Up at the crack of dawn!

 Mark called me from the basement (where he spends most of his time and sleeps) at 5:40 a.m. to tell me to call 911 - he said he couldn't breath.  To me, he sounded exactly like he always does, but apparently it was worse.  I asked if he could get upstairs so I could take him to the ER and he said no.  I don't think it was about his ability to GET up the stairs but about his ability to put on his gel liner so he could get into his prosthetic leg.  His gel liner is new, and with his bad hand, it's quite a chore to get it turned inside out so he can apply it - even I struggle with it.  So I called 911 and 6 firemen/EMTs showed up, went down and gave him a breathing treatment and got him comfortable enough that they didn't take him away. I think the time is quickly approaching that he needs to be on oxygen, which scares me with his smoking...  Of course, on the up side, if he has an oxygen tank, the rule will be to never, ever take it into the bathroom, which is the only place I allow him to smoke in the house.  If he blows up my house, he better just hope he dies in the explosion and that I don't die with him because if I do, I'll go kick his ass on the other side!

Today, I plan to go to an Abe meeting.  I really need it... we haven't been to very many in the past year with Covid.  We met outside last late summer/fall, so we went to some of those.  We didn't go through the winter when they were meeting at a coffee house - didn't want to wear a mask while trying to chat and didn't want the exposure.  They've started back up, but they've been meeting at a park again, and that just doesn't work so much for Mom with her intestinal issues.  Well, Tim finally decided to schedule one at a Panera to accommodate Mom, so we're going today.  At least I HOPE I can still go!  I'll go as long as Mark seems ok, but I will leave the back door unlocked in case he needs to call 911 while I'm gone.  I really, REALLY need to be around some serious positivity!

Ok, to make me smile, here are some funny pictures!  First, a car I pulled up behind at Walgreens the other day...

I see plenty of the "666" license plates, but I thought this one was particularly funny because I see "What the hell" or "Way to hell" in the letters!!

I got these two funnies off FB recently, and can definitely relate to both of them!

The first one is SO how I feel when I see photos of Marco's Hoyas!  I send him a cutting off one of mine and within a year, it's bigger then my 10-year-old plant, and it pumps out flowers like a machine gun!  He's experiencing that right now with a "cutting" off my inconspicua.  It's been covered with flowers while mine is just sitting there, not really even growing right now.  Mine hangs in the bathroom and gets strong reflective light and will produce a flower or two several times a year, and it tends to grow in little spurts.  But down there it is apparently in its element!  I can see why he puts up with the heat and humidity!

And the cartoon - yep, just change the word "garden" to "greenhouse" and you got me!  Yesterday, I spent the day watching recorded episodes of Hawaii 5-O and at each commercial, I'd go spend a few minutes cleaning in the GH.  I think I mentioned in a previous post that I put one of my shelves out in the back yard to give me room to clean the nooks and crannies in the GH this year. It's divided into 9 window sections and I'm doing one section at a time.  And yes, it's THAT dirty!  I worked on the 2nd section yesterday.  It's a grimy job!  But when I get done with a section, it looks so nice.  This fall, I'll hire someone to come wash all the outside windows.  I used to have an extension ladder AND the balls to go up and wash the roof windows.  I haven't been able to do that in years (not to mention that the ladder got stolen some years back...)

Here is a photo I took of Cleo doing her thing on the door top:

She's such a brave little girl!  I came home to her brother limping around last week and I suspect that he finally tried to get up there and either missed, or maybe he made it and then tried to jump down all the way from up there.  She gets up there by jumping onto the bookcase (that's built-in between living and dining rooms) and then to the door and back down the same way.  He may have thought he could come straight down to the floor... boys just aren't as smart as girls!  LOL!

Blooming today...  for the last several mornings, when I get up and go to the kitchen, my routine is to do the last of the dishes from the night before and as I stand at the sink, I'm bombarded with the sweet scent of a blooming Hoya - it's krohniana, the one growing in the seashell in the west window to the left of the sink.  Of course, it's closely related to lacunosa, so it's one of the sweetest smells in the Hoya world!  Very nice...

There's actually two open.  For some reason, this one blooms easier than my big mama plant!

Bicknellii has the one bloom that has been going strong for I'd guess at least two weeks!  I can't think of another Hoya whose blooms last so long...

 

That's the Vanilla orchid in front of it.  I wish THAT would bloom for me!

