3. water woodside potatoes
4. fence the back border
5. think of something to add height to the sunny rock garden
6. rip out the vietnamese mint as taking over, relocate to the back
7. or relocate ginger lily rhizomes to the back border
9. take more photos, hibiscus bloomed pinky-red
10. mark out sundial, there must be a good cheap working one somewhere...
11. keep eye on sunflower seedlings
I was reading a book about Luther Burbank yesterday called 'Gardens of Invention' and how he bred plants and improved varieties of potatoes, crossed a plum with an apricot (called a plumcot), grew fruit trees that fruited faster by grafting, and tried to patent his creations. Scientists tried to lionise him but all he was trying to make a living out of his passion, it wasn't really something nobody can do, it's just he had the patience to experiment.
This was all in sunny california, Santa Rosa where it all happened, that's why California is famous for its citrus, grapes, and every other new fangled variety of plant. Because it doesn't snow there. I don't know that we have a Luther Burbank type figure who became as famous as Thomas Edison or Henry Ford in America as inventors. But there is one guy that keeps cropping up in gardening circles with plants he breeds especially carnations and sweet peas and that is Keith Hammett.
I have got sweet peas all along the fence and they are all bicolor old-fashioned ones except for one or two of the spencer variety. I must say it's pretty and we have masses of them. I am hoping that they will self sow freely and picking them every two days to bring in the house. I don't know that I can improve on nature by cross pollinating the different kinds but apparently everyone's tried to grow a yellow sweet pea and failed, just like the elusive blue rose. So maybe some things aren't to be tampered with. Sweet peas are to my mind always pink or purple or both, not yellow and roses will always be red, or pink, yellow and white but never blue. A blue rose would be sad, like an imitation hydrangea and a yellow sweet pea would be like a trying to steal a march on a kowhai.
