Gardening by the ocean

Just when you guys thought I am set in structure, I am adding another heading page called "Gardening & Hobbies".

Why? This is, or was at least, a great part of being me. I love succulent plants in particular. Aloe plants are the main focus for the garden, but the smaller succulents has become our collecting hobby.

For now, we start at the beginning. Our house had no garden, in fact there is very little going on in terms of gardening where we live, due to the ocean salty winds, which kills about anything a normal garden would see. Succulents on the other hand are growing for the most part, but also be garden weed, in terms of the local species.

In 2011, I set out to develop my garden.

10 Bags of compost went into that sand heap!

By the end of the year (2011), it looked like this.

By then I also developed the garden inside the yard, but that is for later. The main backbone is the aloe. I use various smaller plants, 99% succulents to color the image.

Today this garden has grown well and looks like this.

Some of the plants here include:

Aloe thraskii (Dune aloe)

Small one flowering in the corner is a seed grown Aloe maculata, then a few Crassula species and the midsize aloe is a hybrid branching plant.

Above is a Aloe ferox with smaller aloe species hidden all around. In the bottom picture is an Aloe lineata about to flower with Aeonium 'kiwi' as additional color and a fine Delosperma as ground cover.

My favorite aloe for sure, is the Aloe speciosa in the bottom picture. They turn their heads toward the sun, blueish in color and they have fantastic raceme (flowers), which this one is doing for the first time this year, cannot wait.

Again lots of smaller aloes, and various species of succulents grow around these main plants, creating more and more height differences.

This is just a quick introduction to another part of the our rumbling ocean living space. Doing a blog without including something that is also close to our hearts does not seem fair and true to who we are. We will do posts about our plants in future, which include near 200 species of aloes, succulents like Lithops and other living stones, crassula (Jade plants) and other.