Con­di­tions in the Pacific Ocean seem to be shift­ing toward the return of the La Niña weather phe­nom­e­non, the lesser-​​known rel­a­tive of the El Niño weather anom­aly, accord­ing to fore­cast­ers at the Jet Propul­sion Lab­o­ra­tory in Pasadena. What does that mean for SoCal gar­den­ers? Experts say a lot less rain in an area already plagued by drought conditions.

“Right now, I’d say the dice seem loaded for an immi­nent La Niña,” Bill Patzert, a long-​​range fore­caster at the Jet Propul­sion Lab­o­ra­tory in Pasadena told the San Diego Tri­bune. “It’s not a good sign. La Niña is what I call the diva of drought for the Southwest.”

The U.S. Cli­mate Pre­dic­tion Cen­ter said a large num­ber of com­puter mod­els indi­cates “the onset of La Niña conditions.”

La Niña is char­ac­ter­ized by unusu­ally cold ocean tem­per­a­tures in the Equa­to­r­ial Pacific, com­pared to El Niño, which is char­ac­ter­ized by unusu­ally warm ocean temperatures.

In the past sev­eral weeks, ocean tem­per­a­tures have dropped significantly. And from Bill Patzert,  “For those who think in terms of “nor­mal” rain­fall for Los Ange­les: “Nor­mal is a cycle on a wash­ing machine.”

The pre­dic­tion map below is from the National Weather Ser­vice site. The first map is for Sep-​​Oct-​​Nov/​2010 and the last map is for Aug-​​Sept-​​Oct/​2011. The white areas are nor­mal rain­fall, the green above nor­mal, and the brown areas are below nor­mal. I’m tear­ing out my lawn as soon as I can afford it.

“Huge Sude­ley Bench” by Pablo Reinoso at Sude­ley Castle

I came across this work of art on a favorite web­site and stopped in my tracks! What a per­fect set­ting for this glo­ri­ous piece of out­door sculpture!

From the catalog:

As impres­sive in scale and ambi­tion as its name sug­gests, Huge Sude­ley Bench was com­mis­sioned espe­cially for the Sotheby’s at Sude­ley Cas­tle exhi­bi­tion. It rep­re­sents the first time that Reinoso has worked on this mon­u­men­tal scale, over­see­ing a team of foundry tech­ni­cians who employed hydraulic machin­ery to manip­u­late lengths of steel girder into exu­ber­ant and free flow­ing forms. Reinoso refers to this process as ‘breath­ing sculp­ture’, ref­er­enc­ing the man­ner in which Calder adapted his mobiles while at the same time acknowl­edg­ing its archi­tec­tural prop­er­ties. Com­ment­ing on his early train­ing as a sculp­tor, Reinoso has stated his will to go beyond pre­scribed bound­aries, ‘bound­aries you need to know but you don’t need to respect’. Huge Sude­ley Bench was cre­ated in three indi­vid­ual sec­tions and treated with black auto­body paint, a deci­sion made to ensure that future gen­er­a­tions could refresh its sur­faces and appre­ci­ate the work in the pris­tine state it first left the foundry. It also sees the intro­duc­tion of Reinoso’s new artist’s mono­gram which he intends to apply to all his future creations.

“Spaghetti chair” is actu­ally a bench.

To learn more about Pablo Reinoso and his work, go to:  www​.pablor​einoso​.com, www​.chair​blog​.eu/, and to see more of this Sotheby’s exhi­bi­tion:www​.sothe​bys​.com/​m​i​n​i​s​i​t​e​/​s​u​d​e​l​ey/.

A Socal com­pany that car­ries beau­ti­ful gar­den art and foun­tains on a smaller scale is Gar­den Tem­ple (818 – 783-0079) in Stu­dio City,www​.gar​den​tem​ple​.com.

Now this is a bicycle!

I was impa­tiently antic­i­pat­ing Flora Grubb Gar­dens and was not dis­ap­pointed! I was in fact wowed by this ulti­mate urban gar­den resource. Set in an indus­trial area of down­town San Fran­cisco, Flora’s green king­dom  encom­passes a soar­ing indus­trial build­ing filled with witty dis­plays, ver­ti­cal gar­dens and unusual plants and con­tain­ers. Ser­vices offered include cut­ting edge flo­ral designs (suc­cu­lent wed­ding bou­quet, any­one?), gar­den design and main­te­nance and a palm bro­ker­age. Flora Grubb Gar­dens has a ter­rific web­site and newslet­ter: check it out @ Flor​agrubb​.com. She also offers sem­i­nars and speakers.

1001 Gar­dens is a book to die for!

.….YOU MUST SEE BEFORE YOU DIE. That’s the title of a book edited by Rae Spencer-​​Jones that I had to have when I spot­ted it at the Hunt­ing­ton Gar­dens gift shop (www​.Hunt​ing​ton​.org/). Weigh­ing in at about 2 pounds and with 960 pho­tos and 800+ pho­tos, this is not a take-​​along book. It really is intended for arm­chair trav­el­ing (to actu­ally visit a listed gar­den you will evi­dently need to do some dig­ging on hours, direc­tions, etc.) I like it because there may be a gar­den not far afield to visit that the reader is not aware of. The for­mat lists design­ers, own­ers, gar­den style, size, cli­mate, loca­tion and a brief descrip­tion. List­ings are eclec­tic, on every con­ti­nent, with a heavy con­cen­tra­tion on the British Isles.

1001 GARDENS YOU MUST SEE BEFORE YOU DIE, Pub­lished in Jan­u­ary 2007 by Barron’s Edu­ca­tional Series Inc.