{"id":48873,"date":"2013-11-25T14:08:04","date_gmt":"2013-11-25T18:08:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/?p=48873"},"modified":"2013-11-25T14:08:04","modified_gmt":"2013-11-25T18:08:04","slug":"the-awkward-age","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/?p=48873","title":{"rendered":"the awkward age"},"content":{"rendered":"

My garden has lived through lots of them and will most likely continue to do so while I’m in charge. The latest awkward age involves a flowering agave and a young tree. Or maybe it will be a shrub. Neither the Acacia podalyrfolia nor myself can make up our minds yet. So far the Pearl Acacia is a little too beamy widthwise to prune out the lower branches and train as a tree, which will become an important issue when all the aloes I’ve planted here are ready to bloom. At that point (maybe this year?) there ideally should be a high canopy. Even so, for now I think we’re both leaning more toward shrub than tree and possibly moving the aloes elsewhere. What’s certain is that until the agave finishes flowering and expires, things will be looking a bit chaotic in this corner of the front garden. Watching the agave send that bloom stalk roof-high, I was reminded of a chat I had with a nurseryman, who felt that aloes were gaining favor over agaves with the public because they didn’t inflict such drama on a garden (flowering, death, and then a gaping blankness). I prefer to view the death of an agave as an act of creative destruction, and can’t wait til I haul out the carcass.
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Here’s the awkward part, the Pearl Acacia and agave getting in each other’s grilles.<\/p>\n

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While I’ve been distracted by the flag pole of an agave bloom outside the front door, I failed to notice what the acacia was up to. Was I catching a glint of lemony yellow as I raced from the car to the back office to deal with the merciless deadlines I’ve had the past couple weeks? Nah, must be eyestrain.<\/p>\n

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Not yet two years old, planted as a small cutting, the Pearl Acacia was already budding up for a late winter\/spring bloom. After all, this Australian evergreen is well know for its fast growth.
\nStill, it was a bit surprising to see the branches already studded with flower buds in November.<\/p>\n

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Early this morning I took a closer look at the flashes of yellow and found these.<\/p>\n

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Watching its mad dash to bloom, I can confirm that this tree\/shrub’s reputation for speedy growth is well-deserved<\/p>\n

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What’s that catty old saying, “Your lack of planning is not my problem”? This beautiful, quicksilver tree reminds me of it every time I pass it now.<\/p>\n

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My garden has lived through lots of them and will most likely continue to do so while I’m in charge. The latest awkward age involves a flowering agave and a young tree. Or maybe it will be a shrub. Neither … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[28,551,36,27],"tags":[1930,2302,839,3195],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paNJ2E-cIh","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48873"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48873"}],"version-history":[{"count":60,"href":"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48873\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49209,"href":"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48873\/revisions\/49209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agrowingobsession.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}