I'm off this morning to the University of California @ Irvine botanical gardens for their annual South African bulbs sale. I hope to keep my wallet in my back pocket and just look......

http://arboretum.bio.uci.edu/calendar2.cfm

I looked though the PDF file and they have a lot of cool looking S. African plants.............I think money is going to be flying out of your wallet Mikey

Well, I did a so-so job of keeping my wallet in my back pocket. I wanted about 4 or 5 of their plants and I resisted and came away with two plants. A lot of their aloes in the garden were in bloom and I will post photos of them a bit later.

I took these photos of mostly South African Aloes in UCI's botanical garden.

Fantastic pics......Are any of those examples of the ones you purchased?

No. But I have the three bulbs that are shown flowering in the 4th photo down, however, none of mine are blooming yet even though UCI is only 30 minutes down the road....

How lucky you are to live where they will grow and bloom so lovely I had some that I brought from Las Vegas one year and I kept them in pots for several years in the green house but one year I left them out on the front porch and they froze and turned into a glucky mess :ex[sad24]: I think there are supposed to be some that will live here but haven't really looked for them yet

I lived in the bay area of San Francisco for twelve years from 1969 to 1981, and I really loved the weather there. Growing up here in the northwest I remember my dad attempting to grow cactus in the southerly kitchen of our home. While living in the bay area that memory kinda gave me the bug to try growing some cactus out on our patio in Cupertino, CA. One thing I found out right away was that growing cactus in that warm climate was effortless. After the first year I had collected around two dozen varieties of large native and local cactus. Starting in the early spring the cactus would start to bloom, and at a given point every cactus would be in full bloom. For those of you that have never seen cactus blooming, well, all I can say is that it is breath taking for both sight and smell.
I have some cactus here on my enclosed front porch that will be going out in front of my garage which faces west and will get most of the heat of the summer days. The last two years some of my small collection of cactus has managed to bloom and do quite well. I guess we'll see what this year brings.

Happy ponding,

Rich I hope you will post pictures of the cactus in bloom and I did not know that they were fragrant

I'm still learning this computer stuff. I need some coaching on how to post pics.

Happy ponding,

Rich, If you want to add a picture from your photo bucket account you just go to photo bucket and click on the picture and then a page will open and you will see a box that says share image with lines of different types. Choose the one that says img code and copy that and put it in the empty box above that says add your comments. Paste it in there and then copy it again and take it and paste it in your post where ever you want to put it. Or if you want to get a picture from your My picture file on your computer you click the link at the top of the post here that says Host and image.(When you point your mouse arrow above it will show up. It's the little box w/ the square picture w/ the littler square in front of it.)A box will open up and you click browse and go to where you keep your pictures on your computer and choose which one you want and then open it up. It will then appear in that host box and you click host it. Then another box will open and choose the second line for best size (In my opinion anyway)Copy that one and paste it in your post and then click preview so it will show you what you did. You have to click preview or the box won't leave. You can add more pics to the same post but you have to keep clicking preview after each addition. I hope this helps. If you have any questions ask me and be very specific so my puny little brain can understand

"E:\Pictures\2009first week of August\2009first week of August 048.jpg"


JW, I tried what you said noted above. I must be doing something wrong. I'll keep trying.