Killing Babies

 

Plant babies.  Agave vilmoriniana 'Stained Glass' produces hundreds of plantlets when it blooms.  Some have the 'Stained Glass' feature of yellow leaf markings.  Some don't.  It also produces a good crop of seeds. 

Time to chop it down, before the windy season begins.

 

 

I left the stump to dry further so it will be easier to remove.  There are two other younger and smaller 'Stained Glass' up on the same slope, so 'Stained Glass' remains in the garden--renewed, not lost. 

There is no reasonable way for me to save hundreds of plantlets.  I saved a dozen of the largest, most promising ones and green-binned the remaining thousand or so.  

The packet of foxglove seeds also yielded far more seedlings than could possibly be managed.  I got 12 seedlings from the packet of Tagetes erecta and expected the same from the packet of foxgloves.  

Whoops!

Two dozen pricked out and potted into individual cells.

 Foxgloves, 'Stained Glass', and Froggy:

The rest returned to the earth, to compost and be reborn  as part of something else--a tomato, an oak, a rabbit.  (Hopefully not a rabbit.) 

Nature seems wasteful, but nothing is wasted. 

On the subject of baby plants, A small big-box 'Arabella' Clematis sent out a few more flowers--impressive for a baby Clematis in this climate.  Perhaps the rain--we got another 0.12" of rain a few days ago--helped.  Another most welcome surprise weather event.  

Perhaps it was that rain and the previous 2.62" from storm Hilary that also prompted the Leucophyllum langmaniae 'Lynn's Legacy' to cover its tiny self with pale lavender flowers.  

Must find you a prime location!

5' tall Leucophyllum candidum 'Thunder Cloud' was also prompted to bloom by the rain.  Aeoniums are also starting to wake up as the daylight hours lessen and the nights cool a bit:

Last week's blast of of 95F/35C nearly killed the 50% off Helianthemum 'The Bride' purchased recently even though it was in protective shade.  It looked about to die so I planted it down by the pergola in the gully to give the poor thing a reason to get on with dying.   It bounced right back to health.   The plant label said this is a tough genus.  Apparently, yes.

Flowers now from the Tagetes erecta seeds planted in late June.  The shortening daylight hours and cooler nights will give them only a brief life, but that is Nature's way.  

New plant:  Dudleya .  One of 'Steve McCabe's Hybrids'. 

The Dudleyas purchased back in April at our local  excuse for a garden show have not grown much (summer is not their growing season) but they look healthy.  Hopefully the chosen location will give them a good life.  D. brittonii(?), viscida,  pachyphytum:

Plant babies of last fall and this spring are looking less baby-like.  Teucrium 'Ackermanii' had a good spring flowering and brought forth a burst of new growth afterwards.  Artemisia 'Sea Foam' and a big-box Leucospermum grew more modestly, but they survived their start, and that matters.

Out front, the usual late-summer flowers of Aloe reitzii, Drimia maritima, and Yucca 'Bright Star':

Floral stars of the moment are the pair of Lagerstroemia 'Dynamite':

The past several days I've been wandering around the garden looking more than doing.  Gawking at the Eriocapitella hupensis has been a major activity:

More flowers this year than in the past ten put together.

Made a bouquet on Sunday because the flowers were going to get ruined by the heat otherwise

One 'Rouge Royale' and three 'Yves Piaget':

'Rouge Royale' kept flopping over onto Eucalyptus 'Moon Lagoon' foliage--oh, well:

One thing small accomplishment was walking around with small bamboo stakes marking plants that need to move, as was suggested on last week's Gardeners World "Jobs for the week-end".  October is prime plant-moving time.  I ran out of "move" signs but had some stakes on hand:

The small 'Blue Glow' Agave on the right--not enough room for it there:

Have had struggles commenting on my favorite garden blogs--sometimes it works, often it doesn't.  I'm reading them anonymously at least.   So that's what's up here.