Brad's Tropical Paradise

To my surprise and delight, the sansevieria pups that I got a couple of years ago are doing great. And I'd never even heard of sansevierias until a gardening friend gave me some pups. I'll see if I can explain. The most common sansevieria that you see around is usually called a "snake plant". If you're old enough, you will remember them being called "mother-in-law's tongue". And the most common variety looks similar to what I have growing here in the garden, but it's just slightly different. It's bluer, and I think that's why it does better in the heat. And it's HOT here. I'm in Glendale, a suburb of Phoenix, and the summer temperatures are always over 100, sometimes getting up in the teens. And since the humidity is very low, a lot of tropical plants won't grow, even if you give them all of the water they want. They simply dry out - I'm talking about most ferns, which I've killed over the years of experimentin...

I've had artificial turf (fake plastic grass) here in my backyard since 2006, which was a year after I got my first dog. I've found it to not only be wonderful for me, but it's great for dogs, especially as it's so hot here in the Phoenix area. When I first got this house, I tried to grow grass in the backyard. It was a huge mess, and no matter how diligent I was, there were still bare patches, and places with mud. The space is a small one, so I figured that I could do with hoses and sprinklers, which were a major pain to deal with. And the year after I got my first dog I invested in artificial turf. Now calm down there, no one is paying me to say this. I just like to think of how comfortable my dogs are, and that maybe other dogs would be able to enjoy what mine have. Mostly it's shade. It's also a lack of the mess of grass in a small space, tracking in mud into the house, and the problems associated with not quite seeing something that had been left...