Six on Saturday

There is just enough going on in the new garden for a Six on Saturday post today.

Several weeks ago I found a lovely blue and white talavera container on sale, and this past week I bought some succulents and planted them in it. It now contains two cacti and a graptosedum.

The taller cactus is a young Trichocereus x grandiflorus, which I love to grow for their large, brilliant blooms. This one is still quite small and may well eventually need a larger pot of its own, unless I decide to try planting it out in the ground. But in the garden it will be at greater risk from both winter cold and rabbits, so it may well stay in a container!

The second cactus is Ferocactus latispinus, with its bright fishhook spines. The garden already contains two large native Ferocactus, probably F. emoryi spp. covillei. Another younger one is growing wild in the shade of a nurse mesquite tree.

But this little chap is from more southerly areas of Mexico and, like the Trichocereus, will probably need a bit of winter protection here. So I expect to keep it happy in a container too. It doesn’t grow as large as the big barrel cacti I find in the wild here, but it has the same redoubtable curving spines common among the Ferocactus group.

The hardiest of the lot is possibly x Graptosedum “Blue Giant”, but there seem to be differing opinions on this. At any rate, it is a handsome little burro’s tail variety with a delicate powdery blue sheen and a light blush at the leaf tips.

I planted them together in the blue and white talavera pot. The photos don’t show it very well, but it stands up on three legs, which makes for good drainage. I used a proprietary cactus soil mix, rather than the odd combination of stuff-at-hand I’ve tended to use in the past, though I never had any plants complain about the latter either!

Other garden elements catching my eye right now include this Salvia microphylla. It’s still apparently not “Hot Lips” though I’ve been encouraged to wait and watch for further color developments. Some of the flowers did develop a pale coloring on the lower lobes, but this is the opposite of HL’s coloration. Meantime, most flowers are back to this vibrant solid pink-vermilion.

There are quite a few rosebuds on Paradise now. It has put out robust new growth since I planted and pruned it back. The old leaves are yellowing and dropping at a quick rate, but the new growth looks substantial and healthy, so I think all will be well.

Finally there have been lots of snout butterflies, especially in the kumquat tree. They are a bit shy. With their brown and gray underwing patterns, they can be nearly invisible while sitting still. The rest of the time their wings vibrate so quickly I can only glimpse quick flashes of the orange uppersides of the wings. I was persistent enough to eventually get the shot at the top of this page, but the rest of my photographs were mostly like this…

…and this was an improvement. At first they would face me head-on, with just the front legs showing above a leaf edge, along with the feelers and that long, long snout. Eventually they decided that I wasn’t too terrifying, after which I got more successful photographs, such as this one.

I’m happy to report that I’ve seen the occasional Queen butterfly and possibly some Monarchs, but I have no pictures thus far.

I’ll post a link here to the Propagator’s blog, where Six on Saturday is hosted.

Happy weekend!