Boo!

Ghostly pumpkins


Ghostly Agaves, with fangs!




Ghosts in the eerie distance?


Not-Very-Grim Reaper, and all A's on his last report card!  Yay!
 
Happy Halloween!

I Don't Know What It Is

It has a Graptopetalum/Echeveria hybrid kind of vibe, but I don't know what it is.  It seems like Graptopetalum paraguayense is in there--but what else?  The stems grow long and snakey, and the leaf surface is glaucous:

 

Excellent vigor, easy to grow.  One tiny rosette became all this:

The stems root themselves as they snake along:

Beautiful color:  a blend of pale aqua, blue, grey, and violet:

Perhaps if it ever blooms, I'll have a better idea of what it is.  Yesterday I spent so much time sitting by the pond staring at the plant, the Koi became quite annoyed and began making impatient bwop-bwop noises at the surface to remind me I owe them food.  

The pond water is really green.  Grrrr!  I have to do something about the UV light.  It is not effective.  Though the green tint did look lovely with Blondie's orange forehead.  

Green looks good with orange.  This is an Echeveria agavoides variant (I think):

And what is possibly Agave marmorata showed off dark orange spines.  I have a few other plants I can't quite identify yet. 

"Hey, you with the food.  Quit looking at plants.  Feed me."

Aloe deltoideodonta var candicans has bloomed!

Frosty:


Frosty, but not the weather. Aloe deltoideodonta var cadicans (aka var fallax?) has bloomed.  I've had this Aloe at least two years, but this is the first bloom.  The San Marcos website says for them, this species has been "shy to bloom", so it's not just me.  Mine gets along on very little water in the spot where I have it--mostly shade.  I water it about once every six weeks.  I thought the whiteness of the foliage would appreciate plenty of shade, though I don't know if that's true since I've not exposed it to full sun.  It's been beautiful and happy in the conditions I gave it, so why change?  The flower has a white cast to it that agrees with the whiteness in the foliage--look carefully at the flower stem to get a sense of it.  This is a very beautiful small Aloe. 

My photo is prettier than the San Marcos photo!  Wheeee!


The plant grows very slowly, but offsets well.  It was solitary when I bought it, and now has six or seven offsets.  I read somewhere that offsets trigger the main rosette to stop growing.  This has proven true for my plant.  I wonder if removing the offsets would trigger growing again, but I'm not inclined to disturb the plant just yet. 


Top view of flower:


Perhaps even frostier, Echeveria cante has grown.  Any touch whatsoever mars the exquisitely thick farina on the leaves, so I painstakingly pull off the occasional aphid with fine tweezers, and water with fanatical care.  The extra attention is completely worth it.   

My kind of frost:

 

Fall Project Day 4

Some of the not-fun stuff.

 
I knew there would be some painfully tedious bits to get through.  Today is one of them:  pulling out the old low-voltage lighting.  Eccch.  Dull indeed.  I distracted myself at every opportunity.  

Don't want to dig up old lighting.  Go feed the koi. 
 


Ah, the Agave maybe-ellemeetiana has grown since I bought it.  


Back in April, it looked like this:


Don't want to dig up old lighting.  Go sniff the sweet fragrance of 'Aimee Vibert'.


Don't want to dig up old lighting.  Go try to get an accurate photo of 'Prospero's rich color.  Hmm.  Not quite. 


Hey, it's overcast...how does Echeveria 'Imbricata' look in overcast?
 

A week ago, the Tagetes lemonii had not a single flower blooming.


I did move the tomato-patch Oak seedling to a spot out front.  Better than yanking on that buried lighting wire.  Digging down about 18" ensured I got all of the baby Oak's tap root.  Now, possibly the Oak will grow and thrive.  I've just given a seedling its chance to try to live gloriously for centuries.  Our native Oaks can live for five hundred years.

Mixed in with all the tedium, a reach for meaning, a hope for significance.  Isn't a day in the garden like life itself? 

Some Sun

I gather from reading certain garden blogs that in some climates, the sun has vanished and will not return until next April or so.  Some sun for the sun deprived, in the mean time.  Rest assured, it's still up there. 

Agave desmettiana continues to reach upwards and outwards...

...with Senecio vitalis glowing at its base.

'Blue Glow' is also glowing.

Tagetes lemonii is glowing, too.

Aloe maybe-marlothii is happy.  The dark chocolate spines cast tiny pyramids of shadow. 

The spines look sharp, but you can grab a leaf pretty firmly and it doesn't hurt--too much.  Not nearly as nasty as Agave spines.  

Here's the whole plant.  It's done better this summer, now that it is large enough to avoid being completely swallowed up by the nearby Tagetes.   Swallowed up, it sorely missed the sun.

In A Garden, On A Saturday Morning

Fish and their sheen in glassy water,


And grass aloft, like bird feathers,



And modern roses in sun,



And old roses in shadow,



And a Camellia, tissue-thin,



And a hint of a breeze,



in a garden, on a Saturday morning.

Fall Project Day 3

'Barcelona'


Good progress yesterday.  I got all the gravel out.



Then  I removed the raised beds along with the landscape fabric on the path and the path edging.



Piled all the stuff in the corner for now.



Of course, I got distracted by roses.  As usual, 'William Morris' is one of the most consistently photogenic roses in the garden:



'Barcelona's big draw is a marvelous old rose fragrance and a deep velvety red color, with surprisingly excellent rust resistance for such an old cultivar.


 'Daring Dilemma' is the 'Iceberg' rose of Hemerocalli in my garden.  Excellent rebloom through most of the year, and little care required.  

I still have to figure out what to do with this Quercus agrifolia seedling that sprouted in one of the raised veggie beds last winter.  It's very healthy, having spent the summer buried under tomato plants.  Baby Oaks need shade, and this one got plenty.

I noticed the hybrid Aloe 'Grassy Lassie' was producing its inaugural bloom when a hummingbird zipped around it.  I did not manage to get a shot of the hummer.  


I was very fortunate to be able to spend a beautiful Autumn day in the garden.