UCI botanical gardens event

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

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....

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,

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

Happy ponding,

"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.