The Plants Are Taking Over

I, for one, welcome my Plant Overlords. The Husband… maybe not so much. I’m going to firmly place the loving blame on my mother for this one. She’s always had plants and had a garden too, so I’ve missed having them. My house is super dark though, even now that we have new windows that let more light in, most plants don’t really like our environment. Piggy will almost immediately try to eat anything she thinks is food on the floor as well, so I was nervous about some of the pet toxic plants. After some experimenting, I finally found plants that are both non-toxic and easy-ish to keep alive! I then rejoiced and bought all the plants. (Whoops!)

I thought it might be fun to show them off since they are doing so well! My at home plant list is:

-Fittonia/nerve plant. This one is a diva. It droops so dramatically that it lies flat when it’s thirsty and then two hours later is back up and perky. So ridiculous, but also easy to keep track of when to water it! This is an old picture, but demonstrates the dramatic nature. I now have potted this cutting with a bigger mixed plant of white and pink leaf plants and I love it. It’s called a nerve plant because it the veins are so pronounced, but I like to think also because it’s such a drama queen.

-Three Hoyas- one pink princess, a rope hoya, and one heart hoya. The pink princess is a climber and look how pretty it is with this trellis! I’m so excited for it to start vining all around it. The rope hoya has a really interesting texture, although I think I may need to repot it. It may appreciate a bigger space to grow in. I saw it in the Potawatomi Conservatory on the Wine Hike Trip and was fascinated by it. There are lots of varies of hoyas and they are not fussy plants and all of them are non-toxic. The rope hoya is in a little green pot and the heart hoya is in the dog butt pot.

-Three haworthia- These are succulents that seem to be ok with my house and are non-toxic for pets. They’re also pretty showy and there seems to be a lot of varieties of them. They are pretty tiny plants, so I can use my cute little planters. I may also plant one in a tea cup some day. How cute would that be? The haworthia in he little gold pot has a pup starting too! I love free plants!

-ZZ plant- green pot, (jury is out on if they are poisonous or not, most says yes, but it is safely secured): This is extremely drought tolerant and likes my light. There’s a raven version that I want as well, but I can’t find a small one of it. It’s black!

-Pickle Plant: I had to get this one because it made me think of my mother and now I will always have pickles around, not that I would ever allow myself to run out of pickles- the horror!

-Snake Plants: These are poisonous as well, but they don’t drop leaves and the big one is on the counter in the bathroom, as they are extremely tolerant of low light. I bought this Bird’s Nest variety from the clearance plant shelf at English Gardens (my favorite plant store so far.) It needed to be repotted so badly that it was deforming the pot, poor thing! I ended up getting 8 smaller plants out of it. I gave them to people at work and also to my younger brother, who needed some green and living things in his new apartment.

-A purple shamrock: this one is poisonous to dogs, but I keep it safely up where if anything fell off of it, she couldn’t get it.

I tried to grow a Christmas cactus from a cutting that was at my grandma in law’s house, but it didn’t survive. I really like how they look though and they are non-toxic to pets, so I bought another one in memory and it seems to be doing okay.

-Spider plant: This one I didn’t steal from my mother! Instead I bought it from the store. This is the third spider plant I have had and so far it’s doing really well!

I have several cuttings that I’m nurturing. Three heart leaf philodendron (not pet safe, but up on the windowsill until they’re big enough to go join the work one) that I got from my Buy Nothing Local group, three spider plant babies that I definitely stole from my mother at Christmas (what? They grow better!,) and a silver pothos cutting from my MIL. Don’t they look pretty in the purple glass?

My office has a window now too, so I started buying some plants to brighten up the space. I saw a meme online about someone not going to a therapist who had fake plants in their office because “if they can’t be trusted to keep a plant alive, how will they keep me alive?!” and laughed, as I now have plants everywhere at work. For some of the office plants, I’m going to blame my coworker M, as we’ve now traded a few plants back and forth. Plus, she brought in a rubber tree and now I want one! Gosh. Office plant drama. Who knew it could be a thing?

At work I have A Swiss Cheese plant. a pink philodendron, which actually looks like a smaller heart philo, two Crotons, a stripy snake plant, more haworthia, a zz plant who absolutely loves my office, Wandering Jew plant cuttings, a huge spider plant, two aloes, a pearl and jade pothos, and a bigger heart philodendron. Let me just say, if you don’t have pets or want plants in your office, or in low light, the philodendron seems to do very well in all those conditions. Mine are all looking super healthy!

I do think that they have helped our air quality at home and at work (totally how I sold my office jungle to my boss), as well as improving my mental health. The Husband’s too, I think, although he’ll probably tell you they stress him out. He told me the one in the bathroom that was leaning sideways towards his sink was making him “claustrophobic.” I switched that plant back out to the living room to make it grow straight again and put a snake plant in there instead. It seems to be working out.

I just saw a post from the farm store where I get most of my garden plants from that they now have houseplants, so this may not be the last of the houseplants I have, if I can figure out how to make more room. We don’t really need to be able to eat on the table, right?

I hope these have made your day a little cheerier! It’s been grey, nasty, and rainy for a lot of the past couple of weeks, so it’s nice to have the plants around to brighten things up. I’m going to start some seeds soon too. I’m a little late with them, but have a hard time getting them to stay good until it’s time to plant, so I think it will be ok. Wish me luck with them!