Perfection is overrated?

My overwintering strategy involves moving many potted plants into the garage and basement each fall, but I wait until absolutely necessary. Some of the agaves can take temperatures down to 25ºF (-3ºF) or so, and those I will leave outdoors the longest. When the first sub-freezing night approaches, you'll usually find me standing in the garden poring over Google because I can't remember which species can take those few more degrees of cold.

The trouble is, I sometimes make a mistake.

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Sexy Succulents (Tasty Too?)

With a night or two of freezes recently (before returning to 80ºF/26ºC temps) I had to move several potted succulents into the garage.

This gave me a good chance to look at most of them. They're quite beautiful after a season outside!

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The good and the bad

My garden -- like yours I have to assume -- is full of good and bad this year. Here's an example of good and bad in the same view:

It's the front bed between the driveway and the house. The Alocasia make it worth looking at -- they really set off the understory of bamboo and hakone grass. The bad part though is obvious: the clematis. All of my clematis vines do the same thing each year: grow like gangbusters, bloom, then halfway die during the summer. Blech. Maybe I should put the maypop here too?

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Agave love

I've had a decent (too big for my climate?) Agave collection for a few years, ever since several were gifted to me by a downsizing gardener. This is the first year that I've really been blown away by one though.

Agave weberi 'Arizona Star' loves its new spot on the south side of the house!

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What's wrong with this Agave?

I noticed that this Agave 'Impressa' (or at least that was how it was labeled) is looking a bit unhappy:

Lots of yellow in those leaves, especially the lower ones.

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Late summer small observations

This has to be my favorite time of year in the garden. Everything is full-sized, the humidity drops and the breezes start blowing, the katydids and crickets all start singing -- just wonderful!

Here are just a few things that I've noticed the last couple of days, starting with bamboo canes. They're "canes" after they've been cut, and these have been left leaning for a while. I like them here as they really complement the background colors -- too bad they're blocking a path.

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Potting up some agaves

I've had several Agaves in plastic nursery pots for over a year. Some of them were inherited, and some I bought.

I finally put them into permanent pots, or at least pots that will hold them for a few years.

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Monday Miscellany

I'm looking forward to spending a good few (many?) hours in the garden today, but here's a collection of tidbits from late last week. Starting with some advice to self: remember to move the agaves out from underneath the mulberry tree before the berries start dropping next year:

This is where I put them in the partial sunlight to acclimate from indoors, and I admit I was a bit lazy with them.

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New plants!

Of course I've been acquiring new plants recently, why wouldn't I? Just because it's the hottest part of summer and I have literally dozens of plants still in their nursery pots on my driveway, doesn't mean that I shouldn't continue to feed my obsession, right?

So I thought I'd take a look at some of the newest flora that I've added. A few of these I may have covered briefly in other posts, but most of this should be new (here). Starting with 'Chocolate Chip' Ajuga above. It's been around for a few years but I've only this year decided that the "wild" Ajuga growing in my garden isn't enough, and how could I resist those cute little leaves?

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Cats love Agave?

You already knew that I have cats right? They don't venture outdoors after we adopt them, but that doesn't mean that I haven't learned some things about cats and plants. One thing I learned when Kumo wasn't yet ours...

...is that cats really love bamboo. Not just rubbing against it, but eating it too. I love how cut bamboo looks in vases indoors, but that look doesn't last long because the branches immediately turn into a cat salad bar.

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The results: my new Agaves

A week ago I went to local nursery Greenscape Gardens to buy some kale seed, but instead spent a lot of time looking at Agaves and other succulents. After getting some questions answered here and thinking about it for a week, I went back this weekend and made my choices.

That's not to say that I just walked in, grabbed the plants I had decided upon, and purchased. No, this was a shopping trip that included much more debate, side-by-side comparison, putting plants into the cart then taking them back out again until the final decisions were made. For instance the Agave impressa 'Impressive' above was in the cart for a while then out again before I finally decided upon a smaller specimen.

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