It's easy to take defoliated trees for granted when you're surrounded by them — as we did when we were growing up back East. But out here, winter-stripped deciduous trees feel like a novelty. Actually, there are plenty of them, and they stand out brilliantly against...
Aside from our downy jade, neon cigar flowers and pigheaded birds of paradise, flowers are hard to come by in our yard right now. So we were thrilled when one of our aloe plants sent out a skinny raceme covered in tubular mauve flowers. It's an Aloe...
Wildlife differs ferociously from continent to continent, but birdwatchers from here to Melbourne have one creature in common: Strelitzia reginae. We've got a bird of paradise shrub in our yard that blooms twice a year, late fall through winter and late spring through summer. To keep...
We don’t get snow out here, but when our six-foot-tall jade plant — west-facing and located behind our garden pond — is in full flower, it happens to resemble an enormous snowball. We call her “mama jade” because her stem cuttings have been planted in...
Every weekend last summer, as we walked to and from the beach, we'd pass a south-facing succulent tour de force. But this hedge of Aloe arborescens (street name: torch aloe) didn't really get interesting until November. Welcome mats, schmelcome mats — by now you know that it's the welcome plants that...
One of the things RB and C have in common is that we're late bloomers. We won't get into all the clammy high-school specifics, but it's something that we bond on. So — it's no surprise that late autumn flowers endear themselves to us. The cigar...