And opening today is my first bloom on 'Dapple Grey', one I got from Marco.  This has been a great grower for me, though I'm sure it's just another clone of carnosa.  But plain carnosa refuses to bloom for me.  I can remember once probably 20 years ago that I got a bloom or two off of carnosa.  Now if I take cuttings of reverted vines off of 'Krimson Princess', they usually bloom within a few years.  But my original carnosa, which is another reboot, sooo rarely blooms...  Here's the DG...

I'll take another pic when it fully opens.

I took down merredithii x crassicaulis to water today.  I just love the leaves on this one...

The veins are so prominent!  The down side of this one is that the tips brown easily, so eventually, I have to snip them flat and it takes away some of the beauty.  I wonder if it would help to move it back to the GH...now it grows in my bedroom.

And one last observation before I get my day started... I put the finlaysonii that was in the sunroom out in the GH a few days ago.  I notice that it's budding up, whereas the one that's been in the GH for several years is not!  Isn't that interesting... maybe it doesn't have everything to do with how much light they get!  It's actually got several (I counted 5) peduncles budding on the same vine!

 

Mark's problems just seems to get worse and worse... Wednesday night around 12:30 a.m., he got me up and said to call 911. Well, he managed to come up and I took him to the ER because he was having excruciating pain from his hernia. They spent the next five hours doing tests and determined that his hernia wasn't the problem but it was a gallstone in left behind when they took out his gallbladder, one that goes to the liver. They removed it and his pain went away. But it was quite a fiasco... Around 36 hours in the hospital, then when he came home he was still acting drunk from the anesthesia - zig-zag walking and slurred speach. He managed to get himself downstairs, but within an hour he fell down in the bathroom. Thankfully, I was able to help him crawl to his chair and get into it. It seems that life has become one crisis after another with him... It kind of feels like I'm in this giant cosmic game of dodge ball and I can't seem to get out of the way of the ball!  I'm almost afraid to check on him this morning...

So, I managed to lose those two days this week.  I was supposed to work Thursday but didn't - even if he had come home from the ER, I lost the whole night of sleep and wouldn't have been good to drive. Oh, and as if THAT wasn't enough to deal with, Thursday around noon Jessica (my boss) called to tell me Darlene, one of my co-workers, tested positive for Covid!  Darlene is the one from out group who refuses to get vaccinated.  I worked with her all day Tuesday - just freakin' fantastic!  So now here I was, going back and forth to the hospital and I've been exposed.  Granted, I've had my shots, the last one nearly a month ago, but I can still get it, which means I can still be contagious.  So I took a quick response test on Friday morning.  Of course I learned that "quick" means hopefully 1-3 hours, but up to 24 hours!  So I went on up to the hospital - on Thursday, once he was admitted, I went up there and no one was actively screening people, so I thought maybe they were relaxing those standards now that the mask mandate is getting so close to being over.  Well, apparently they just weren't paying attention when I came in.  Friday, they hailed me over to the info desk and asked who I was there to see, called the nurse because "no one is on the approved visitor list."  Then they started the barrage of questions - I wasn't going to lie, and when they ask that STUPID question, "have you been exposed to Covid?", I would handle it like I always do... "Don't you think that's a silly question?  Of course, if you go out in public, we've ALL been exposed to it!"  Then they usually roll their eyes at me (I must not be the only one who thinks this is a stupid question) and say "...for a fact..."  At which point I would simply point out that I have no symptoms and I've been vaccinated.  Would that be enough?  I don't know...  But, for some weird reason, she didn't ask the question so I never had to answer it...

So I'm going down to see Mom today.  I need to get away for a few hours...

---------------------------

Now it's Sunday.  Life just gets more interesting by the minute.  My plan was to leave at 11 a.m. yesterday to go see Mom, and Mark was going to go get some milk and donuts for his breakfast.  (Yeah, that's how he rolls!)  But as I was leaving, he got up from the front porch to go to his truck and he could barely walk.  It's his balance, and I think (I HOPE) it's exacerbated by having been under general anesthesia the day before.  He was also still slurring his words.  He opened his truck door and literally fell into it.  I said, "STOP, I'll take you to get your donuts and milk!"  So I did, and I insisted on going into the Casey's to get them because it was my fear he would fall.  Brought him back home and got him inside and crossed my fingers he would be ok for a few hours, and I left.

