I'm amazed at the cuttings I've gotten this spring. Let's see... I got excavata from Dee. It's producing new growth. The large succulent leaves are pretty impressive. There's a nice long vine that's got leaf buds - I think it will be a climber. The photo at the right is excavata, and the two leaves you can see fully on the left are the new leaves...

Here's a photo of villosa... What a beautiful Hoya!! I've got it in that stout, off-white pot that has a pumpkin shape. It seems very happy there. I'm keeping it on the top shelf in the GH for the summer and it seems to love the heat and sun.
I got 5 rooting cuttings from Plumerindr (an eBay seller) in May. I lost one, but the other 4 are doing great! I'll post photos in a future blog. I should also take photos of the Liddle cuttings, and take new photos of last year's Liddle cuttings to show how much new growth I've gotten since then...

So this post isn't about plants... I'll title it...

Cucumber Slumber!!

I've inadvertently discovered something. Well, not inadvertently exactly - I got one of those e-mails "All the great things you can do with cucumbers..." Yadda-yadda-yadda. Until I got to the one about nighttime headaches!! I need to digress and explain...

About 6 weeks go (yes SIX!!), I started having these BLINDING nighttime headaches. They typically would start about 2-3 hours into my night's sleep, and I'd awake to a headache that felt like someone was stabbing me in my right temple. They were sinus pressure headaches - that I knew. My right cheek, above my eye and ear all hurt, and the pounding in my temple was excrutiating. It also would hurt all the way down to the back of my head on the right side. The temple throbbing I could usually (not always) settle down with heat or ice (or both, back and forth), a hot cup of tea (inhaling the steam). But the pressure would persist most of the night. If I was lucky, it would be better by the time I got up in the a.m. Sometimes, it wouldn't get better until I got up. Which made me think it was pressure building during the night, when I wasn't relieving the pressure regularly by blowing... I started to dread going to bed.

I finally went to the doctor in desperation last Monday (a week ago tomorrow) and the doc thinks it's allergies, though I've never experienced anything like this before. She gave me 40 mg. of prednisone for 5 days to settle it down. That day, I came home to the e-mail, and the line that caught my eye was this:

"Want to avoid a hangover or terrible headache? Eat a few cucumber slices before going to bed and wake up refreshed and headache free. Cucumbers contain enough sugar, B vitamins and electrolytes to replenish essential nutrients the body lost, keeping everything in equilibrium, avoiding both a hangover and headache!!"

At this point, I'm so desperate I'll try anything. So I sent Mark to the store to get me a couple of cucumbers. I didn't start on the prednisone that day (because the doc said it would keep me awake if I took it in the afternoon...), but I ate 5 chunky slices of cucumber before I went to bed. I had a BEAUTIFUL night's sleep! The first in 6 weeks! Hm - maybe just coincidence. I did it again Tuesday - I slept like a rock, no headache! Wed., Thurs., Fri., Sat... every morning I felt like a million bucks. They're better than a sleeping pill! I'm in utter awe... I hope I can report back in another month that this is the miracle it seems today!!

It's Sunday again - my days off seem to be the best day to observe and record new goings-on in the GH. Some really good news! I put merredithii x. crassicaulis (the clone I got from Ted Green 2 years ago) out on the back deck about a week or so ago. That one has been a struggle for me. It rooted nicely when I got it, and I think even put on a little new growth the first year. But in 2009, it apparently got a little dehydrated and looked like it was failing. So I ended up cutting it back and re-rooting a portion of it and putting it back in the mother pot. It did a little better, and earlier this spring, it even put on one new leaf off thge newly rooted part. But the main plant just never looked quite right to me. So in an attempt to get it going, I put it outside. It may be more about timing, but it has some new growth on it already, so I'm very excited!!

I repotted davidcummingii into one of those 5" hanging pots this week. It looked to be dehydrating - I think it was potbound, plus I found a couple scale on it - grrr. I treated it with BATS. I really fight those buggers on the ones I've gotten from Hawaii... They must be a real nuisance over there.

Check out my first flowers on pubicalyx 'Red Buttons'. I really like the rosey,

mauvish color of the corollas, and I especially like the white, furry rim. My first flowers opened yesterday (6/5/10) - I have other peduncles starting to bud up. Now, if I could just get 'Pink Silver' to bloom! It's such a stingy bloomer - I've let it wander to both ends of the GH, up along the eaves, and it seems quite happy. Maybe I'll hit it a few times with a bloom booster...

My H. carnosa 'Krimson Queen', which I grow in the sunroom, has been putting on new growth. Oh, it's a bit slow, as it typical of variegates, but it looks good. I put the big 'Krimson Princess' out on the fron't porch about 10 days ago. I figured it might bloom for me if I summer it outside. Now, if I can just remember to keep it watered! And here's a cluster of all-cream leaves on my 'KQ'...

It's really beautiful, but I usually end up eventually removing leaves like this because the lack of chlorophyll tends to slow the growth to the rest of the plant at some point. I'll wait until that's apparent, though, and enjoy them in the meantime...

I got up this morning and put three of my carnosa rubras in 5" hanging pots for the sale. I got a box of them from Awanda this week - decided they'll look better and I can get a few more bucks for them in hanging pots. I've also put 3 polyneuras in those pots, too. I figure I'll charge about $12 apiece for them. I was going to charge $10, but I think the pot (which really probably costs me $2 w/shipping) makes them more desirable.