Succulents and Cactus

With all of Sam's free time, we're working on cultivating hobbies that we both enjoy.  

One of the things I suggested is gardening.

I love gardening!  

I wish we had a real backyard so I could really do some serious landscaping, and it turns out Sam really likes outdoor home improvement activities.  Win-win!  

I've had a couple of different plants since I moved to Southern California.  There were some short-lived  geraniums on the Newport Peninsula that fried in the all-day direct sunlight.  Then I had an orchid that lived for about 2 years but couldn't find the right amount of sunlight in our current apartment. 

So far, my biggest success has come from a rubber plant my brought down after we moved into our apartment.  It's managed to survive (barely) for 2 years despite numerous periods of neglect.  Which got me thinking, maybe we needed to rethink the kinds of plants we were trying to cultivate.  Perhaps we should move away from the florals in favor of succulents.

So Sam agreed to check out succulents with me this morning and we headed to Lowes to see what we could find.  When we arrived, Sam found some cactus plants that looked pretty neat next to the succulents.  He also found some really neat pots that fit in with the ones we already have as well as the patio furniture for housing potted plants at different heights.  Major win-win!

Interestingly enough, we bought one pre-potted compilation of low-moisture succulents and cacti but we bought loose plants to put into 3 additional pots.  It's the perfect mix of do it yourself meets prefabrication.  And they are actually pretty cool looking when you mix them together.

 So hopefully we'll have better luck with these bad boys than I have had with previous iterations of potted plants and patio gardening.  At the very least, hopefully Hunter won't be eating these plants since these plants have spikes and prickly needles.