"Stopped into a church I found along the way...

... I got down on my knees, and pretend to pray"

The Mamas and the Papas have been playing in my head the past few days because... I'm headed to California tomorrow! I've never been to California before (well, I made a layover in LAX once, but airports don't count) so I am quite excited. I'm going to be enjoying the California Spring Trials (formerly and better known as the Pack Trials) with a group of mostly academics -- including some good friends.

If you've never heard of them, the Pack Trials are a chance for the big plant breeding companies to show off their new varieties to everyone. The trip will be a great inside peak into the ornamental plant breeding-industrial complex, and a chance to see what may be coming soon to a garden center near you. I'll take tons of pictures and give you all sorts of thoughts about it all when I return next week.

So stand y!

Wednesday Links

After a couple weeks off, Wednesday Links is back!

I love Hakonechloa but really am not a big fan of yellow variegation. So I'm excited there is finally a good white variegated form on the market!

The Wall Street Journal has a nice story on horticulture therapy. My garden is TOTALLY therapy for me, the ultimate stress reliever and generally keeps me sane, but I never knew if that was something fundamental about gardening, or just a quirk in my personality. Looks like it is more of the first, though I'm sure it is a combination of the two.

Chani, over at the Timber Press blog writes a defense of dandelions -- with which I absolutely agree. I love them. I'm even going to try growing pink ones this year

The Germinatrix writes about echium. I won't say any more... it is classic Germinatrix, and you just have to go read it. I'm kind of obsessed with echium at the moment (a surprising number are turning out to be hardy for me) so maybe I'll post about them soon.

Living room Garden

My friend Virginia sent me photos the other day of a planting we did two years ago at the Ohio State Learning Gardens. When we were both students, we worked in the gardens together, and started a tradition of whimsical, furniture-based plantings.

This is what we did for 2008:

Coleus on the couch watching TV next to the Canna Grandfather clock

Begonia end table and more of the couch

Virginia herself, relaxing on the sedum-ajuga rug next to the thyme chair.

Last year we were both too busy to do a planting, but we're getting ready to do one for this year come May!