When Planets Align - Me and Shirley

Every once in a while someone comes into your life who is just meant to be there. A few years ago, I met Shirley Bovshow, first via comments on each other's blogs, then dimply face to scruffy forgot-to-shave face at the Portland Garden Writers Symposium in 2008. It was like we'd know each other since we were kids.

Ever since, Shirley (the Brooklyn boy in me pronounces it SHOOOY-lee) and I have been looking out for each other, doing video projects at her skyrocketing Garden World Report online TV project and wherever else we can team up.

This weekend, the Bovshow kid told me she'd be attend the Go Green Expo in Los Angeles. Every imaginable "green" living product and service under one roof. I'll be donning my stingy brim, filling my hip flask with a full dose of smarminess and see what kind of useful information we can report to you from the show.

For more info about what's going on and what to expect from this gruesome twosome, click over to Shirley's hand-crafted, perfectly seasoned Edenmaker blog.

Hope to see you at the Expo.

The SF Flower & Garden Show is Just Around the Corner

I am SOOOO looking forward to the San Francisco Flower & Garden Show this year. Although I lived in the Bay Area for a while, I finally made my first visit to the show last year, and boy, was it worth my while...

...Embarrassing as it is to admit this, last year’s SFFGS was the first “real” garden show I’ve been to in my decades-long career in the landscape biz. I was the proverbial kid in a candy store. Aside from the great visual displays, there were hundreds of product and nursery booths with experts in every imaginable aspect of gardening.

Here's the rest of the article at Fine Gardening magazine...come join me in SF?

Lift a Fig Leave and What Do You Hope To See?

I enjoy being a garden writer. But sometimes I long to create something that gets readers all hot and bothered the old fashion way, with some sexy, steamy heat.

Today I got my inspiration. While walking Biff the Wonder Spaniel, I espied a flagrant act of botanical erotica. As I scrambled to capture this public display on my camera, images of tattered, torrid romance novels cartwheeled past my mind’s eye.

You know, like the paperbacks with the square jawed hero, blond hair blowing Favio-like, poofy pirate shirt ripped to the navel. And always the ravaged, redhead damsel nearly collapsed in his sinewy, suntanned arms.

There's more hot and steamy stuff here>>>

Some Real Crap Passes for Landscaping at the Malls

If I were an actual journalist, I'd make phone calls, figure out who the landscape designers were, interview the person in charge of maintenance and gain an understanding of the constraints they have to deal with. After all, every design problem is a series of compromises that hopefully lead to the best possible solution, diluted as it may be. No one expects the Brooklyn Botanical Garden (or the Spanish Inquisition!).

But gimme a frickin break, will ya? It looks like someone devised a rubber stamp that brainlessly repeated the same boring handful of plants everywhere, most of which have no coherent theme or connection. It's part "cottagey" with pink roses and variegated English ivy, incongruously slammed together in Mediterranean-style rolled rim pots.


Read the rest at Edhat.com

When Bad Taste Meet Power Tools at Fine Gardening

[If you didn't see this article at my Fine Gardening blog, here's a second chance...]

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What better way to close this tumultuous last year of the first decade of the 21st century than by writing a “list” article? You’ve probably read your share of them: Top 100 Tech Toys, or 50 Celebrity Arrests For Acting Foolish In Public, or 10 iPhone Apps To Improve Your Dental Hygiene.

Now it’s my turn. Since starting this Cool Green Gardens blog in April I’ve written about water conservation, helpful design ideas for your garden, posted a video interview about coyote pee and shared just plain beautiful images of enchanting gardens.

I enjoy bringing you that kinda stuff. But deep inside me, pulsing like trapped magma, beats the heart of a smartass garden critic. This dark side was revealed in my June 5 blog titled Why Not Replace Your Plants With Styrofoam? in which I threw virtual rotten eggs at the worst examples of ugliness and environmentally bone-headed gardening practices. Boy, did THAT attract an avalanche of comments.

So why not do it again!

I'll fill you in on the rest of the bizarre stuff right here.