Disney landscapes and storyboards all around. Chip didn't fail to notice and seemed quite happy to make the connection between the location and the lecture. Here are a couple of posters I snapped photos of. (Innerspace-sponsored by Monsanto! Yikes!) and a very trippy floor.




But Liz and Chip make a great team and they have combined to create a truly unique landscape history book and have done a terrific job with the presentation. I look forward to their next joint venture.

Cherry U-Pick Time!

Out in the countryside are some farms that let you go in and pick your own fruits and veggies. My favorite thing to pick are cherries. It seems so decadent, filling buckets with ripe, juicy fruit (and of course, eating a few as you go). We hadn't been since Parker was born and now that he's 4 we decided it was high time to head out and pick some cherries.



Even on a hot day the shade is cool in the groves of cherry trees. The farm we went to lets the branches grow low so even Parker could help fill the bucket. I'm always astounded at how many cherries grow on the trees. When I first arive, I always want to race in from the parking lot, beating the other people milling around, so that they don't get the cherries before me. But you get in there and realize there are so many cherries, hordes of people couldn't pick them all.



We also picked apricots, which is a finer art than pulling handfuls of cherries of the trees. One has to select the perfectly ripe ones. Although, of all the ones we got, over-ripe, perfect, a bit green and hard, they all tasted amazing in the end.



We ended up with 10lbs of cherries and 12 lbs of apricots. I lose sense of scale when I'm in the orchards. I feel like we've barely picked any at all and then I get the fruit into the kitchen and wonder what have I done?! Every surface is covered with fruit. So far we've made a cherry apricot pie, vanilla apricot preserves, eaten copious amounts of fruit out of hand, and I plan to make a cherry clafoutis and maybe some cherry icecream if I have enough left. Ah, summer!

We're planning on going back in nectarine season. Yum! And I'm a bit tempted by the U-pick tomato fields - although I may feel differently when my 15 tomato plants at home kick into gear soon. But there is also something appealing to harvesting tomatoes (and cherries and apricots) in a vast field, reveling in the excess agriculturalness of it all.

Fruit and Veggie Finale - June 2010

Can you say anthocyanins? My blackberry vines went crazy this year. I've gotten about 7lbs off them so far. I can see the end coming but I've enjoyed these two glorious weeks of juicy berries. Now I'm starting to get some purple 'Royalty' beans. They are so beautiful!



I planted a 'Heritage' raspberry plant late last year and got a few berries off of it recently. Looking forward to having a nice crop in the next year or two. My Fragaria vesca is pumping out the strawberries right now. They're tiny but oh so sweet! Those are my son's favorite though, so I don't get very many.



My crop of blackberries became so noticeable to the birds that I had to net them. It was actually pretty easy since the area is only 2 1/2 feet wide and between two garages. We just strung the netting over and down the sides. Any berries that were within a couple of inches of the net definitely got pecked clean though. Now I'm just waiting for my blueberries to ripen!