Succulents and More™

My mother-in-law lives in Mount Shasta , a small town at the base of the 14,179 ft. volcano of the same name , about 40 miles south of the Oregon border. On a recent visit, we did something I hadn’t done in a long time: we went on a nursery crawl. Well, “crawl” might be a bit of an exaggeration, seeing how there are just two nurseries in town. However, considering that greater Mount Shasta City has a population of barely 4,000, it’s actually quite amazing that it can sustain two independent nurseries. The fact that Mount Shasta attracts a diverse range of people, from outdoor enthusiasts to spiritual seekers and believers in Bigfoot and other mythical beings, and has the highest real estate values in the region may have something to do with it. In contrast, Davis has a population of 66,000 and one of the best public universities in California, and all we have is one small independent nursery and an even smaller Ace Hardware garden center, both with limited selections.  Location of...

Last month I gave you an update on the new succulent beds in the backyard . Even though I continued to make small edits, I thought I was done with larger projects for a while. But of course that’s not what happened. I was so happy with the new beds that I decided to work on other areas in the backyard. I mean, why stop now when there’s still so much left to improve? I started with the bed in the southeast corner of the backyard. This bed is what we see when we look out the kitchen window. I had already done some work on this bed in December and January, clearing out overgrown areas and putting new plants in the ground. Because this bed is in the shade most of the day and I had already decided to water more than I had in the past, I opted for a lusher palette. It includes foxtail fern ( Asparagus densiflorus ‘Myersii’), Japanese holly fern ( Cyrtomium falcatum ), California gray rush ( Juncus patens ), variegated Japanese sedge ( Carex oshimensis ‘Evergold’), and Tasmanian tree fern ( D...