Occasional Daily Photo 7/29/11

Echeveria ‘Afterglow’ and Allium senescens. This little mid summer-flowering onion is sweet consolation for an allium-less garden up to this point.
Unlike me, the early-blooming, flamboyant drumstick alliums don’t enjoy a zone 10 garden and prefer chillier winters. And although echeverias don’t need to be kept in pots and can be grown outside year-round by the coast here in Southern California, it’s always nice to have a few in containers to force some interesting companionships between pots and garden. The allium in the garden in bloom, no more than a foot high, becomes borrowed scenery on a miniature scale for a study in pink. Icy starbursts wooing fleshy rosettes. Being a busybody matchmaker is perfectly acceptable with plants.