I’m running a trial of lavender in my back yard hotspot – the little strip of soil between the cement decking and the cement brick wall. So far, the lavender plants look nice. It made me want to order more, but the mail-order catalog company is out until next spring. Yikes! That’s a long ways away.

I decided I’d try to root some cuttings.

I don’t have high hopes for these, since they’re so small, but even if a few of them root and grow into actual plants, that’s more than I would have had otherwise. We’ll see..

I’m also rooting some geranium cuttings from a plant that’s growing along the sidewalk of a nearby business. The mother plant has such nice flowers, I really wanted to see if I could root some. We’ll see…

I had the day off yesterday. I decided to do something unusual with my unusual day off, so I went to the South Coast Botanic Garden. I had visited it before I lived here, back in 2020.

It was really nice. There were a lot of families with young children there, which made me happy. Get those kids outside to touch grass!

The botanic garden people were making an effort to get kids out there. There were a bunch of wooden trolls throughout the property.

Some of the paths were paved, but most of them were dirt. It was very peaceful.

My favorite flowers were the scented ones.

Magnolia:

Citrus:

Pua keni keni (or maybe not – the flowers are not quite the right shape):

Milkweed:

Roses:

And this agave that the honeybees were crazy about:

I did take a picture of one thing that wasn’t a flower. It was a weird seed pod of some kind. It looks kind of like a nigella to me.

What a wonderful diversion before a busy week of school!

When I get gift cards from students, I write their names on them so I can think of them when I use the card.

Yesterday, Sarah helped me buy a really nice hand pruner. I’ve needed one for a while, because my old one was cheap and was falling apart. I’m so excited to have this nice one! Thank you, Sarah!