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It has been a long time coming. A few weeks ago I gave up and was contemplating what I would plant after removing this apparent failure. A few days ago I noticed a little nub in the dirt. It is now clearly a new leaf. I need to check my photos to see exactly when these pups were removed but it must be close to three years ago. This is my last remaining Encephalartos nubimontanus pup to flush from the batch i removed.

Here’s an Encephalartos chimanimaniensis pushing out a flush in a crowded location, And here is a young Encephalartos laurentianus pushing out a tall flush. It was hard to get a good photo of it.

A few more unidentified Encephalartos flushing,

A few Encephalartos Longifolious flushing.

Thanks . A tornado destroyed what he originally planted in the mid 80’s. Most of what you see is from the 90’s and very early 2000’s.

this Chamaedorea radicalis, almost 11 years old from seed, courtesy of @doomsdave

They are real winner, iam surprised they take the cool weather well.

Lovely crownshaft of young Chrysalidiocarpus sp. mayotte. Almost looks like it should be in a pastry shop…

Those look very healthy there . I would have never thought that Fresno would be home to them. I bet he soaks them very well! Harry

My guess is the lighting. Copernicias LOVE lots of full blazing hot sun. Yours looks like its in filtered light.

Fantastique. Qu'allez-vous faire des jeunes plants ?

@Eric in Orlando Roughly the same here. Most of the deaths have been because folks removed stuff like Royals or Coconuts before giving it a shot to come back. @donalt The place looks great! Especially considering what went down in February! @Merlyn Pulling weeds, trunk cutting, and dumping daconil are scheduled events for this year's gardening decathalon. Your training should pay dividends. 😁

Plumeria in our neighborhood bloomed early this year and have been loaded with flowers ever since that early start. Here are a few in our yard which havd followed the neighborhood trend. It was a mild winter and spring and much hotter than normal along the coast of San Diego County this summer. How are the Plumeria doing in your garden or neighborhood this summer?

@Eric in Orlando I've also noted more Spindle deaths in my yard than Bottles. It might just be random chance, since both seem susceptible to bud rots. Either way, the "conventional wisdom" of Spindles being tougher doesn't seem to be true in my yard. My front porch Licuala Grandis is now showing signs of actual life! About a week ago I carefully trimmed all the dead frond bases down around the crown, trying to find if there are actually any spears. I found a double spear and cut back to expose it, and today I noticed both spears had grown about 0.25" taller and started opening with a hint of green!

I started some I got from big fish.They were not fresh, but not old. Sat in a baggie w/ moist vermiculite for at least 6 months. Nothing. I then stratified them in the crisper of my beer fridge in baggies. 2mos,then into a community pot in March with fluctuating temps. Saw sprouts in July or so. So it may be inconclusive to say that they need stratifying but my results indicated it was helpful. Reminds me I have a decent size bag of my own needle seeds I need to start Good luck

It is fig season, Socatran Island style. Actually it is in my backyard.

And in the middle of all the above, I spent a solid 6 days doing nothing but pulling weeds. It's for sure my least favorite task, especially with this new weed...er...hardy imported perennial. I've figured out how to deal with Artillery Fern (hand removal and 2,4-D), and most other weeds don't like to grow with a thick layer of mulch. Some pop up in March and die by April. Big ones like thistles or pokeweed or even potato vine are easy targets for hand pulling. However, this one popped up this year and is INCREDIBLY annoying. I'm not sure if it's Sida Acuta, Hyptis Verticillata, or something completely different. It has small white flowers and the bees love it, and it makes little green round seeds that seem to have a 500% strike rate. If you see this stuff, do NOT let it get started. The biggest problem is that it'll grow in thick mulch and loves to grow right up against the trunks of palms and cycads. So I'll miss one and then end up with 50 small seedlings growing in the middle of a spiky Dioon Edule cluster, and get stabbed many...many times trying to pull them all. The only good thing is that it doesn't seem to grow in the lawn. I guess the grass roots choke it out. I pulled 3 yard waste bags full of these beasties out of the NW corner:

