The Plants Are Taking Over

April 18, 2022April 17, 2022 LSieh2 Comments

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!

L-R: pickle plant, heart hoya, zz plant, haworthia, anthurium cutting also from my MIL- blue, haworthia

-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.

L -R: Hoya brown pot, snake plant white pot, nerve plant, mystery succulent in elephant, rope hoya with a seretonin molecule, haworthia, purple shamrock.

-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?

Pothos, spider, air plant, philodendron, spider, air plant, philodendron and spider, philodendron.

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!

Bottom row l-r: ZZ plant, wandering Jew, haworthias. Top Row l-r: Swiss Cheese Plant, Philodendron, Captain Croton, variegated snake plant.

L-R: Spider plant, aloe from M, Pothos, Croton

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!

Gardening

How Does Your Garden Grow?

June 26, 2021June 26, 2021 LSiehLeave a comment

A little too well currently! My yellow squash plant is taking over, as one would expect from a squash. I know my Dad will agree with me on that one. Squash is his sworn enemy, after all. 😉 Here’s the squash in question.

The squirrels have already started plotting their garden attacks. Mysteriously, there are baby squash bits in my garden. Piggy has been investigating the herb garden and has rediscovered the green apples in the lawn. She likes the crunch because she will pick one up and eat it while running gleefully away from us when we try to get them back.

It’s hard to see the other plants in my squash bed, but I do have a bunch of cucumbers, peas, beans, and peppers. Also carrots down the middle so they’re out of the way. I’m going to go tie up the squash plants and prune the leaves a little when it finally stops raining.

The berry and squash bed is also doing well. I have some smaller plants in there.

The berries are looking a little rough, but I’m hoping that they’ll come back better next year. My poor blueberry bush is just a bunch of twigs, so I’ll have to keep buying them at the store, I guess. 🙁

The tomatoes look nice and have a lot of flowers starting, so I think that’s a good sign.

The herb garden is growing wonderfully well. I think I’m going to have to harvest and dry a bunch of the bee balm and the hyssop for tea. The Thai basil is destined for an Asian inspired pesto to go over rice noodles tomorrow for lunch.

My little salad buckets are doing really well too. I’ve had a couple of salads all from the garden, including the nasturtium leaves! I need to eat more salads this week to keep up with the arugula and lettuce growth.

We have a little garden friend too. Piggy gives it a heart attack about once a week by chasing it, but it seems to like our yard.

We are fighting poison ivy and think possibly the Husband may be immune. I am most definitely not, as evidenced by my recent doctor trip and itchiness. Ugh. Over all though, it seems to be going pretty well. I’m impatiently waiting for when I have other things besides lettuce and arugula to eat.

Hope you enjoyed the garden tour! I’m sure everything will be a lot different after all the rain predicted this week. I’m not looking forward to the weeding! I’d better go rest up now for it. 🙂

Gardening · Life Posts

Gardening Setup

April 19, 2021April 18, 2021 LSiehLeave a comment

Hello and welcome to the blog post where I have garden fever and muse about how best to run off the squirrels! if you have any tips, please let me know!

We had a really nice weekend last weekend and ended up getting my third garden bed started! We need about 10 more bricks to make it two layers and are going to be getting garden dirt in two weeks. A friend who gardens as well has a truck and we’re going to be splitting a yard of garden dirt with her. I think the beds will like a nice soil refresh. I also put as many worms as I could find into them while we moved things around. We also got fancy and added pea gravel around the beds to keep the weeds down hopefully. We’re going to get another batch of it and make it a thicker layer around the front and on the sides of the garden.

Here’s the third bed. It’s positioned under the apple tree somewhat, so will be my shade loving plant bed. I’m planning on moving the rhubarb there too.

Sorry for the weird angle. I was attempting not to get the neighbor in the picture. He’s a little grumpy, so we try not to irritate him. This bed is one brick smaller than the other beds for ease of reaching across. I think it will work out really well. I think the middle bed will be tomatoes, as they seemed to do the best there. The last bed will be berries.

