It occurs to me that nearly every single one of my houseplants is in need of repotting.
Every. Single. One.
If you care to indulge my plant geekery, read on for my current houseplant inventory…
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Category Archives: house
Gardening: Year Four
Year One (2004): Moved into the new house in March. Planted $100 worth of nursery plants in April. Killed every blessed one.
Year Two (2005): Received free plants from work and bought seedlings online. Planted miniature daffodils that Sheryl gave me for my birthday. Only the daffodils lived to see another Spring.
Year Three (2006): Planted daylilies from Scott at work in Fall 2005. Bought plants in a white elephant sale in the Spring. Started seeds indoors. Daylilies came up grandly; plants died before I planted them; only catnip and lemon basil seedlings survived the furry aminal seige once planted outside. The previous year’s mini daffodil bulbs came up, albeit a touch weakly.
Year Four (2007): Impending. Daylilies currently showing leafy growth. One lone mini daffodil has already peeked out its little head, only to get snowed on. Catnip is still MIA, although I have high hopes. Scott got me greenhouse tulips that have already bloomed and done their piece; I plan to plant the bulbs outside after the leafy growth dies back.
Today, I spent some quality time with my lone surviving Rose of Sharon cutting. The ones I brought from the old apartment died off over time, but one of the cuttings from Scott is still alive and kicking. I’ve had it in perlite (a rooting medium) for nigh on two or three years now. I forget. At any rate, I repotted it this evening into a large plastic pot, leftover from my unfortunate garden center trip of 2004. I’m not sure what its root system is *supposed* to look like, but what it’s got is a long, stringy root system with feathery branchings-off here and there. The root system, stretched out, is probably one and a half times as long as the stick-with-leaves is tall.
So, I’m planning to set the Rose of Sharon outside once the danger of frost is past, in hopes of getting it growing upward more, branching out a little, and getting used to the outside. I don’t know if I’ll try to plant it this fall yet, but hopefully it’ll at least like its new home. Hopefully I didn’t just sign its death warrant, as I so often do with my garden plants.
The key for me? Finding low-maintenance plants that can stand being forgotten about for up to two weeks. Plants that don’t require daily watering. Plants that won’t kick it over the winter if I don’t get the mulch down in time. Yes, I am a neglectful gardener. But I still like plants. And gardening.
Filling In The Gaps
Since some fantastic small furry animal (perhaps now gathered together with several of its friends in a cave and grooving with a pict?) ate my sweet basil, I decided to start some new plants indoors. Three sweet basil, three lemon basil, and three lavender. They’re currently living under the plant lamp, which is on a timer, and they’ve been there for… three days? Four? Something like that. All three sweet basil are almost an inch tall, the lemon basil are over half an inch tall — the two that germinated, anyway — and the lavender aren’t doing crap.
I thought maybe I got three duds. So I planted a couple more yesterday, in the same peat pellet pots. No love today.
So, I went online to check the germination time of lavender. (I believe the internet before I believe the seed packet.) And what do I find? Lavender can take up to a month to germinate! I might have to research some alternate germination methods (in the fridge?!) to make these babies grow.
Oops. Who knew?
So Much To Say
Back still hurts like a mofo. I made an appointment with a local chiropractor for tomorrow right after work, so hopefully that’ll set me on the road to recovery. Every time I try to stand up, I swear vehemently at no one and declare that this is fucking bullshit. I’m looking forward to living without lower back pain again.
Man, WTF. I’ve never fucked myself up this bad before.
Anyway. Not that we’ll be doing it this weekend, being that my back’s still fuckered up, but the next room to paint is the dining room. Home improvement veterans, I could use some design opinion assistance.
Aaron still isn’t sure what to think of Sheryl’s idea to build the color palette around the awesome bachelor pad lamp. I’m having a time of it myself. I have to decide a.) what color to paint the living room and upstairs hallway (preferably the same color, as they share a wall), and b.) what color to paint the adjoining dining room. I’m unsure what would make the space seem bigger: painting the dining room a darker color, so it seems to extend farther back than it really does; or painting the dining room the same color as (or even lighter than?) the living room.
My general idea for the color of the living room is for it to contrast the lamp. Light enough to contrast against the base, and dark enough to contrast the shade. My original thought was the Bagel color (these are swatches from Behr paints), as I was trying to match one particular color on the palette I pulled from the lamp (above — and yes, all those colors were sampled directly from the lamp photo). Now that I see the potential wall shades all together, though, I’m thinking I prefer a tan to an orange. I mean, I spent over ten years of my life hating being stuck with an orange and brown and school, and now what do I start planning for my living room? Yeah.
Anywhozit, I’m trying to create an understated wall and general color palette, so that the lamp is actually an accent against other more muted earth tones. I’m thinking of going back to behr.com and starting with the Chai Latte color as a jumping-off point for other earth tones. I can’t reconcile the idea of having a living room, hallway, and dining room the color of dried pumpkin. Might look nice, but it’s not really my thing.
And for one last Martha Stewart moment: I just started a few more seeds tonight. Three lemon basil, three lavender, and three sweet basil. I’m planning to put them in a planter indoors. Maybe I’ll transplant the lavender outside after it’s grown big enough — like, next year. Until then, it’ll get harvested and eaten like the other herbs.
OMG. The entire weedy area by the house is going to be overtaken by catnip! …And I’m OK with that. ^_^
Getting Back In Touch With My Garden
While I was home today, nursing my lower back, Aaron suggested that I go into the back yard and check out the plants that are actually thriving on my benign neglect.
Turns out that the tiger lilies daylilies that I planted back in the fall are not only big and bushy, but are about to bloom! They’re currently sporting tall stalks topped with large orange buds. A photo op will soon be had.
The roses of sharon that I kept in my watering can are still green, while the one I planted in the ground is officially a dead stick. I can deal with hydroponic altheas, I suppose. Maybe someday I’ll manage to plant them somewhere appropriate.
My herb garden was the big shocker for me. I’d just about given up on it after the fuzzy aminals ate all my parsley and sweet basil. All that was left was catnip and two lemon basil plants.
The catnip are a freakin’ foot tall now. And the lemon basil plants are healthy and bushy. Who knew?
I harvested several stalks of catnip, and have some catnip tea chilling in the fridge right now. (I think I put too much honey in it, though. Oops.) I currently have about five stalks of catnip hanging in my dining room, and I have every intention of making Mei a cute catnip toy with The Good Stuff™, as soon as it dries.
Moral of the story? Bulbs good. Invasive herbs good (for my gardening style, anyway). High-maintenance plants not so good.