I DIDN’T FORGET THIS ASK FOR THE PLANTBLR NUMBER THING, IVE JUST BEEN STUMPED FOR SEVERAL MONTHS TRYING TO THINK OF SOME GOOD ANSWERS IM SO SORRY!!! I still don’t have good answers for these two questions but I’m gonna force answers outta myself anyways.
5. A plant you share an interesting story with?
I have pondered on this a lot as to how to interpret this question for the most interesting answer; my struggle with Musa/Ensente, my opportunity to try to grow Asmina from seed for the first time leading to my obsession to continue seaching, tulips in bloom relative to my birth. After a lot of think, I settled to go for my currently-oldest houseplant, my senior of the collection who has endured some abuse and was the start of my explosion of houseplants;
My good old Crassula ovata Jade Plant.
I think this is the oldest picture of it but I’m not sure as I was searching through the blog for these pics and this one did not have my old-style “photographed on this day” note. Originally called “Jadey” by me back then, it was an apartment warming gift from my former highschool EA teachers, and the houseplant that pushed me to considering indoor cultivation more (before this fella I had many plant deaths on my hands including bromeliads, Pepperomias, and particularly African Violets).
Anyone who knows this plant will know; Jade plants are very trouble-free so long as they get tons of sunlight and are not overwatered, and this girl was no exception to the rule; It has been the one houseplant that shrugged off my leaving for holidays and even enduring the Neglectathon when the plant collection and I returned to the farm for permanent residence- but I’m getting ahead of myself. During college it thrived, to the point it got pruned, propagated and shared throughout the Horticulture Tech Class (I may have even given some to @omgplants but I genuinely cannot remember).
But one winter 2013 in the apartment, I wasn’t watchful, and I inadvertently killed a large amount of branch-to-trunk due to cold conduction from the windowframe to the plant itself.
The damaged plant material was cut off with a knife (which was over half of the bottom trunk) and given an application of Cinnamon as an attempt at anitfungal protection.
A firsthand proof to me that plants, houseplant or not, can be rather tough cookies.
Unfortunately misfortune befell it once more; its lovely open branch arrangement lead to getting caught onto the curtain and then toppling over from its window as the curtain was being pulled over the window. With that, it got an unplanned prune up to fix the mess that was left behind.
From there any posts for it specifically never really popped up, however it did get odd cameos in group plant pictures/posts to further the documentation of its journey;
By 2015 you could see in cameo in the plant tour of the time, when I returned to the farmhouse and brought my gargantuan plant collection with me. By this time it was growing leggier from the change of light conditions and grew painfully topheavy along with its variegated relative.
From there was when the great plant dying (ie- the winter colds triggering the slow death of the African Violets) followed by neglectathon began. As I grew doom-and-gloom with my own mind and trying to resettle in space that was shared rather than mine and mine alone, plants were forgotten to be tended to (mainly watered, they were watered scarcely if at all) as they were scattered across the different small windows of the house (unlike the apartment where I only had two windows which I walked by every day, the farmhouse had windows in very out-of-the-way spaces) and even the toughest of houseplants started to struggle even more.
By 2017 the house addition mom so wished for this farmhouse was being put together and a call of opportunity, a second chance; among the features of the addition, large south facing windows to almost rival even the apartments of London. My bedroom was moved to the new basement floor to give me more freedom and space, the plants too would get a similar treatment. While in none of the photos, the Jade was part of great houseplant bathtub soak and relocation. Given more light and a little more water (to this current time of this ask I am still fighting to return semblance in my life/routines again, watering being one I still struggle to reclaim for the houseplants) it thickened with water and grew a little better, but started to lean out of its pot and still showed severe leggieness (curing legginess requires more than a change of light, it also means they need to be pruned, something I felt it would not tolerate after the neglectathon ordeal). It is one of the few “leggy succulents” left in the collection.
This autumn of 2018 old Jadey got to cameo in a tweet with other houseplants once again (tumblr mobile makes photosets not as easy as twitter so my apologies for no updates on that here yet). After far too long, she has finally gotten the repot she so painfully needed, and a light trim to begin fixing her wiriness and reshape. Currently her rootball is almost nonexistent (ripped apart to give her a chance in fresher, albeit peatier potting soil) and needs to regrow her roots, as well as branch/bulk up her branches. A tradeoff currently is that she has been exiled from the plant-shelf spaces due to her height and being in a fragile clay flowerpot, but I’m hoping she’ll continue to live on with her houseplant juniors and continue holding the trophy for oldest owned houseplant.
53. Favourite flower?
Always a question that I can never answer with just one flower.
My default answer has always been a tie of 4 plant genera; Trilliums, Liliums, Lavendula, and Dianthus.
Since the new garden additions and struggle to grow certain favourite species (the first two in particular) new plants/flowers may come to soon wear the rivalry crown of “favorite”; New England Asters are becoming my favourite autumn queens while Northern Wild (Senna hebecarpa) has come to impress me for its bee-attracting qualities and mildly exotic charm in the midsummer.
Kihaku-Gato's Garden Blog (tumblr import) 