My African Violets

I sure love flowering houseplants. African Violets are so much fun for me on my plant shelf. They just love it there. Here are some pictures of them.

This one is really flowering well right now. I don't know if I've ever seen this many flowers on an African Violet at once:


This one flowers such glittery white flowers that you fall in love with it in an instant:


And this lady is just getting ready to throw out a bunch more flowers I'm sure!


Here they are all together on my plant shelf with there little flip flap friend:

I wish I wanted to tell you all about these lovely ladies, but my wrists hurt so I'm too lazy to make myself type. I hope you enjoy the photos anyway. :)

Papaya Leaves

At last, the long awaited post! I said I'd show you close up pictures of my papaya leaves. Here they are finally!


I don't know about you, but I think they're beautiful! Hopefully my next posts will be a little closer together. ;) Thank you everyone for your kind sentiments. Check back soon!

Why Do I Garden?

Randy over at Creating Our Eden posed an interesting question. How did you develop an interest in gardening? Well, I guess it kind of came natural with me. My grandmother is an avid gardener although my mother is not interested. I never really got into gardening much when I was younger. I thought it was all but a punishment to have to weed. I still don't like to hoe and rake, but at one point I remember realizing that I actually didn't mind weeding flowerbeds by hand. That was when I was 13 or so. I still didn't do it very much and never thought of actually planting anything. Then I got an office job. After about 2 years, my sister told me about a coffee house plant she'd seen at Home Depot. My company had just given us Home Depot gift cards and there was a bit left to spend, so I sent my card with a co worker and he picked up my coffee tree for me. That was my first house plant. It was just a little bunch in about a 3" pot when I got it. This is what it looks like now:

Well, the house plant was a refreshing and happy addition to my little office. He grew and brought me happy thrills with each new leaf. What a fascinating world the world of plants is! I remember being so gleeful and summonsing the whole office to come see when the first two leaves bloomed out. I even took a picture of new baby leaves when another branch started coming on:

So, what does all this have to do with gardening? I don't exactly consider house plant care as gardening, but it does give me a little piece of my hobby when I'm in the office. What this has to do with gardening is, that is how my love of plants got started. When that gets started, well we all know it's non-stoppable! A few years later my boss came and asked me to take care of a few plots with some plants. He told me to plant some things around the trees and make it beautiful. There was no limit to how much I could do. Truthfully, he's a better gardener than I, but I'm sure glad he let me do it. I was elated when he asked. Can you imagine being paid to do what you already enjoy?

I sure had a lot to learn and I still do. My first lesson was that bulbs don't bloom all year long. (Is that embarrassing, or what?) I was pretty much a novice on the subject, but I loved plants. I actually had a very pretty garden that year. My boss had his wife take me to a nursery and get whatever plants I wanted. She introduced me to SO many different things. I got lots of different things and put them in the ground. My second lesson was that you have to break up the root ball or your plants will get root bound in the ground. (Yes, that was embarrassing too.) I had kale that wouldn't grow because it was root bound.

My boss would have people bring me different plants and flowers so I could make it beautiful if he got to thinking I hadn't put enough in or was afraid to ask for more. :) This made so I had petunias, verbena, hyssops, lantana, rose bushes, desert rose, ornamental kale, and lots of other plants, that I developed a love for, in my very first garden. I don't think my love of gardening is going to grow old like some hobbies do. I love gardening. Weeding is so relaxing. You don't have to do any brain work to weed. You can just rip out the weeds and let your thought wander around without anything bad happening. (Good luck doing that in an office.) So anyway, that's why I garden, and that's where I got started. (Now I just need to figure out how to do it more.) Thanks for reading. Happy Gardening!

