Succulents and More™

In an early November post I talked about using bird netting to catch the leaves from our neighbor’s sycamore (a.k.a. London planetree, Platanus × hispanica ), preventing them from piling up in the aloes and agaves in our driveway bed. I don’t mind raking leaves that accumulate in the driveway proper, but getting them out of spiny and spiky plants is a tedious and painful chore I want to minimize as much as I can. Now, six weeks later, I’m happy to report that the netting did exactly what I was hoping it would do. After a few storms with high winds, our neighbor’s sycamore is almost bare. Not entirely, but what’s left shouldn’t be much of a problem. Sycamore after dropping most of its leaves Let’s take a look at the results after removing the netting. This is the top end of the driveway bed. Leaves have piled up along either side of the bed, but those are easy to rake up. Leaves on either side... Just a few leaves ended up in the middle, between plants. Most importantly, none accumul...

The massive sycamore ( Platanus × hispanica ) in our neighbor’s front yard provides valuable shade for her house, but in the fall, it becomes the bane of my existence. It produces a seemingly endless stream of leaves – large leaves that curl up and are difficult to dislodge with a leaf blower. Our neighbor’s sycamore at the very beginning of its leaf drop Because of our prevailing winds (typically from the north), a lot of the sycamore leaves get blown our way. The most immediate destination is the driveway bed my friend Kyle helped me redo last December ( see here ). This bed is full of hechtias, agaves, and aloes – spiky, toothy, and/or prickly plants that trap the leaves and make manual removal painful. In an effort to make my life a little easier, I decided to try something new: bird netting, like you would use in an orchard to prevent birds from eating the fruit. And it seems to be doing the trick. Here’s a photo of the leaves piling up on our neighbor’s side instead of being blo...

Fall is a special time of year. Trees turning all kinds of color, what a beautiful sight that is. Our neighbor’s massive London plane tree But pretty soon the pretty leaves begin to fall – first a few, then a few hundred, then countless thousand. And somehow most of them end up in our garden, getting stuck in the center of agaves and aloes and swallowing up smaller plants almost entirely. See for yourself. I could have posted just a few photos to illustrate my point, but what would be the fun in that? Why limit yourself to one or two images when you can have a dozen or more! Plus, taking pictures of the annual leafageddon is the first step towards actually cleaning them up. Agave sebastiana and Malephora crocea Grevillea ‘Scarlet Sprite’ and Mangave ‘Permanent Wave’ Rainbow hedgehog cactus ( Echinocereus rigidissimus ssp. rubrispinus ) Echinocereus rigidissimus ssp. rubrispinus This Aloe ‘Apache’ is almost completely buried, just the inflorescence sticking out Agave zebra and Mang...

It's been a beautiful weekend with plenty of sunshine and daytime highs in the 70s. Unfortunately, there hasn't been any rain since mid-March, and nothing in the forecast. I spent Saturday fixing broken drip emitters and running new spur lines to plants added since fall. Then I turned on the irrigation system for the first time since November. I've started to use blue flags to mark spots that need attention, either repairs or new emitters: New emitters needed, but when I created this mound, I buried the main irrigation line. Duh! I love the two clumping bamboos left in the front yard, but they shed more leaves than a golden retriever does hair. After several windy days last week, this is what the path looked like: The chore that never ends.... I also moved some plants, put a few others in the ground, and repotted some Agave pintilla  and Hechtia michoacana  seedlings. And I spent quite a bit of time enjoying what's in bloom right now: L-R:  Helichrysum thianschanicum...