I Heart Succulents

This past year I have fallen head over heels in love with succulents. I know, I know....where the heck have I been? This love has passed onto Charlie Bravo too and last month, I came home one day to this:
Our very own succulent garden on our balcony! Some were cuttings from a friend, some were bought and the large terra cotta bowl in the upper right was left on our street one day. What a score. You could bathe a small child in there, it's that big.

Using the succulents in my plant cozies have been a match made in heaven. I'm not sure what it is....maybe that they both look so touchable. You always want to squeeze succulents (ok, well at least I do. Some look like pillows!) and I guess my felted goodies are squeezable too. Voila! A match!
With succulents in mind, I had been meaning to visit a fabulous nursery in the Bayview area of San Francisco, so we finally made a trip out there last week. Before going though, I read up on what Flora Grubb was all about and I think Dwell magazine summed it up quite nicely (read it here), calling her place "the hippest plant merchant in the Bay Area" and "the greenest and most charming garden store and nursery in SF". Lordy, lordy they were NOT kidding. Flora's place was the most beautiful, artistically designed gardening oasis that I've ever been to! It has an urban, art studio vibe to it, very open and lofty in the great boutique area, complete with yummy coffee by Ritual Coffee and a very helpful staff. We stayed quite a while, making sure to cover every inch of it.....soaking up the succulents (oh the choices!) and browsing the books. I purchased the funniest looking things there, something called a lithop which also go by "Living Stones" since they have this funky prehistoric rock formation thing going on. They remind me of the bottom of an animals foot or elephant toes....just bizarre but I love them!

Right before we left, we discovered something that totally took us by surprise:
An huge framed planter of succulents on a wall! This thing was really big, at least 6 feet wide. So stunning. You can see me holding the lithops in the middle. Funny, huh?

Ok, one last succulent shout-out.
A while back, Donna of Re-Surface sent me pic of her plant cozy complete with a fuzzy succulent. I'm smitten :)