Photos

In agave da vida, honey

This strong, brave blue agave plant began as a shoot from our neighbor’s place in San Francisco. It had grown under a fence and through a rock wall with its point facing east instead of up. I put it in a pot for a while, and while it got pretty big, it didn’t really flourish like an agave should.

A couple years later, with great difficulty, I hauled the agave down to Aptos and put its ten feet of potbound roots in the ground. It doesn’t get as much sun as it would like in that spot, but it’s still growing into a big, fearsome plant. It’s also spawned about eight new plants.

The other day, I saw a shaft of light illuminating the slow process of a new leaf unfolding. These things are like the tortoises of the plant world — it’ll be another couple weeks before the leaf opens fully.