GARDENING SUCCS
You say "obsession" like it's a bad thing.
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Exploring the Morrill Greenhouses at UMass Amherst

5/16/2017

 
True, I have moved to Zone 5.  True, Zone 5 is often freezing cold and holds a possibility of snowing seven months out of the year.  True, the first snow this fall was in October and the most recent was April 1.  But that doesn't mean I never get to see succulents outside of my abode, thank goodness.

It might not be Stanford's Arizona Garden, but the Morrill Greenhouses at UMass Amherst are just a short walk from my office and house some really cool plants.  Last month when I was lamenting the cold weather, I took a walk across campus to the Peet's (we have Peet's here!), got a cup of coffee, and spent some quality time in the greenhouses.  It's not an enormous collection, but it's a rather nice, well-labeled, and thoughtfully-curated one.  (I love saying that things are "thoughtfully curated," because it makes it seem as if I have a refined and generous aesthetic).  Anyhow, observe:
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...Pretty cool, right?  Especially those echeveria lutea (that's the oddly-shaped, thin-leaved echeveria that looks as if its leaves were outlined in white.

Stay tuned as I share more of my Zone 5 environs with you. It may take a little more work to find the plants I love, but I'm up for the challenge and I'll be sharing it with you every step of the way.  It's so good to be back on Gardening Succs, my dear succ-ers!

Gardens and Moms and Happy Mother's Day!

5/14/2017

 
When I was a kid, the last place I wanted my mom to bring me was a plant nursery.  "Not the nursery!" I would wail.  "We'll be there forever!"  What am I supposed to do at the nursery?!?!"

Fast-forward 25 or 30 years: guess whose favorite places are plant nurseries?  (Well, along with coffee shops and bookstores, and come to think of it, my mom introduced me to both coffee and books, too.)  Though a few decades elapsed before my plant obsession took hold (though there were warning signs in the form of dalliances with bonsais and jade plants), I fully attribute it to my mom.  

When I was growing up, we lived in a number of different places, and each is marked in my memory by the plants my mom tended there: the sunflowers she grew in Dallas, the olive tree that exasperated her in Sacramento, her gorgeous tomato garden in Tracy.  I also remember her mom's amazing tiered garden, which I think of whenever I catch the intoxicating scent of mint plants in the summer sun.

Some of my fondest memories entail talking to my mom in the yard while she weeded or watered or planted. I only wish I had imbibed more of her expertise when I was younger so that I wouldn't have so much catching up to do now.  She is also an expert at plant identification.  Two days ago, I texted her a picture of a strange flower I liked. She didn't know it, but googled and managed to ID it shortly after I had given up (osteospermum "flower power," in case anyone's interested).

On Mother's Day, of course, I'm thinking about my mom (and I'm super excited, because she's coming to visit me in my new Zone 5 abode soon!).  I'm also thinking about my wife's mom, who passed away a few years ago, and who also loved gardening.  Today we bought a plant in my wife's mom's honor--one she used to keep in her garden (I can't remember the name--I'm terrible with non-succulents), and I'm looking forward to making it part of our garden tomorrow.

In addition to wishing you all a happy Mother's Day, I want to share some pictures I took two months ago on a trip to southern California. It was one of the saddest and happiest trips I have ever taken. We were there for my paternal grandmother's funeral. She exited this world far before I thought she would, and I think about her every day. After the funeral, my mom and I spent a couple days together--just the two of us, which we hadn't done in ages. ​We chose Manhattan Beach and had so much fun.  When we weren't in pursuit of coffee or books or red wine or looking at open houses or eating sushi, we were obsessing over the magnificent Manhattan Beach succulent scene. 

I couldn't believe the variety and vigor of plants growing in people's yards! Observe, e.g.:
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I love this next one.  On yeah, a crassula moonglow.  No big deal...  I think most people have a couple dozen of those growing like weeds in their side yards below a thriving agave kissho kan, right?  Right?  OMG.  
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There is also a walk/bike path along the beach that extends the length of the city. It is clean and well-maintained, and long stretches have lovely beds of succulents surrounded by grey river rock. The pictures don't quite capture the splendor (and it was a foggy morning, so you can't see the ocean), but they'll give you an idea:
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Of course, I was selfishly trolling the succulent beds for stray leaves and fallen stems, with the hopes of scooping them up and rooting them in my little succulent room back on the east coast. I thought my mom was doing the same thing for her succulent collection, and when I witnessed the scene pictured below (left), I speculated aloud that she was liberating a piece of the giant crassula mesembryanthemoides. Nope! She gave me an "Oh, puh-leez" look and I realized that she was guerilla weeding this public space (action shot below on the right). Just randomly weeding, because weeding was needed. That encapsulates my mom's generous nature.  
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Restaurants and public businesses in Manhattan Beach also had some terrific plantings. For example, if I'm remembering correctly, this healthy, robust faucaria was just chilling casually in the window box of a coffee shop...
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And these lush thickets of kalanchoe thyrsiflora were on a curb/median strip that appeared to be completely neglected--which the plants didn't seem to mind a bit. 
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The sunsets at Manhattan Beach were also terrific.  Of course, the picture below doesn't do the sunset justice; sunset pictures never do.  But it's still beautiful. I love the kid with the surfboard running toward the ocean. Shouldn't we all try to catch as many good waves as we can before the sun dips below the horizon?
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Anyhow, dear succ-ers, today I wish you many succulent pups, abundant time for gardening, and a very happy Mother's Day.

