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!