Three Years Later....

It's been nearly three years since I've had the time to do something OTHER than my job. It is with great relief that I will at least be writing my blog again! In the past three years there has been an amazing variety of succulent plants and changes in my garden, and it's a shame I didn't share them on the this blog.

So, how are the plants? Well, some of them have died, in fact, I have only one shriveled lithops left. They are so easy to over and/or under-water, and while I love them and am fascinating by time, I don't think they're the right sort of succulent for the busy person!


In the front garden, I moved the plants around in order to form a single bed, and the vast space that would otherwise be lawn is filled with rocks. Lawns are definitely OUT in California's drought, and concentrating the area my plants covered has made it more efficient and easier to water them, as well as provide a more attractive appearance.

The original layout of the garden

The plants still look, generally, as they did when I planted them in this formation. The biggest changes are the filling-in of the dirt-area with docks, and the absence of a few plants and the addition of others. The large grass bush hiding the hose is GONE, the thing just wouldn't stop being huge. I've replaced it with a strange sort of palm that was palmed off on me by its former owner.

The plants in there have experienced quite a bit of growth, and I'm looking forward to featuring them in future entries. My favorite arboreal aeoniums have thrived, and the tallest is growing its conical yellow bloom.

A behind-the-scenes view of the large bed.

 In this photo you can see that the fang plant (the fuzzy one in the middle-bottom of the picture) is starting to grow and stretch, and at this point has an incredible florescence. As kalanchoes do, it WILL die when the bloom does, but thankfully it has split into two separate plants, so I will still have my lovely fuzzy plant.

Yog Sothoth growing up only a few weeks after I received it in the mail.

 For the last update of the new entry, here's a throwback picture of the monstrose (mutated so that it grows in clusters or crests) plant I bought off of Ebay and named "Yog Sothoth." I'm not usually a plant-namer, but this was just too much like the H.P. Lovecraft monster-god. Since this picture it has grown into an amazing shrub, and I took a picture of it this evening:

This monstrose plant truly IS a monster now! Yog Sothoth is huge.

I will be adding additional pictures with better lighting, but this plant has just exploded and is the most impressive of the entire collection. I've actually taken cuttings and planted them in other parts of the bed, and they are already larger than the original plant was when I received it. Even with the horrid treatment I provided for these plants during much of the last two years (mainly, no treatment), this beauty has become a true monster, and I'm strangely proud of it!