Tell the Truth Tuesday - sad agave...

Allison at Bonney Lassie has been encouraging everyone to share the not-so-great parts of our gardens. While i haven't been doing a lot of gardening, a break in the rain this weekend left some time to address the truth that one of my agaves didn't look so good:

...that doesn't look good!

Much to the delight of all my neighbors, that's in the front garden. This poor agave (unidentified when it was planted) had been declining for a while. The first part of cleaning it up just exposed more of a mess: 

pretty sure i know what/who the culprit is!

Since rot doesn't usually cause dirt to migrate into the center of the agave, it looks like the gophers are back. Sigh. 

Thankfully, a replacement candidate was waiting in the back garden pipes:

its been here for a while, gaining size

This is agave franzosinii 'Lost Wax', from the Ruth Bancroft garden. It was high time for it to get out of the pipe, before it takes over like Mr. Ripple has. A few moves with a shovel and some new gravel mulch, and it's in the front garden:

where it will have plenty of room to grow

The blue works well with the blue ball decoration and everything else. It's on a slope, so the rain shouldn't bother it too much. I will be upset if the gophers eat this one, although there's another pup safely protected from them.

Some other things i got done this weekend while the rains held off:

• trim back all the roses
• start to trim back the butterfly bush (...to get to the roses)
• debate whether its too early to cut back the grasses...

Any of those situations could have made for good "tell the truth tuesday" pictures, but sometimes cleaning up is the best part. Is it spring yet?