Crambe cordifolia? It is for sure a Crambe, cordifolia I am not certain

I love sculptural plants and they don't get a lot more structural than this one. Of course right now its form is obscured by that immense cloud of richly fragrant flowers. The scent is strongly sweetish, I am not certain whether I like it or not. Not unpleasant, it is an aroma that suggests the presence of lots of bees, but there are no bees to be seen.. The leaves there under the flowers are thick, dissected, glaucous, kale-like. It is a beautiful plant and seems to love this hot, sunny, sandy site.

Like anyone who has spent 40 years involved with plants vocationally and avocationally, I possess varying levels of knowledge about many many plants. Some are intimates that have been daily in my life for decades. Others I fell in and out of love with, growing them for a while, then giving them up and maybe being lured back by a new incarnation. Some have come into and out of my life for short periods and, about many of these I retain a solid base of knowledge. Some I am fanatical about. Others I know more as acquaintances; we acknowledge each other in passing but have developed no relationship. Others I have really only encountered in books, magazines, and the odd curious garden.

Crambe is a plant that until a few years ago I had only read about. I encountered it as a weed in a gravel path that I regularly traversed and became intrigued. It seemed unkillable; they tried. Graham Stuart Thomas liked it. He quotes E.A. Bowles, whose opinions I respect and usually concur with to a positive effect. I obtained a small start and put it in my front streetside bed. It has prospered. Though not visible in this picture, a plant of Eryngium bourgatii, a similar sort of plant but in miniature, sits visually juxtaposed. It also serves, while in flower, to soften the incredibly vivid color of the Knockout rose. When the flowers are gone, Agastache x Tutti Frutti will fill in around it

Islands in the Stream

Max was at a job interview, Karen was teaching, and I was waiting to go to a funeral so all I had to do was move one car and there was nothing parked in front of the house. I almost never see the front garden without cars. Not that the exfoliating asphalt pavement is a better foreground than automobiles, but... I actually don't have, didn't have, any pictures of the front gardens without cars. That is a little weird, but hey. Now I have a bunch!

Funerals.....I used to resent going to weddings 5 or 6 or 7 or 10 times a year, but you know what? Now I would trade one funeral for a bunch of weddings. And I hate to complain but, I thought the participants would be young people. They seem to be waiting longer to marry however, which makes a lot of sense, except that it means I am going to second weddings of people my own age and I didn't anticipate that. On the up side though, they are generally relaxed and fun and that's good. Hey, theres no substitute for experience.

A "conceit" runs through this garden. A conceit is an artificial construct imposed on the design of a garden (or anything, eg. a poem). For example: a garden that, viewed from the air, looked like a butterfly (or a poem where the words form the shape of, say a butterfly). Nothing so odd controls this site, but I did have an idea in my mind in which the house and the contiguous plantings represented a "mainland" in an ocean, while the turf represented an embayment, making the various island beds, well, "islands". You don't have to buy into this scenario to appreciate the plantings (I hope), but it does add a subconscious layer of comprehensibility. Actually when I removed the walkway connecting the house to the street, I think I lost a lot of the enthusiasm of my fellow residents, but you can't have a sidewalk crossing a bay, or river, or any body of water. Still, I have a sense that there is some valid use of the concept of a conceit. Notice that in this framework, the street is part of the "Ocean."