It has rained here the last few days, great gasps of storm to knock potted plants off the porch. One pot broke. A Calibanus hookeri, bought cheap from a big box store that did not know what it was, and it sat out on the porch all night, roots exposed in a pile of sherds. I took the excuse to divide it. The growers had put two plants together in the pot, a cheat to make small, slow-growing plants look larger. They sit tonight in their own unglazed terracotta pots, awaiting the next storm. There is another pair still in its original pot — I went back to the store for it — and another I have been coaxing along for a few years indoors, now potted up.
Near them, a Nolina longifolia, looking right now like a small, trunkless pony-tail palm but with much longer leaves. I’ve wanted one for three years now, since we saw one at Boyce Thompson Arboretum in Arizona. I think, in fact, that the one we saw is the one in this photo. Boyce Thompson is one of very few arboreta allowing dogs: Imagine me and Becky and Zeke standing in front of this plant the first week of January 2004, the two of them waiting patiently for me to stop gaping. I scoured the nurseries until this past December, when I finally found one. It arrived this month with a couple new agaves and a cactus that will eventually be 30 feet tall unless I kill it. I dimly remember putting them in pots a couple weeks ago. Someday I will struggle to repot the Nolina grown large in the fourth or fifth pot after the one it’s in now, and I will be struck by how long it has been since he left, and it will not seem that long.
Posted by: Chris Clarke
Categories:
Garden
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