Resurrection

A day or two ago as I was looking over my airplane plant (aka spider plant, but I don’t call it that since some people are so frightened of spiders, I don’t want to prejudice them), I noticed that one cluster of “babies” was the wrong color and knew something was wrong. Eyes are some of the best gardening tools! As I looked over the limp gray-greenness, I was pretty sure that the plantlet’s connecting branch had somehow been broken. It had.


Airplane plants can be easily propagated from these “babies” but usually only when they’re cut and planted right away. However, I’ve not had success in planting the “dead” ones. But I had a pot of soil and decided that I had nothing to lose if I planted this one. Maybe some TLC would pull it through; would it thrive like others (2nd picture) I had cut and planted—I didn’t know. I potted and watered and put it in the least sunny place in the garden (any difference in sunlight is incremental though since in the afternoon the entire garden is ablaze).


This morning when I checked on it, I was pleased to find that it was making a come-back! It’s not yet fully flourishing like its brothers but it’s on its way—a kind of resurrection. Since the morning some years ago when I collapsed and showed no signs of life until my husband shouted, “Be alive in Jesus’ name!” and I was, I’ve been reluctant to give up too easily. Even when things show no signs of life.

I’ll keep you posted on “Lazarus” airplane plant.

Elbow Room

This morning I noticed that my Persian Shield leaves are always upright when they normally spread to show their beautiful purple and silver markings (as in last year's plant in the photo on the far left).

Though it’s tempting to pack the plants into the space, they really do need some elbow room. So I moved the pots out a bit to give the Persian Shield some room to spread its leaves; that’s the beauty of a container garden—you can rearrange it to suit your design, and the plants’ needs.

New Clothes

A sign that it’s getting (slightly) cooler is that I had no trouble staying out in the garden for hours. My other work sometimes gets jealous but it’s good and healthy to get outdoors for awhile. After all, the first work that God assigned to people was gardening. The Garden of Eden was also the first home for them. Sometime, I’d like to explore the possibilities of what the garden needed from them.

Today, in my garden, I found the tall, spindly Mexican Petunia (Ruella) toppling over so I knew it was time to give it a bigger pot. My sister, who lives in a hotter climate talks about her purple-flowered ones all the time; they’ve been the trendy new thing in our garden centers the last couple of years, so I decided to try one. When I bought it, it had flowers on it. They were shriveled from the heat by the time we got it home. I haven’t seen a flower on it since (2 months!). Nothing seems to have helped. It gets plenty sun and water; I even fertilized it. “Don’t fertilize it,” she exhorted, “it’s a weed!” Maybe it needs a bigger pot or “new clothes”… Definitely. As you can see in the picture, a large root ball had grown outside the pot. I gingerly cut the plastic pot away (recyclable)—had it been a clay pot I would have carefully worked as many of the roots (without soil) as I could back through the hole and lost the rest.

An orchid cactus cutting I was given and hurriedly stuck in the “corner” of a pot of airplane plants also got its own pot. It will likely stay in the indoor part of my garden since it prefers indirect sun. Angel Face Angelonia also has its own pot now to encourage as much growth as possible before it winters indoors.

Time for a Haircut

My yellow-green sweet potato vine is thriving—all over the place. I’ve taken cuttings before to root in clear vases of water indoors but it’s time for more. I’ve enjoyed the beauty of the cuttings indoors so much that I’ve been reluctant to pot them outdoors. Encouraged by new cuttings on the way, I finally moved one to a large pot out front. By the look of the long loop of roots, I waited longer than is ideal. (The roots are pink!) It takes a little while for a plant with water roots to adapt to soil but with care, a plant this vigorous has no problem. In fact they’re so vigorous that they need a big pot since they grow a good-sized tuber or sweet potato (non-edible) underground. The pot therefore gets heavier as the tuber and its vine grows.

The best time to see the hummingbird, I’ve discovered, is morning but today as the temperature climbed I came face to face with him or her over the geranium.

Last night our gullies were again washed—this time with a bang!

Color!

Since I’m an artist, color is essential to me (or maybe it’s the other way around). It’s fairly easy to find the purple and magenta flowers that are the backbone of my garden but the orange ones that complete my color vision are harder to find. I found these orange zinnias marked down at the local garden center and finally have some orange. (I do have a touch of orange with my million bells but I’ll write about that in a future post.) The garden centers are beginning to mark things down more every week but the longer one waits for “just the right price”, the more TLC will be required.


This variety usually does well in my garden, unlike its cousin a deep pink “cherry” mini zinnia that re-blooms in white with a tinge of pink—nothing like the magenta double-flowered beauty I bought at a garden center. The same thing happened last year. Hmm, I wonder if they’re like flamingos, which have to eat certain crustaceans to maintain their beautiful color? Whatever the problem, they apparently didn’t like Friday’s FOUR INCHES of rain since I found two of them dead this morning. Hopefully, next year I’ll resist their temptation. That’s part of the fun of gardening though, to try things and see what works and what doesn’t, to learn and then move on. (Recommended for gardening—not marriage!)

