Opuntia Blooms

Every year, numerous times, i curse myself for getting glochids all over myself. Why do i put up with these plants?

Oh yeah:

because of these flowers!

even newly replanted they bloom!

these ones (marcocentra) have always been my favorite

these defy being photographed!

This year was a long blooming year - as of mid may, there are still some buds waiting to pop.

This one is brand new/never flowered... i wonder what color it will be?

This was the first time I saw these flowers:

a very soft pink!

these are so loud they deserve a 2nd picture

these will also be a very soft pink.. but on purple pads

these are also new!

these will be yellow!

And then there is still orange and peach to come! I need to find some red flowering ones... 

(wait - no - i don't need more plants, and definitely not more opuntias. Although i forget the glochids soon enough...)

Six on Saturday: Weird cherry tree, and new pots!

Just for fun this weekend, here's a look at six random things in my garden...

First off, my very strange cherry tree - can you see it blooming here?

it's on the north side of the house

It's done this the last few years - bloom on the bottom half of the tree first. I assume it has something to do with the roof line of the house?

a closer picture

In a few more weeks, the top will have flowers, and the bottom leaves. In a few more months, there will be lots of cherries, which is really all that matters.

(also - note to self - prune those opuntia...)

Next - i refreshed some of the hanging pots in my garden! I'm still amazed i can keep these alive! This is one of the new ones:

just some easy succulents

 This one is in a bit more exposed location - it already has sunburn:

but hopefully it will adjust...

 both pots have a spot that's clearly rock mulch - that's where the ice cubes go! I water these pots with ice cubes... so that the water can actually soak into the pots. I've had luck with string-of-pearls surviving, so let's hope that continues!

These next two pots are going on their 3rd year!

this one looks much better now that i watered it...

this one looks kinda bad, TBH, but this plant is definitely surviving

I should get around to adding some more plants to that second pot. Perhaps i should brave the garden center next weekend for my weekly "leave the house" adventure/support local businesses, while maintaining social distancing.

Weekend Wrap up: Gazania everywhere

I continue to be grateful to my garden for being a great place to be distracted, relaxed, and learn that control is just an illusion. I spend all sorts of time figuring out where plants go, and which ones i should get, and then the garden says: "What you need is Gazania"

and so therefore, there were Gazania on the hillside

You can buy different colored ones at the garden centers. In my experience, they don't really last. I've never bought yellow or orange ones. But that's what the garden decided it liked, in all the different colors. 

yellow with orange stipes

more orangy and dark

orange

yellow

and this color combo

Not just content with showing me that it's better than me at picking flower colors, the garden also showed that it's much better at picking where to plant them than any planting scheme i've ever come up with:

the right hill side

Here's to hoping we get more Spring-like days soon! 

6 on Saturday: pretty pictures

Spring (well, late winter) cleaning continues. I hate gophers. Instead of focusing on that though, here are some pretty pictures of the garden:

the first acacia to bloom this year!

finally an in-focus grevillea (lanigera, but more pink that the one in front garden)

the almond tree is blooming (late)

the new foliage on these roses is very green

the fact that these two pots of succulents aren't dead is a small miracle

it starts: the first new pond plant!

Now i will get back to cleaning up the hillside. And looking up insulting names for gophers... Happy almost Spring!

New Roses For the Front Garden

This was one project i did in the end of 2018 that will hopefully look nice in 2019, and reminds me of the Austin fling everything I get home! No current pictures... because they look like rose bushes in the winter. 

One of the plants i saw in Austin that I wanted to get for myself were these "Livin' Easy" roses. Here they are in the garden of Kirk Moring - in person, the orange popped out, and the smell was amazing. 

From Kirk Moring's garden

Since i'm trying to apply the lessons I learned in Austin (in addition to buying all the plants!), i figured that Livin' Easy would work well in the front garden. The flower color would play off the orange lantanas. Roses do ok here, although in general they need a bit more water, especially in the sun. However, i have some roses on the north side of the house that survive and bloom really well. So I knew that if i could give them some shade, they'd do fine. 

Coincidentally, this bed in the front garden needed an update anyway. Its in the shade during our hot afternoons (facing due east), and i installed drip irrigation a number of years ago. The current occupants were a opuntia and a Black Knight butterfly bush. The Opuntia was doing fine, but leaning over the side walk. The butterfly bush had been doing fine, but took a big hit during the house painting and really didn't recover. 