@Harry’s Palms I've been doing the reciprocating saw thing for a while, but mostly for cutting up bamboos or old oak stumps. I had a "blinding flash of the obvious" this morning when prepping to move the Chamaerops. I'd used the saw to cut around the above Butia for trashing it, but it didn't occur to me that it might actually work better than just the shovel. When I sliced around the Chamaerops the slightly-damp sand stuck in place to the roots. So not only was it easy to move, but the root ball held in place instead of having all the sand fall off. If you are in dense clay and rock then a carbide-tipped blade is probably a good idea. I've been using the Diablo pruning 3tpi ones for all the stumps and bamboos. They stay sharp in sand for so many cuts that the eventual failure is snapping off at the tang instead of getting dull. I wish they weren't $10 each... I used an old Bosch RS7 for years on stumps until I finally destroyed it. I then made the mistake of buying a "counter weighted" Milwaukee saw, which was super smooth in regular cutting...until the blade gets stuck. Then the extra counterweight means extra super strong rip your arms from the sockets vibration. It was so bad that I went and bought a Bosch RS325 and tossed the Milwaukee in a cabinet as a "in case of emergencies only" saw.

Being so commonly sold as indoor plants, it's no surprise that so many Ravenea end up outdoors in people's yards in the Fresno area. I see them haphazardly thrown outdoors, usually after a poor performance as an indoor plant. Occasionally, I see them growing happily if they're near a lawn or sprinkler. I've even seen some with a few feet of trunk... but this one takes the prize. This has got to be the biggest pair of Ravenea in Fresno. Wow! You might mistake this for a neighborhood in SoCal, as opposed to the Central Valley. I feel like the anecdotal things about climate change from old-time gardeners in the Fresno area are substantive. I'm seeing lots of plumerias growing happily around town too - at first you notice one. Then the following year you notice more, and each year it seems there are more. Cassia fistula, fruiting mangoes, longan... all of these grown by adventurous gardeners, and somehow happily making it in this harsh climate. The USDA's latest zone update has a small pocket of 10a in the Fresno area to add a bit of weight to the anecdotal chatter too.

@kinzyjr I've been intentionally spacing things out more over the past year...and especially after the deaths from February 1st. Too many places looked just haphazard, like some crazy idiot just threw stuff into the ground at random. Oh wait, that's EXACTLY what happened! 🤪 In around 2023 I just decided I was going to plant out every single thing in my nursery area. Clearly that was a mistake. A bit more space makes it a lot easier to weed, prune, and not get stabbed every time I try to walk through an area...in addition to looking nicer when you can actually see each plant. When I've moved things to fill spots I've looked first as "does this empty spot need anything?" And then I've tried moving stuff from a too-congested area first, instead of buying new plants. The reason for moving the above Hookeriana and Dasyantha is that the Butia went from looking ok to d-e-d in a matter of days. This one has always had fungal spotting issues on the leaves, so I didn't really notice that the fronds were almost all dead. The above photo was on the 3rd, and I cut it down on the 7th when all of the slightly-blue fronds had completely died. The upper trunk and bud were brown rotted dead, and all the rachis & petioles were internally discolored. The most likely culprit is Thielaviopsis, due to the rapid death and the sickly sweet ripe-banana smell of the tissue. This makes sense because I was always having to chop off live fronds for driveway clearance. Bud rot smells like rotting garbage, Ganoderma kills the lower part (which was clean) and Lethal Bronzing/TPPD dries out the rachis instead of causing discoloration and ripe banana smell. Unfortunately I lost all the photos of the removal, because I left my old Samsung Galaxy S8 outside in a snap thunderstorm. It was waterproof...but not THAT waterproof! It had a good run after being retired from my actual cellphone. So now I'm using my wife's old S8 instead! To replace the Pindo I transplanted a decent-sized Encephalartos Whitelockii/Ituriensis from the backyard. I had planted a triple of those back in June 2020, and they just grew into an impenetrable mess of super-stabby thorny stems and leaves. Not only did it look bad, but it hurt a lot every time I had to prune it. So here's the final version:

Great job there . I feel so inferior, I planted one palm a week ago in our courtyard and I was in rough shape physically. It has been so hot here , plus humidity we’re not used to . I really like your transplant method , I may borrow that one. I did use a radial saw with a dull blade to carve through roots of mature palms so I could put pavers down . It was messy ( enter mask and safety goggles!) but it got the job done and the palms didn’t seem to mind , even the Archontophoenix . Harry

