Plants

I am REALLY starting to figure out the indoor plant thing!! I have had some great plant teachers though! The boys were talking last night about how old a couple of my plants were. I had not thought about it, but a couple of these came with us when we moved up here from TX. I figure they are close to five years old!

These are my "teachers" and their sad stories!

This is the oldest plant.

It has really survived a lot!! When I first got this plant it looked similar to this:

As a small baby plant, it got beat up by a small baby human named Isaac. Isaac pulled the plant out of the pot. Luckily it was not long after I repotted it from the store pot. It had not had time to root into the new soil, so I was able to save it. I was not sure that it would survive, but that was five years ago, and two moves ago! It really needs some grooming - cut off the stems that can't stand anymore - but those are the original stems - hate to cut them off!

The small plant is one of my newest plants. I figured I did so good with the first one - I would try again. They are easy to keep in the house because they don't like direct sunlight - it burns the leaves. So I can put them ANYWHERE (not in the sun) in the house and they do great. I only water when the soil is bone dry - that is important survival trick for them because I frequently forget to water!

This is another that has survived two moves, but was not pulled out of the soil by little hands!

It is another one that does not need direct sunlight and the best part...it actually TELLS me when it is thirsty. I don't water it until it starts to wilt. When it starts wilting I give it lots of water - til it comes out of the pot and fills the tray underneath it.

This one has the saddest story though:

I have had this one for probably around two years. It had gotten really stringy and ugly and needed a lot of trimming. It had been hanging outside at the old house, but when we moved I had no where outside to hang it, so I put it on the fence in the backyard. It froze MANY MANY times last winter because I forgot about it until it looked to bad to save. For some reason, even though it was dead, brown and really ugly, I never took it down from the fence. This spring when we started doing work outside, I went to throw it away and noticed it had new sprouts. So, I decided to cut all the dead off, leave it outside and see what it would do. I never remembered to water it - it only got rain water. Somehow it survived. I brought it in the house when it started getting cold out again. I made a spot for it (for now anyway) in the kitchen. It was growing good, the shape was uniform all the way around - until this week. Late Saturday night I watered all the plants with Miracle Grow. This is the first time THIS plant has had Miracle Grow. All of the tall sprouts are new since Saturday night. This plant REALLY loves Miracle Grow! I think he deserves a nice pretty pot now!

I also have a fairly new ivy (different kind from the two above). I am still trying to learn this fellow! He needs more sunlight than the other two, so I am still experimenting with where he needs to be. And I have two African Violets. I had one before we moved that I had had for a LONG time. They are finicky little plants though. It had a perfect spot at the old house, and I could not find that spot here. I decided a couple of months ago to try again. I got two new plants and put them both in my bathroom (I have a glass block window and the sun never shines directly in it). I was concerned that there would not be enough light through the glass blocks, but I have had flowers blooming constantly since I got them!

Hopefully, now that I have bragged on them all and how well they are doing, I did not jinx it. My luck - by next week they will all be DEAD!!