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When it comes to cactus that bloom during the influx of snowy-headed winter visitors that flock to Arizona to escape North Country winters, the selection is slim indeed. Most pump out their showy flowers in late spring or summer when only hard-boiled desert rats are around to witness the spectacle.

Not so with the devil's tongue (Ferocactus latispinus). Unlike its other family members in the barrel cactus (Ferocactus) group, devil's tongue blooms in fall. Around my birthday in early November, buds begin to swell and purple flowers begin opening. This blooming can last well into December in Tucson at occurs at a time with other cactus are sitting around waiting for warmer weather. Every winter visitor should have one, but five or more would be better.

Even out of bloom, the devil's tongue is fetching. It sports wide recurving amber spines tinged with red and orange. Do they really look like Lucifer's tongue? Well, they are not forked, but they do have a devilish rake and are arranged in a sort of sinister array. It is a lovable villain for sure.

I'll confess that I'm hooked on AMC's Breaking Bad. For those of you unfamiliar with the television series, its central character is Walter White, an Albuquerque high-school chemistry teacher who when diagnosed with terminal lung cancer turns to methamphetamine production as a means to put away a nest egg for his pregnant wife and teenage son. Other characters include Walt's brother-in-law, a DEA agent, and a former student of Walter's, Jesse Pinkman, who becomes his business partner.

The show is full of plot twists and bloody executions but manages to be more than a gangster story. Walt and Jesse are both prototypical underdogs who are perennially out of their league. We see the violence through their eyes and how they are both shocked and resigned at what passes for acceptable in their new line of business. Both Walt and Jesse are constantly recalibrating their moral compasses, and seeing their gyrations is mesmerizing to watch.

On the other hand, Walt's medical situation could happen to any of us. How many of us would want probe the limits of our health insurance coverage if we were hit with a serious illness? Certainly many of my friends making a living in the arts (myself included) have either catastrophic health coverage or none at all. What measures would you take if the costs of a terminal illness wiped out your savings and promised to leave your family bereft?

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It is also true that I might like this show because I love Albuquerque, or the "ABQ," as Jesse Pinkman calls it. In lots of ways big and small, Albuquerque is a sister city to Tucson. Both cities are of similar size, and share comparable ethnic demographics, weather, culinary traditions, and prominent mountain ranges. Breaking Bad does a good job of giving us glimpses inside the taco shops, neighborhoods, and reservations that encircle the Duke City. Breaking Bad also uses time-lapse shots featuring the wide skies and arid landscapes that define the Southwest.

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Albuquerque is a city with valiant water-wise gardening proponents and some great examples of drought-tolerant gardens. An annual Xeriscape conference attracts attendees from all over the country and has been ongoing for sixteen years; its innovative torch bearer, Scott Varner, recently died and will be greatly missed. Some of my favorite garden designers are from the Albuquerque. Judith Phillips with her nuanced grassland inspired landscapes is a master, and David Cristiani, who is constantly agitating for gardens filled with more succulents and gnarly drought tolerant shrubs, is one of my ABQ favorites. I've featured both Judith's and David's work in two of my books.

So when I began watching season 3 of Breaking Bad, my eyes opened wide when Walt moves into a condo with contemporary architecture and snappy desert landscaping. I recognized the project right away as one of David Cristiani's designs. It is near Albuquerque's Nob Hill neighborhood and is called Aliso. When I was in New Mexico back in April, David had given me directions to Aliso. On my visit, I was impressed with the use of giant hesperaloe (Hesperaloe funifera), twisted yucca (Yucca rupicola), and desert willow trees (Chilopsis linearis). In Breaking Bad (beginning with Season 3, Episode 6) there are several views of the landscape shown through Walt's living room windows. The views of the landscape through Walt's condo window serve as a tranquil counterpoint to otherwise hyper-anxious life.

I called David on his cell phone to tell him he was famous. I reached him while he was out hiking looking for soap tree yucca and ocotillo. He hadn't heard that one of his landscape designs had broke bad. Like any designer worth their salt, he was worried about the current condition of the garden. "I've been meaning to get back there and check on the maintenance," he said, "I fear the landscape crew has turned the germander into little balls rather than a groundcover."

