Asparagaceae Agavoideae Agave americana, the full name of our main backyard Agave (also known as a Century Plant).
I have no idea why we have a huge agave in our backyard, except that – I’m guessing – we thought the plant would not grow very big. But it just kept growing until it dominated our yard. I want to say garden here, but as a friend replied when Michele complained about how difficult it is to maintain “her” garden with the quail and rabbits eating all the sprouts, “You don’t have a garden, you have a habitat”.
Whatever the backyard is, the agave dominates it, and we’ve grown to like its sculptural quality. Then, at the end of last year, it started growing a huge, asparagus-like stalk. In the hot spell we had in early March, it seemed to be growing a couple of inches a day. Then, in late May, it started branching out. Last week, it started blooming, and we are thrilled.
I haven’t blogged in weeks, not because nothing has happened – it has, both to the world and me – but because I seem to be in a loop. Everything in my life and everything I want to blog about seems to be on repeat. We went to the Carizzo Plain some time ago, hoping to see a superbloom. It turns out that we were a little late, but it was still nice. But I’ve written about the Carizzo Plain’s Superbloom several times, and doing it again just seems superfluous.
One new thing: we went to the Ruth Bancroft Garden in Walnut Creek over Easter. Now, thinking back on it, I’m surprised I haven’t gone before. I have certainly heard of it for years. I was working as a Construction Manager only a few blocks away in the late 1960s, but it was still a farm in those days. Now it is primarily a cactus and suculent garden, beautifully laid out.
A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again, President Donald Trump said, referring to what would happen to Iran if his demands were not met.
How deranged do you have to be to be upset with the Pope for preaching about peace and love in the spirit of Jesus Christ? RepresentativeIlhan Omar (who is a Muslim in case you didn’t know).
To change the subject to something which is actually sort of new, the Wall Street Journal – which I don’t read, but saw in Which Car – Reports from April 15, 2026, indicate that senior defense officials have held preliminary meetings with top executives from Ford, General Motors, GE Aerospace, and Oshkosh Corp. The goal of these talks is to determine how quickly the domestic auto industry could pivot to a “wartime footing” if needed.
We seem to be running out of munitions, especially anti-drone munitions, in our so-called war with Iran, and that doesn’t surprise me. I was stationed on a Hawk anti-aircraft site in the mid 1960s, and we had 18 missiles ready, or near ready, to fire with another 18 missiles in the onsite maintenance-storage facility. There were 16 HAWK batteries in Korea and China, alone had an estimated 3,000 planes, so it never seemed like we were very serious about protecting “Freedom’s Frontier”. It still doesn’t.
There are flowers that bloom in gardens Under a gardener’s care, And their lavish beauties charm me, As they flourish in luxury there. There are flowers that blow in the meadows, Kissed by the rain and the dew, In a riot of happy blooming, And I love their loveliness too. But the flower that fills me with comfort, And makes Life’s meaning sweet, Is the flower that blooms in the desert, In the midst of sand and heat; Whose roots draw strength and beauty, From a land forbidding and wild, Whose face turns bravely skyward, Nor pines for lot more mild…To a Desert Flower by Hattie Greene Lockett, American writer, rancher, and clubwoman (whatever the hell a clubwoman is).
Our results showed that from 4.5 million years ago, the arid regions of Mexico were the locations for abundant cacti speciation. From these lands, cacti have colonized most of the Mexican territories, the southern regions of the United States, as well as the Caribbean. Delil A. Chincoya, Salvador Arias, Felipe Vaca-Paniagua, Patricia Dávila, and Sofía Solórzano, Phylogenomics and Biogeography of the Mammilloid Clade Revealed an Intricate Evolutionary History Arose in the Mexican Plateau
Our garden is in full bloom, or, at least, as full a spring bloom as we are going to get this year. It got warm early, and everybody started growing, stretching, seeking the sun’s warmth, then it got cold, and everybody hunkered down, confused, including me. I left out several plants I had taken from the greenhouse where they had spent the winter, and they were especially unhappy. One, a Pachypodium – a very succulent member of the Oleander family – even committed harakiri.
Even with everything else blooming, like Hattie, the clubwoman from Arizona, I am most fascinated by the small cactuses in pots on a table on our deck.
Cactuses like the Paraodia, below, which grow at about 1,000 feet to 2,500 feet on the eastern slopes of the Andes in northwestern Argentina and southwestern Bolivia.
And Mammalarias, which grow primarily in Mexico but have spread to Central and Southwestern United States, to Colombia, and the Caribbean.
NOAA says it was 28°F a couple of nights ago. Balmy for much of the country, but cold for here. That means that the plants that can’t take cold, are inside covering every horizontal surface near a window. The house feels might full and we haven’t even started to put up Christmas stuff.
We have had a couple of hot days, and – it seems like all of sudden – our Epiphylums are blooming. Epiphylums are epiphytic cactus. Epiphytic meaning they are arborael; they grow in trees like some orchids and bromeliades, but are not parasites. The plants we have are from tropical areas of the Americas and are not species but have been hybridized for their flowers which I am normally against (because I am a species snob).
The flowers are spectacular with flowers up to 4″ across.
