In our peculiar Bay Area climate, August is usually cool, with highs in the 60s and fog hanging overhead till mid-day. No rain, of course. That won’t come till late October or November. But with just a little water from the hose, the garden is coming back to life. (It needed the help. We were away at a couple of critical times during recent months, and it looked more despondent than usual for late summer.)

I don’t discount the effects of a long, dry summer after years of punishing drought. Trees are taking an early start on dropping their leaves. But the rains of this past winter clearly made a difference—as does the cooling weather.

There are plants that take this late-summer opportunity to flower, such as the sedum “Autumn Joy”:

Or the surprise lilies or “naked ladies” (Amaryllis belladonna) by the still-young apricot tree:

And remnants of summer like this hydrangea, brought from the garden of my brother Fred, who died almost twelve years ago:

The new succulent garden is also showing signs of growth as plants settle in and decide, for the most part, that they like it in this spot. They’ve also managed to survive an unexpected and potentially fatal blow. An octopus agave, last of the group that my Tucson friend Chris Eastoe gave me more than twenty years ago, bloomed this summer, the top of its spike appearing right outside the study window on the second floor of the house. These flowering spikes grow amazingly fast:

Unlike its elder siblings, this plant wasn’t well anchored in the ground—perhaps from having to struggle out from under the shade cast by the others. The bloom spikes of the others all remained standing well into the winter, when storm winds broke them in two, but this one began leaning precariously this month. When it came to rest on the porch roof, we pulled it back up and anchored it to the pergola that carries the wisteria on the other side of the garden. But on Saturday, it tipped unexpectedly to the right and subsided right across the new succulent bed.

I say “subsided” because it was quite noiseless. I was in the back of the garden at the time but didn’t notice it until Jon called my attention to the fact that it was lying on the ground. Happily, it fell flat, without rolling or bouncing, and only one plant got seriously shattered under it.

But there was nothing for it except to begin cutting it up and disposing of it—a project not yet completed as of this writing. The biggest chunk, about six feet long, is still leaning against the back wall of the house, with the new succulent garden at its foot.

As you can see from this final picture, it is covered by innumberable tiny plantlets along with the spent blossoms. There are also what look like seeds, but I have no idea whether they ever germinate. Chris tells me that, in their native terrain in the mountains of Sonora, the plantlets scatter across the rocks, falilng, with luck, into crevices where they can take root. We have several in pots, waiting to go into the ground.