Today I half-trunk-cut the rear pygmy date in the above photo. It was just not growing new fronds, despite having some green on last year's burnt remains. The circled area is the top of the new spears. It's not promising. But I did the hydrogen peroxide + Daconil pour and the stuff towards the back didn't bubble...the front stuff did. I'll check in a few days and see if anything happens: In better news, the front doorway Licuala Grandis appears to be alive, for now! About a week ago I carefully cut back the older dead fronds from around the crown. This was tedious but I tried to find any signs of life. About 4 or 5 inches down I found two small spear tips, and cut about an inch below them. I did the hydrogen peroxide + Daconil here too. Today I saw the spears grown about 0.25" from my sharpie mark, and have opened up a little bit with green!!! Next to the Grandis maybe-a-survivor I moved a couple of others. Just to the right of the Grandis is now a Lanonia Dasyantha and an Arenga Hookeriana. These were planted in the NE corner under a Butia that suddenly died. The Peace Lily stub/volcano is slowly growing back too: Further along the porch are several clumps of the tall green/purple unidentified ginger, some white Caladium, a variegated Calathea Lubbersiana, and some slowly-regrowing Philodendron "Xanadu." The second Arenga Hookeriana is just to the right of the post:

@Merlyn You might not be 25 anymore, but the garden is looking pretty sharp with some extra space between the plantings.

More thoughts from Ben Noll: For anyone curious, In Depth dive by Ben regarding his thoughts on the potential impacts of what lies ahead.. As mentioned, ...and to take the wind out of any hype, right out of the gate.... while the likelyhood of the strongest El Nino on record looks pretty certain, when it comes to weather / WX forecasting, there is never a guarantee in any particular, on- the- ground outcome.. Day to day ..or long range / Seasonal, WX Model thoughts = guidance ..Not Gospel. That said, there isn't a longer range WX model that isn't leaning hard on the idea of a " wet / stormy for CA and the Southwest / rest of the southern U.S. " kind of winter right now. On top of this ...and unlike the non ENSO Teleconnections that led to a dud of a winter ( ...For CA at least ) back in '15 -'16, same non - ENSO teleconnections that had a strong negative influence on winter precip across CA / the Southwest that time around, seem to be lining up w/ the " anticipated, strong / extremely strong El Nino " outcome everyone has been talking about, this time around. Obviously, we won't know what actually happens, until ..it happens ..or doesn't.. For California, ( and quite likely having some deg. of influence further north ) issues tied to El Nino increased sea level height is one thing looks pretty certain / is already occurring atm. Current PENTAD Sea Surface Height chart ( Stormsurf ENSO Powertool data ) ... = a way to measure how much higher or lower the mean surface of the ocean is in X or Y area across an ocean basin at any given time.. + height anomalies = quite obvious along the Equator, indicating a large pool of warm water beneath the ocean surface. ( = El Nino signature ) Increasing + height anomalies along the Cen AM / Mexico / Baja and CA coast = effects of coastally trapped Kelvin Waves working their way north, up the coast of North America ( ..Same idea occurs along the Pacific coast of South America as well ) Warm colors = Sea surface is higher than normal. ( Warm water beneath the ocean surface = causes the surface to rise ) Cool colors = Sea surface is lower than normal. ( Colder than normal water below the ocean surface = Causes that particular area of the ocean to drop below the mean surface height *** Measurements are in centimeters, NOT temperature units. 8th... Low Pressure contour = back in view. Won't be surprised if it expands beyond the mere blip it is atm later. Also, as you can see, appears that from today forward, East Pacific will be under the influence of solid Westerly anomalies ( Red and Orange on the chart ) , ..which could usher in a sizable uptick in tropical activity in this part of the world. FYI: 120W Longitude = right under Pt. Conception ( in CA ) For ref: S.F. / San Jose = 122 W, Los Angeles = 118W, Phoenix = 111W. While he didn't give a specific time yesterday, Daniel Swain did mention he may have another El Nino - focused Youtube live session later this week / this weekend.

Here’s how it’s looking. Documenting this because who knows maybe someone will be in a similar spot as I am today. Spear is firm.