Scorching weather once more! I nearly got around to removing the shading from my greenhouse  during the cold spell last week. Now I am glad I was too lazy.  More and more Lithops budding up.  In a couple of weeks they should be looking really good.

            I was in the garden last week trying to decide what was nibbling the leaves of some of my succulents outdoors when a movement caught the corner of my eye.  My first impression was that it was one of these huge brown slugs that often put in an appearance after the rain but this was moving too quickly and was not shiny and slimy.  I then wondered if it was a small snake. On closer inspection I found the biggest caterpillar I had ever seen.  It was nearly four inches long and thicker than my little finger.  It was dark brown with pronounced “eye” markings.  My reference books told me that it was an Elephant Hawk Moth, and that it likes to eat Willow Herb and Fuchsia, I could add Aeonium and Echevaria to that!    I didn’t have the heart to murder it but I did move it to another part of the garden where it was less likely to do lasting damage.

It was interesting to visit the different collections on Gloucester Branch Open Day last month. John Foster’s collection of Senecios must be one of the best in the country, I didn’t know so many Senecios existed.  One of the growers we visited had his Ferocacti outdoors for the summer.  He explained that the rain washed off the nectar that tends to leave black marks on the plants.  I put mine outside when I got home and the rain certainly seems to have washed them clean. I just hope that this return to hot sunshine doesn’t scorch them when they are not used to being outside – we shall see.

Last year I carefully harvested the seeds from my Dorstenia Foeteda. I had about twenty and spaced them out carefully on a seed tray and waited, and waited. After a while two seedlings put in an appearance, six months later one more germinated and after a further month yet one more.  So in ten months four seedlings have grown. Meanwhile around the original plant and in the pots of the surrounding plants on the bench, seedlings are springing up all over the place!!  Isn’t nature interesting?