Notes as I work in the GH...

I started this on my laptop, got my first paragraph in and the stupid thing deleted it!  I don't know what it is about both of my laptops, but for some reason, the keyboard just doesn't sit right and apparently, I must hit something as I'm typing that does one of two things - it either jumps back into the middle of what I've already typed, OR it highlights everything and as soon as I hit a key, it all disappears.  It makes me so mad I just wanna SPIT!  

Ok, back to my notes.  I've been spring cleaning...and what I mean by that is I take a plant down, check it over, trim, primp, whack, toss...whatever is called for.  I've had losses this winter because it's the worst year I can remember for mealies.  I'm usually really good at catching them before they get bad, but for some reason, they're hiding better from me.  My only explanation is my eyes are getting older and I'm not seeing them until they get bigger.  So I'm going to have to be more diligent, I guess...  In any case, it's weird because they're here and there.  In other words, I'll find a plant on a shelf that has them, and none of the surrounding plants have them.  Then several feet away, I'll find another one with them, but again, none of the surrounding plants have them.  It's weird...

I'm counting some of the losses as "maybes" at this point.  For example, I found 'Annakey', one of my super-expensive cuttings from Carol, dried up and destroyed by mealies.  I whacked it clear back to the soil, but the roots feel solid so I'm going to play "wait and see" - maybe it will come back.  I've got a few of those that I'll put out on the porch as soon as it's warm enough and see if I can't get them to come back.  

Then there were two (so far) that I whacked back just because I thought they were ugly.  Pentaphlebia is one I've been growing for some time.  I got a cutting from Dee about 15 years ago, then I got a plant from Gardinos a few years ago.  I put them together.  Well, they've always grown a little "funky" for me.  The leaves are almost always kind of wavy, not particularly pretty.  So I figure I'll let it restart and if that's just it's nature, I'll trade it off for something else.  

Kenejiana is another one.  I'm sure I blogged last summer about how my kenejiana is no favorite, but suddenly it sprouted 3 new shoots off at the edge of the pot that seemed completely different than the growth I'd been getting before.  Now granted, there are two different clones of kenejiana in the pot - one from Gardino's, and one from David Liddle.  Well, these new shoots are very eye appealing.  So what I did was I whacked back the old growth to see what will happen when it grows back.  I guess I'm feeling in an experimental mood this year!

My oldest kerrii really needs to be repotted.  Maybe back into the same pot, but it definitely could use some new soil.  It has such a super thick trunk on it, I think it would be better to put it in a slightly larger and very heavy pot.  Right now, it's in a lightweight metal pot.

Sp. aff. vitellina is one that has turned into a real beauty, and it's just covered with peduncles.  It looks like they may even be gearing up to bloom.  Here's a photo:

 

The leaves are relatively succulent, and subtly veined.  I think the spots are just from the sunny spot it sits in.  Sometimes, if there's droplets of water on a plant when the sun is blazing hot, the water magnifies the suns rays and "burns" a little spot into a leaf.  This is one that is pretty bug resistant, probably because the leaves are tough and vines are woody.

In the same vicinity is sp. Chicken Farm, one I got from Carol about 3 years ago.  It's grown nicely and the leaves are absolutely primitive looking!... 

This one is very succulent and the leaves are textured, veined and silver-mottled.  Very pretty!

I repotted bicknellii... poor, poor bicknellii!  It really should have been repotted last year at worst, and probably the year before would have been better.  I have it in one of my (what I call) BJ pots.  BJ was a good friend in the cactus club who passed away from cancer several years ago.  She made very interesting pottery, very textured and a little off-the-wall.  This was a heavy, tall pot that had about a 4" opening at the top, and it was maybe 6 or 7" tall.  Well, it was so grotesquely potbound that that I had to use a long, slender knife and cut along the outside of the rootball to separate it from the pot.  Well, even after that, I struggled like crazy to get it to "let go" from the bottom of the pot, and ended up losing about half the rootball.  I put it in a bigger, heavy clay pot and I'm so hoping it will adjust ok... It's such a lovely Hoya.  Here's a pic from a couple years ago...

