Today’s Weather report for Northern California: Spring!

Are you going to the Garden Show this week? It is stormy out, I know, so if you’re not here’s a video recap. Lot’s of succulents this year, again.

The overview is pretty nice, even if the music is overblown.

From KPHO CBS-5 we have a photo of a mountain lion on a saguaro.

Nice! Shall we have a caption contest?

Containers of succulent plants, by WIG Nursery in Burnaby, at the entrance of the BC Home & Garden Show. Photograph by: Les Bazso, PNG

And a green roof too:

A green garden shed by Beneath Your Feet, Maple Ridge. Photograph by: Les Bazso, PNG

They’re going to add some stuff to the Town Center and I thought you should read it here first.

A Carefree resident… will add cactuses, agave, succulents and boulders. “We really want to make it spectacular,” he said.

They’ve lifted the taboo on cactus and succulent in your garden in India? I didn’t even know there had been a taboo.

(Cacti and succulents) are no more a taboo and could be judiciously used in landscape…. Shed the fear and use cacti and succulents in your garden. There is nothing vaastu related in these plants. These are the most beautiful creations of God.

Of course, they also recommend,

Using them with small statues and toys make them more attractive.

A guide to weird food eaten the world over from Eeow! foods.

Cactus apples, eaten in Mexico
Red or purple fruits growing on beavertail cactus plants need to be removed very carefully. They are then rolled around in the sand and skinned with a sharp knife. The purple ones taste like cranberry while the red taste like pears. Be warned not to eat more than three at a time for fear of constipation.

Actually, the prickly pear fruit is called a “Cactus Pear” among other names, and the “Cactus Apple” refers to the fruit of the Cereus Peruvianus, not to get all pedantic on your a**.

In Mexico they seem to be having the same weight issues as the US. They’re removing fried snacks and soft drinks, just like the US.

But just to be a little bit different, they’re substituting cactus snacks. The New York Times has the story.

(In) Mexico City… one day recently, there was a hot meal of rice and tortillas, prickly pear leaves with eggs and onions, and squash with soft white cheese.

That sounds delicious. Of course, I’d still rather have a hotdog and chips if I were 10. That’s a lot of kids culture (i.e. advertising dollars) to overcome.

Good Luck!

Wondering what to do this weekend around the West Texas area? Try the Cactus and Succulent Festival at CDRI.

The Chihuahuan Desert Research Institute’s Nature Center offers an opportunity to enjoy desert wondersduring its annual Cactus and Succulent Festival, Saturday (March 12) through March 19.

I love the Big Bend area and would be there if I could, but I’m in New York right now instead so I’ll be missing out.

I’ll post any photos of any plants I happen to find in New York along the streets, but don’t hold your breath. I do have some leftover photos from the nursery too that I can blog. I wonder which ones you’ll get to see?

From Dong-a Ilbo, a Korean golf news service, comes this exciting photo of a golf ball in a cactus. I hope many newspapers in Korea reprinted this photo.

Every now and then a new article about protecting the Cactus Wren from destruction comes across my desktop, and I blog it. In fact, I’ve blogged about that little wren so many times that by now I just look for cute little pictures. I’m sure the article is just as entertaining as this photo, so click through, but really, I mean, awwww….  sooooo cute…..

UCI biologists are creating a welcoming habitat near campus that they hope will help the cactus wren thrive. Credit: Steve Zylius / University Communications.

Apparently it’s now time for the Echeverias to start their upward trend into trendiness. Enough with the Agaves! Aeoniums are so 2010! Echeverias for all.

Terrariums, of course, but,

Way ahead of lower ranking container gardening… are succulents. How could the trend spotters miss ever-popular echeverias?

How could they, indeed.

Here, have a photo.

Echeveria “Violet Queen”. Do you think the Queen is Violet?

Maybe Agave? They only use the heart of the plant for tequila, leaving all those giant pointy leaves around to burn as waste.

So they seem to be researching Agave for a Biofuel. Seems like a good idea. Keep the corn for corn syrup soft drinks.

Faucaria felina

The sunshine is back! (For a few days…)

At Alki Arts Museum/Art Gallery.

This one has a description to go with it:

(W)elder Rodger Squirrell shows water color painter John Constantine his cactus sculpture made from car bumpers. Squirrell teaches welding at South Seattle Community College.

There’s no description to go with this next cactus sculpture, and it doesn’t even say who the artist is. For shame!

The photos also seem to focus on the people at the opening, rather than on the art. You can get a bit of a feel for the art, but not much. Anyone in Seattle want to stop by and let us know if these are worth stopping by for?

From Angie, we find out that the Berkeley Art Museum has been probing one of our cacti.

I don’t know what’s going on here, but the title is “Loud Cactus” and there’s a watermelon being probed too.

Maybe I should stop by the museum and see what they’ve done to the Ferocactus. And maybe next time they could let us know and we’d have promoted their event!

Nor Palm trees. That’s what the El Paso Times editorial board wants you to know. That’s right – they wrote an editorial telling you not to plant Saguaros and Palms. Hah!

Unknown to some here, various species of palms, along with the stately saguaro cactus, cannot withstand extreme cold unless they are very well-protected, especially in the root area. We are the high desert, at about 4,000 feet above sea level. It gets cold here in the winter, and once every decade or two, it gets real cold. We had 1 degree Fahrenheit recently. And look at all the brown palms.

Odd subject for an editorial. I wonder if the editorial board had a meeting to discuss this. Maybe one person on the board came down on the other side of this hot topic, and would rather have recommended that people in El Paso do plant Saguaros anyway.

