It was time to show some love to our houseplants this weekend. We set aside some time on Saturday to pay a little attention to them. I mowed the lawn while my wife went to the grocery store, then all bets were off. One by one we carried the houseplants out to the driveway and prepared an area to commence the re-potting. A few weekends before I purchased a large bag of potting soil, in anticipation of the task. For some of the plants, re-potting was loooong overdue. They were root bound, pot bound and suffering a bit. We gave them a bigger pot and new soil. For the handful of others, they were cleaned up and placed back into their original pots after cleaning up the root systems and refreshing most of the soil.
The tall banana tree looking plant is actually a white Bird Of Paradise. We've had it for quite some time now, and it has never bloomed. I really don't expect it to since they can get quite large and bloom well into maturity. We geep it rather small and stuck in this tiny pot so that it can remain in the house. It makes a nice foliage plant that reminds us of the tropics. It needed a major straitening up. Over the last several years it had slowly begun to lean further and further toward the door. It was a bit of a challenge, but we managed to get it out of it's tapered pot and straitened up. We also found a small colony of ants living in the dead portions of the plant. Quite the surprise! I quickly sprayed for them and the problem was resolved in about 10 minutes.
We found these two heart shaped rocks on our travels, and couldn't bring ourselves to just toss them away. The make a nice little, and subtle, addition to the more or less boring potting soil.
We also couldn't believe that we didn't see the new shoots forming off of one of the main stalks. How cool is that! I hope we don't stress the plant out too much, so the shoots continue to grow. It would be nice to see this plant flourish a little more than it has.
The Lemon tree got it's long awaited new pot and fresh soil. It also received a dose of fertilizer since it was beginning to show signs of Iron deficiency. The new growth is turning yellow but the veins were remaining green.. a sign of iron deficiency. If the older leaves were showing the same signs, I would of just applied some Epsom Salt, because that would have been an indication it was suffering from Magnesium deficiency. This new pot is roughly three times the size of the older one. It also has a nice wide lip on it, making it easy to carry it in and out doors this summer.
Here you can see that the older, more established leaves, are quite dark and showing no signs of Magnesium issues.
Off to the left of the Lemon tree, you'll notice our Amaryllis quietly sitting there. We did not re-pot this one, since it was just newly potted by my mom a few months ago. It has been doing quite well now that the flowering season is over. The foliage is slowly growing and adding interest to our houseplant family.
At first I thought Molly or Pepper left me a little present to clean up, then realized that they were just flower buds that fell off of my oldest Orchid.
The Orchid has been pretty stressed, and I was waiting to see if the flowers would open before cutting of the bloom stem. They never did and just fell off. It was now time for this little guy to get trimmed up and re-potted as well. She was hanging too far out of her pot as it was.
I ended up taking off quite a bit of dead material and refreshed the bark chips. It dosn't look to happy now, but I am keeping my fingers crossed for a full recovery.
The other Orchids appear to be doing quite fine. They are both about half way through their current blooming cycle. It's so nice to have the color pops in the area were we tend to send most of our time.
A few of the flowers are spent and drying up. I pulled a bunch off and noticed that there are a few new flower buds forming.. hopefully this is a good sign!
The Peace Lilly received a bigger taller pot. We are unsure of whether or not it is too tall for on the hearth of the fireplace, but we'll let it be for now and decide whether a shorter but wider pot is needed. There are a total of three blooms visible now!
I was dreading it, but even the cactus's were re-potted.. OUCH!! Yep a few times they got me, but overall it wasn't too bad of an ordeal. I decided to put three or so of them together. A little cactus family!
Here are a few other plants that got fixed up today. A Christmas Cactus, some other green plant (haha) and a shoot that fell of the peace Lilly when she was getting groomed. A new plant!! Yippee!!!
We still have a few others that need re-potted, but we ran out of appropriatly sized pots and potting soil. Another day after I make a trip to the hardware store or garden center.
The dreaded re-potting chore was tackled and we succeeded in checking the task off our to do list. The plants all seem happier now and hopefully all of them survive the stressful ordeal. For now, back to their little corner they go. Looking forward to many more years of greenish happiness to come!!
My art work incorporates a wide variety of subject matter, including landscape, seascape, cityscape, and still life images. My works are the product of a continuing process of exploration through which I seek to portray personal and visionary interpretations of my surroundings. My paintings are impressions of places and events from everyday life, an interpretation of my imagination, and personal responses to what I see and feel on a daily basis. More recently I have invested generous amounts of time into my landscape painting. I am surrounded by natural and man made beauty, which inherently presents itself in the tri-state area, and almost demands that I paint it.
Not everything is art. Art is not everything, but it comes close. Art is everywhere and all the time. Art makes you experience the beauty of the world, the people in it, and the places we call home. Art itself is so influential that it can tell stories, show feelings, and express passion or fury. Art exists in addition to language; expression of sensations and thoughts, revealing a way of thinking too subtle and delicate for words.
For me art requires love, honesty and perseverance. In return, it reveals some personal, non-analyzable, and creative untamed passion. For the public, art with its magnificent beauty, improves mood and health and builds better human beings and communities. It engages the intellect, softens the heart, strengthens the soul and frees the spirit.
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― Kasie West, Lucky in Love
