Fun new updates everyone, thanks for sharing what's going on with you and your gardens! Really fun to hear about. Congrats on your 'Curly' orchid cactus, Pagan, they are so low maintenance here, I'm sure yours will thrive for you. Aren't the fruit fun? Mine gets covered each year in those fun, small Barbie Mattel pink fruit. Neat. Keep us posted on yours, especially now that it's so easy to post pics. Great job! raimeiken, your new pics are awesome as always. So nice to see. You grow so many wonderful plants, and so well! I really like all of the hardscape in your garden, really elegant, tasteful, practical and attractive. Great stuff! The temperatures sure have improved, haven't they? I absolutely LOVE this time of year. Pleasant mornings without a hint of being cool/cold, and nice warm afternoons that don't feel HOT. Love it! Here are a couple of plants looking good as the month wraps up: Lycoris radiata, one of the plants that goes by "surprise lily", and for a good reason--these stalks just popped up out of nowhere like they do each autumn, and then suddenly explode into bloom. I've had them several years and they follow the same, smart routine: leaves in late winter/early spring, dormant in summer, and then surprise! flowers in autumn. The red ones have FAR outperformed the yellow ones in my garden. Full, hot, sun for these puppies. Hybrid Aloe 'Hercules' which I bought as a small two footer five years ago, it's now almost 7 feet tall. It's a hybrid between Aloe dichotoma which loves it here, and Aloe bainsii, which hates it here (melting in mid summer usually). Happily it takes after the A. dichotoma and thrives here. The other thing it takes after dichotoma about: little to no summer water when it's in a heat-induced semi-dormancy. This one has done great and certainly isn't hard to find these days. A sure sign of autumn: Zauschneria californica beginning its long, vibrant autumn display of flowers. This plant has a huge flush of bloom in early summer and then again in autumn. Full hot sun and weekly watering keeps it happy. I love it! It self sows around the garden too, often nestling in with very xeric cacti and succulents, so that shows how drought tolerant it is. Here's a pic of it right next to a golden barrel cactus, surviving on the same twice-monthly-in-summer watering schedule as the cactus. The only downside (unless you dislike self-sowing--then there are two): the stems are very, very brittle, so keep it where you or your pets/kids/hose won't slam in to it, breaking the stems. Fun, gorgeous plant, that the hummingbirds adore. Take care and happy gardening! Keep the updates and posts coming! Grant Here is a link that might be useful: Pics from my garden, September 2012

One problem I have experienced is that nursery tags and photos on the internet always show either close up photos of the flowers and don't give a good picture of the mature plant. They give inaccurate mature size estimates, too. These lavenders were not supposed to get so wide, it said 18" wide by 24" tall... they are about that tall but 36" wide at least! Any specific recommendations for plants to aesthetically and biologically work with the germander and this hot sunny spot, low water use, I am right on the border of sunset zone 15 and 17. You can probably see I used a palette of purple/blue and yellow. It was so spectacular last summer when everything was blooming, was proud of my garden :) I did purposely overplant the area because I like the blended-together full look and figured not all the plants would flourish, and they did not. The Russian sages are pretty much gone, over-run by the germanders and lavenders perhaps but also just didn't seem to thrive in the baking heat last summer. The photo shows some shade but that's only there until 11am, the entire walkway gets very hot and full sun. The lavenders are just a chopped up half dead mess now and they all have extensive mold in them, which didn't happen last winter when it was wetter - it is the frost damaged parts that grew the mold. They looked gorgeous last summer though (between the March 2013 and the March 2014 pictures) they reached full size and bloomed all summer and fall. I read that they need pruning to keep from splitting and reduce moisture buildup in winter which leads to mold, so that's why I pruned in later October. Some of the other plants have mold too, such as the lantana and the one that I don't know the name of long narrow leaves and pretty blackberry colored bell shaped flowers in spikes...I tried to remove the moldiest parts of those plants. I don't understand why the mold when it has been so much drier this year than last winter, I guess it is elated to the frost damaging or weakening the plants and that allowed the mold to grow. I did replace one lavender on the right with a blue spire sage , but I think I will look at other types of lavender and replace these sad looking ones, although it will look uneven and empty in spots for a while :(