Current residents right before being evicted...

The sad buddleia

I'm actually not entirely sure what happened here - the last few years, this plant was 6+ feet tall. My guess is a combination of broken irrigation, bugs (something ate its leaves - every year) and rough handling during painting finally got it.

Speaking of broken irrigation...

Had to fix where the old sprinkler head converted to drip

Do not ask me why the previous owners installed old fashioned pop up sprinklers in a bed filled with rocks. Even weirder is the fact that there is some major plumbing equipment another foot under the ground here. A part of the rock mulch is actually laying on an access hatch i installed to make it easier to service that in future...

Of course, before i started any of this, i had to source Livin' Easy. I probably spent a good 2 months checking every orange rose i saw, and checking online. I had just decided to wait until bare root season and ordering online, when i randomly checked some roses at the big box store, and found 'Livin Easy'.

One on one side

I had just said "i'm not buying any plants today", when i, of course, ended up with plants. Oh well - at least now i have the rose I want!

and one on the other side!

All the rocks put back, and some bark mulch (the same as in the rest of the garden! I learned!) and everything looks cleaned up...

Now grow!

 These pictures are a bit too bight, but the roses did give me some immediate gratification in the form of flowers...

they are more orange in real life!

 So pretty...

a little bit better color match to RL

These are (probably) the last plants I'll get to plant this year. They will get a bit of supplemental hand watering the first few months (and during heat waves) but so far they are doing alright. And now i have one of my Austin Plant Lusts in my own garden!

Finally, Cousin Itt comes to visit!

Taking a short break from looking at Austin pictures, I finally found a plant i'd been looking for! Before our heat got completely insane, i finally found a plant i'd been looking for (locally) for over 2 years - acacia cognata Cousin Itt. I fell in plant-lust with it after seeing it in botanical gardens and blogs, and even figured out the "perfect" spot for it in my garden. And then I couldn't find it anywhere...

I wanted it to replace a pink muhly grass that was in too much shade to bloom well, next to the dry creek bed. Since it looked horrible, and i couldn't find Cousin Itt, i eventually planted a purple cordyline instead. Amazingly enough, it didn't die!

mostly-happy cordyline

I realize that picture doesn't make that spot look particularly shady, but after about 2pm, the sun moves behind the wall on the right side, so it mostly gets morning sun. And in my garden, that counts as "shade".

And then a few weeks ago, i was "just looking" at one of the nurseries, and i found:

Cousin Itt! Fancy seeing you here!

So obviously i bought it. And i did think about whether there were other spots to plant it, but the most likely spot (the hill side) seemed like guaranteed death. So with some quick shovel work, the cordyline was evicted, and Cousin Itt put in where i wanted it 2 years ago.

In place - the green will go much better with the grasses that are further down the creek bed

Supposedly, acacia cognata can take 'full sun' (probably not this full sun), and have low water needs, so that should work. Cold hardiness is a bit of a gamble, but i have several other acacia's that seem to be surviving fairly well, so fingers crossed.

The poor cordyline didn't get tossed - there was a spot in the front garden where something else had died, so it got moved:

The cordyline in its new spot - this might be too much sun for the purple leaves...

You can see that it's now in closer proximity to other plants - i think it should be able to outgrow the neighbors vertically, assuming it survives. Ironically, it's closest neighbor is now acacia redolens. This poor cordyline really needs to compete with all members of acacia for space!

Just some pictures

Earlier this week, I took a bunch of pictures of my garden as I was about to leave it for a few days again. I didn't want to post them all to Instagram, so I'm putting them here! This is my garden looks like on a random Tuesday in May:

Agave 'Crazy Horse' - love the stripes!

A. lophantha 'Quadricolor which usually hides under grass

Agave whichever 'Cream Spike'

The new kid on the block: A 'Snow Glow'

Still amazed these aloes grow and seem happy!

Purple and yellow!

The first of the daisies that reseeded everywhere

Hiding under the Palo Verde blooms

Green, silver and purple on the hillside

 Even though I'm a bit late, I'm linking to both Carol at May Dreams Garden for Bloom Day and Pam at Digging for Foliage Follow-up. There are way more gardens, blooms and foliage at both their blogs that I can look at while I'm away from mine!