The Rusty Things Find Their Homes!

I promised last week to share with you what I did with the rusty treasures I came home with from my raid on a friend’s junk pile. All but two pieces found a home in the cactus garden, where they will most likely stay. Once the pieces are placed, they just seem to work...

Two Surprise Blooms

I discovered some blooms I wasn’t expecting while checking on everything. Thought I might as well share them with you. My lithops have bloomed before, but I like them and I don’t know that I have share this white one with you before. And even if I have, it never hurts...

Pruning the Pachypodiums, aka Madagascar Palms

In a blog post on July 18, 2012, I introduced you to the fat plants pachypodium geayi and p. lamerii, also known as Madagascar palms. That was in 2012; by 2016 the two pachys I kept had grown a foot or more taller than me. They were outside this Spring when we had...

Cactus, Succulents, and Heavy Rain

Muleshoe has had rain for the last seven days- August tends to be our monsoon season-and during those times when the water wasn’t falling from the sky, that sky was gray and overcast; no sunshine, which means that all my cactus and succulents, potted and in the...

Lobivia and Rebutia Do Their Thing

Over the course of the last three months I have enjoyed a variety of very different flowers, some which just happened to be all in the same pot. For example, look at these beauties on a lobivia I bought last year. In the same pot this little mammillaria plumosa...

Try Silky Thread Grass in Your Xeriscape Garden

You may not have a cactus garden, but you might be wanting to do more xeriscaping in your garden, and if so, you might consider adding some Mexican feather grass, also called silky thread grass. I started out with some of this grass in a bed between the house and the...

The Birdhouses

Back before Bill created the grain elevator, I came up with the bright idea that we could throw together some birdhouses for the cactus garden. When I would see them for sale, all cute and little and rustic and decorated, upon closer inspection I would notice they...

Grain Elevator in Miniature

My husband surprised me with this, his very own idea, his very own creation, a grain elevator for my cactus garden. He casually went about building it during the cold of the winter months when there was nothing to work on outside and when I wasn’t in and out of his...

Stapelia Lepida Seeds

One of my favorite plants is the stapelia lepida that I think I have shared with you before. But the flower is so intricate it is worth sharing again. Every year it blooms, and every year I take yet another picture of that amazing flower, this one blooming in ...