While puttering around the house when I was conscious for short amounts of time, my keen sense of observation took note of a change in my most beloved and prized Haight-Ashbury hibiscus cuttings:
I found it to be quite a lovely surprise especially as it was a cutting and noted no buds on the potted up hibiscus.
It was almost as though the shock of it still sitting in water and being a "cutting" still rather than have graduated to potted plant status (due to my lazy self not having potted it up sooner...there's a good amount of roots floating around in its water jar :\ ) caused it to either be like (uh oh, I'm anthropomorphizing plants again...):
(1) Plant: "Oh, please, please, PLEASE, can I be potted up now and be a big plant now? Here's a bud to convince you!"
or
(2) Plant: "You snipped me! Please, don't hurt me any further! Look, here's a bud, keep your filthy gardener propagating fingers away from me!"
Oh silly little cutting, potting plants are for non-lazy gardeners! (Really, I'm getting to you, right after I buy those bags of potting soil for seed starting!)
It's been ice storm, snow storm, and now snow storm again here, which has been melting and will freeze to ice this afternoon/evening. Hurray. As I hate driving in weather like this, I am in hunker down mode (we'll call it human "sleep mode") and will continue to ride this all out until I venture out to prepare for spring, sweet spring.
*sigh* Not even the flowering kohleria, my blooming begonia:
or the fuzziness of my gifted selaginella (no matter how much I've been petting it!) has
been making me any less gloomy.
I even noshed on a petal of my lemon tree in flower (sweet with obvious bitter citrus oil taste) and that didn't even lift me.
The orchids are in bud, but they are tiny things and won't even be close to blooming for another month I can tell.
CRIKEY. (Always wanted to use that) I really need to stop being so "Wah-wah." I have plants! MANY plants! Indoors, blooming (and going to bloom)! I've got my health (mostly, with a little cabin syndrome + SAD on the side) and I'm not in the financial pits! I get to do what I mostly love (even what you love can become work and stressful) and I have a dog and loving husband.
OFFICIALLY, bucking up here. Only another month or so to get through of crummy weather, I can make it, despite late seed starting and cold and snow and lack of sunshine. Bear with me?
5 comments:
Pics are great and the narrative is always enjoyable. i would pick you but the link doesn't go through. Hope all the storms missed you. jim
@Jim: Thanks again :) I actually and terrible at keeping up with Blotanical and when I try to go to the site now I am getting errors and it won't even load... can they tell it's me?! The storms seemed to have missed us,but we'll see this coming weekend, it's nutty weather-wise everywhere isn't it?
Just checked mine, it has a bud too. Didn't pot it up yet and it has tons of roots. I planted out some transplants becuas they got root bound since I started too early... They are on my flickr if you want to check them out.
@kermit: Your transplants are gorgeous! Good thing you've got protection, keep me updated as to how they're doing! Did you acclimate them or just chuck them out there? I believe in survival of the fittest :) Either way, I am sure they'll do great and you've got yourself some tasty greens there. *sigh* I need to find materials to build myself a good cheap cold frame. I sort of rely on scavaging and found one neighbor who gets pallets all the time, so score on wood. The glass/clear acrylic or something part, a little more difficult. CD frames maybe?
It was time to harden them off and when I pulled them off the "wicking mat" (an old T-shirt) there were tons of roots growing out of the pot so I figured it'd be better to just put them in the ground. I was worried the others would be pot bound in a week or two anyways so I put them out too. The soil temp under the black plastic was 40F so they aren't having too hard of a time. The lowest it got (air temp) was 27F in the cold frame. My hoops are 1/2" PVC conduit (89 cents per 10 feet!) and my plastic is 3 mil painters drop cloth both have had no issue with the sleet or snow. All the wood I have is salvaged, and the soil is all last years compost the only things I spent money on were Boiled linseed oil, brackets, plastic and screws.
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