I recently visited family in Escondido. Just a few days before I arrived, the area was deluged with 4 inches of rain in a single day. The result was spectacular – many cacti and succulents were blooming. My brother and sister-in-law's home overlooks a nature preserve near Lake Hodges, and the canyon was alive with not just the color, but all kinds of birds: woodpeckers, finches, hummingbirds, roadrunners, raptors, pelicans, to name a few, and mammals. I heard coyotes calling to each other at night and noticed their scat on the hiking/biking trail behind his home the next morning. I am surprised that I didn't see any snakes as warm as it was (90 degrees one afternoon), while I was out walking their dog.
What really caught my eye, though, was a garden easily seen from my brother's backyard. I last visited my brother about 2 ½ years ago and hadn't noticed it then, but this garden has been being built slowly ever since the Witch Fire totally blackened the area in October, 2007. I was told that the homeowner's gardener had asked the homeowner if he could take the prunings from the succulents in the front garden, propagate them and plant them in the backyard on the slope running down to the hiking trail. The homeowner had no problem with the idea. The gardener continues to fill in the slope with the propagated plants from the front and now from prunings from the back yard, too.
All of you propagating plants for the next plant exchange, here is what one person's effort can reap.