Fall

 Although it's going to be 90° today, the nights and mornings are so wonderfully cool!  It's officially hot days/cold nights- my favorite.  It's also Banksia appreciation month.  *I made that up.

The new growth on Banksia blechnifolia, sigh.  Infatuated.  

The tiny cone is peeking out behind last year's fuzzy grandpa.

This banksia prionotes, acorn banksia has been in the slope for 2 years and never produced flower spikes.  With the fence removed and more sun exposure, I'd say it's responding with a "hell yeah".

This larger banksia prionotes has produced 9 cones this year! 

It's quite insane to me that a plant can produce an ice cream cone-like explosion.  

Over the weekend, I was lucky to have a visit from Sophia and Ivan!  Ivan and I have been meaning to repot several things in the "greenhouse".  Most of these plants live in Livermore, but belong to Ivan.  Ariocarpus love heat,  they've grown much faster here than in Berkeley. 

He had to sacrifice the pots.  

The sides of the plastic pots were bulging from the stout roots.

These roots look like a pair of legs!

He mixed up a special free draining mix, potted in terra cotta & back in the greenhouse then went! The little table is the mealy bug ward.  Treated. 

It feels so tidy!

We talked about how to improve the "chipped" in dirt stairs. I have some EdgeRight Corten steel edging they may work, I need a few more pieces. 

Sophia and Ivan gave ChaptGPT a few prompts to get a mock-up.  Ha ha ha!

We picked a TON of pumpkins from the garden up top.  And did some midnight foraging - Ivan found some very overgrown zucchini.  That's a no for me, I only like them when tiny. 

And now for a segment I will call THEY LIVE! 

Casuarina glauca 'Cousin It'. Mostly shaded spot by the front porch, plenty of water.  Supposed to be a full sun plant, which I've learned the hard way - No can do. 

I thought this was dead after I planted it last summer.  Put the little rootball back in the pot, and tucked away.  Lo and behold, Pteris cretica Albo lineata lives on.  I don't think this is difficult to grow, I just pushed it with evening sun exposure. 

Aloe polyphylla, 1 of 2.  Finicky.  I found these at a price I was willing to lose.  Both in protected spots, we will see.  Neither have really started the classic spiral yet.  I may never actually see them spiral, as these are so persnickety. *I hope they don't read here. 

Restio - I'm not horribly surprised it made it.  Mostly, I was afraid of the soil drying out.  Especially with being gone a few weeks over summer.  The timer/sprinkler set up didn't fail me. 

A couple updates on Aloe bloomers.  Aloe africana

Aloe lukeana,  the summer stressed foliage coloring blows me away. 

That's a wrap!  I'll be back soon with a couple things I'm working on.  A small agave hill... not really a hill, maybe mount paltry?

And plantings in the meteorite have begun. Agave utahensis v. eborispina, agave albopilosa, mammillaria plumosa and ferocactus pringlei. For the remaining plantings I'd like to stick to small to very small agaves.