When I left Ventura to return to Denver in 1999, I had to leave (among many precious personal belongings) all of my house plants. I love houseplants and I have two green thumbs; friends bring me their sick plants and I'm almost always able to revive them. Maybe it's the Hobbit in me, I don't know.Anyway, while in Denver for those short seven months, I bought a Dragon Tree (Dracaena marginata) in a 4" plastic pot. You know, the little plants at Walmart that cost, like, $1.49. When I moved to Stillwater in August of 2000, I brought it with me. A few months later, when Nettl's mother died, her dad gave me all of her plants. One of them was a tiny Dragon Tree, not taller than 4 or 5 inches. I immediately moved it in with my other Dragon Tree, which by then had grown to be about a foot tall. They were happy together for about five years and, because one was tall and the other short, and they looked like they had busy heads, I named them Cheech & Chong.
Sadly, Cheech died in 2006, leaving Chong all by himself. I almost lost him, too. The culprit? Lowrider decided the pot (yuk yuk) would make an attractive litter box. I took Chong out of the pot (he was about 5 feet tall by then), shook all of the soil out of his roots and gave him new soil, covering it with potting moss to keep the cat out of it. It worked, and he started getting well, and continued to grow.
After he'd spent last summer outdoors, I brought him in and noticed that a new Cheech had spouted, and right out of Chong's "neck"! They're now happily ensconced in a corner of the dining room, and growing; Chong is probably 7 feet tall now.
And that's my entry for Friday.