I love you, Mom!! 

​

Flue Planters!

4/16/2015

 
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When my mom and I were on our latest expedition to Cactus Jungle, we also hit a salvage yard in Berkeley, Urban Ore.  We were hoping to find some new pots, and found little in that regard (though my mom did score a pretty cool one).  It turns out that pots come in all the time, but someone who works there usually snags them, plants them with something, and sells them for three times what the pot would have gone for alone.

Anyhow, among the random items in the salvage yard were these chimney parts (flues?) for $5 each.  They're about two feet high, quite heavy, and...  I had a vision!  Actually, I had a couple of them. One involved removing the black rubber and metal things that are strapped onto the bottom of the clay cylinders, then planting the cylinders into the ground at various heights and angles.  I still think this would look cool.  

But I decided to go with the incarnation you see here.  Since the chimney things are hollow, I was going to put them somewhere, fill them with dirt, and plant agaves in them.  Then my partner pointed out that this would be (1) a waste of dirt that (2) would make them hard to move from one place to another, should I so desire.  She asked me to try putting plastic pots in them instead.  After some trial and error, I was able to find a pot that fit into each one.  

I took each pot out of its flue, 
planted an agave in each, then covered the top with wet sand (in order to have some top dressing that wouldn't fall off when they were planted at an angle).  Then I pushed the pots into their respective, perfectly-fitting flues.  From left to right: agave americana, agave stricta, and agave "Joe Hoak."

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I thought about arranging these in various ways, but my partner liked them best lined up in a row, which she says makes our deck look like a ship.  I say: okay, cool.  Not bad for a $15 find in a salvage yard, eh?



Guerilla Gardening: One Year Later

9/23/2014

 
Last August, I did a little post about guerilla gardening--that is, planting plants on public or pseudo-public property.  Many of my guerilla gardening attempts failed--frost killed off my haworthias in front of the post office, and overaggressive pedestrians demolished the crassulas I stuck into a planter bed.  But one of my efforts paid off particularly well.  I hadn't thought about this little echeveria for some time, but I remembered it today and dropped by.

On the left is a photo from the day I planted it last August.  On the right is a photo I took today.  Doesn't it look happy?  Seeing the pictures side by side totally made my day:
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For good measure, here's a closer-up shot:
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Post-Rain Photos

9/21/2014

 
Fall has descended on Northern California, and recently we had the rain to prove it.  Although this marks the inception of my annual worry that my succulents are going to get too much water outside (which precedes my annual worry that my succulents will freeze, or else get terribly leggy indoors), I have to admit that they look absolutely gorgeous after a rain.  Here are some of my favorites:
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Droplets on a web connecting a gasteria glomerata (upper left), an agave pumila (lower left), and a variegated astrophytum
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Echeveria Perle von Nurnberg
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Echeveria minima
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An absurdly gorgeous variegated echeveria purpusorum that I purchased from Renny Hosogai. It just looks marvelous with these droplets, don't you think?
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Haworthia truncata. Admittedly, you can't really tell that this one's even wet, but I wanted to show off my truncata.
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Agave potatorum "kissho kan" with really unusual variegation
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Echeveria gorgeousana (just kidding; I made that up because I don't know the name... but you've got to admit it's apt)
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Small, crested myrtillocactus geometrizans. A spider has taken up residence on it and spins all kinds of webs that I'm always brushing off. But this time I didn't, and the rain adhered to the web beautifully.
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Echeveria "blue heron"
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Agave "excelsior," which I found last year at Berkeley Dry Garden--I think it's one kind of variegated agave parryi (can anyone confirm?)
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Sempervivum "moss rose"
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This was sold to me as a mammillaria parkinsonii, but the spines seem awfully big. I love how the rain makes them glisten.
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Echeveria peacockii
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Unknown echeveria coming back after a beheading a few months ago; crassula deceptor at the lower right
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Agave potatorum "kissho kan" (bigger than the other one, and with regular variegation)
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