I'm keeping my eyes peeled for more distinctive ABQ gardens on the show, as well as a scene in Charlie's Back Door restaurant with a close-up of my favorite order, the flat blue enchilada's with an over easy egg on top, served Christmas style.

I'm working on an essay about larkspur as part of a poetic inventory of Saguaro National Park East. What follows is a little bit about the dark side of the larkspur didn't fit into that piece, but I thought it might be of interest here for those of you with an Amy Stewartish imagination. As for the title, larkspurs fit, rather oddly in my opinion, into the sunnily named buttercup (Ranunculacea) family.

Enjoy:
You can kill yourself with larkspur if you eat enough of it. All parts of the plant are poisonous, filled with a lethal cocktail of diterpenoid alkaloids, including ajacine and delphinine. Cattle go belly up after consuming three percent of their body weight—about 20-25 pounds. As I look out at a hillside in Saguaro National Park East that is sporadically dotted with larkspur, it looks like a bull with a death wish would have to eat every last plant in the park. One rancher concocted larkspur eradication plan involves sending in sheep—which are curiously immune to larkspur's toxic effects—to denude a new pasture before sending in cattle. It's an intractable problem: ranchers detest larkspur, botanists loath sheep. After a drought in 1898 began to kill off sheep herds in the Mojave desert, the botanist Carl A. Purpus (who has a Delphinium species named after him) wrote, "It is a great pity to see the cattle starve to dead on the desert, but it is a frolic for me to see the sheep die."

I'm just coming out of a six month self-imposed writing hermitage. My desk is a slag heap of articles and books. Several stacks have formed. There is a pile of books awaiting appraisal for the American Horticultural Society book awards (look for a future entry about my favorites), and another stack of books that I am tardy in reviewing. Debra Baldwin's Succulent Container Gardens falls into that second category.
I have to disclose that I've spent some time with Debra and her West Highland terrier strolling around her garden, which makes me want to like this book. Fortunately, there is much to like. She manages to photograph nearly all of the best succulent plant arrangers in California: from Flora Grubb, to Larry Grammer and Arrea Thongthiraj. Plus, she doesn't neglect work of creative intermountain plantsman like Dan Johnson of Denver Botanic Gardens.
It is true that for Arizona gardeners, some of the plants in Succulent Container Gardening are California dreaming--most of those beautiful Aeoniams aren't going to make it here, but she also features many plants that will shine in Arizona gardens. Just look for the usual suspects: agaves, yuccas, cactus; plenty of each are appear in the photos and text.
The well-articulated design tips and examples are more than worth the price of the book. I found myself lusting after a wall of agaves in Holland and a zen-like butter dish-sized pot filled with a tiny sedum. I also admired photos featuring the pottery of Mike Cone, a potter I wrote about for Horticulture Magazine a few years back. In fact, there are many stellar pots to ogle.
The examples Baldwin gives are so inspiring that I literally stopped writing this review after the second paragraph, walked outside and potted up a Echeveria 'Dark Prince' cutting that had been languishing on my potting bench.

I have to say that when this news broke earlier this year, it bummed me out a little.

Not for the plants, which were no big deal, but rather for the garden furniture. It was a good place to find clean-lined furnishings at really affordable prices. I bought cool rectangular concrete pots, and more than a few metal bistro-style tables and chairs. And all of it was end-of-season cheap. Plus they had Sean Conway onboard to keep up with the latest garden fashions.

Garden furniture is one category that independent nurseries don't seem to do very well with. In my experience (I used to buy furniture for an independent) they don't carry enough and it is too expensive. In their defense, it is hard thing to buy, particularly when you don't have the resources of a Target.

So, I'm hoping Target continues to carry outdoor furniture-- at least seasonally. Is that so wrong?

