Cactus bling

It’s a photo. Of a cactus.

With bling!

A blogger on Psychology Today has a very personal relationship with her cactus. Here’s a snippet.

The one live plant in my office is a cactus… we have developed a relationship…

Despite my desertion, it lived…

At a weak moment, I felt guilty…

Not that I’m bitter…

It has the power to inflict pain….

Here’s the rest of it.

I was wondering what the most popular CactusBlog entry is. So I looked it up and it’s this one from 2008.

What’s sad about this is that isn’t even my photo. But apparently google loves it, so what can I do?

It’s Plants are the Strangest People and fun with Photoshop.

A Growing Obsession uses broken pieces of glass as a succulent mulch, and calls it “Succulents on Ice“. Better than petunias on ice any day.

It’s a cactus flower photo gallery! Add your cactus flower photos too!

I’m updating the blog to the latest version of WordPress, due to some security flaws in the last version, and we just had our first glitch – the blog was down for half an hour. But we’re back! Hopefully, the rest of this update will be smoooooth sailing all the way.

Jacque at The Creative Gardener is somewhere in Northern California and has a greenhouse full of succulents, and some blooming cacti too.

Earth’s Little Gems may not post a whole lot, but they do have up some adorable gasteria bloom photos right now.

Danger Garden picked up some Aloe Yucca hybrid that may be called Yucca aloifolia or Aloe Yucca.

To the google! And… Yucca aloifolia it is, also known as Spanish Bayonet, and it’s not a hybrid at all.

Here’s a photo of an impressive clump via Floridata.

Kelly’s Imaginary Garden appears to be a new blog in the East Bay, and they have a neighbor with giant Echinocereus grandiflora blooms, not to mention the Aloe striatas going crazy too.

Impressive.

The Alaska Squirrel Cam blog has a cactus bloom photo. Anyone have any guesses as to which opuntia species it is that is surviving in Alaska?

Teri found a nest in the middle of a very spiny cactus. Photos ensued.

From the Baltimore Sun’s Garden Variety Blog by Susan Reimer, we find out that Debra Lee Baldwin has been inspiring succulent lovers all over the country.

Photo credit: Baltimore Sun/Susan Reimer

Try keeping container gardens alive on my deck during the heat of July and August and you will find yourself a convert to succulent container gardens, too.

That’s how I spent the weekend, assembling this collection of glazed pots and the very few varieties of succulents I could find in my quadrant of Maryland….

I have been enchanted by the idea of succulents in containers since I wrote about Debra Lee Baldwin’s new book, “Succulent Container Gardens.” These plants look soooo exotic.

Ian has started an urban farm blog, Oakland Farming, and it turns out that the organic lettuce he planted last year re-seeded itself and has provided more food than he can possibly eat.

Check the link in the sidebar, too.

Hopefully he’ll add some photos…

An Alameda Garden kicks off their new Succulent Sundays with a picture of Aeoniums and Agaves on Alcatraz.

Mr. Subjunctive has a blooming Stapelia gigantea. They stink.

Idora Design is featuring a pink echeveria hybrid in the garden. Any ideas what c.v. it may be?

Lara, at enidlifestyle.com has been collecting vintage pots to fill with succulents. See the results, on enidlifestyle.com. There’s some really nice vintage glazes.

I’m not so sure about the owl, though.

You know I am often amazed what one can find on the web. Here we have a balloon cactus.

Now what does this mean? I mean, you know, like, 500 years ago someone in Rome first got a sample of a cactus from an explorer who had recently returned from the Americas. Maybe from Columbus himself. And now look what happens; google, twitter, and balloon cactuses. Oh my.

Mr. Subjunctive links to a site with some startlingly close-up photos of cactus.

Did I mention the startle factor?

It’s called A Closeup Look at Some Members of the Cactus Family, or some such thing. And it’s by a Canadian who goes by Brian Johnston, according to the site. Did I mention how cool it is?

Jenny at J Peterson Blog has a tree trunk photo. Oh, and it’s covered in caterpillars. Oh Nos! I’ll bet they’ve already stripped those leaves bare.

I see that Mr. Subjunctive is planning for the zombie apocalypse by buying plants. An excellent strategy, indeed!

He has a number of excellent succulent choices, including the ever fascinating Pedilanthus, and some other houseplant thingys too. I think he should also add astelia to his list. And you? What are you doing to prepare for the zombies?

Debra Lee Baldwin’s Agave potatorum is starting to bloom, as told on Gardening Gone Wild.

She wonders what to do with all the plantlets that will result. Any ideas of how she can share them, maybe while on her book tour?

My twitter friend @kotemaro grows succulents in Hokkaido, and has some new seedlings growing on his website. No english, but lots of succulent pictures.

This is the caption below the photo of the seedlings:

花物メセンの実生
ちょっとー何これ♪　可愛いんですけどー！

So go check out the picture, and see if you can figure out what it is. Then come back here and let me know what you’ve come up with.

Matti from Far Out Flora has very crisp photos of some 1 year old seedlings in a bull pot.

Idora design had trouble picking paint colors, so they hired a colorist. They should have hired me! I do color selection, too you know. What, you don’t know?

Despite the fact that I attended fancy-pants art school, we ended up having to get a colorist to help us pick paint for our house. It’s embarrassing, but it really worked out. If anyone has a purpose for quarts of some wierd colors I bought pre-colorist, I’m your girl!

They also linked to us at the cactusblog in this post, so a link back seemed like the least I could do.

From using twitter recently, I’ve been discovering all kinds of new garden blogs. In fact, I may have already linked to some of these, but anyway here are a few to check out.

Donegan Landscaping in Dublin (Ireland).

Our Little Acre is somewhere in rural Ohio, but that’s a good thing.

J Peterson Garden Design is one of many garden bloggers in Austin, in the heart of Texas.

Finally! A San Francisco blogger! My Back 40 (Feet).