St. Mary's Southern Magnolia. It is filling the whole front yard with fantastic perfume. This year, the perfume is more intense than last year.

Southern Magnolia are approved by the city as replacement trees for the ones they have given us. I threw away the messy city fast growing tree and replaced it with the slowest growing of the southern magnolias. St. Mary's Southern Magnolia, really slow grower, and you know why I wanted it to be slow grower? It so happens that it has the best fragrance amongst the Southern Magnolias, beautiful too.

Bougainvilleas slowly coming into bloom to greet the summer. Hey, I installed that decorative door all by myself!

All over California, we have fantastic blooms and fruit sets of the grapes. This is going to be a bounty year for wine making.

more grapes, almost touching the ground in just one cluster!

Spanish Yellow Cherries, can really fool the birds. This should be ready next week.

We've been enjoying Flavorosa pluot for one week now, and there's still more from where this came from. To enjoy this pluot, you will have to harvest them like this and ripen them for a couple of days more off the tree on the table, and they turn deep purple and almost black, and that brings out their complex flavors:

Phil's best Butia capitata edible jelly palm. Newly acquired, bears at young age, slow grower ideal for landscape and beautiful feathery form, but that remains to be seen. I am excited about this palm, hardy to 15 deg F.

Newly acquired: Jaboticaba, Guyatis (Soursop x Sweetsop hybrid), and Enano gigante banana.

Newly acquired Chamburro plant, so far so good, it has survived the winter. I have been trying to grow papayas and babacos but they all die when it gets cooler and not even freezing.

With Chamburro, belonging to the same family, I stand better chance because they can tolerate cold soil. Most importantly, they have been reported to take papaya and babaco scionwood. So someday, I may have grafted papaya, babaco and chamburro together. They will need winter protection every winter though:

Musa sikkimensis, a truly cold hardy banana that sometimes its leaves can survive the frosty nights some winters. I think they are cold hardier than Musa basjoos, only with prettier underside colors. They are one of the more primitive bananas found in the Himalayas, and can be a good source of cold hardiness genes. The fruits are edible but very seedy and not worth munching. Most domesticated bananas started out very seedy, several thousand years ago before they were domesticated and hybridized and became mostly seedless.

Joe, very nice place. I grow 103 grape vines of various types, and have NEVER achieved grape clusters even 1/2 the size of the variety that you pictured. What variety is that grape? Your landscpe is well kept up, a nice looking place. Your the kind of a guy that people want as their neighbor. - Millet

Hi Joe. Pindo Butia capitata is a very common palm here. If you would like more seed let me know, my Pindo is just about to split its fruit pods open.

Joe:
Those pictures look so delicious. And the grapes. Wow!
Is that availavle in the store?
You sure have a lot of rare ones.

This is just for a laugh.

Joe I beat you (by a mile) again on the palm department.

click on the image to enlarge.




Benny