O·a·sis  | /ōˈāsis/ | Noun

With our moving truck still missing (I haven’t heard from them once since they hauled my stuff away 3 weeks ago) it has become increasingly challenging to remain calm and keep focused on the positive. And it probably goes without saying, but finding entertainment inside an empty house is getting a little hard to come by as well. Fortunately the weather has been gorgeous here…perfect gardening weather!

So while my gardening skills are pretty much maxed-out with silk plants and pre-cut blooms from the grocery store, I decided to give succulents (real plants!) a try. Rumor has it they are pretty difficult to do away with. After watching a handful of YouTube videos on how to plant succulents and feeling only marginally more prepared, my daughter and I trekked off to the local hardware / nursery store and dove right in.

Time to create a mini oasis! Back home I poured my special cactus mix soil (supposedly good for succulents…but we’ll see) into the large pot I’d picked out and started arranging the plants in the soil. I didn’t really have a rhyme or reason for where each plant ended up…I just wanted there to be nice contrast and a bit of a wild feel about the finished look.

The thing is, that even though I have been a horrid gardener up to this point in my life, I have always had a deep affinity for succulents. They will forever remind me of childhood visits with my grandparents here in California. As a kid who lived neck-deep in snow most of the year in Minnesota and Montana, stepping off the airplane and into a place warm with sun and brimming with plants and flowers was something more than just a little bit magical to me.

So now that I have my very own little spot of planted magic, I’m going to be keeping a watchful eye on it…and will hopefully have nothing but good news to report about it’s progress as the year goes on. Maybe one day soon I’ll even have a chair (what a novel idea) to prop beside it where I can watch the sun set in our neighborhood. How beautiful would that be?!

By the way, I’m by no means a plant expert. But after sharing a photo of my little succulent plantings over on Instagram a request for plant identification came in. So since most of the pots that my plants came in were not labeled, I made a trip back to the store and wrote down all the names that I could find to share with you here today (hence all the succulent identification above). If you notice that I got anything wrong, please feel free to send the correct details my way! I hope they will come in handy for you if you decide to create your own little succulent oasis someday soon. xo Ez

P.S. For those of you wondering…it turns out that we legally have to give the moving company 21 “business days” (not 21 actual days) to return our things to us. This is why you haven’t yet seen me calling these horrid people out all over social media. When the time comes I promise to tell you know exactly who they are so that you can keep yourself and everyone you care about as far away from them as humanly possible!