On Sundays, we stop by the Theodore Payne Foundation booth at the farmers market and talk to this nice woman about native plants, our yard and the Engelmann Oak we planted. Yesterday, she surprised us with a gift of a California Sycamore. It is one of the babies propagated from the tree in Pasadena whose rescue was documented in the movie Sick-Amour by Joel Tauber.We'd been discussing planting a Sycamore on the parkway for a little while, but weren't sure we had enough space. Its roots are pretty invasive and we were concerned about possible interference with the Englemann and the sidewalk. Plus our property is crisscrossed with power lines.The gift seemed like a sign, however, so we accepted the tree and planted it. Joel Tauber's site has a map of all the babies that have been planted in Los Angeles. One was in our zip code and, when I put on my Nancy Drew hat, I discovered it was only two blocks from our house. We walked the dogs past it last night and it looks a little sickly. I have to go back during daylight to see for sure. I hope ours fares okay. The Englemann is doing great -- I'll post new pics of it soon.
Alas, even the phoenix roses could not survive the botched transplant we did. If only we could have found the root ball...
On Thanksgiving, Rob transplanted another rose in front of the fence. It had the same weird tap root as the one he did last week.
No idea if it's a climber, but we shall see...
On Saturday, we moved two of our phoenix rose bushes. One was a climber that had sprung up by the porch; the other, a bushy one from the middle of the yard. We thought they'd look great in front of the new fence.Oddly enough, we couldn't find a root ball for either one. The one by the porch had this gigantic tap root that led all the way back under the foundation. We had to hack it with a saw. Rob's convince he killed it. I'm holding out hope.
The bushy one, on the other hand, looks pretty damn traumatized. We'll see what happens.