The Rest of the Houseplants

Here are the rest of my houseplants. I know I said I'd share these yesterday, but it got really hairy and I didn't get to it. This first plant is another Impatien:

This is a Finger Jade:

This belongs to a co-worker. It's a Bougainvillea. It's supposed to grow red bracts, but it hasn't yet. Where it was before, I think it wasn't getting enough sun, so we moved it here:

This is an arrangement I got just the other day. It's got an Umbrella Plant and an Arrowhead Plant in it:

This is an African Violet which I also got just the other day. I've seen, bought, and grown much better specimens than this before, but this was the last one they had so I took it:

This is a Hummingbird Vine which I started from seed about this time last year. It grows very very slowly. There were 4 plants in there, but one of them died:

This is an Ornamental Pepper Plant. You can see that it has red fruit on it. That's from last year. I let them dry and remain as decorations on the plant. It's also growing some more:

This is a Spring Cactus. If it were to flower again I'd be very glad. It grows very pretty flowers, but it's hard to get it to flower and I haven't felt like it would be worth the effort yet. You have to keep it at a certain temperature for so long, then a different temperature for so long, then in darkness for so long...anyway, I'm not that ambitious quite yet. It makes a lovely green plant in the meantime:

This is a Swedish Ivy:

This is a Cyclamen. I've really enjoyed this plant. It grows beautiful pink flowers in cooler weather. You can see that there are a few on it right now, but in the cooler weather it grows scads of them:

This is where all those hanging baskets are hanging. Isn't this lovely? I really like hanging baskets:

This plant I also got just the other day. It's a Corn Plant with Pathos vine growing around it. I've never spent as much on a plant as I did on this one, but it was truly love at first sight when I saw it:

Last, but not least, this is a Mother-in-Law's Tongue. It's a great plant because it almost never needs watered and doesn't really care if it get any direct sunlight. It does just fine with fluorescent lighting:

Well, I hope you all enjoyed my house plant collection. These are all the ones I have at my office. There are some more at home, but that will have to be for a later article. ;) For those who wonder, that's 35 pots of plants. :O We better have lots of oxygen in this office!

Even More Houseplants

Again, here are more house plants. This first one is an Aloe Vera Plant which I got on a clearance table for $0.99. As you can see, it's not doing very well. I watered it too much at first. It's just starting to turn back green from that! The problem is, I love my house plants...too much for this type. They thrive on neglect rather than care, so all my efforts of rescue just make them worse. One day I'll figure the silly things out. In the mean time, this is what it looks like:

This is another Dragon's Blood or "Hairy Tree" as I like to call them. This belongs to a co worker. Dragon's Blood trees are amazing plants. They seem to grow just as large as you allow them to. If they're in a small pot, they stay small. You can move them to a large pot and they'll grow larger until they fill the pot. I saw one that was huge; I mean HUGE in a hospital. It was as tall as a 1 story building without any exaggeration and the pot was massive. This one will probably get a little larger in this pot before it evens off:

This is a banana tree. It was much larger, but something happened to it and it clear died off. This one came up from the roots and is just starting to get big for us:

This next plant is a China Doll plant. It was once much bigger too, but we re-potted it and took most of the starts out. It started out as this cute little innocent looking plant in a basket arrangement that also contained the Peace Lily I mentioned in my last article. When we re-potted it, all the starts we took out died. This one had 2 starts that struggled for a long time before one finally got over it and the other one died clear back. We thought it was gone, but you can see in this picture that it's tiny in the bottom and coming back healthy as ever:

I love these plants. This actually belongs to a co-worker, but I sure like it a lot. It doesn't need any direct sunlight and just likes to be watered about every other week:

This is a little shoot I took off a Kalanchoe. It's growing next to a Money Tree:

This is another arrangement that was given to my co-worker. It has a Dragon's Blood or "Hairy Tree", a Crouton, as well as a Pathos. This is about how big the other arrangement was when she first got it:

This next plant is a Spider Plant. It also came is the same arrangement that the China Doll and Peace Lily were in:

This is an Ivy and, well, it's not doing so good. It looks fine here:

...but take a closer look:

It's my fault. I forgot to water it for 2 weeks and now I just hope it's going to pull out of it. It looks so lovely here:

While you'd think I'd be content with that many plants, I do actually have a few more to share with you tomorrow, so check back for even more beautiful, lovely houseplants that keep our office cheery. :)

More Houseplants

Here are some more of my houseplants. This first one is an Impatien. A little history on this plant which is actually my boss's plant; my sister gave it to him after she couldn't get it to grow for about 6 months or more. It was pale and yellow and just plain wouldn't grow. It was about 6 inches tall and just did nothing. After he had it for about that long, I took pitty on the poor thing and repotted it with my favorite kind of potting soil (Black Gold Waterhold), and fed it some of my favorite fertilizer (Miracle-Gro Liquid Houseplant Food). It just took off and grew like crazy. Now it's producing flowers and is absolutely gorgeous:

I love these plants. They're so much fun. I did have to trim off a branch that got broken somehow:

Look at the flowers on this thing. They're so beautiful:

When I water Impatiens, I pour lots of water on top of the soil, then I fill up the tray with water too. They like lots of water:

These plants can easily be grown from clippings. You just put the clipping in water until they sprout roots, then you pot them up. I grew this one from a clipping and then gave it to a co-worker:

I water it the same way:

This next one is I grew from Mimosa Pudica Seeds. Some people call them Sensitive Plant Seeds. The leaves fold up when you touch them:

Here is a Jade. I only water this when it starts looking shriveled:

This is a rainbow bush. It gets watered whenever I think about it. :) It doesn't like too much water. It's a succulent so it's kind of like the Jade family. This is actually a rescue I got from a friend. She had a bunch of plants in her classroom that accidentally got abandoned for a couple months. I went in there one day and this was the last one that had even a tiny bit of life left. It's doing very well now:

Here is my co-worker's Peace Lily in bloom:

This last plant is a coffee tree that a friend of mine gave me to try and resurrect. In places it looks like it'll be fine. Well have to see how it turns out. I'm thinking about changing out the soil to Black Gold Waterhold, and I think that would help a lot:

I guess that better be all for today. I still have more, so do check back tomorrow for some more beautiful houseplant pictures!

My Houseplants

I love houseplants. It's my office way of gardening from my computer. :) Every Monday I go through the office and water all the houseplants. Most are mine, but I water them all regardless of the owner. I always use Miracle-Gro Liquid Houseplant Food each time I water:

Let me introduce you to some of my plants. These are African Violets. They don't need watered every week. I only water them when they feel dry to touch. One or the other of them are in flower almost all year long:

This is a start that came of the blue purple one. It hasn't flowered yet. I gave it to my co worker who potted it up most tastefully in this vanity light glass. African Violets don't like to be in large pots, so she'll never have to re-pot it:

This is a Dragon's Blood tree. I like to call it a "Hairy Tree." :) This plant only needs watered about every other week or so:

This is a Cat Palm. It's in water. I just keep it filled with water and it just grows beautifully. It doesn't really care if it has direct sunlight or not:

Somehow I always manage to run that one over when I water:

This is a coffee tree. Coffee trees are really easy to care for. They don't mind fluorescent lighting and just want watered once a week. I've had this one for about 4 years. It was my first houseplant:

I usually just pour water in until it looks good. The soil this is in takes a minute to absorb the water. Yes, that's a can of instant coffee there for looks. I don't drink coffee, but it was given to me because it's labeled in Spanish and I'm studying Spanish. :)

This is an Autumn Croton. Crotons are notoriously hard to grow houseplants because they detest change. I haven't had a lot of problems with this one, but I haven't changed its environment or care even in the slightest since I first got it. It did have 3 separate plants when I first got it and one of them died. You can't really tell by looking though:

This is a bamboo. They call them "Lucky" bamboo when they're twisted like that. All I do to this plant is keep the water full. It's not picky at all:

That better be all for today. I have a lot of plants. I'll keep posting pictures of my houseplants for the next few days until you've seen all of them, so check back tomorrow for some more beautiful plant pictures! :)