Weekend Pictures & Favorites - 2/26/2017

I haven't had much time in the garden this weekend, but progress continues! The bed that was a mess is much cleaner now. This does make the smoke bush look even sadder than before... i really should give up on him, i think.

The sage bushes probably need replacing too

The left most hill side has been cleaned up, and i've rearranged the yucca here to fill an empty spot and save it from being engulfed. There are so many poppy seedling here this year!

The rest of hillside is probably next weekend's project...

I wanted to share some of my favorite plants - like Loree at Danger Garden, i picked Five for February. Her post and comments show many more favorites, and here are mine:

the senna artemisioides is starting to bloom - and taller than the wall this year!

every year that this stone cactus blooms i'm impressed that it isn't dead. 3 blooms this year!

The fruit trees on the hill side (this is nectarine) are almost ready to bloom

this combination of green, silver and purple on the hill side makes me happy.

This tube has to be cleaned up some, but i love this combo of plants. 

I'll add cleaning up that last tube to the list of things to do, although i'm always so worried that i'll kill the plants by moving them. But some extra soil and new mulch should help them this summer, and i should do it now, before it gets hot again.

All these projects should be enough to keep me busy, but now i've been wondering whether i've made enough progress yet to get to buy more plants... I have to remember we can still get frost for another month or 2! Maybe buying mulch and continuing clean up will help keep me from buying new plants (probably not!).

Garden Progress, Agaves & Lessons Learned

Even with all the rain the last few weeks, I'm making progress on all the projects/problem areas I identified earlier this year. One particular horrible bed (left of the patio) has been cleaned, new drip lines installed, plants moved and cut back, some new, low-risk succulent cuttings and a layer of new mulch:

cedar mulch because it's the one i dislike the least. 

you can see some of the new drip lines on the left

the other side of the bed has new rock mulch

The new mulch stayed in place through the crazy rain we had last night! This morning, the weather was perfect for continuing the clean up, and noticing some of the spiky goodies, like agave agave lophantha quadricolor hiding under a carex testacea - this keeps the agave happier in our crazy hot summer sun:

This bed still needs a lot of cleaning, but the combination of yucca (need to remember which one), aloe (the biggest one in my garden!) and agave ovatifolia looks good regardless. I also really need to think about pruning that lowest branch off that tree, so it's less of a bush...

Speaking of agaves - there are three in this picture: a. 'Crazy Horse', a. shawii (in the back, with all it's pups) and the one in the foreground that i've lost the tag for.

While not one of my original spring projects, 'Crazy Horse' really needs to come out that tube. I think that will be next weekend's fun, or maybe tomorrow. But i really can't let it go much longer, lest it end up like my biggest (and still favorite) agave: 'Mr. Ripple':

(please ignore all the gopher damage to the DG - still on the list to fix)

He's not coming out of that tube until after he's bloomed, and even then, it will be interesting. And i even knew that he would get too big, since i told myself to move him 3 years ago: right here. He was so cute and little then. And of course, i've never found another Mr. Ripple since... I'd like to say that i learned my lesson about planting for final size, etc, but probably not.

Given all the foliage in the pictures, I'm linking to Digging for Foliage Follow Up (even if i didn't do a bloom day post to follow up on). Now let's hope for some more gentle rain and nice gardening weather as we get into spring!