Every now and then, you get lucky enough to meet one of your heros. For me, yesterday was one of those days. I got to spend a little time with writer Jim Harrison at an intimate reading in the San Rafael Valley. Philip Caputo was rolling out his new book, , in a modern new ranch house owned by Ross and Susie Humphreys.

The new ranch house is a pared-down transparent box set in a sea of native grasses. I had the privilege of drawing a garden design for it. It was an honor to be able to put together a plan with some native plants that would compliment the house and surrounding landscape. While I was drawing the garden plan, my mantra was, "Don't screw it up!" It was in the living room of the house, overlooking the wide valley clear into Mexico, that I was introduced to Harrison.

"Sorry about my hair," he said, smiling and making a mock show of trying to smooth down some tufty patches.
"I've got the same problem," I said, my own thinning hair doing something similar.

Harrison was holding a glass of good French Bordeaux, a 2004 Chateau Margaux, in one hand, and a plate with some steamed pork sticky buns in the other. During the reading, I noticed that he was getting a kick out of a restless kid near him who couldn't suppress an occasional squawk as his parents struggled to keep him still.

I discovered Harrison when I was 21 and studying English at Brigham Young University. I picked up a copy of his Selected and New Poems, a book peppered with nude line drawings by Russell Chatham that somehow made it past the censors at the BYU Bookstore. For a kid who, on account of religious training, did a lot of living in his head, Harrison's work was refreshingly tactile and rooted a physical world of dogs, quail, travel, women, wine, cooking, and fishing. It was a world I wanted to inhabit. I have followed his career, and 30 some-odd books, with keen interest.

Since I was tipped-off that Harrison would be at the reading, I bought a copy of his collected non-fiction, , so I could get him to sign a copy as my dad's Christmas present. We stood outside on a patio in the watery winter light with the wind blowing through the tawny blue grama seedheads and a trio of handsome English setters running around nearby. Harrison signed the book for me while I explained that he was a favorite author of my father, uncles, and cousins. "What are they, uneducated?" he asked. "Mostly," I replied with a smile.

I asked how the hunting was going, and he said the doves all fly away when they see his car coming. His wife Linda, standing next to him said, "we have your book, Yard Full of Sun." I had forgotten that our hosts, and my publishers, Ross and Susie Humphreys had given Harrison a copy of my first book. Jim said, bring some of your gardening books over and I'll trade you for some of mine. A much better trade for me than him, but I'm looking forward to obliging.

He inscribed my dad's book:

To Wayne,
Gardens!
Yours,
Jim Harrison

For the last two years, I've sat on the American Horticultural Society's Book Award Committee. This means that each week in November and December, two or three or six gardening books show up in my mailbox or on my doorstep to review, peruse, and ultimately judge. In fact, while I was writing this, the UPS man interrupted me with the delivery of a new memoir by a Canadian poet-farmer: Trauma Farm: A Rebel History of Rural Life. I got diverted and just spent 15 minutes reading the first chapter. For someone crazy about plants, words, and photos, exploring these books is a treat but also a task I take seriously.

After receiving the books, I give each one a general once-over, read the introductory material, table of contents, and first chapter. If I'm compelled to read on, the book makes it into my "for further review" pile, which after a complete read eventually gets whittled down to a top 10 list. Last year, most of my finalists (and many of the ) were large format hard-bound affairs crammed with luscious full-bleed photos, plant lists and other useful information in mostly photo-driven formats.

This year, the quality of the writing and depth of the research is shining through and my top three selections thus far contain no photographs whatsoever.

In Andrea Wulf's , she brings to life the colonial world of plant trade beginning with the friendship, correspondence, and plant swapping between American plantsman John Bartram, and British merchant Peter Collinson. The way Wulf mines the letters these men exchanged is exhaustive and magnificent. Along the way, we get a personal picture of the brilliant, arrogant, and persistent father of modern botany, Carl Linnaeus, and his more affable student Daniel Solander. Lest you think that the book is set in drawing rooms filled with rattling tea cups, plant presses, and powdered wigs, Wulf peppers her text with tales of English playboys on high seas plant adventures,Tahitian orgies, bouts of malaria, and glimpses into Benjamin Franklin's passion for horticulture. I can't think of a more interesting introduction to the sport we call gardening.