mytime, Sorry to not follow up. Gardenweb was not forwarding responses to this post (and for a while all my posts) so I was not aware that anyone had responded to it. I had some bad luck propagating earlier this year and then got sidetracked. Fuchsia boliviana Alba cuttings started to root but some sort of fungus caused problems and killed them. The Correa cuttings I first tried did not root. I will start some new ones now, with bottom heat (which I did not use before). Pretty commonly even without bottom heat factored in a lot of plants propagate poorly in winter. So we'll see. I started a bunch of Deppea cuttings a week ago. That plant had some bug problems earlier in the year and I was reluctant to take a lot of cuttings until it fully recovered. I may or may not start new cuttings of the F. boliviana Alba soon; I'm not sure where that ranks on the list of things that I need/want to propagate. However, that plant has done really well and should produce a steady crop of berries in the near future. Here's a photo of the plant from about 10 days ago: And here's a closeup of the berries on one inflorescence: I find it amusing how the berries get long, and then get fat. So mytime, maybe I should contact you when things start to root. As far as the berries, I might try one batch of seeds, but in general I don't have a use for them. I guess I could eat them... If anyone wants a berry for postage (then they can clean out the seeds) I can send one for postage. They can get a bit soft when ripe, and the berry may end up smushed. I'm guessing that's not a problem. Andrea, thanks for the propagation advice. I do enjoy trying to see how many cuttings I can get from limited material. I didn't realize the stems can be split like that. If the seeds are easy, maybe I'll try some. I generally don't like growing things from tiny seeds, especially if they are easy to root. However I've never tried Fuchsias. I see the Fuchsia forum has no exchange site, so I'll mention it here. I'm looking for the variegated F. procumbens, which I believe goes by the name 'Mary Miller'. In trade, I have a lot of things, but only a few Fuchsias and none of them propagated at the moment. The other Fuchsias I have are the regular procumbens, denticulata, 'First Success' (F. paniculata x F. splendens'), F. x baccillaris and of course F. boliviana Alba. I may have access to F. splendens as well; my old plant went to a friends house in the area. Perhaps I'll try start a F. procumbens thread when my new F. procumbens opens another flower and repeat the question about the variegated cultivar. I thought I'd mention that an interesting source I've found locally for small inexpensive plants is Lone Pine Gardens, which is a wholesaler for succulents and bonsai plants. Their little Fuchsias are just a few dollars, and are often found in the bonsai section of nurseries (in N. California at least). I got 'First Success', procumbens, and x bacillaris from them. The plant on the right, of course, is Fuchsia 'First Success', which seems to be a really nice hybrid.

I live in the Northern Willamette Vally in Oregon, and the rule of thumb, (sort of) seems to be that if they are in the ground, most can take full sun, if its not in too hot of a micro climate, (think surrounded by black top, or against a hot wall.) Then there is another bit of Fuschia lore that says that the orange tones, creme, and some others can take sun better that some others. I dont remember if that meant others that were pale pinks and lavenders or others that were the deep reds and blues, but some types are definately more heat and sun tolerant. to my knowledge, none of them love soggy cold soil though, and if that were my plant, Id probably gently unpot it, and loosen up the soil by mixing in a bit of some dry compost, then repot it and maybe bring it inside at night or cover it with a piece of plastic, even an old plastic picknick table cloth will do. You can just slide it under a deck chair and throw the cover over that if you dont have a cold frame. I know that after a while it seems pretty simple, but when I was just starting to collect these I lost them every so often, and in fact I still loose a few every winter. Not a happy thing, but we are all learning. The good news is,this spring more than 60 made it :) Dont give up. It might also have been stressed when you got it, and with some TLC you will be fine