Plants I'm growing: Cuckoos and Clocks, Aloes and Woes

It's said that English gentleman used to vie for the honor of reporting the first cuckoo call of spring each year. (I wonder how many imagined cuckoo calls got mixed in with the real ones and how much paper and ink was consumed staking the claim?) No doubt, the origin of the cuckoo clock is buried in there somewhere. Quaint.

OK, I admit it. I like this way of marking the passage of a year. Englishmen used cuckoos. Egyptians used the flooding of the Nile. I suppose there are any number of natural cycles that could be tracked to gauge the duration of a year. Over time, it would be interesting to see how closely these approximate the astronomical year. It wouldn't surprise me to learn there are people whose hobby it is to follow some natural indicator of the passing of time. So, this is hardly a new idea. I like it nevertheless. 

For several years I've made half-hearted attempts to record the first bloom date of the various plants in our rather diverse garden as a way of marking time. Kept up long enough and carefully recorded, a record of these dates might provide a bit of interesting quaintness for someone to ponder in the future. Typically, I have scribbled notes on scraps of paper and then promptly lost them or given up mid-year. In short, I've never really made a go of this little project. With January 1st looming, however, I'm thinking of trying again. Dates reported here might be easier to keep track of than scraps of paper. Stay tuned. 

Our Aloe arborescens (a large aloe native to South Africa) put up a flower stalk this year for the first time. I've waited several years for this plant to bloom. What else offers showy spikes of bright red flowers in the middle of December? So unexpected, so welcome. Unfortunately, the plant is sensitive to frost. Planted with its back to a stone wall that blocks wind and radiates heat from the sun, it's well protected, but the single flower stalk has blackened and gone limp, a rather depressing development. I will have to wait another year for the chance to see it, a year spent wondering if it will bloom. When it's time to put up another shoot around Christmas, will I be able to see it? I don't know. I can only wait. Perhaps I will be able to use the annual withering of my hopes for this blossom as one of my garden indicators of the annual cycle; it may simply be too cold for it.

(The plants here were photographed at the Strybing Arboretum, in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco.)