Steve Snedeker’s Landscaping and Gardening Blog

Having negotiated the Desert Garden with rare relish – what an amazingly creative set-up – my daughter and I then proceeded to the next exhibits…..specifically the totally contrasting Lily Ponds. Here is a “jungle lush” view of our approach…..

(please enlarge images by clicking)

Once again, the entire Gardens are simply World Class edifices. I just feel and felt then so lucky to be able to take part in all this incredible landscaping. This is pretty much the best in the galaxy.

Next…..

Later, we pass by the Australian Garden section, rife with Eucalyptus and these guys….. This is where Hummingbirds go to retire.

Flowers are the primary attractions here…..with some Eucalyptus trees, of course. I am so jaded now towards Eucalyptus, I didn’t even bother taking pictures. That was actually a mistake because the bark and trunks congregated there were richly-colored.

Guess where this leads…….

This spot is on the march between the Aussie Garden and the splendid Japanese Garden, of course. It was yet another present for the senses and featured some absolutely amazing Bonzai plants which made me wonder at the ratings these plants would receive in comparison with absolutely any others. I mean, I just suspected these were also some of the best Bonzai examples in the world. Incredible stuff!

Here’s today’s Daily Double worth a billion – I was really beginning to believe these guys knew what they were doing.

The Japanese Garden was closed for a year or so as they remade a water feature and added some features. Indeed, it had just been opened for a couple weeks before our visit. This is a real sweet Japanese Garden.

I rate the Water Feature a total success……with a perfectly bubbling sound and the absolutely correct flow rate.

As always in Japanese Gardens, we get to witness the changing patterns in the sand or stones lavished daily for our pleasure. More minimalist, gorgeous lines soothe our souls as we connect with the purpose of this combination of Man and Nature.

We then cut through a grove of Camelias which were almost spent by this date. But what was even cooler were the hardy orchids which so adore life under the canopy between the Japanese garden and The Chinese Garden.

Here are the beginnings of the canopy, complete with some Camelias:

And here are the orchids along the paths……

Cool stuff………….and now our Favorite

The Chinese Garden……..note the ham welcoming committee. These guys even supply gorgeous models!

I now consider myself somewhat of an expert on Chinese gardens, having worked on the actual construction of the Portland, Oregon Chinese garden personally. I rate this version as near-equal. This is simply a phenomenal place, no if’s and’s or but’s. It’s simply just as good as it gets.

Walk with us…..

As always, the gorgeous foot-massaging pebbled walkways are the eye candy that ties it all together.

Hide the women and children! 

The consistent fascination Chinese Gardens illustrate for windows and the Feng Shui aspects of peeks into another dimension never fails to please.

What a wonderful place. Alena and I both offered that the Chinese Garden was out favorite spot on the entire Huntington’s grounds. This is a stunningly beautiful garden.

Oh yeah – and a great beautiful Mahonia, too.

And, finally, a beautiful bridge.

Next, I’ll finish Huntington up.

Eventually, maybe sooner rather than later, I’m going to split off a different blog  for strictly personal stuff. My days have been so loaded with friendship, communion among old friends and family and the more serious issues of life, they have nearly overwhelmed my more technical pleasures in presenting landscape-specific posts, information and results. As it is, I guess I’ll just punctuate things with a few examples of some of the ridiculously arresting places I managed to see and capture on digital film. In fact, today will be rather easy.

This comes later……..after the Desert.

Below, we’re munching on breakfast at a place famous for its French Toast on a bread they manufacture – more like a roll. Good Lord, there’s a reason for the fame. Here we eat beside the barking seals up the beach in La Jolla in the San Diego area. I regret I’ve forgotten the name of the gorgeous seaside restaurant, but they do a bang up business anyway….plus, its setting is totally unique. I bet Alice Joyce knows this one.

(enlarge pictures by clicking)

Today it’s the Huntington Garden and Library, in beautiful downtown Pasadena, California. I had long heard about it, specifically from James at Lost In The Landscape. I had made up my mind that if I ever got there, I’d check this garden out.

Wow.

The literal forests of Cactus were extremely gorgeous, busy and arresting.

