When things turned cold last December I completely forgot about taking down the Hover Dish planter over the front porch. ![]()
Once I remembered and commented on it Andrew offered to take it down, but by then I could see it was full of ice and figured it was too late anyway.
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Fast forward several months, and last week I finally got around to asking him to take it down so I could replant it. He's tall enough it's not too difficult for him, I'd be risking life and limb to do it myself. I was surprised to see signs of life. This planting has been through extreme heat with no water (broken ankle and I didn't look up), and then 72 hours below freezing, filled with frozen water. How could anything growing in 5" of soil suspended in the air live through that?![]()
Opuntia polyacantha x cymochila 'Peter Pan'
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I don't know what possessed me to plant these low-growing cactus in this planter, but I did... and they're still alive. Amazing.
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Equally amazing, this small Agave bracteosa is still alive.
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Ditto for the larger one!
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Sempervivum struggling but alive, not so for whatever agave those used to be...
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This poor opuntia qualifies as alive, but I'm so tired of looking at its scarred and oddly colored back-side (the view from inside the house) that I'm going to retire it to the great compost pile in the sky. Bye-bye.
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A weed blew in and was quite happy, and the purple leaves of the Yucca aloifolia 'Blue Boy' were only pretending to be alive.
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Why did I put this agave in the hover dish? It looks to have been a beauty. Of course it fell apart in my hands as I tried to remove it.
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Have you ever seen such a black leaf? It looks like charcoal.
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I don't know why I needed to share all of these images, who wants to look at dead plants, right? I found it interesting though. Maybe you did too.
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Here's what I replanted with, going in a completely different direction! Super tall black mondo grass (Ophiopogon planiscapus 'Nigrescens'), Lonicera nitida 'Lemon Beauty' (completely inappropriate long term, but I thought it would be fun for awhile), Muehlenbeckia complexa ‘Big Leaf’ and Sedum confusum.
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It's nice to see lots of life up there again!
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