Went to a garden party

Notes from my garden: My newest rose has put on a nice bloom this week.

I don't have a lot of roses anymore, kind of let them go to hell, but I do love them. This is a rose from Weeks, I believe it is called Good for Gold.

I have always had a thing for yellow and orange roses. don't ask me why?

I had gone to Tropic World, which used to have the best rose selection this side of Hunter's in Spring Valley, not the same today, looking for two of my favorite orange roses, Lucille Ball and Brass Band. Both long discontinued. How could that be? Brass Band had been rose of the year for floribundas at one point.

It turns out that Jackson & Perkins, my favorite rose grower and distributor, went out of business a few years ago. Woman said they weren't paying their growers. Shame.

Lucille Ball was a hybrid tea hybridized by the same person as Brass Band, Jack E. Christensen. Guy had a knack. It is now Leslie's pick and she said she will be tending towards the fuchsia with this one.

Anyway I picked up Good for Gold. It is a hybrid tea, hybridized last year by Tom Carruth. Very healthy looking plant. Cross between Golden Beauty x About Face.

*

Drove home last week to see that some great soul had dumped a bunch of construction trash on the road, down a very steep ravine. The very toughest place to retrieve trash, down a steep 200' canyon.

A construction worker too cheap or lazy to go to the dump so they decide to go take a crap on my rural neighborhood instead.

I don't get people sometimes. A lot of the time.

This week there was a type of cowboy hat favored by the campesinos in the area plunked down next to a bunch of empty modelo bottles in the road.

Enjoy the playa but tire su basura, por favor.

That was a few feet from this spot, littered with a bunch of trash and an old appliance or two.

Your mother isn't here to pick up after you anymore. Please respect other people's spaces.

*

It was touch and go with my bismarckias for a while but I think they will both make it fine.  The spears are velvety soft and starting the process of separation. Beautiful abstract forms.

Garry Cohen allowed us to poach a bunch of his cool succulent collection yesterday. His house, the Glass Ranch, is pretty amazing.

Garry is one of the most creative and talented craftsman I have ever known, in so many media.

We have been friends for forty years, introduced to me by Rick and Ida Griffin at a costume party in Valley Center.

He was wearing an astronaut helmet and I will never forget Rick saying, "I would know that guy in an astronaut helmet anywhere, that's Garry Cohen." They grew up together as kids.

Garry just finished this bitchen patio wall, made out of some weird industrial found objects.

Great to hang out with my old bud and Leslie in his amazing garden. We both go back a long way.