The Surprising Dunsmuir Estate

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I am so excited to tell you that I've been asked to serve on an advisory board for the Dunsmuir Estate!  I'm told that this is the first advisory board since the City of Oakland took over care of the property, so I feel truly honored.I was just over there last Friday because I made an effort to remember to visit during their insanely restricted hours (it is an effort, even bank employees would drool over these hours!).  I work from home not very far from this place and even still, I can't seem to get over there while they're actually open.... never-mind the times they should be open (imho) but aren't, like weekdays squeezed between major holidays and weekends (I tried to go last Black Friday for example).  BUT, that's not the point I'm here to make.This place is a gem in the rough.  Anyone who has read my blog before knows how much I enjoy visiting historic estates and gardens, but this one eluded me until a few months ago.  SO, without further delay - a few photos from last Friday to celebrate my budding relationship with the folks who are working so hard to keep the place up and promote it.  I'm plain ole thrilled about it.So above you see the Main House and the entry, ducks, fountain, and gazebo (drought?  what drought?)....... and two benches with gobs of personality...... a couple of shots that I think exemplify the magic of the character of the place....... but I'll leave you with a shot of my favorite thing, the pool and pool house.  I could do a whole post just on this one item, and I probably will, but it is such a magical, beautifully proportioned thing, I wish I had drawings of it to study, find out what it is about the space that is so magical, apply those ratios to my own work (even though I don't design by mathematical formula, I just want to "get" it and be able to replicate it).   I dearly hope that this can someday be restored, but in the meantime, I'll stare at it and imagine what it must have been like.

Oh, Lantana, How You Vex Me!

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The front of my new place is awash with purple Lantana (Lantana montevidensis).  It is lovely stuff if you are both color blind (unless you're into this sort of purple, nothing wrong with that!) and an admirer of wildlife.  There are butterflies, bees, spiders, and lizards all over it.  It is absolutely marvelous for year-round blooming and needs no supplemental water once established (at least not here, I turned the irrigation off last fall).The flowers are the pepto bismol of purples - not my favorite, though maybe someday I will find a companion plant with a color that mitigates the pepto purple hue.  Meh, maybe not.  A dear friend of mine said that the overwhelming amount of purple Lantana in my garden made my place look like a retirement home.As much as I'd like to be able to retire (I'd still spend my time designing gardens - I love it that much), I am not ready to live in a dadgum retirement home!  Talk about death by association; I can't look at it anymore without thinking about retirement homes.  As if that wasn't bad enough, my lovely boyfriend thinks the foliage smells like poo (the flowers smell nice at night).  Charming: a poo scented retirement home.Here's my vexation:  as much as I intend to remove the Lantana and put in other stuff, it is happy, healthy, requires no water, and supports oodles of critters.  So for now it stays.... providing food and shelter for all those bugs and lizards, but lookout, Lantana!  You're living on borrowed time.  Wanna know what I think might fill the space above?  I'm considering a collection of spineless Opuntia that my friend Melinda sent me from Texas along with a few I've collected on my own here.  The ones from Texas are rooting in the shed right now - cross your fingers that they all take!So there's my dilemma - removing the Lantana removes habitat, but goodness gracious, there's so danged much of it, I don't really like it, and the new design/plants aren't ready yet.  Patience....