You may be able to grow all sorts of things in California that you can't grow elsewhere, but one thing that's impossible here is grass. I'm pretty sure there are only two real grass plots in all of San Diego: in Balboa Park and surrounding the administrative building.

I walk by the administrative building every day since it sits between the trolley and the boat. I think it's beautiful.

Yep, that's it. And my feet just ache from walking on pavement, so I am becoming desperately in need of some thick tall grass. I went to Balboa Park last weekend, just so I could sit in the grass and knit. Also this past weekend, I volunteered at Crest Canyon, an area in Del Mar that was saved by a community in the 1970s from development, so there it sits in an urban setting, a preserve of all that is native to southern California.

Crest Canyon, with a little stream down the center that flows into that river in the lowlands that looks like snow (1980)

Our job was to remove invasive plants, and I was only interested in this because I wanted to know which plants were native and which were not. Clearly I knew nothing because our leader got overly upset when I pulled up some buttercup plants instead of the terrible mustard plants. Oops.

Turns out fennel, which I've seen growing all over here is considered invasive. Here I am trying to keep my now somewhat-tall fennel plant alive, and we were chopping down fennel plants that had grown to 10 feet tall and had 1" thick stems. It sure smelled good at least.

my little fennel plant that I bought at the farmer's market back in Kansas and dragged all the way to California, only to find out it's a "weed"

Another plant that surprised me as invasive is the ice plant (or highway ice plant, because it's grown all over the interstates). It's a succulent that people put it in their yards as ground cover (because remember, there is no grass here) but it absorbs so much water that it crowds out the other plants. It's all over here: yards, interstates, street landscaping, railroads, and beaches.

In fact, it's even growing outside my bedroom window. It's surprising how it can remain alive everywhere considering San Diego only gets 10 inches of rain per year, but that's also why most plant life survives by sprinkler systems here. To keep the stuff surrounding our house growing, I get to listen to the sprinklers spew on at 2:30 every night. It still wakes me up nearly every time, and the first time I heard it, I could not figure out what the terrible hissing noise was! I thought for sure someone had poured water in a hot frying pan right outside the window. Still, the air outside is too nice to keep my window closed. We haven't even turned on the air conditioner. 

I always have trouble keeping myself from buying yet another plant. I'm really going to have to find a house, with a garden, and stay put so that my mother doesn't have to keep plant-sitting my ever-growing collection. The plants are always so small when I get them though...

I found this little thing at the international food market, for only $1.29. How could I resist when it already has an eggplant growing?