During Austin’s infernal summer at least the porch plants are looking good. Coppertone sedum spilling out of a Pot Inc. hanging planter even matches the door color — Benjamin Moore “Wasabi”, if you’re curious.
Most of these were grown from cuttings, like the Coppertone sedum, blue chalksticks, and ghost plant. I may have grown the ‘Bloodspot’ mangave from a bulbil.
In the baking-hot courtyard near the front porch, a whale’s tongue agave is thriving and starting to really fill out its tractor-rim container. After record freezes across two recent winters, I’ve given up on having Mexican grass tree in the tall pipe planter. Now I’m growing native wheeler’s sotol, which is much more cold hardy. In the small pipe planter, I’m trying to reestablish ‘Frazzle Dazzle’ dyckia after the original plant succumbed to the same freak freezes. The metal grid is there to keep curious deer from pulling up the plant.
I have nothing positive to say about the weather in Austin this summer. It’s brutal. It’s joy-sapping. But the plant survivors will keep surviving, I hope. As this mural at the Domain shopping center says, Let Love In. And rain, please!
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