My current series of Top Comments diaries are an account of our vacation trip at the beginning of June, a road trip through parts of California lasting about 10 days. We have made it to the west side of the Sierra Nevada, and are staying two nights in Sonoma. I’ll have quite a bit to say about Sonoma and California history in a future diary (I learned a lot on this trip), but after our first night in Sonoma, we visited Santa Rosa, in order to do the one thing that hubby on his own insisted that we do: visit the home of Luther Burbank.
To clear up any misconceptions from the start, Luther Burbank is not the person Burbank, California, is named after. Those who don’t know much about the history of plant breeding may not know who Luther Burbank was; to hubby, who is obsessed with gardening, Burbank is a personal hero. In fact, in the early part of the 20th Century, Burbank was hailed as a great entrepreneur, classed with Thomas Edison and Henry Ford. In fact, take a look at this photo:
Burbank bred the Shasta daisy, the Santa Rosa plum, and a prickly pear cactus with (almost) no spines. His goal was to breed plants that had the characteristics that everyone would want. He wasn’t always successful, but when he hit, he hit big. While many of his most popular bred plants can still be found, however, most others have been supplanted by newer varieties, and nobody remembers Burbank anymore (while we still remember Edison and Ford, for example). In any case, the City of Santa Rosa has made the Burbank House a park and museum, which we visited. Details and photos are to be found below the fold.
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The visitor center is in what was once the carriage house.
This is actually the back of the house, but the brick work makes it more attractive than the front.
The tour takes you through the house, but no photos are allowed with in the house itself. As you might imagine, Burbank has a greenhouse. Note the Shasta daisies in the foreground.
This is the “spineless” prickly-pear cactus that Burbank bred as feed for cattle being raised in arid places. However, it was not a success because, apparently, the rats would get to it first.
Both the large tree on the right and the tree in the center (with Shasta daisies in the foreground, again) are what Burbank called the paradox walnut. He wanted to breed a fast-growing tree whose wood could be used for the making of furniture. The paradox walnut does, indeed, grow fast, but the wood is not of sufficient quality to make good furniture out of it, so this was not a success.
Additional pants on the grounds that Burbank bred (but for which I have no photos) are the Santa Rosa plum, the white blackberry, a thornless artichoke, and a few others. (By the way, the white blackberry was not a success, at least partly because the pies made from it were deemed unattractive.) The gardens also featured lovely flower gardens, but hubby was disappointed that there weren’t more of Burbank’s own varieties in the gardens. The personnel that staffed the house were well versed in Burbank’s history, but they didn’t know anything about plants. Hubby found this quite frustrating. So he was a little disappointed with his visit.
In any case, I’ll leave you with a few shots of the gardens (the ones devoid of Burbank’s varieties).
And now, on to the comments!
Top Comments (July 6, 2016):
From Wee Mama:
There is a one line summary from GimmeAFBreak that hits the mark on the Republicans' relative value of governing versus harassment. From Kerry Eleveld’s post Two GOP-led inquiries into Clinton produce basically zip in the space of two weeks.
Top Mojo (July 5, 2016):
Top Mojo is courtesy of mik! Click here for more on how Top Mojo works.
Top Photos (July 5, 2016):
Tonight’s picture quilt is courtesy of jotter!