Yucca

Day 282: Valleys tend to be romanticized as fertile, loamy places where crops grow lushly in rich, black soil. Whoever created that myth obviously never met a glacier. This valley...my valley...is nothing but rocks and glacial flour overlaid with a thin layer of fill. Decent soil was brought in to give grass something to hold onto, at least on two sides of my house, but twenty feet from the structure, you're like as not to hit a Volkswagen-sized boulder if you can hack through the compacted silt layer to dig down three feet. Consequently, the farther away from the house foundation you get, the greater the need for clever xeriscaping. Enter the Yucca, purloined from my foster sister's house some years ago and plunked down in one of the least fertile spots in the yard. Tough as this plant may be, it has not spread as much as I'd hoped, although it valiantly struggles on and produces a flower spike every year.

It's A Bloomin' Yucca

Day 287: For all of what I said a few days ago about the Crocosmia's tendency to spread (you can see it in the background here), I approve of any plant which will reduce the amount of grass/weeds in my yard, so while I was visiting my foster sister last year, her husband and I teamed up and brutally sectioned one of her yuccas with shovels. Even jumping on mine, my weight was not sufficient to cut through the thick roots, so once Romy had loosened his side, he finished off mine and then the two of us grabbed the plant by its remaining rhizomes and pulled, a process which sent us tumbling backward in a sprawl of arms and legs when it finally let loose of its antipodeal anchor. The fact that we had so much trouble digging it out was a good sign for its survival, and even though it was thoroughly wilted by the time I arrived home, I was sure it would recover. I was right, and not quite a year later, it has put up its first spike of flowers: graceful bells as large as the end of a man's thumb, borne in a panicle which rises well above the mounded foliage. As for its location in the yard, I've given it plenty of room to make more little yuccas if it so desires.