Thanx
I hope not

Look out Ted, water is about to fall from the sky like you haven't seen in a year or so! You might not have a choice about watering those guys.

It rained hard but short yesterday and has been pouring since early this morning. People in the recent burn area were evacuated last night. Lots of small landslides. We ran into two on the way to work. 4 lanes down to 2. What a mess

Just watching it on the news. Very messy already, and more to come. Stay safe, Ted and Carol!

Yes, please!

No problems here except palm fronds. The communities at the base of the foothills and those on coastal bluffs are the ones in danger. Of course no one here can drive in the rain so I did my shopping yesterday. When I was still working, my partner and I came across a car sticking out of a block wall, right around the corner from our yard. The guy had hydroplaned and gone off the freeway, up a 6' high berm, over a chain link fence, across the street. We stopped to see if anybody needed help. The driver was walking around, waiting for a tow truck...no injuries. When we asked him what happened, he really didn't know...he had the cruise control set at 70... We just shook our heads and left.

Saw three cars off the road/freeway (all drivers walking around) and two accidents that were nasty on the way home. That is over about a 13 mile drive. Carol is spot on. People cannot drive in California when it is dry and figure if they speed up when it's raining their Beemer won't get as wet
Glad I and my family learned in the rain snow and ice of Chicago

While the snow slowly melts in our yards (and we hopefully don't get more on Monday), the Pachypodiums and Adeniums know it is Spring.
Pachypodium eburneum continues to bloom


Pachypodium brevicaule asks to be gently watered too


and the Adenium multiflorum Mombassa was also blooming on the top shelf and taken down for some pictures.

Lovely Pachy's Ursula! My one and only Pachy saundersii is going downhill I wonder if it is just thirsty..the caudex has shrunken a lot!

That does sound like it might need some water!

My Passiflora pot managed to turn the upstairs sunroom into a green jungle over the Winter, but it finally starts blooming this month.

Beautiful, Ursula! I have to laugh, because around here they are bordering on "noxious weed" What a difference a couple of zones make, eh? You just haven't lived until you've spent an 8 hr day, with a crew of 12 trying to pull those vines out of the ice plant on the side of a freeway! People plant them to cover a fence, and they escape.

Carol, I know what you mean, I have seen Passifloras growing in tropical regions and there they can be humongous!!! So gorgeous when there is enough room for them to ramble.

Ursula, I love your Passion flowers. We used to gather them up like hunting for Easter Eggs. The fruit was a green ball about the size of a golf ball, and we ate them! I guess we were about 8 or 9 years old. And played in the woods all summer long, making forts and finding turtles. Boy, we had fun as kids, didn't get to go on vacations and such. I remember smoking the grape vines or was it the Catawba tree beans? Nowadays, it's just to dangerous to let kids roam wide during the summer, so many predators. Thanks for a good memory!

They sure can ramble - I have red ones that bloom up in the tops of my huge oak trees, a fruit-bearing Purple Possum that covered 75ft. of an 8ft high fence in just over 2 years, and the Giant Granadilla that is 'way up in my clump of 30ft. tall bamboo. I know it's blooming when the huge blossoms drop off. In fact I hauled down a vine of it just so I could get some pictures and a sniff of the fragrant flowers yesterday. Then I have 'Lady Margaret' who is surely no lady and sends out runners in all directions. Lucky for her she has pretty flowers. Love your purple one, Ursula.

Loved your story, Roberta!

Elaine, I love the Giant Granadilla, those blooms are just gorgeous!!
I had a Lady Margaret for a few years and then I lost it. I am never without a pot of some Passiflora, I just love them. Wish I could reliably keep Passiflora edulis.

I have tried to grow Giant Granadilla here but it is very sensitive to cold and I lost it one frosty night. I have tried the Florida native Passaflora incarnata (maypop) but spent most of the time trying to kill it as it is very invasive. Most folks use it as a butterfly plant. I now grow Passaflora edulis. It produces good fruit and is not invasive. There are two types; one produces purple fruit and the other yellow fruit.

Jim

I can taste them!!!!
One year I took the seeds from a whole yellow Passionfruit with flesh and juice and everything and threw them on top of soil. They all germinated really fast without any problem!! I always thought that the acidity in the juice helped along, since I had always trouble germinating them from dry seeds.

I had pots and pots ( took large buckets and punched holes into the bottom for drainage) of plants! That Summer I let them run up the vegetation in our backyard. I had a green wall, but by the end of the Summer still no blooms/fruit in the making. I gave up and gave the pots ( after whacking the vines back to their plants) to a local nursery near our place in Pennsy, which had hopefully more room during the Winter.

Passion vine has only about a five year life expectancy, even under the best conditions. A freeze will kill them quickly. That is why I usually keep a cutting growing in a small pot in the OC during the winter.

Jim

So right on the P. quad, Jim. Mine is on the south side of the bamboo stand which is on the south side of Marsh's shop, so it is in the most warm, protected spot it could be. It's survived in that place for nearly 4 years now, so I just got lucky. When I start a new one, my fruit-bearing Possum Purple takes until fall to start blooming and making fruits, then it blooms and fruits in spring and fall for the next few years until trunk rot gets it. Your seedlings probably just didn't get quite a long enough season outdoors, Ursula.

Found another nice 'anticipation' surprise out there just now, seed pods on my Nun's Orchids - those naughty nuns! I'll put a pot of seed starting mix under there and see if I get seedlings. Blc. Anduril 'Krull's Scarlet' is sure taking its time opening.