Impulse control

Now that I'm working in the garden again I couldn't resist a visit (or two) to the garden store this weekend. First I stopped in at the Great Outdoors (conveniently located within 5 minutes of our house). I have sort of hit-or-miss luck with the place but on Saturday I bought an agave I'd been wanting for a while, an agave bracteosa or squid agave. Its leaves are fleshy and pale green, with no spines on the edges or tips. And supposedly, unlike most agaves, it doesn't die after it blooms. I planted it in one of my favorite pots, empty since I left an aloe "Blue Elf" out in one of last winter's freezes (and it was just about to bloom; I was completely bummed).


I also bought a one-gallon Laura Bush petunia, just to put in a pot for some more color (I'm a sucker for that fuschia color on any plant; check out the salvia greggii in the background).

Then on Sunday D and I ran out to Barton Springs Nursery to pick up some cotton burr compost for the extension of the far back bed and to use as mulch and, even with him there as a moderating force, I couldn't resist a manfreda called "Macho Mocha" that I'd read about on the Yucca Do website (Barton Springs has a huge one in a pot up on a pedestal just at the east edge of the main barn, if you want to check it out). The one I bought is small and the leaves are all green but supposedly in sun it will develop a purplish color with brown spots. And then in the spring it's supposed to send up a huge, tall bloom stalk. I've had a manfreda (I think it's manfreda maculosa) of a more sedate nature in a pot for several years trying to find a spot for it in the ground. It actually does fine in a pot so I think I'll put the new one in a big pot as well for now.


At Barton Springs I also bought a couple of odd little succulents; one I'm sure is an aloe of some kind but with a strange pyramidal growth habit I've never seen before; the other one looks a bit like the echevarria "Jelly Beans" I got last week, but in miniature form. I also bought, mostly because D admired it, a dark blue plumbago. The flowers aren't really all that dark blue but they are darker than a plumbago I had years ago. I'm not sure where it will go. It's not really a color I have anywhere in the garden but I'm sure it will work in somewhere.

I also bought another purple fountain grass, a gallon this time. I think I'll dig up the two small fountain grasses I bought a week or so ago and put them into a pot to stick somewhere else sunnier than the spot I've got them in now. Then I'll put the bigger new one (which is already blooming) in the place of one of them at the top of the new stairs, next to the stand with the succulent in a pot. It will be next to the eggplant-painted steel columns on the new porch and should blend together with the zexmenia that's blooming there. I think that spot gets enough sun to keep the grass happy.

I did resist the lure of a bougainvillea and another one of the salmon-flowered globe mallow plants that I already have in the far back bed, as well as a couple of other plants that were calling my name (has anyone tried a plant called melochia tomentosa? I saw it at both Great Outdoors and Barton Springs; supposedly it's a native but I don't remember seeing it before. It's also called pyramid plant and Yucca Do has something similar listed as melochia pyramidata or anglepod.) And then there were all those beautiful roses. Oh well, there's always next time.