Aralia - FAIL

I fondly called it my giraffe plant. Mostly because, if I had a desktop sized giraffe - you know a cubicle pet - it would love to eat this plant. It was odd and tall with tufts of crinkly leaves. It filled this tall empty space on top of my 2 drawer filing cabinet just perfectly.

I even covered the soil with moss to keep it nice and moist. But then I killed it. Well, it's not quite dead yet, but it sure isn't happy like the guy on the gurney in Monty Python.

I've had it for about 3 years I would say. I bought it for a steal at the wholesale florist because I had never seen one like it. My coworker pick one up as well, but hers died in the first 6 months, so I guess mine wasn't terrible.

The little tag said Aralia and a wiki search tells me there are crap loads of different varieties, but most of them live in the woodlands. I guess my office wasn't woodland enough. Since these pictures, the one lone tuft has fallen off.

Heartless bitch that I am, I went out and bought replacement plants at IKEA and gave it's spot to a cheap and tawdry little money plant in a $2.99 white ceramic pot. I know, that's no way to remember my cubicle giraffe's favorite food source, but I am a sucker for cheap plants.

So, it's fate is sealed. I moved my embarrassing failure home to convalesce on my condo porch. There are no leaves, just tall shameful sticks waiting to be put out of their misery. We will see if it comes alive again, or just freezes it's little ass off out there.

One a side note: IKEA has a super cool plant that I want. It's a coconut palm, about 4' tall. The best part is that it's just a whole coconut on it's side in a pot of dirt and it has sprouted a tree. It looks awesome, but at $29.99, I don't think it will get a home with me.

See, I've already forgotten my failure and moved on to the bright and shiny new plants. I have learned nothing.

Average House Plant

I am sure you all probably have one of these. It's the quintessential hanging house plant that is kind of hard to kill. This one I think I have had for going on 10 years. The most surprising is that it survived living in our super dark double-wide for years.

When we moved to the light-filled condo, we found a great little place for it in the living room and it's been thriving ever since.

I haven't ever repotted it, and right now I think it is going to need it soon...you can't even see the pot anymore and kind of have to dig into it to get the watering can in there. Since the cats will try to eat it, I just keep looping the long tendrils back up on the hook.

For people with some sun and a place for a hook, this is just a great little plant. And you can sprout more plants off of the cutting if you want... More on that next time

Stupid Pretty in New Zealand

By Jenny the Guest Blogger

In September and October of 2008, we vacationed in the lovely country of New Zealand. For anyone considering international travel, I would highly recommend NZ. It's easy to get around, they speak English, their currency is also the dollar, and the exchange rate is usually in our favor. So we went. And it was even more fantastic than what we had been expecting.


It was springtime during out trip, and NZ was in full bloom (and so were our allergies). We spent our three weeks on both the north and the south island, and quite frankly we ran out of words for "pretty". This is the place where they filmed the Lord Of The Rings trilogy, so yeah, it's gorgeous and it has a lot of different types of terrain, and it's freaking green.


Alternate words for "Pretty":
Lovely
Gorgeous
Beautiful
Stunning
Breathtaking
Captivating
Awesome
Stupid Pretty
and
"Well, that's just retarded."


Where plant life is concerned, NZ is known for it's ferns. The national plant is the silver fern, a tree fern that has a silver color on the underside of the leaves. And the tree ferns in NZ are like 30 feet tall. I had never seen a 30 foot tall fern before, so I was easily amazed. And these gorgeous prehistoric-looking ferns unfurl in spring. It was magical. And so was the smaller plant life. Little growies everywhere. And you're never more than a 2 or 3 hours drive from the coast in New Zealand. Beaches and stupid pretty everywhere you turn. There are many more reasons to love New Zealand, we decided we could totally live there. And we'll definitely go back.

Grandma's Cactus

By Jenny the Guest Blogger

My grandma gave me this cute little cactus a while ago. Grandma passed away in 2006, but the cactus is still kicking. It was a tiny little cactus in a tiny little pot. And it truly lives on water alone. I put a cork next to it in the picture for scale. When I water it frequently, the thing grows like the dickens. I have never re-potted it, given it new soil, or fertilizer or anything. I am consistently amazed at the ability of cacti to make something from nothing. This past year, I placed the little grandma cactus in the kitchen window box. No plant can resist the kitchen window box! It has flourished, and I barely remember to water it. Maybe in 2009 I will re-pot it. Or not. Either way, I'm sure like my late grandma it will keep on keeping on.

Bulbs Again, Surprise!!!

So, back when the condo porch was in full flush of spring, I had a ton of bulbs in all my extra pots..I honestly can't remember exactly what they were. Freesia, Runnunclus, some other stuff...

When they died back in mid summer, I trimmed the green parts and sort of stashed the pots behind the table with the grand scheme of digging out the bulbs and throwing them in the garage over the winter to use again. Well, surprise! It's winter, the porch is all wet from the rain and all the pots are sprouting again...even though I have them stacked on top of each other :). I only noticed because the greens were sticking out the sides.

Apparently, I am now growing bulbs again! I'll see what they are in a month or so when they bloom. Wow, I suck at plants sometimes.

Geranium Plant

Last year at the Zoo's Plant Fest, I bought a little geranium from the Geranium Society. I don't usually like Geraniums, but I am a sucker for these plant societies and once I get talking to them, I can see why they like their preferred species so much.

So, I ended up with a little 2" potted Geranium that I kinda liked. It has bright, light green leaves with a rusty sort of red in the middle. The foliage is really where it's at, but the flowers are okay too. Very small Chinese red flowers. Over the summer, it bloomed pretty regularly but stopped in the winter.

I trimmed the crap out of it at the beginning of winter and it's seems to be thriving. It's already doubled in size in just a couple of months. I should probably get it into a bigger pot before spring hits so it can get a little bigger.

Bamboo Plant

I got this cute little bamboo plant from a coworker at our housewarming party about four years ago. I was something you would pick up at Trader Joe's or Raley's and was awfully cute. The lovely thing about bamboo is that really, you just have to keep it full up of water and it does just fine.

It has lived in the same place for years and tripled in size. Recently, I had to move it and it's started to get some yellow leaves...I don't know if it's the change in light or the fact that it is high enough that I sort of forgot to water it for a while. Either way, it's hanging in there.

The weird thing is that one of the stick/stem things started to turn black and die a little. Not sure why, but I just trimmed it down.

Apparently, there isn't a great story behind this one...just reliable and easy to care for. That's it.