Daily Dose Blogger Bios

Aloes - 9, Red Hots - 1

Okay, I know I just recently posted about my beloved Aeonium 'Zwartkopf', and here it is again but I just had to show you all this fantastic combination I just spied out in the old garden - A big frousy Aeonium and a blazing Aloe spike!

Aloe season is in full swing, and the colors of my Aloe arborescens are just out of this world. I'd say the bloom spikes look like red hot pokers - real red hot pokers, not the plant red hot poker. For me, that plant is a big old waste of time ... am I being to harsh?

It's just that when I was a baby gardener, I planted so many Kniphofia uvarias (red hot pokers) and they were so disappointingly short lived. No bang for the buck! The idea of the plant is great - but what you basically get is a bunch of leaves doing not much for the better part of a year, and then a few spikes pop up, and they bloom for two weeks, and that's all she wrote. Sorry - that is just not enough for me... my rule is that in my garden, every plant has to give me at least two seasons of interest, preferably three. Most of our city gardens are not that big, and we need our plants to work for us ...we gardeners need to be ruthless!

But not everyone lives in the type of climate for aloes - so for these people, I will allow kniphofias to be planted, so that you too can have some hot spikes, for a little while at least.