A Succulent Kind of Summer

As we work through our backlog of non-reported activities, we thought we'd share a quick post on Round One: Battle Heat and Drought.

For Christmas L picked up some fabulous planters for me at a local Gordman's in a style I had been trying to hunt down for a reasonable price for quite some time. They're a thin grey metal of some sort, with a tapered square shape. We managed to snag three on the cheap (in varying heights), so when warm weather finally came our way we headed to our favorite local nursery in search of flora beauty.

Given Oklahoma's hot, dry climate during the summer, and our love for modern landscapes, we decided to go with a combination of cacti and succulents. The result? Sheer beauty! There are so many varieties of succulents that I can never remember any of their names (except for maybe chicks and hens), but I love how alien they can look. The ones below remind me of little tentacles, but we spotted a few at the nursery that looked a lot like human organs. Very. Neat. 

So why do we say Round One: Battle Heat and Drought? Well, as you may know, Oklahoma suffered one of the hottest, driest summers on record with the majority of June and July being 100* or above. So even though these little beauties are built for arid conditions, even they couldn't survive the summer (except for the star-shaped guy below). Their loss was sufficiently mourned at our house, but we eventually decided we had to move on and replace the little guys. We'll be back with more later this week on the plants currently occupying our planters.