It was a total thrill, seeing these as we approached, but my delight was just beginning. Famous for its rare and exotic species, collected for nearly 100 years and tended to by true experts, the Huntington’s Desert Garden display is absurdly rich in impractical colors, made even more rare and other-worldly by the electrifying vividness of the blooms.

The Cactus above features a bloom so bright Yellow, it’s as if it creates its own Sun – from inside!

Below, these apparently “Interstellar/Transgalactic” Yucca’s provide us with colors we cannot find in ordinary gardens, certainly not in such combinations.

Looking magnificent comes easy to these guys – the entire lot of them.

Once again, the “artful arrangements”.

There is some amazing material to work with, no less…..

There are also some beautiful accidents   

This gorgeous area below looks like something of a transition between the Desert Garden theme and the Japanese Garden. I really dig the blue color – it’s like this air conditioner for the eyes. Plus, the layout is minimalist and tight for that.

Some very unusual individual cactii…….

Silver Jade Plant below.

Beautiful stuff all over

I left Portland Thursday morning in a misty rain, cool and dark as the mornings there are. The freshness of the air hit me again as remarkable – it’s an almost therapeutic side benefit of all the constant rainfall, what with the cleansed oxygen and ozone so redolent all around one.

My next leg of travel deals with seeing my daughter again, amid some of the recent changes in her life. As well, I have the great good fortune of my life’s best friend picking me up at the airport, then running up to see his own daughter in Camarillo, a gal I met when she was all of 2 years old. I’m a nice local legend in her family and I was her first real adult friend at her age then.

Here he regales my new bestest little freind, Marleigh, with a railroad tune, further justifying her pet name for her Grandad – “Choo-Choo”.

It was so cool chatting as we drove Northward after we sat for a while with my girl, Alena, at a great outdoor pub close to Mission Beach in San Diego. Here’s a shot of us with her friend, Matt.

But I am a landscaping man…………..enough of the sociality. Time to get local, regional and take a gander at Paradise. As these things go, this is high Rose season in Southern California. Coincidentally, it’s also Bouganvilla season, which rather augments the next picture of a home in Leigha’s neighborhood.

 Here’s “concrete truth” about my whereabouts.

Among the flora of Southern California which I know absolutely Zero about but which I still consider elements of Paradise are Jackaranda Trees. Anything blue always surprises me, I think, but particularly this big.

Leigha and Nic’s place is set in a small and surprisingly mellow corner of humanity, away from the rush of LA, set near the new college of Cal State Channel Islands – you know, the Dolphins. It’s a gorgeous school, the site of an old mental institution and home of a few myths designed to give a scare. But much of it was added later in a great, airy, ultra-modern design which looks real fun to attend.

The view outside is kind of terrific – Leigha and Nic abut the wilds, more or less. Evidently, coyotes are thick especially when it gets drier and farther from Spring. Here’s what’s outside the front porch:

Things are going pretty good, so far. This guy agrees!

Since I am in the beginning stages of my own writing project dealing with a central figure in my life and who was also a central figure in so many other lives, it has made me reflect on the sport of baseball itself. I have found a love of the sport among the more permanent diversions of my entire life – over the entire length of it, from cradle to grave, as it were. I recall my gracious older brother and sister allowing me to take a swing for the very first time as a baseball-playing youngster, over at Austin Pryor’s front yard on Shelbyville Road at the age of around 8. It was a line drive down the third base line.

From that point on, throughout a career that began in Little League in St. Matthews, Kentucky, thence to Bowling Green and finally Owensboro, my early years with the game were a riotous pageant. I have always considered my “career” to pretty much consist of my experiences in high school. I played a disappointing period of Div 1 baseball for almost a year at Murray State University, then went 18 more years without seeing one pitch, swinging a bat or even making a throw. Like some of my generation, I dropped sports as a participatory enterprise in spite of being asked to play now and then. I “moved on”.

It was in Santa Cruz in 1986 when my good friend from Owensboro, Steve Bare, asked me if I wanted to play on a slow pitch softball team. The local radical veterans who I very much liked were looking to form a team. My first question was: “So, do we try to win?”

