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 Wal*Mart 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? Our cat decided their 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. Until tonight. Tonight, I plan on taking part in NaDruBloMo.
16 comments:
That's so sweet!
(Have got to be careful, not to let my plants read this - they would want to move in with you!)
P.S.:
Is it only me who has a hard time reading the yellow on black? Should I not read this late at night or early in the morning?
Are you talking about the color of the actual entry, or the titles?
Hah! Changed my template again!
Oh, thank you! :-)))
I love the new template,
very original, so very welcoming!
I feel as if being welcomed into a warm home,
a cup of coffee ready and tales to be listened to.
This templates really pulls one in,
wandering about the rooms and reading every little bit. I realize only now that I rarely read more than your daily entry, the black and yellow challenged my eye sight too much. So, thanks a ton, Steph! :-)
I wasn't liking it very much either. Thanks for the nudge!
I've got a couple of green thumbs, too. My uncle swears it's my breath. I'm not sure what to think about that.
Love the new look, Steph. I loved the drama and sleekness of the black, too, but I had a hard time reading my own blog when it was black!
Like the new template. It's very expressive!
Wow.. I love this new look.. what a clever header. The blog head.. not Cheech and Chong over there who keep shouting "Dave's not here!"
LOVE your new template!
Your writing is clever, I thought you were going to tell us about a new bong!
What a great new look! It's like a memory palace!
I was half-asleep when I brought it up, but the bright new look really woke me up. LOL
I have such awful luck with live plants in the house because my cat wants to treat them all like trees. Do you have a cure for that? I like your new heading lots! Jeanne
I have two black thumbs. All I have to do is look at a plant and it's on it's way out. But I have read about how to keep cats out of the plants. Put rocks on top of the soil. Like little river rocks, maybe an inch or two across.
Willow: Glad to have helped you, too.
Hilary: LOL! You don't know how much that gets said around our house!
Sue: Those were the days...
Kathy: Yeah, this blog has been dark for too long.
SCB: I've never had that trouble, except for the Christmas tree.
Deni: I used rocks for a while, but it;s a huge pot, and it made it too hard to carry when I had to water it.
You could take out the rocks, water the plant, put it back and put the rocks back in. Better than having a dead plant.
The potting moss is working like a charm. She can't get to the soil, so she's left it alone.
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