Lucinda Fleeson's is vastly different from The Brother Gardeners, but no less compelling. As the print newspaper business enters an uncertain and depressing twilight, Fleeson leaves her successful career as a Philadelphia Inquirer reporter for a job at the National Tropical Botanical Garden on Kauai. Her firsthand personal accounts of garden politics, seemingly doomed native plant conservation efforts, horseback riding, and outrigger canoeing are all top-notch, but perhaps what Fleeson does best is articulate her own emotional terrain. The way she chronicles her transformation from cultured urbanite to a woman who realizes that there is "no enjoyment difference between attending the opera in London or a potluck with friends on Kauai" is fun to witness. For anyone hoping to go fearlessly into middle-age, or boldly navigate a path out it, Fleeson's memoir could easily serve as a template.

And lastly, we come to the prolific Amy Stewart's latest work, her smarting little tome of pain and suffering by horticulture: . The book is organized reference style, and each plant's deadly, toxic, or inflammatory qualities are relayed like a well-told campfire ghost story. Consider the way Stewart begins her description of Mala Mujer (bad woman): "A group of teenagers went hiking in the Mexican desert and came back with a mysterious rash. The next day, one girl went to the doctor complaining of red itchy spots on her hand..." Each time I looked up a plant that I knew well in Wicked Plants, Stewart's research was spot-on and presented in a lively (or should I say deadly?) manner. Such was the case with sacred datura, or jimson weed, a plant whose white flowers Georgia O'Keefe choose as the subject for some of her most sensuous paintings. Because it is so pretty, I sometimes specify this plant for use in clients' gardens, but every once in a while a story appears in the local paper about some teenagers who were hospitalized after eating its seeds. In the garden outside my office, I have bushel loads of sacred datura growing, but after reading Stewart's description of the effects of ingesting tropane alkaloids, I lost my desire to experiment. The American colonists fed jimson weed to the British soldiers who were there to put down colonial unrest; Stewart coyly remarks, "The British soldiers did not die, but they did go crazy for eleven days, temporarily giving the Americans the upper hand." Although the fact-filled writing is the main focus of Wicked Plants, the wonderful etchings and morbid drawings make the package complete.

I don't care if California is bankrupt, on fire, on drugs, out of work and out of water; it is a ravishingly beautiful state where you can grow almost everything well. There is a word for those who like to bash California: jealous. They have mountains, deserts, exquisite coastlines, and farms that could feed the world. They also have Luther Burbank's Gold Ridge Experiment Farm in Sebastopol, which I visited last week on my way to a book event. Luther Burbank (1849-1926) was a wildly successful plant breeder who introduced, among many other things, over 60 varieties of prickly pear cactus. He was also friends with Jack London; need I say more?

It was a perfect cool sunny day and I was the only one at the farm walking over the grassy hillsides among the oaks, persimmons, plums, and sweet peas. I bought a Luther Burbank prickly pear plant by sliding 4 dollars through a slot in a barn door. I also ate a plum, or three, which I didn't pay for. After all, they were literally falling off the tree. My walk on these California hills, plums in hand, brought to mind the William Carlos Williams poem, which, with apologies to Williams, I have modified here:

This Is Just To Say

I have eaten
the hybrid beach plums
that were dangling
from the dwarf Prunus

and which
you were probably
saving
for research

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so warm

For those interested in finding out more about Burbank, I recommend the new biography, by Jane S. Smith. I got my copy at Copperfield's books in Sebastopol.

I'll be headed up to the Valley of the Sun tomorrow to give a presentation and sign my new book, The Hot Garden, at Changing Hands Bookstore in Tempe (6428 S McClintock Dr.)

In my talk, I'll highlight innovative garden design strategies for the desert Southwest, show some striking landscape photos, and talk a little bit about Star Wars (to find out how I work Luke Skywalker into a gardening talk, you'll have to show up).

I would appreciate the attendance of any of my friends and family who can make it.