Setcreasea or Purple Queen

One of the beautiful purple groundcovers to choose from for our desert gardening is the Purple Queen or Setcreasea.  It makes an excellent addition to planters or areas that need some contrast against a green background.  These are really hardy in Tucson!!  They will grow easily for you and do need some regular water.  Plus they love sun.  BUT.....Setcreasea can get leggy and spread out losing it's beautiful form.  It came back from our severe frost and actually looks a lot fuller now because of the severe freeze.  It has cute little tiny whitish pink flowers surrounded by purple leaves.  This is a common plant that you'll see in town and is rather easy to transplant......plus it's hard to kill.  Let's look at how this plant is used in a planter setting.....

Look at how the purple leaves accent artistic garden features. It's best used like this in your garden in combination with other things.  It doesn't mind full sun at all and does require regular watering once established.  I don't think it looks attractive by itself, but when combined with other plants, it really stands out. This is a great and dependable performer in Tucson.  Just remember to water this plant and maybe trim it up every now and again when it starts to look scraggly.  Until next time.... 

Testing...

New Camera Tests....first on a Barrel Cactus

As promised, I wanted to update on this weekend's work in the garden.  It's still too hot in my opinion to be working outside, but the weeds are driving me nuts as are the mesquite pods....they must be cleaned up so I am working sections over the next several days to reclaim the garden and her glory:)

Cereus Monstrose Rojo..new to the garden

So I bought the Canon PowerShot SX20IS. It has exactly what I need, but I am trying to work on the settings right now.  It will take the detailed pics like you see here, but I have yet to figure out the focus so that when I hit the button, it will detail the pic and snap...right now, it just blurs.  I have some more playing around to do.

The Calamondin....a first

The plant above is a new citrus to me that is similiar to an orange, lemon, and lime combined....closer to the kumquat. I'll try it out and see what happens:)

Maybe it's just switching one little thing on the camera for zoom in capability.

The settings seem fine as do the detail

So I know it's possible....

Mexican Bird of Paradise

I have no idea what happened here..but it's a hazy cool...

This was the shot I was trying to get....again the detail

I've learned words such as aperture and ISO and I think it's the aperture I'm trying to fix.....

I've hit the reset to the original settings numerous times.......

Our neighbor's kitty Simon......

A painting I purchased in Mexico

HELP!!!  Yes...these are fine....but um...it took 500 hundred test shots and I still can't focus doesn't want to focus on command for me:(