Fern at Life on the Balcony took a lot of photos of succulents at the Huntington Gardens near Pasadena.

It’s always a joy to walk the grounds of the Huntington, home of some of the largest succulent specimens seen in captivity, and Life on the Balcony does a good job of capturing that.

Nice Fockea.

Bay Area Tendrils has an old post up with lots of edible-style green roofs to visit.

I see succulents in there too, sedums amongst them. And summertime sunshine.

i am dianthus has an amazing photo of a Pachyphytum oviferum, also known as Moonglow.

Danger Garden visited The streets of Fillmore, California and found a lot of agaves. Some other plants too, but mostly agaves. I see A. americana, A. neomexicana, A. lophantha, A. marginata, A. attenuata, A. parryi and yuccas too, I almost forgot the yuccas.

A Growing Delight in Canberra has regular visit from their local magpies, and the hoyas are about to bloom! Photos of the birds and the flower buds are included.

chuck b. of My Back 40(Feet) has some big and juicy rock photos of Tahquitz Canyon outside Palm Springs. I highly recommend the photo with the little tufts of grasses poking through.

Cactus Blindness. Can you help?

Affordable Accoutrements has a cactus on the table.

A very scenic photo ensues. (“Scenic” in the old-english-countryside-with-follies sense of the word.)

From Amy Stewart at Garden Rant:

…You’ll walk into the garden center and walk around for a little while, lost and confused, until some helpful employee walks up and asked you what you’re looking for. You won’t want to ask, because it sounds so weird, but eventually you’ll have no choice but to say, “Uh—do you have—uh—any clay spheres?”

The employee will light up and say, “Of course. They’re over here.” He or she will lead you to the section in the garden center where they keep flowerpots. There, among the pots, will be these things. Clay spheres. There’s really no other way to describe them….

Actually, I like to refer to them as “clay balls” to our customers. We have them scattered around the nursery so you can see them in action. They are an oddity that some people just have to have. What are ya gonna do?

The small ones are solid, but the large ones are hollow! The glazed balls have a bottom, with a large hole.

Mulch Maven, from J Peterson Garden Design in Austin, TX, uploaded a succulent centerpiece, with bright red candle, on twitpic.

Let’s see what we can identify in the photo. I see: Kalanchoe blossfeldiana, Sedum spurium, Crassula nudicaulis, Echeveria imbricata, Sedum “Blue Spruce”, Sempervivum arachnoides, a Mammillaria, and some others too!

Christine from Idora Design (California Native plant designs…) came by the nursery today and brought me Cactus Pastilles! I am so excited. Unfortunately, I was not around at the time, but I have now tasted them, and they are a bit licoricey, which is good because I like licorice.

Yay!

Idora Design Blog is featuring Arctostaphyloses today. We like manzanitas.

Water When Dry had a fox visit her agave yesterday; photos ensued.

Such a big fluffy tail, indeed.

Infrared Cactus photo.

A Desert Observer, in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona, has a late blooming ferocactus, and it’s purple! Such a pretty flower. I wonder what special minerals she had to feed the plant to get that color?

Soekershof peruses some strange common names in a blog post called About ‘horse teeth’, ‘cat balls’ and an ‘old woman’s buttock’

My favorite is ‘hondeballen’ because ours don’t have any, but you’ll have to click through to see what I’m talking about.

Danger Garden rescued a giant bromeliad from their office lobby, and it turns out it’s a Vriesea imperialis. Good times.

And how did they know this? Why, they saw one at Cactus Jungle! Photos ensued.

SENSATIONAL SUCCULENTS has some lovely photos of a Crassula “Coralita” and some very pastel coral colored blooms.

Did you know this was a hybrid? It is! It’s a cross between C. suzannae and C. falcata. And quite the cross it is.

Oregon Cactus Blog has a nice big, dark, scary-looking sempervivum variety that I’ve never seen. You’ll have to click over to see Sempervivum ‘Jungle Shadows’, but it’s worth the trip.

Seedbyte has a whole bunch of photos of a spectacular series of mixed succulent pots in the Potrero Hill neighborhood of San Francisco. Good stuff.

Garden Amateur in Sydney, Australia has some nice little succulents growing pots that appreciate the recent rain.

He’s got a cute little unnamed mesemb that we are calling a Hartmanthus. You’d think if it has found its way to Australia, the plant must be in wider cultivation by now, and someone should have a definitive name for it.

This Digital Life has a stunning black and white photo of an Opuntia bigelovii, also known as Cylindropuntia bigelovii. Common names include the Teddy Bear Cholla and the Jumping Cholla. Now you know more than you wanted to, so go see the picture already.

First, you paint it yellow, then you plant it up with succulents.

BaldManModPad has created the definitive filing cabinet planter.

The SF Chronicle raised their price again, to $1, after recently shrinking the paper by 1/3.

The future belongs to the internet. Blogs rulez.

On the Gates arrest, this post by Digby is very good.  As they say in the intertubes, “what Digby says.”

My personal perspective is colored by the fact that I was also once arrested for arguing with an officer, even though no laws were broken and no charges were filed. There’s no question they have power beyond upholding the law.

Bonding over Lizards had a contest to name a cactus (actually a sempervivum) and the results are in: Norbert. I’m shocked.

Idora Design went traveling to Death Valley and took some especially nice cactus photos. They also met up with lots of spiders and a red-tailed hawk. All good.

If you’re looking for more cactus bloom photos, Water When Dry always has some really nice ones throughout the Arizona spring season. Nice Parodia.

If you don’t read Plants are the Strangest People, then you haven’t been following Mr. Subjunctive’s Toxic Houseplant series, and I recommend starting with Part 1.