Your yard is looking great. Really like the full look the casters give it. Your kind of the odd ball on the block though! But I guess all of us zone pushers are!!!

Great pics! Your yard is definitely the most tropical in the neighborhood, maybe in all of Iowa too! Everything looks great, I love the color on the Portulaca, they are one of my favorite flowers also.

Everything looks really healthy! I had that same rainbow damage on my unprotected trachy 2 winters ago when we got to 5F (some sources say 7F, I didnt have my Vantage Pro at the time so I don't know the exact temperature in my yard), but no damage this winter when it went to 12F briefly (duration of cold is definitely a huge factor!)

The Agave in the "looking northeast" pic is huge now! Im sure it will be a real giant by the end of the summer! And is that banana by the porch your Saba? It's looking good and is probably a little ahead of mine. Mine has 4 leaves total on it at the moment, 2 from last year, 2 from this year.

Thanks for sharing!
-Alex

Everything looks great. Some of my windmills also had rainbow damage this year

Hi Jim!!!

Everything is looking great!!!

Thanks for the pics...

Hope all is well!

Laura

Thanks y'all

Alex

That is the Saba,working on leaf 4 and should really move out as
some upper 90s and 100F might be on the way end of next week.

The A.Americana is on leaf #8 out growing most of the Bananas!

Chad

I don't think any garden clubs will be putting me on the tour,
they apparently don't need/want the compitition!

We don't have to grow all that do we!

Click for weather forecast

Wow it must take you weeks or longer to plant all of your non-hardy stuff!

I second that agave, it looks massive.

It is strange how some trachys will occcasionally put out 360 degree leaves like that. I have one that did for a while, and now it's back to 180 or less.

Speaking of elephant ears coming back, neither of my big thai giants made it, but apparently they both produced small babies at their roots, and now I have four from the original two. The larger ones rotted.

They are tough to maintain over winter unless you have a g-house.

I think it might be better to store them as a bulb-mine
always shrink all winter no matter how much sun they get.

Hows the Filibusta doing????

Click for weather forecast

Looking good!

I have run out of superlatives to describe your work.

I definitely agree that the elephant ears should be stored as bulbs, and should be thoroughly dried out and all leaves removed before storage, otherwise, the leaves and stems hold too much water and start to rot.

The filibusta is doing great! It's not only made it through the bare root delivery, but it put out 2 new leaves so far. The second leaf is definitely the more typical rigid washy leaf. It's looking promising.

Thats great to hear Ryan!

There are certain plants that just get smaller if you don't have
a tropical environment for them in winter.
) :

Great pics, Jim! Very nice yard.