So far, I think my blueberry bush is coming back. I’ll have to get some more and am going to try to look for the bush varieties that might do better in the raised bed. My strawberries have come back as well, but I will be moving them into the planters, I think. My raspberries are growing new canes. I need to trim them down before planting them in the bed. I’m planning on trying to stay on top of them so I don’t end up with all raspberries. We may also get some black berries. The rhubarb came back on it’s own, even after I left the pot out all winter and it got snowed on. It seems to be very enthusiastic this year. As I have lots of rhubarb recipes, I’m very excited to see that.

We’re going to try making a pallet into a vertical herb garden this year. A certain Piggy likes to graze on my herbs as well as my tomatoes, so this might help with that. Basically, you take landscape fabric and staple it around the pallet, fill the cracks with dirt, and then go planting happy! It will hopefully work really well, but we’ll see. We got the pallet for free as it had the cinderblocks on it, so even if it doesn’t work out, it won’t have cost much.

I’ve started seeds for the garden and they seem to be working out. I used a bigger seed starting box this year and went all out with my seeds. I found a purple tomatillo variety, which will be fun! Also, several kinds of tomatoes, of course. I believe I have beefsteak, a bunch of container cherry tomatoes, pineapple tomatoes, and some other kinds I cannot remember. Also peppers, both hot and bell. We’re planning on planting the sprouting garlic cloves, but I will probably put them in pots. The onion we planted last year after it sprouted inside survived, but I have no idea how to tell when we should pick it. We have several other onions currently sprouting and my seeds are finally working.

I have also kept several houseplants alive both at home and in my office! I know that seems like a weird thing to brag about, but our house is really dark and seems to have a bad effect on houseplants. The one side of the hallway where we all have offices is slowly infecting everyone else with plant fever. It’s nice to have a window and to be able to keep the not pet friendly plants there. Three plants are currently calling my office home. The original aloe plant is thriving. It’s growing slowly, but it has developed two new shoots since I moved it there.

I also have a huge spider plant named Marvin, with a baby that has been christened Darvin. I’m going to pot Darvin soon, I just keep forgetting the soil. He lives on my bookshelf because he was too big to keep on that little shelf. I’ve hidden some of my lego creations in the leaves.

I have a Croton plant as well. I’m keeping that with no name as Croton sounds like an awesome super hero name. That one is being tricky. I think it needs to be misted regularly. I have repotted it into a pretty white pot, since the picture was taken.

My plants at home are a Christmas Cactus cutting, which seems to be having issues, a nerve plant which is super dramatic, and another peperomia- I killed the first one by overwatering. I also have a ZZ plant which apparently thrives on neglect. It needs watering once every three to four weeks. It also really likes low light, which is perfect for the house.

The coolest plant I have is probably the prayer plant. The Husband christened it Planty the Potted Plant after a character in Phineas and Ferb, a cartoon about these two kids and their secret spy platypus. It’s actually a wholesome and hilarious tv show and we all adore it. It’s put out another leaf since I brought it home and has two more starting. The neat thing about it though is that it closes at night time (Hence the name.) It’s super fun!

Here it is during the day.

The Husband has been notified that he should expect to see more plants when he gets back from his business trips now that he can travel again. I mean, I might be lonely and plants don’t judge (or beg for) the Nutella snack at midnight. 😉

Hope these inspire you for growing new things!

Gardening

Garden Update

July 11, 2020 LSieh2 Comments

Piggy has started chasing squirrels! This is very exciting for two reasons. 1- The squirrels were eating all the started veggies off my plants before I could get them! And 2- We’re most likely keeping Piggy! She’s captured the Husband with her ridiculously goofy snorts and many dog kisses. She’s quite serious in this picture, as she was supervising the rearranging and cleaning of my sewing space. I’ll do that update in a few days, when I can get things put away. It’s still messy. It’s in a better spot though, I think, so that’s good.

She does like to be outside and we were super excited when she started treeing squirrels. She’s not quite fast enough to catch them though, at least so far. Tonight she stalked one across the yard while it was on the cinder blocks for the garden and then charged until it was up a tree. I approve quite hardily!

I learned an interesting fact this year. Tomatillos grow the husk first and then the fruit grows after that and into the husk! So cool, but I was a little confused at first. Here’s a picture.

I have two orange Juliet cherry tomatoes starting to turn and a lot of green ones on other plants. My homemade cages are mostly working. I am pleased with them, so I’ll set them up next year too.

