Crassula falcata

Under this mess is a pot of Crassula falcata
that I bought on the side of the road a few years ago.


I decided to start over and dig everything out. These are all of the pieces that were worth salvaging.


Here they are back in their pot.


And a couple month later they've plumped up enough to bloom. You can see why C. falcata is also called scarlet paintbrush. If I treat this plant right it should eventually get much bigger and trail over the pot.

Yard Work

When I was a kid yard work meant cutting the grass. Now yard work means cleaning out pots that I've neglected for 10 years. The pot below is one of the first ones I put together when I moved to LA. It was choked with grass and Kalanchoe and another invasive succulent that I don't know the name of.

It looks kind of lush and wild but the plants that I want to be doing well have to fight for their lives against the interlopers.


It wasn't a delicate procedure. I mostly used the needlenosed pliers to rip the plants out.


Once things are cleared out you can see the nice shapes of the euphorbias.


And the cactus that were hidden under the weedy plants.


There were some holes left so I got these little haworthia and echeveria to fill it in a little bit.



Unfortunately I have several pots that are all overgrown and in need of attention.
Before:


After:


The whole group looks a little more happy now that it has some breathing room.


This only a month later and already the weedy succulents are coming back. I'll have to give this one a few more treatments with the needlenosed pliers.

Obligatory New-Chick Video

I had two hens that had a broody relay race. One of them sat on the eggs for 2 weeks and gave up and the next hen finished it out and won the prize. The prize is 3 Mottle Java chicks and one Australorp hybrid.

I'm excited about the Javas. I drove out to Mira Loma, CA a month ago to get the eggs from a nice lady that has a giant garden interspersed with a few varieties of chickens and a fair number of cats.

Javas are credited with being the foundation of several popular American Breeds like Rhode Island Reds and Barred Rocks. I read some great things about them so I thought it would give them a try.

Although the chicks are mostly yellow they should be mostly black with white mottling when mature:

©2005-2010 MY PET CHICKEN

Furcraea macdouglii

When I was in Palm Springs recently we went to the Living Desert and took a tour of the gardens. I wanted to share one plant that I fell in love with. It looks like a cross between an aloe and mean agave.
:

There was also this mature specimen that was amazing:

They had some for sale but I wasn't sure I wanted to cart one back from the desert in my car. Hopefully I can find one here in L.A. and then wait ten years for it to get big and scary.

Mauraders

I've been letting the hen out with her chicks cuz it's so fun to watch them running around the yard. It does have it's risks though. I usually worry more about hawks and cats, but sometimes I have to worry about my cucumbers.

These two are doing a good job of looking nonchalant. They're just hanging out, no big thing.


But when I came back later they were stomping all over everything. They aren't so interested in the plants as what's under them. They scratch through all the dirt looking for bugs.


Here they are high tailing it to escape my rage.

The chicks are at that awkward stage of half feathers half fuzz and all legs. It's not a good look.



And back in jail, where they belong

Tipu Tree

One of the trees that I got from DWP last year was a Tipuana tipu. I planted it in my front yard imaging the beautiful umbrella like canopy that it would grow into to shade the front patio. It's first year in the ground it seemed to be bidding it's time and didn't grow much. I liked to believe that it was spending all of its energy growing strong roots and that it would focus on growing branches when it was ready.

This is what it looked like at the beginning of spring:

This is a crappy picture that I took with my phone as I left one morning for work. For some reason I was always happy to see this tree.

At the time it had three little branches and some tattered leaves left over from last year. Over the course of a week it lost all of it's remaining leaves and pushed out a flurry of new growth. It seemed that it was well on it's way towards fulfilling my expectations of a beautiful, arching shade giver.

It grew so fast that the canopy started to weigh the tree down and it started to lean towards the house. I decided to tie it back and train it to grow in the opposite direction. This would give it a little more room and would require less pruning in the long run. I didn't want it to be growing right on top of the house or for it's future branches to block the path to the rest of the yard.

I tied it down to the Solandra that grows next to it and figured that it would only take a couple weeks to get used to it's new orientation. What I wasn't expecting was the freak wind storm the next day. The wind was so strong that it snapped the whole top of the tree off. All of the new growth was gone and what was left couldn't even be called a tree. It was more of a stick poking out of the ground.

Here's the stump:

I actually cried. Not just out of sadness but out of anger at my own stupidity. Maybe if I'd tied it lower there would have been enough flex in the trunk to bear the wind. Maybe if I'd been a little more patient I could have let the tree get a little bigger or trained it more slowly. I guess we learn more from our failures than our successes. I won't be making this mistake again.

Luckily the tree is giving me another chance. It has already sent out about ten new branches to compensate for my blunder.

I'm getting the message that the tree won't be rushed. It's going to grow the way it has to grow and too much meddling from me is only going to muck things up.

New Chicks V.5

I used to think that chicks were the cutest thing ever, but now I think that chicks with a mother hen are the cutest thing ever.


She's teaching them the all important skill of scratching in the dirt.