Assured this was the case, I joined that team and – 18 years after hanging up the spikes and mitt – I found myself playing shortstop in a recreational slow pitch softball league. It was an ironic return to a first love and I subsequently proved that by eventually, year by year, upping my participation to playing tournaments on weekends and joining one or two other regular season teams. Nor did I stop.

In 2007 I played over 200 ball games. There were a few years where I must have played 300 games. I’ve joined forces with Homicide Detectives, Iraq War vets due to get shipped back (messing with our lineups), females, ex NFL players and a business partner in order to fully explore the competitive spirit together. It was always a labor of true love.

There are ample souls who despair over baseball’s “pace”. They feel it is somehow too slow for their tastes. I often wonder if these same people would enjoy golf played with Jet Ski radicalism, jetting quickly to the next shot and getting it all dealt with in half an hour – replays later on Sportscenter – (lasting an hour.)

Having played both football and basketball at a reasonably high level, I have encountered the pluses and minuses of these sports as well. A fine game for mesomorphs, football is a semi-lethal contest of weight and strength with a ferocity one has to experience to truly understand. I am quite sure my list of concussions is longer than what it might appear to be. You can get absolutely destroyed by the full force of an automobile crash and never even have seen where the damage came from. You can also not know you don’t know what bell got rung until you wake up on your feet, later, sometimes even on the field during play. As a study in human consciousness, football – the game – is not reliable because consciousness becomes literally variably memorable. Then, of course, there are the broken bones. I had about 3-4 broken bones, playing football.

Basketball is another story altogether. Frankly, when the players start rolling out who are above 6′ 6″ tall, it’s time to watch and not participate. My basketball career ended as a junior in high school when I found myself competing with eventual NBA player Butch Beard for a rebound under our basket during a high school game against his team of returning State Champions. As I “went up” for the ball, I swore I saw myself looking at Butch’s knees. Not his waist – his knees. We’re saying here that Butch could grab balls 7 feet more off the ground than I could. It was an epiphany. I also never went back out for the high school team.

But baseball – now baseball lets a 5′ 4″ shortstop like Chris Cates make his current way all the way up to the AA pro level. The best pitcher in baseball, Tim Lincecum, weighs around 175 pounds and the ball absolutely explodes out of his hands. Near-normal men play baseball!! What’s more, they are the best in the world at the sport. Like Soccer, baseball attracts athletes who are far nearer “normal” in size, although there are exceptions.

Then there is the pageant of the hit ball. Once a ball is hit, all 9 defensive positions in baseball are swinging into a choreography dependent on offensive players on base. Every single hit ball demands 9 defenders move in predictable unison to their various assignments. Every percentage is accounted for from bad throws to intuitive throws made to prevent advancement. The sudden bursts of activity in baseball accompany a luring sense of lassitude while people get comfortable watching the pitcher and catcher play catch. Suddenly, it’s on.

Baseball is played during the best time of year – Spring and Summer. Parents find time to watch their kids play, the kids learn to work hard to get better – I mean, there’s no real downside. The practice of any sport is the secret towards improving and advancing. It yields children who grow into adults understanding the work-ethic and what it brings as rewards, the true secret of athletic success.

Kids have no problem loving baseball. Like the requirements of the French language, one plays and corresponds better with a something one loves. The gaps between plays are numerous and sometimes boring to everyone. It is at these times that the game sometimes shows its greatest gift. I have heard jokes in a baseball dugout which stayed with me for life, lol.

I celebrate baseball more as time goes along. Recently, I have been attending University of Louisville’s baseball games. The current college game has advanced to a near equivalent of AA Pro Ball – with the best coaches in America opting to stay at the University level where tenure and longevity apply so much more than the shifting alliances of the professional game. There is more teaching going on and kids are forced to either sign pro after high school or else endure a minimum of 3 years at school before their next draft availability.

It has made for an exceptionally fascinating improvement in the game at that level. I have to believe it also raises the game as a sport since so many guys come into the game with more college behind them, where emotions and rivalries were rife with real emotional character and games played for such things as pride and loyalty. I also believe many of the coaches are more patient and plain better than a string of motivated or under motivated pro coaches.

So I’m enjoying the game as much if not more than ever before.

“Kill the ump!!”