A Nice Surprise from Turbinicarpus Horripilus

I brought home a nice Turbinicarpus horripilus gold spines from the CCSA (Cactus and Succulent Society of America) convention last year in San Luis Obispo, planted it in a dish garden, and then  got busy doing other things and didn’t look at it very closely as I...

Blue Barrel Cactus Make a Beautiful Bloom

Echinocactus horizonthalonius, sometimes called eagle claw or blue barrel and sometimes mistaken for Echinocactus texensis, the horse crippler,  is native to the Chihuahuan and Sonoran deserts, northern Mexico and the Trans-Pecos area of Texas. I have six...

A Graduation to Remember

After too many postponements and recanted bureaucratic decisions to count, grandson Korben Kron, a 2020 senior at Texico (New Mexico) High School, participated in a COVID-19 style outdoor graduation ceremony Sunday, May 17th, in Clovis, New Mexico, in the Faith...

The Catmint Caper

Last September when I was visiting Woody and Kathy Minnich in Edgewood, New Mexico, their neighbor across the way shared a start of catmint with me. Blue mounds of the flowering plant were dotted here and there in the neighbor’s cactus garden and really added a nice...

It’s Miller Time! Miller Bug Time, That Is

Once again we are being invaded by those pesky brown moths known collectively as miller bugs; Euxoa auxiliaris, miller moths, if you want to be entomologically and linguistically correct. And that still might not be exactly right because brown moths come in a variety...