Succulents and More™

When I took photos of our front yard for my last post, Photo tour of our front garden (March 2, 2025) , I realized that a video would be far more effective at capturing the big picture: the layout of the garden, and the plants in their overall context. Here’s the result, 7 minutes and 31 seconds in glorious high definition: Be sure to watch the video on YouTube and select the highest resolution your bandwidth allows. I recommend at least 1080p; 1440p or 2160p would be even better for the best video quality. Before or after watching the video, check out my post Photo tour of our front garden (March 2, 2025) . It contains photos of plants I wasn’t able to focus on in the video, otherwise it would have been twice as long. And finally a few notes: This was my first time using a gimbal . The result is good – smoother panning than I would be able to do hand-holding my phone – but there’s still a bit of unevenness here and there. Also, excuse the wind noise. I just bought a lapel microphone...

On Saturday I had an open garden for the Sacramento Cactus and Succulent Society . The weather couldn’t have been better: sunny and bright, with mid-morning temperatures in the 60s, climbing into the low 70s by mid-afternoon. I didn’t count how many people showed up, but there was a steady stream of visitors. Most of them seemed to like what they saw. My goal wasn’t to impress anybody; I do what I do for myself, not for others. But I hope that I was able to provide a bit of inspiration, just like so many of the gardens I’ve visited over the years – and their owners – have inspired me. Photo taken by Kyle Johnson I admit, I did spend a good amount of time cleaning, reorganizing, and sprucing up the garden, and I was happy with how everything looked. So happy, in fact, that I want to take you on a tour as well. Inside the fence: Peek of the front garden through the bamboo Yes, I do have a fondness for mariachi musicians made of scrap metal Call it my nod to garden kitsch Mounds inside th...