It's warm (59F again) this AM. The dew is heavy and the Cranes (Sandhill) are calling. The foliage of monocots funnels dew to their crowns, somewhat mitigating long rainless periods. The Agaves and Aloes, actually all the linear-leaved plants must get significant amounts of water this way. I will hand water once more this morning excepting the camellia that seems tempted to push open its growth buds.
The large Aloe saponaria inflorescence on the corner of the screen porch now has ~1/5 of its flowers open but still no hummingbirds. They were all over it last winter but it is a bit behind. Osmanthus fragrans, one of the first plants that went in, is flowering heavily and the fragrance is wonderful. The foliage itself iis a bit thin, but I do think that it took two years for the root system to establish and now I expect that it will fill out. The plan was to screen a huge air-conditioning unit and eventually we'll get there. It is definitely one of those plants that flowers in the winter....useful.
The Protea and Leucodendron are both doing well and I want to add a larger-flowered Protea and a few Banksias next year. Also Encephalartos horridus.
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