And the flowers...

 

They're surprisingly small for the size of the plant.  Anyway, I'll be watching it closely with fingers crossed that it will adjust.

My huge H. australis ssp. australis has a lot of dead leaves on it.  I'm not sure why.  It's ancient, so it may just be experiencing some dieback that comes naturally with older plants.  When we have a nice warm day, I'll take it down (it's on the top shelf in my GH and quite heavy!), take it outside and spray it off with the hose, getting all the dead stuff out and getting a good look at it to make sure it's otherwise ok.

Time to fix supper!

It's March at last!

March is here!  The Robins are back, the geese have all returned.  It's warm as all get-out.  We've been breaking temp records right and left!  

It's getting difficult to keep up with all my plants, which is why I'm gaining enthusiasm for "cutting the population".  I have so many nice-growing ones, I just don't need to be burdened by the difficult ones.  So some "speak" about the good ones...

H. krohniana has been hanging in the east window in the dining room all winter.  It has produced some extraordinarily large leaves.  The large ones aren't nearly as textured or as succulent as the small ones, and they are very shiny.  If it was all a single vine, I'd wonder if it was a different species stuck in there with it!  I guess it just proves that leaves can be quite variable and you really can't prove species purely based on leaves.

 That tiny leaf above the two large ones is on the same vine.  Oh, and notice the peduncle budding at the bottom of the photo?  Here's one that's a little further along...

I'm looking forward to that deliciously fragrant smell.  I miss not having a lacunosa - of course, some think that krohniana is a form of lacunosa.  They could be right - they smell the same!

I heard from the publisher of Hobby Greenhouse magazine that my article about Hoyas will be published in the next issue.  (It comes out 4 times a year...)  I submitted it late last summer, and they liked it, though they said it would probably be a couple issues before there was room for it.  But I'm excited to have it published and I look forward to sharing it with my Hoya Peeps on GW!

I don't think I've blogged since my computer woes started...  About 3 or 4 weeks ago, I got an e-mail from UPS that stated that they had attempted to deliver something and it had a "package status" link, which I clicked on.  My bad... I should have known better.  But I get packages ALL the time from UPS, and it really didn't occur to me that this was bogus... UNTIL it installed a zip file that I could neither open nor delete.  Uh-oh...  Nothing bad seemed to happen, so I decided to deal with it later.  Well, it was one of those things they call "ransomware".  The first time you open a document, it encrypts ALL your documents.  And I mean ALL.  18 years of documents, inaccessible.  Oh, and my thumb drive with all my backup files was connected to the computer so all THOSE files were encrypted as well.  I was totally panicked!  I took the computer over to the GEEK squad and he booted it up and said, "Nothing you can do but set the computer back to day 1."  I came home and started pulling off files with photos, music, etc. to move over after I reset it, but those started getting infected, so I ditched that effort and set it back.  Spent about 10 hours getting programs back on and up and running.  A couple days later, I go to get on and it won't get past the wallpaper screen.  It tries, but it won't load the screen that asks for your PIN.  Back to the GEEKS, paid them $200 for a year's worth of service, and they said the reset was corrupted somewhere along the line, and they had to reset it back, AGAIN!  So start over, the 10 hours to get all the programs back on and set up and running...  Guess what?  Now I have no Excel.  I have a version of MS Office that does not include Excel. It must have come on the computer pre-loaded and now I don't have it anymore.  I am NOT a happy camper!  I do not want to buy a newer version of Office, but I suppose I will eventually...

On a positive note, I found a thumb drive that I apparently backed everything up on at the end of 2015.  So I got back a lot of my old files.  There were newer ones I lost, but it's not the end of the world.  I found I had all but 2016 RCCSS newsletters, and I got the 2016s from a couple of the members, so I have all those archives back.  And I put them in the cloud so that I won't ever lose them again!  But I have to recompile my plant database.  What a hassle...

Well, I'm off to my club meeting.  More another day...