In December, I posted about the cycads here but today was another open day and now that it's winter, the aloes are in flower and stealing the show.
Aloe vanbalenii, aka Octopus aloe
The yellow-flowered form of Aloe arborescens
I was there at midday so the light is quite harsh but I did what I could. These stemmed aloes are at least 50-80 years old and around 4m tall.
Below, the more usual red flowered Aloe arborescens, tree-sized Euphorbia, tree aloes and our extremely blue winter skies.
Most people know these aloes and others as pot plants but planted in the soil in the right climate brings them to their full sizes: this Adenia guards the gate - I can only hope that my little one can reach this size.
Another large, old fat caudiciform: Pachypodium suandersii or Kudu lily has gone dormant for winter and shed most of its leaves.
I haven't been around much because my country is in an electrical crisis and we are having anything from 7 to 13 hours of blackouts a day, I went to the open day to escape yet another, when I'm home, my other online work has to take precedence but it was great to go out and see such beauty in among the miseries of winter without electricity. Some of the orchids in the garden are flowering happily in the cold too. Lessons in resilience there...
Ian, the creator of this garden is extremely generous and allowed me to take quite a few cuttings of various epiphytic cacti, his garden is an inspiration for me to create more shade and grow them at my place. I'll show those another time