There’s something odd about the weather forecast for Berkeley this weekend.

The Daily Mail is worried about your kids next week on holiday from school. Those little buggers of yours are going to be wandering around with nothing to do all week with the schools closed in England for winter break. What to do? Well, my nephew went to visit his grandparents in Florida this week during New York’s school break, but the English probably don’t have grandparents in Florida and it’s just not the same to take a holiday in Wales in February.

So plant a cactus!

If you’re looking for ideas to keep the children entertained during next week’s half-term holiday, why not get them to create an indoor cactus garden?

Kids are fascinated by this large clan of spiky plants that are easy to look after and virtually indestructible.

My children Louis, nine, and Lily, five, find prickly plants irresistible and they enjoyed planting up a container each with specimens they hand-picked at a garden centre.

I can tell you from our experience at the nursery that it’s true – kids are fascinated.

City workers in Albuquerque failed the local kids who made a nice large green fiberglas cactus sculpture. What did the city workers do? The chopped it down and took it to the dump.

Oh.

This time in Australia.

Resident angry at theft of pot plants

HILLMAN resident Betty Astrand has warned her neighbours to be on the lookout for suspicious activity…

Three big succulents, including multiple aloe veras in a fake terracotta pot, and two green/white striped corderlines in a pale green plastic pot, were taken.

She said one of her neighbours had a birdbath stolen…

Plastic pots and… not a birdbath too! I’d be angry too.

Well, not yet…

(A) proposed schedule of controlled plants currently before the Attorney-General… (that) targets common ornamental garden plants like datura (angel’s trumpet), various succulents and other plants… has ecologists and plant enthusiasts up in arms.

What began as a legitimate attempt to shut down the drug trade’s access to illicit drug precursors in 2008 by then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, has been extended to more obscure drugs like… mescaline – hallucinogens which hold little prominence in the drug trade and are predominantly extracted from… cacti.

True enough, but really now, there’s a lot of plants that have hallucinogenic effects if you get right down to it. Anyone know of a list?

No customers, which is fine since most of the crew went to the NorCal garden show in San Mateo, assuming the storm wasn’t too bad on the peninsula and they could get through. We have a flood advisory going, and this is exactly! (approximately…) one year from when we had to close for a day because of flooding. I’m watching the street levels….

The weather reports are still calling for some sun this weekend, so that’s good news. So come on by! We have our first spring organic veggies out, soaking up some of this delicious rain before the sun comes out and they start growing like mad.

Odd headline, and yet that is what the article tells us. In Scotland, someone has been putting cactus on a pizza, and has been winning awards for it!

Mamma’s Pizza and Panzerotti invited diners to create the most innovative pizza topping in celebration of the popular restaurant’s 25 successful years in Edinburgh’s Grassmarket.

Jayne-Leigh Thomas… from Edinburgh… beat stiff competition with… creative pizza topping suggestions. Jayne-Leigh’s ‘All American’ pizza includes cactus, artichoke, proscuitto, garlic and fried egg.

Ewww.

Dominica News Online’s Photo of the Day feature a few weeks ago featured a very nice photo of a Parodia, that they decided to headline, The Penis Cactus. I don’t know why.

I really enjoyed the opening paragraphs to this article from the Deccan Herald.

Alas with so much hustle and bustle about roses and hollyhocks, and velvet cockscombs no-one bothered to invite their cheeky cousins, the prettiest oddest, alien Cinderellas to the Glass House!

But they didn’t seem too bothered – they were Lal Bag’s most gorgeous cactus and the succulents, who stayed home like the mean witch kept away from Sleeping beauty’s birthday party, in their very own Cactus House…

It’s a very mysterious thing, full of Disney Princesses and cactus. I feel like I should stop right here, and not read any further. But no! Too late! I already read this part,

…make up their very own… stars, clusters, bows, ties, hair bands and plaits and buns! Some even have the cheek to resemble chocolate muffins…

Do tell…

…dressmakers from an alien planet…

The new giant planet out in the oort cloud?

…patios of glass-filled underwater-themed restaurants…

We are talking about cactus, right?

As if they have landed from a mad boutique…

This is too much. Unacceptable!

…Last month I cut my finger badly in the garden and bled horridly…

By now you probably think I’ve made the whole thing up. No, actually, I only made up one of these quotes about cactus. Can you guess which one? Read the whole article if you don’t believe me, and please go ahead and tell me in the comments what you think this article is really all about, because I DON’T KNOW!

What do you do in Wisconsin in winter long before spring has come to town? Pretend like spring is right around the corner and start gardening with succulents.

The Chippewa County UW-Extension and Chippewa Valley Master Gardener Association are hosting a “Think Spring” gardening seminar on Saturday, Feb. 19 at the Chippewa Falls Middle School, 750 Tropicana Blvd., Chippewa Falls….

In “Create Your Own Dish Garden” participants will have the opportunity to plant a collection of succulents in a 5- to 6-inch pot to take home. Learn how to maintain and care for these plants as they grow. Cost is $20 to cover plants and materials. The workshop is limited to 20 participants, so register early. All items made in the workshop must be taken home at the end of the seminar.

I especially like the part at the end about items must be taken home. No giving them away to other people, or abandoning them at the festival. It’s like an all-you-can-eat buffet restaurant I once went to that charged extra if you took too much food and didn’t finish everything on your plate.

Just in time for Valentine’s Day we’re finally bringing out some new Sarracenias.

And the Pinguiculas are blooming too.

Now you know? You do! You do know!