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...
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...
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...
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. 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...
While I was at a home improvement center this afternoon, I was taken by a 12 inch potted plant called Anisodontea ‘Barely Boysenberry.’ The garden person told me it was a perennial bush and would gro...
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...
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...
During the sort of heat wave we have experienced this summer, the idea of creating a garden where the focus is on perennials, shrubs and trees, as opposed to water-guzzling lawns, easily gains tracti...