Succulents and More™

I’m in southern Germany for a few weeks to visit family. I don’t have any plans to travel within Germany, instead sticking close to the Nuremberg area. The weather has been a mix of overcast skies, rain, and brief interludes of sunshine. I haven’t done any “real” photography with my big DSLR, but I carry my phone everywhere I go so I can grab quick snapshots of whatever catches my eye. There’s no theme to the photos below, but you may notice one thing: It’s so green here! California has been plenty green this winter because of all the rain, but not like this. But I want to start off with another color. The countryside around Nuremberg is dotted with expanses of yellow. These are field of rapeseed , grown on a commercial scale for the production of oil (canola oil is a food-grade version of rapeseed oil originally developed in Canada). Rapeseed field Blaze of yellow through the trees Now for a blast of green: Not that I’ve ever been wanted to be a cow, but if I did, I thin...

Another garden I enjoyed on the 2023 Ruth Bancroft Waterwise Garden Tour was what I mentally dubbed the Living Annie’s Annuals catalog. Imagine my surprise when I found out that the homeowner, Melissa, actually is the marketing director of Annie’s Annuals (and the former marketing director of the Ruth Bancroft Garden). No wonder her garden reminded me of the display beds at Annie’s! In the official garden tour blurb, the style of this garden is described as “RBG-inspired with CA native & edible landscaping (with no cacti!).” Melissa isn’t fond of spiky succulents like aloes and agaves, but she does like Mangave ‘Mission to Mars’ because it reminds her of the RBG. As you’ll see further down, she has a couple of beautiful specimens in her front yard. Another focus of this garden, in addition to all kinds of flowering annuals and perennials, are vegetables. As Melissa says in her garden statement, “"[I wanted to] help the environment, save water and money and have a relatively...