Staying Power

A couple of years ago I took a chance on a new plant at the locally owned garden center since I’m always looking for purple flowers for my garden. It was a little more expensive but I hadn’t seen it anywhere else. Angelonia turned out to be a great “investment” with its spires of small lavender flowers blooming right through the first frost! Though it was sold as an annual, I had nothing to lose to bring it in for the winter. The first one didn’t survive indoor dryness but the one I bought last year not only survived but it’s blooming now in my garden.

However, last spring my carryover flowerless Angelonia looked a little ragged so I set out to the garden center to get another. But instead of getting a replica of the one I already had, the larger Angel Face Angelonia caught my eye. Angel Face has the look and feel of larkspur but is easier to grow (though both Angelonias tend to spiral as they grow).

I had hurriedly planted it in a large pot with many other plants when I traveled but I may transplant it to a larger pot to give it room to grow and mobility to bring it indoors in winter.

Angelonia also does fairly well as cut flowers in small vases.

Plan B

What a humid day! Last evening a blanket of gray clouds pressed down the oppressive heat. They were so heavy with moisture that I knew they’d have give it up. They did.

And that’s the problem—not the rain, we’re glad for it. It’s just that our gullies have been washed several times lately and uncharacteristically, the rain has inundated my garden. Usually welcome, the rain waterlogged my pot of hydrangea stem cuttings, causing several of them to rot—even though they were in a terra cotta pot.

So today I was able to rescue three cuttings and followed the rules more closely, putting them in a small plastic pot with a lighter “sterile” seed-starting medium. They’re now out of the way of downpours but I’ll have to watch closely that they don’t dry out. Many plant cuttings can be “just stuck in the dirt” and they will grow but apparently not these. I did add more rooting powder.

If you look closely at the picture on the right you can see tiny bits of new growth! We’ll see how it goes.

It’s yet another two-red-hibiscus-day and yes, the grasshopper was back. But not for long, I sent him flying--further this time.

Trouble in Paradise

Paradise: an ancient Persian word meaning garden.

The other day as I examined the plants in my personal paradise, I found an interloper—a “giant” grasshopper. It was exactly the color of the hibiscus leaves. I’m not one to pick up bugs, uh uh, so I didn’t know how to get rid of it (and I prefer not to kill them if there’s another way). If I shook the bush, the grasshopper would just jump to another leaf. As I prayed for a solution, I looked around and saw a handy small plastic pot and my garden gloves. With my gloves on (!), I scooped the pest into the pot and cast it from my garden. It flew to a tree across the easement. Sure it could come back but I kept it from eating more for awhile at least. Then I saw the huge hole in a leaf of my beautiful red-striped Tropicana cannas—the grasshopper’s calling card.

Today, I found more holes. It was back. I checked each plant as I watered and then in the last spot, I caught it green-pincered on a coleus leaf (it must like colorful food like I do). My method didn’t work as well this time since I had a little less elbow room to throw it and the grasshopper landed in a hanging basket. By the time I spotted its new hiding place and turned to get the pot, it was gone. I searched and rustled the other plants without finding it so maybe it flew away. Good riddance!

Okay, so maybe I’d find it a fascinating part of God’s creation if it wasn’t devastating my plants. It’s not like there isn’t plenty other greenery out there in the semi-wild. They are kosher but I won’t go there…except to ask those who insist that the Biblical dietary laws are the only acceptable diet, “Mmm…have you eaten the grasshoppers on that diet?” And yes, I know that they are a delicacy in some cultures and in others they are “all they have” but unless it’s necessary, thank you but no thank you.

Nostalgia

When we were young, my sister and I used to walk to the garden center during the summer. It was one of our favorite things to spend our allowance on bedding plants to fill the garden containers my dad made for us out of oil drums. He sliced the drums vertically, welded some kind of feet on them and lined the open edges with a sliced garden hose. Then he filled them with soil.

My sister always bought Sweet Williams (dianthus)--that’s one of the reasons I always grow them. Other reasons are that they are biennials and come back the next year and they bloom like crazy in the spring, continuing to bloom here and there through the summer with another burst in autumn. And for adding easy growing color to the garden, they can’t be beat. It spreads well too, which can be a plus or a minus depending on the setting.

A Possible First

What a pleasant surprise to find not one or even two red hibiscus flowers this morning—but three! I’m not sure my bush has ever had that many flowers at once! It's tending toward being leggy though I’ve wanted the height in order to block some of the intense sun. However, I read in a houseplant book I found at the library that they can be pruned in the spring—maybe I’ll do that next year and make more blossoms possible. Maybe I can even grow some new ones with the stem cuttings.

A week ago, I saw some small hibiscus plants for an unheard of $4.99. But, I thought, I’m not sure if some are orange so I’ll wait ‘til they’ve bloomed out a bit by next Saturday when we’re here again. Too late, they were gone. The store plant lady said, “Oh but they were an opportunity buy so they’re all gone!” Well, I missed that opportunity but surely there will be another one…somewhere.