Spring Carnival

I don’t know why I love county fairs so much, but I always have. Perhaps it’s the reawakening of 50s and 60s Americana. Maybe it’s the colorful neon lights brightening an otherwise monotonous, uneventful night. Or could it really be the smell of cotton candy and caramel apples staring through that scratchy glass? But despite…

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The Rigens Console Table
DIY

This is by far my most ambitious furniture project yet, and one I’m most excited about because I get to try some woodworking techniques totally new to me. I have long wanted to store my photography equipment in my home office, so I have been on the lookout for cabinets with drawers that can hold…

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A Day at the Zoo with the FE 100-400mm GM
Photography

In preparation for our upcoming trip to the Antarctic, I wanted to test out my new FE 100-400mm GM lens on some real wildlife. As I needed a dependable source of subjects, we headed to the San Francisco Zoo and spent a few hours visiting most of the exhibits. The FE 100-400mm GM was mounted…

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The Ciliaris Ladder Shelf
DIY

Our narrow sideyard gets partial sun, and is a perfect spot for succulents that prefer some shade. Putting some shelves here has been a long-awaited project, but I was ambivalent about what to buy or what to build. I didn’t want anything too bulky or rectangular; and since the sideyard is narrow, I wanted something…

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The Striata Planter Box
DIY

One project for the front-yard that I’ve been wanting to get to for years is a rectangular planter box for housing some succulents needing more shade. With shelter-in-place, I finally got the chance to pop this off the queue and scrounge up some leftover pieces of 2 × 6 to make this all happen. The…

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The Flowering of Strelitzia nicolai
Garden

The wait has been long and insufferable at times, but after a full four years, the Stretlizia nicolai in the backyard is finally flowering. The flowers are admittedly much less colorful than those of Strelitzia reginae, but I was still super stoked when the first bracts emerged. Strelitzia nicolai, also known as the Giant White Bird of Paradise, is…

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× Gasteraloe ‘Flow’
Garden

A few years ago, I came across―to my great dismay―a vast collection of neon-colored, spray-painted Gasteraloe plants in the garden center of a home improvement store. They are marketed as Kosmik Kaktus; the product label describes them as part of “a new lineup of cacti with out-of-this-world color.” The plants came in every imaginable (and unimaginable) outlandish hue,…

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Growing Siraitia grosvenorii
Garden

Siraitia grosvenorii is a perennial, deciduous, fruit-bearing vine endemic to southeast Asia, from the mountains of Guilin, China to northern Thailand. It belongs to the Cucurbitaceae family, of which the squash, pumpkin, zucchini, watermelon, and cucumber are also members. The plant’s fruit, commonly known as “Buddha Fruit,” is edible and often cultivated for its natural, low-calorie…

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Aloe tororoana

This species is endemic to the Tororo district in eastern Uganda, from which it derives its name. It was first discovered there on bare rock surfaces by Henry C. Dawkins, a British botanist who spent many years in Uganda as a forest ecologist. Subsequently, Swiss botanist Peter R. O. Bally collected more samples, from which Reynolds gathered enough information to first publish it in 1953.

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Aloe calcairophila

Aloe calcairophila is a cute miniature Aloe from an area south of Ambatofinandrahana in the Fianarantsoa Province in Madagascar. The region is part of the Central Highlands at an altitude of about 1400 m​.

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