Century Plant Triplets--7th Week Lookit the Tops!

April 15 (tax day!) was a beautiful blue-sky day, and the subjects' details crisper than on April 8. Amazingly, these century plants continued upward growth even while continuing to grow outward. And the bloom clusters grew bigger. The pixstrip shows the agave triplets pics for those two days. (Click for larger older/newer side-by-side image.)

Last week, although I talked about gauging heights, the image of a couple in front of their own century plant triplets piqued my interest more than just guestimating the stalks' heights. During the browsing, I landed on Ross Family Photographs, where the same picture had the accompanying text "Will and Mary Ross by century plant in their yard in Burnet, TX, about 1948; he was so proud when it bloomed -- and three bloom stalks is rare".

I noticed a link to Will and Mary's 50th anniversary, which occurred in 1952. I wrote the website owner, Doris Ross Johnston, to talk about the plant and the couple—that it is nice to have such an interesting plant and the couple for height reference, and info about the long marriage, particularly so long ago. Doris noted, "Grandma and Grandpa were rather unusual for that time to have a Golden wedding anniversary. I think it's more common now that people usually live longer."

I wanted revisit heights this week, with a slight bit of refinement. I used a copy of this week's picture to further refine use of the street sign's height (two feet) to indicate how tall the plants are. I started with the bottom edge of the first sign in line with the start of the street sign post. From there, I stacked multiple images. At the top of the plants, I pasted sign images horizontally, with some offset by half the heights (one foot).

Observations about the previous to newer week:

• All three look about a foot taller than the previous week.
• Lefty reaches halfway up the "hangman's noose", and is champeen at 24 feet. (I don't know what that wiry formation is or does.)
• Peewee reached the upper wire (18 1/2 feet).
• Righty's up to 22 feet.

My thoughts of the pic for that day:

Much clearer day for taking pix! A bit more blossomy development, more noticeable at the tops. Peewee in the middle's doing pretty good also!

Index to my agave posts, from the time I first spotted the set of triplets in early March to mid-June, about 3 1/2 months.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16