I really wish I was a good gardener! Like I really really want to be. But oh man it's so much effort! I don't know how my grandmother did it. Her roses were always so nice, and her plants never got burnt. I fantasized about a cool container garden on my balcony, since that's what the cool kids are into. I succeeded for a little while, but I got too overzealous in watering my succulents. I killed the easiest things to grow! So I got more and they were doing really well, even in the heat. But then one day they started getting just a little too much sun during the day, and I realized too late, so I have a bunch of burnt up succulents now. Some are still good and will hopefully survive our move to the house.
Several of the plants flowered earlier this summer. I had a couple different pretty orange ones:
But my favorite was from an unidentified succulent. At first I thought they were going to bloom into a brighter flower, but then realized this was it.
They are just so delicate and papery:
I actually ended up removing the flowers and preserved them in a little glass bottle. Unfortunately the plant it came from ended up dying, but hopefully I'll see it come up again. I think it was just a random succulent from Lowes, so we'll see!
My other favorite plant is the "Kitten Paws":
People mostly call them "Bear Paws", but one book labeled them Kitten Paws so obviously that's the one I'll stick with.
And finally here is the cannonball ammo bin we got at the surplus store:
I planted some random California wildflower seeds. Unfortunately our cats thought it looked an awful lot like a lavatory, so I had to cover it and nothing has grown. Hopefully we'll be able to do something else when we move.
