Ganoderma, Adenium, Gazania, Beaucarnea

While walking our dogs in the neighborhood, I saw something I’ve never seen before.  It looked like a loaf of some kind of bread under a tree. Then I saw there were several other “loaves”. The bigges...

Black Fruit, Red Fruit, and Birdscapes

There is a reason that mulberries and blackberries are so attractive to birds. In whatever stage of their development, whether red and unripe or black and ready to pick, mulberries and blackberries s...

Citrus Colors

Did you ever wonder why limes are green and every other type of citrus fruit is either orange or yellow?  The reason for this, I recently learned, is that limes (and lime trees) are the most cold sen...

Living Art

Gerda Maxey is an artist in the truest sense.   As you tour her home and garden in Sylmar, you appreciate Maxey’s need to be surrounded by art, both indoors and out.  Maxey is a portraitist and her w...

Mimosa, Jacaranda, and Honeysuckle

Mimosa.  Mi-MOH-sa.  It’s a tree that looks like it sounds.  Tropical, exotic, with a distinctive parasol form.  Mimosa possesses fine, bipinnate foliage and wispy pink flowers.  Mimosa, with its sus...

A Luddite’s Paradise

                    Loren Zeldin doesn’t have a computer or a cell phone or even a camera. But he does have a garden, which is the focus of his...

Gold Medallions and Australian Flames

On the corner of Riverside Drive and Hazeltine Avenue in Sherman Oaks, two gold medallion trees are in full bloom.  If you are wondering how these trees got their name, just take a look at their sphe...

Dazzling Callery Pear in Jerusalem

If you seek to become pure with all your heart, God will help.  Words cannot describe what you experience in Jerusalem or anywhere else in Israel, for that matter.  King David, in Psalm 136, says  it...