Succulents and More™

Last week, I caught up with my friend Justin . He lives in Pinole, about an hour away, but for one reason or another, I hadn’t seen his garden in 10 months. High time for an update. (If you want to see what Justin’s garden looked like in previous years, check out these posts: June 2021 | June 2022 | June 2023 | October 2023 .) The Agave applanata near the driveway has grown dramatically. It’s over 6 ft. wide and tall now (for comparison, Justin is 6'3"). Justin believes it will flower soon. I think he wants the space back so he can plant something else (I can relate). Agave applanata on the left, Agave horrida on the right looking downright puny Mangave ‘Bloodspot’ × Agave titanota on the left, Agave applanata in the middle, Agave horrida on the right What this corner looked like in June 2021 More from Justin’s front yard: Aloe glauca var. spinosior growing in a pocket between rocks A colorful mix of South African daisies, irises, aloes, field poppies... ...and Cali...

The other day I walked into my greenhouse , perfectly relaxed and certainly not expecting anything bad. Imagine how p***ed I was when this greeted me: It got worse from there... ...much worse: Nothing left here! Weirdly enough, nothing else was eaten, just these Astrophytum cactus — and there definitely are other tasty morsels in the greenhouse. I don’t “collect” a lot of plants, but I did collect these astrophytums. I knew immediately who the culprit was. It’s always the same one. It starts with an r, has an a in the middle, and ends with a t. Let me spell it out: r-a-t. If you’ve followed my blog for any length of time, you might know that rats are my arch nemesis. They’ve done more damage in our garden over the years than anything else. Not just ornamentals: More than ¾ of the vegetables and herbs my wife planted in recent weeks have been gnawed down to stubs. Poison traps aren’t an option because of Stella, and I don’t love the idea of live traps: What am I going to do with a trap...