Succulents and More™

The massive sycamore ( Platanus × hispanica ) in our neighbor’s front yard provides valuable shade for her house, but in the fall, it becomes the bane of my existence. It produces a seemingly endless stream of leaves – large leaves that curl up and are difficult to dislodge with a leaf blower. Our neighbor’s sycamore at the very beginning of its leaf drop Because of our prevailing winds (typically from the north), a lot of the sycamore leaves get blown our way. The most immediate destination is the driveway bed my friend Kyle helped me redo last December ( see here ). This bed is full of hechtias, agaves, and aloes – spiky, toothy, and/or prickly plants that trap the leaves and make manual removal painful. In an effort to make my life a little easier, I decided to try something new: bird netting, like you would use in an orchard to prevent birds from eating the fruit. And it seems to be doing the trick. Here’s a photo of the leaves piling up on our neighbor’s side instead of being blo

Of all the shrubs in the garden, my favorite is Acacia aphylla . This oddball from Western Australia lacks traditional leaves (hence the common name “leafless rock wattle”). Instead, its zigzaggy blue-green stems perform photosynthesis. These stems, which give the plant its striking sculptural appearance, are adapted to reduce water loss in the dry, arid conditions where it naturally grows – not so different from here. From a distance, Acacia aphylla looks like a bluish cloud hovering over the sidewalk bed. In late winter, mid- to late-February, it’s covered with bright yellow ball-shaped flowers. This is what it looked like this year: The red-flowering shrub behind it is Grevillea ‘Scarlet Sprite’, thought to be a hybrid of Grevillea rosmarinifolia and another unknown grevillea: I like the two together, but both were getting too large for this spot – or any spot in our small garden. This is what Acacia aphylla looked like yesterday morning: With curbside yard-waste pickup coming up

I fully expected October to come to a close without any measurable rainfall. That would make it the driest October in recent memory. Imagine my surprise when I looked outside this morning and saw that the street was wet! It wasn’t much, not even a tenth of an inch, but it was thrilling nonetheless. I had somewhere to be first thing this morning, but when I got back, I snapped the photos below. I’m also including a couple of photos from my friend Kyle, who lives about 25 minutes east of here. Raindrops on plants – a sight I hadn’t seen in many months. Aloe lukeana ×Mangave ‘Pineapple Punch’ ×Mangave ‘Queen for a Day’ ×Mangave ‘Lavender Lady’ Graptopetalum paraguayense Graptopetalum superbum Echeveria cante (photo by Kyle Johnson) Myrtillocactus geometrizans (photo by Kyle Johnson) Echeveria agavoides ‘Christmas’ Notocactus herteri ssp. roseoluteus Notocactus mammulosus No sign of rain here, but don’t the prickles on this Aloe marlothii hybrid look like spiky rain drops? The rain

After a long, hot, destructive, and depressing summer, all I want is to put the misery behind me and move forward. I’ve pulled out all the aloes and agaves that rotted as a result of the heat domes we had in July and August ( some mentioned here , but there have been others as well) and I’ve done some replanting, as you’ll see later in this post. In addition, I’ve removed a few other plants that simply didn’t do it for me anymore. One of them is Agave ‘Ripple Express’, a variegated form of ‘Mr Ripple’ . I had high hopes for ‘Ripple Express’, but I was never quite satisfied with how it looked. Two years ago, maybe even a year ago, I would have simply accepted it for what it was and moved on. Not so now. When a plant doesn’t play its part, it gets replaced. Agave ‘Mr Ripple’ Agave ‘Mr Ripple’ You can guess what happened: I took advantage of our first curbside yard waste pickup of the season I replaced ‘Ripple Express’ with a Jeremy Spath hybrid, Agave bovicornuta × parrasana . It’s jus