Flower Friday : : Iceplant

Iceplant is often called 'freeway plant' because it was planted along many freeways in California to stabilize the soil and prevent erosion, but it is very invasive and will choke out any less aggressive plants in the area. When we looked at this house the first time...and the only time before we bought it... this entire strip between our lawn and the street was nothing but blooming pink and orange ice plant. It was almost psychedelic as one rounded the curve in the road and caught the first glimpse of them.

They bloomed for about a month, and then reverted to a dead looking ground cover. In fact, when an unusually heavy frost killed it all, we didn't realize it until it didn't bloom the following year, and we had to have it all taken out. Our neighbors were not happy with us for this until we explained to them that it was actually dead....

A few very small patches were left, and have managed to grow and make quite a comeback. I took this picture this morning as I rounded the corner.*  The roses behind them are healthy and bloom vigorously, but the deer love roses and there is no deer fence there...we rely on a product called, oddly enough,  'Deer Fence' which is a spray that smells bad to deer (people too) and prevents them from smelling their natural predators, so they stay away. The problem is that it has to be reapplied frequently, which doesn't always happen, and then the deer are back in a trice, enjoying their flowery dessert.

Tomorrow we are off on our AMTRAK adventure to Denver. So far, the most adventurous part is that we have no guarantee that we will be able to find any long term parking...

OilMan says, 'well, if we can't find a place to park, we could just keep driving'...sounds like it might make an interesting movie....

*There is a close-up of the flowers in extras.