Earlier today John and I headed over to Balboa Park to the plant sale that was being held to benefit the local Master Gardener program. We got there 20 minutes before the door opened and there were already dozens of people there. To avert a dangerous rush at opening time–you know how rabid and out of control some of those plant people can get when faced with interesting plants at wholesale prices!–they were lining everyone up and handing out numbers.


Once the doors parted it was every gardener for him- or herself. There were tables of herbs, native plants, perennials, drought-tolerant plants, orchids, “unusual plants,” succulents, trees, all of them donated by the Master Gardeners themselves as well as a number of local growers.

We walked out the door with half a flat of various green critters, some fairly common (a couple more gauras to supplement those in the garden) as well as some we hadn’t seen before. John scored what was probably the oddest-looking plant in our little instant collection, a little plant of the paper spine cactus, Tephrocactus articulatus var. paprycanthus. In the end I guess it’s not that uncommon a plant to the local succulent specialists, but for us it’ll be that new weird wonder in the pots of succulents out back.