Rare butterfly sighted

Today Matt and I went to PG and PRG to plant some plants, look at the work done by Tomas and his crew at PRG yesterday, and yes, weed some weeds.

Starting at PRG we uncovered some Agave "Sharkskin" that were being engulfed by Artemisias. You can see the problem in the before and after shot, left.  Agaves don't like to be damp and shaded, and will rot if nearby plants grow over them, so keeping them weeded is important.

After that we planted three gorgeous specimens of Agave ocahui - a lovely donation from Emily who lives on the peninsula. Thanks Emily! Hopefully these three will turn into nice 2' wide plants along the pathway. 

The name "ocahui" was the name was used by the indigenous Sonoran Desert population for "fiber" and "cordage" because the leaf fibers of this Agave were used to make rope. Another common name is Amolillo - a reference to the tradition of making soap from the leaves.

After that, we put in five small Agave "Blue Flame" to go with the four larger ones already in place.  This is a nice, soft, medium-sized agave that pups a lot, so there will be more to come. Always good - we often try to pick Agaves that produce lots of offsets so we will have more in the future.

Lastly we planted two very small Dracaena draco plants. This is the gorgeous and rare Dragon Tree, and we have one at PRG already.  They are painfully slow growing though, and will get to tree size probably after Matt and I are too old to enjoy them. Consider it our gift to future Potrero Hill!

After all that we headed up to PG and took photos and just enjoyed the garden. It's lovely right now - and you might get to see something I saw today, the rare pipevine swallowtail, Battus philen. This stunning black and blue butterfly only lives for a few weeks and only eats California pipevine - you can read more about them, and one man's efforts to help them, here. Why it was at the garden, I don't know, but I really appreciated seeing it. Sorry the photo is so bad!