Hi Tarev, yes I have had good luck with shade too! For my noids, keeping them under the dappled light of my mulberry trees or on the far side of my patio that gets morning sun works for them in summer. I think this year everyone will have to spend the summer on my patio because I made the mistake of mentioning to my father while he was over that I needed to prune my trees and when I next looked outside he had done it for me and done it too well
So now I am busy moving things around before we get the heat wave coming this weekend! Supposed to be 107 here. The best thing about the heat is that my lemon verbenas grow like weeds when it is hot.
I wonder of all arachnoideums do well in heat? Maybe that is why Cebenese is sold here so often. My tomentosum arachnoideums have grown more in the heat as well!
Sorry to hear about your Kalinda
I had something similar on one of mine a few weeks ago but the next day they were gone, some good insect must have come along. It was almost like a cochineal insect I sometimes see on my prickly pears, a ball of very sticky white goo when I pulled one off with a toothpick. But no dye.
Where do you buy chicken grit? We have several feed stores here but none of them carry it so I have always just used crushed gravel. All anyone seems to carry here is pigeon grit, but it has charcoal and minerals added to it.
Here are some pictures of some of my oldest semps, taken today. You can see where the squirrel nibbled some of them the other night. The one off to the side has all of its offsets between its leaves this year! I kept waiting for it to push them out on stolons but it hasn't. The last picture is flowers from two of my S. ciliosum which began flowering several weeks ago.