Into The Rabbit Hole

We totally loved on our plants tonight. I love lovin on the plants. We re-potted more than twenty of them. Gave them the love we’ve been meaning to give them but never found the time to. Thank Goddess for Christmas break, right???

The house is looking rather jungle-y. I’m a big fan of jungle-y.

You might think I’m weird for this, but I’m going to tell you for the sake of you either thinking, “My she’s weird,” or, “Hey, that’s rather cool.”

Okay, ready? I think plants have feelings. Yes, I said it. I could see the sighs of relief for some of these guys. It was like stretching out, perking up, turning a deeper shade of green. No, I wasn’t stoned. I swear it.

Wouldn’t it be cool to have a plant nursery? Perhaps one day I will. (In my copious free time, of course, after I’ve become a doctor and all, because doctors have uber lots of free time.)

So, here’s the secret to keeping plants alive: Love them. Love on them. Water them when they’re thirsty. They’ll tell you they’re thirsty through their soil and through their leaves. Give them the right amount of sunlight. If they’re losing their color, then you’re giving them either too much or too little sunlight. Give them exercise. This means you turn them as the grow towards the light. Give them nutrients, through their soil and through fertilizer. It doesn’t have to be sheep poop, either. They make these wild concoctions that are poop free and you just sprinkle a little into their soil. That’s about the secret to having a green thumb… Basically plants just need you to pay attention to them.

This is a schefflera:

A few of our scheffleras have scales. Sad. So, we have some spray for them. It’s “systemic,” which I guess means that you have to use them repeatedly to kill the bugs. We’ve been spraying them, and one of the scheffleras is doing better, so we sat her down on the kitchen floor and used steak knives to scrape the little effers off of her. I think she’s going to do juuuuust fine. There’s another one who was locked in the bedroom (and left alone) for a bit longer than probably was appropriate. But we picked her up, gave her some water, shined her leaves, and named her Stella. I’ll bet you she lives another twenty years. One of our scheffleras is almost fourteen feet tall. She’s a monstrous tree and possibly my favorite ever. Of course, then there are the Wandering Jews, which we’ve renamed to the less offensive scientific name “Tradescantia.” The purple ones that we have a whole lot of are called Tradescantia Zebrina. Yunno, like the teenage witch. Here’s a picture of a Zebrina:

In the sunshine, these leaves usually glitter with silver and gold flecks. Marvelous, no?

We got a peace lily for Christmas from my aunt Lori. This is officially a really super cool ass plant. Look, this is what they look like:

Look at those dashing buds. (hee hee, I make me chuckle.)

We also have some really rad cacti, but I don’t know much about cacti, so I won’t give you any pictures. One time, when I’m not busy stealing other people’s pictures from the internet, I’ll take pictures of our cacti and post it here for you.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed hearing about yet another one of my hobbies. *grin* Taking care of plants was extremely therapeutic for us, especially after having the kids all weekend with no outside time because the back yard is muddy. You should try it sometime!!!