Latest from the Blog
Mexican Truffles
In polite company they call it the Mexican truffle, but in the American corn belt it’s nothing but smut. In fact, the USDA has been trying to eradicate it for a century. If you have ever seen a smut infested ear of corn, you’d know why this bizarre sooty looking fungus freaks people out. No doubt backyard gardeners in the Midwest will see it often this flood year because this fungus thrives in warm, wet weather. But in other cultures the fungus is cherished like a rare and delicious mushroom truffle. First appreciated by the Aztecs, they incorporated it into
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Gardening
Secrets of Coast Redwood
The vast redwood forests of Northern California’s coastline are mystical. It is dark and romantic beneath these evergreen canopies, where I wandered during my early years in horticulture. There in the gloom, shelf fungi and mushrooms festoon old-growth stumps and disintegrating trunks that add to the gradual buildup of organic matter on the forest floor. — This was where I first encountered giant woodwardia ferns and rhododendron occidentalis in bloom wherever significant light penetrated the canopy. Even in these second-growth forests that rose up in the wake of 19th-century logging, the redwood trees are awesome in their beauty. It is
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Desert Plants
Modern Cactus
The orderly nature of modern design appeals to our need for simplicity in a progressively complex world. The simple lines of both modern architecture and interiors offers respite from strip commercial, traffic and media where color and image change faster than ever. There has been difficulty in understanding the relationship of plants to this style. But one group of plants seems intrinsically suited to modern design. It is the cactus, but not all of them. Specific types of cacti are so remarkable in their symmetry that it is difficult to believe they are living things. Moreover, their uniformity of
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Maureen's Fiction
Grendel
At least one thing won’t change, Donna thought as she slipped her hands into the alfalfa bale, pulling a flake for the horse her daughter left behind. Thankful for the one familiar routine of twice daily feeding, she missed all the other daily tasks that composed a life as the mother of an only child who was now gone off to college to start her life. Donna carried the flake around to Grendel’s stall where the mare was always stretching her neck to steal a mouth full before the feed hit the manger. But Grendel wasn’t at the trough
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Over the last 30 years, Maureen Gilmer has worked in virtually every aspect of horticulture and landscaping in California. Her strong background in landscape architecture coupled with decades of field experience lends a broad spectrum of expertise to all her work.
She is writer of Yardsmart, syndicated weekly in color by Scripps Howard News Service since 2001. She's also weekly garden columnist for the Desert Sun, Palm Springs.
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