Saturday

As of this morning, we have 296 cases of Coronavirus in Nebraska. That's 23 over yesterday. Not much else to report except that the CDC is asking Americans to wear masks when they go into public now. It's not a demand, but a suggestion. I have one and I will take it with me and I guess if everyone else is, I suppose I should. I find them really uncomfortable with my glasses because they tend to fog up.

Well, thankfully yesterday was the one cold day. Today it's supposed to get into the low 50s, tomorrow into the 60s, and Monday and Tuesday are supposed to be in the 70s! What a relief...

I have a lot of my special plants in the kitchen, where I see them a lot. For example mounted orchids that need to be regularly misted or drenched. Here are my three mounted orchids, all small or miniature. Names are on their photos...

Also in this West window are three growing in seashells. This first one is my krohniana, which I got from Gardino's in 2013. I'm posting a pic of the full-size plant that hangs in the dining room as well.

Next is Mathilde in a shell followed by the full size plant...

And the last one in a seashell is parviflora, which I got from Jessica in 2012. Jessica is the one that used to go by GreedyGhost on Garden Web and lives here in Omaha. It didn't do very well for me for a long long time, and I felt like I was barely keeping it alive. Claude gave me this nice shell  right after his wife, Carol Ann, passed away. I decided to put the parviflora in that shell and within a couple of months, it took off. I've always said that Carol Ann must be watching over my plant and inspiring it to grow. She was such a lover of plants, and she especially loved Hoyas, so I figure it's Touched by an Angel!

I'm not sure where I got Hoya siamica IML 1127. I just know I've had it for several years. It's another one that has grown and then had problems, back and forth over the years. The last two years have been good for it, though it has not grown much. It has a new vine, so this may be a good year for it.  Note added: thanks to Marco for taking a really close look at this and seeing scale!  I got her all cleaned up, which should make a difference in how she grows!  And in the process, I found three, not one, new growth points!

Hoya EPC 392 came from Ric a few years ago. Last year was a good year for it, and it even grew some this winter. I think this is going to be a good year for this one!

I have a few Tillandsias as well - these are two that are in a cute little dish I got at Goodwill some years back.

Hoya crassicaulis was one that came from Cowboyflowerman back in 2009. It's done okay, but it's not one that particularly trips my trigger. Last year, I moved it up to a larger pot and it was on the south side of the greenhouse most of the winter. I decided to move it into the kitchen on the top shelf in the north window. At least now it has a good excuse for not blooming!

I have a few Sansevierias on that top shelf as well. Here are two of the smaller ones...

This Malawi Midnight is from a cutting I took off of my main plant. A couple years back, one of the plants in the pot had a dying main tip. That stops them from growing so I just took it out of there, chopped up the leaves and started babies from it. One cutting gave me all these little plants in this pot!

Sansevieria masoniana 'Whale's Fin' is one of the greatly sought after species for obvious reasons. The super wide leaves are just gorgeous. I got mine last year at the Cactus Club show and sale in Des Moines. There were a whole bunch of bare-root ones for sale for a couple of bucks apiece, and I picked one that had a baby side shoot on it. Hoping it grows some more this year!

And last one I'm going to show from the kitchen is Hoya nabawensis. I received this one as pusilla from Gardino's some years ago, then received another one with the same name from Chuck Hansen. I can't tell you which one this comes from... I think it might be from Chuck's actually. Personally, I'm not that confident of the new name...

In the dining room are some more of my favorite plants. I sit at the dining room table and marvel over them! The next Sansevieria is one I got at the last Tri Club Auction we had a few years ago. It was from someone in the KC club. A couple years later, I was one of the judges at one of their shows and she had her big plant entered in the show. There were three of us judges and I thought hers was the blue ribbon winner, but my two co-judges disagreed with me and selected another one, a more common one. I still think they were wrong!

Hoya kerrii albomarginata is such a SLOW grower!  I showed my smaller one from the greenhouse in an earlier post. That one I've had for many many years. This one I got as a larger plant at one of the shows about 3 years ago. It puts on new growth every year, but so often the new leaves are ugly... I always end up whacking off the ugly leaves. It's got two new leaves right now that don't look too bad... The only negative thing about them is that they are incurved which doesn't look right. But looks like they might otherwise be okay once they grow out and start to show their variegation. We'll see...

And this one is cv. Noelle. It's very similar to Joy, which is a cross between sp. Lao and vitellina. Doug from Vermont Hoyas says that Noelle is a cross between vitellina and vitellinoides. I think he's a pretty good source for identification, but I see no hint of vitellinoides in this species! Anyway, I'm including a pic of the whole plant, and then one of us particularly nice large leaf...