I have eaten my second produce from the garden too! A little radish! We had one lonely strawberry this year. I think they need some extra compost in the fall to keep them better over the winter.

I also used some of the rhubarb in a fun new quick bread recipe. It was pretty good. I have also been excited about having arugula in my salads. It’s fun to have something to make the salads a little less boring.

My hot peppers are growing, the squirrels stole one, but abandoned it in the garden, as usual. My other peppers keep getting eaten before they can grow.

My zucchini has a lot of flowers, but they keep getting eaten, so I don’t know how many zucchini I’ll get this year. It bums me out, I was going to make more squash pickles to share with Dad.

I made a scare bag to put in the garden, but I might need a few more. My Grandpa Ed used to put them in his garden and he was a fantastic gardener, so I’m hoping some of his garden luck will rub off on me. My rhubarb is planted in his memory as well, so I was excited to use it this year.

Some of my herbs are growing and I need to replace a couple of them. It’s been too hot and I haven’t been able to water them enough. I also transplanted a couple of the volunteer tomato plants into pots instead of in the middle of the cucumbers/carrots/etc.

We have a couple of interlopers that we are going to work on getting rid of. These are American Pokeweed and these are we think, Poison Oak.

My younger brother is staying with us for a little while and as it turns out, he’s immune to poison ivy! We’re all hoping this also applies to poison oak, although he will be wearing the necessary protective gear of course. He’s going to dig out the area by the apple tree that we had planned to turn into another garden space anyway. I’m thinking we’ll put two narrow beds in it to grow herbs or things that can be trellised. For now though, after he digs it all out, we’re going to cover it with landscape fabric and set up the blocks to hold it down. Hopefully it’s not gotten too far away from that area and into the ground cover a little ways over.

Piggy has been getting very itchy after coming in from outside and we suspect that might be why. We’ve got an itch relief spray for her and some wipes that seem to help.

We did have a nice interloper though. A big toad! Piggy found it and was sniffing it until I made her leave it alone. It hopped off into the bushes. Being so close to the river, we do get a lot of toads and frogs. I think it’s fun!

I think that’s all the garden updates recently. Everything seems to be taking a long time to grow and produce. I think we need to add some compost for next year to get the extra nutrients into the soil. Hopefully I will have some more updates soon!

Life Posts · Sewing · Wordless Wednesdays

Sewing Space and Garden Update- Wordy Wednesday

June 27, 2018July 1, 2018 LSiehLeave a comment

Well, hello Wednesday! I thought it was Tuesday, somehow missed that I have spent two days at work already. Man…

I’ll post some pictures tomorrow for a Thoughtful Thursday post, but in the meantime, here’s an update on the garden and my sewing space.

The garden is growing like crazy! I have to get out there and weed it, but it’s currently pouring rain, so it won’t be today.

Here’s a shot of the pepper and lettuce box:

I lost once lettuce, but the rest are going strong. We’re going to have a lot of lettuce though. More salads, I guess. Next year, maybe I will split lettuce with someone, or start from seed.

Here’s the tomato box:

Holy tomatoes, Batman!

Mr. Stripey is getting very big and my smaller tomato plants, the Early Girl’s have taken off! We’re going to have so many tomatoes!

My herbs are looking good. I used some lemon thyme in shortbread cookies and they were good.

I think being in the ground has really helped the garden. It’s much easier to control the consistent watering and everything seems to be thriving.

Now for the sewing part. I wasn’t up to crawling around on the floor to get patterns cut when sick, so I didn’t do a lot of sewing. I did make a table runner for Thanksgiving.

I also made this maxi skirt. Excuse the late night, silly face.

It’s super comfy and now has a slightly shorter hem. The skirt is a cotton rayon blend and I used black double brushed poly for the waistband. It’s lovely ans swishy, but I have to wait until it stops raining to wear it. It originally had a pocket, but it looked hideous, so I took it out.

I’ve done a lot of organizing to get my space ready to sew downstairs again.

The desk still has a few things on it, but now where near as bad as it was. The new lights the Husband hing are glorious, but I think I need one in front of my machine too. It’s a little backlit at the moment. It’s much brighter though, so that’s good.

I even cleaned the little messy area on top of my storage shelves.