On my way to Plattsmouth (which is about 25 minutes), Mom called and said, "Do you mind if we go to Red Oak again?"  Of course, I knew that was about her friend Sandy who is in hospice.  She said Merry (my sis) would be driving.  I was hesitant because of Mark, but I said yes...  Turns out Chris (Sandy's daughter) called Mom at 7:15, but Mom was in bed and didn't get it.  She called her back later when she got up and Chris couldn't even talk she was so hysterically sobbing.  All she gleaned from the conversation was that Sandy was apparently very close to the end and she was not handling it well... 

We got down there and Sandy was not conscious and obviously was struggling to exit her body.  I could see why Chris was a blubbering mess.  Most people see death as some kind of finality, even many with a religious background.  But with Chris, I don't think her sadness was about her mom's suffering, but about how her death would affect HER.  She actually said at one point, "I want to shake her and say WAKE UP!!  I need you!"  She didn't seem to understand that her mom was probably holding on because Chris couldn't let go.  We (along with a neighbor lady, who had some experience in hospice care) told her she needs to let her mom know it's ok to let go, that she would be ok...  Merry called Chris's brother, who lives on the east coast, who called his daughter who lives in Nebraska City, about 1.5 hours away.  She drove up to stay with Chris to the end... and we left at about 5:00 to head back to Plattsmouth.  Mom got the call about 8:30 that Sandy passed. Good for you, Sandy!  I'm glad you made the transition and I'm so sorry it was rough at the end...  She was one of the kindest souls I've ever known and I hope she'll be part of my greeting crew someday!

Here's a little interesting tidbit... Chris claims she never made that call that Mom got at 7:15 a.m. (She didn't leave a message, but her name came up in caller ID.) When she left the room at some point, I looked at her phone - I told Mom, wouldn't it be interesting if it didn't show up in her phone?  It would prove that someone... maybe her dad (deceased) or even Sandy on some level, had made that call for "help".  They say that spirits are able to manipulate electronic devices and though Sandy was still "here", I think when they are that far gone, they have one foot in this world and the other in the spirit world...  If it wasn't listed, that would prove she really DIDN'T call Mom.  It was listed, so I thought we'll never know... Chris is no stranger to lying.  Well, a little later, that neighbor came back when Merry and Chris went for a little ride and we were telling her how Mom had gotten this call from Chris at 7:15.  She shook her head and said, "No, I don't think so.  I've been here since a few minutes after 7:00 and she hasn't made any calls.  She was in no condition to make any calls.  Her phone was in on her bed most of the morning and I know that because I kept trying to get her to call her brother and let him know what's going on and at some point, I went and found it for her."  WOW - now we know!  Crazy, right?!

So I came home and Mark had managed to go downstairs and back up and was on the porch when I got home, which gave me some new hope that he was getting his land-legs back.  I went to pick up supper (which he would normally do, but I still don't want him driving...) and when I got back, my neighbor, Marcy, came running up and said firemen had been here and in our house... Damn, he'd fallen again.  This time, it was in the kitchen and he conked his head and broke his glasses on the stone counter!  And he was just sitting at the table like nothing had happened!  He later told me they wiped some blood off his head!  FUCK!  This morning, he's still slurring his speech.  I wonder if this is going to be the new normal... **SIGH**

Well, I managed to get quite a few Hoyas (and a few Epis) out to the shelf I put against the north wall of the house...

I still have room on the bottom and top shelves.  I won't put anything precious on the top shelf in case we have a hail storm...

 

Here are some hanging in the tree:

Not a great pic, but it shows there are more than most years.  I think I have around 9 or 10 hanging in the tree this time.  Hope the mowing guy doesn't cuss at me every time, but at least I tell him to do the back every other visit.

 

I bought some Sempervivums (Hens & Chicks) for the pot on the patio:

They seem to be happily settling in.  Three varieties, plus a pup off one out front.

I hope they survive the winter!  And here is my succulent shelf:

And since I need to get started on my newsletter, that's it for today!

 

 

Tues., May 11th

I'm getting ready to go to Plattsmouth to take Mom to Red Oak.  She called yesterday to tell me that they had put Sandy, her best friend, into Hospice and she wants to see her.  I was with Mom a week or so ago when she got a call from Sandy saying that she most likely wouldn't be able to make it to Mom's 80th birthday party, which is this coming weekend.  Mom had her on speaker phone and she sounded bad, almost like she was drunk (which she was not, I'm sure), even though she was making every attempt to sound cheerful.  She's such a nice lady... but both she and her husband have been having serious health issues lately.  He's got cancer they can't really do much about, and she's... well, mostly just aging out, I guess.  She's diabetic and I think has a lot of health issues related to that.  But she is in her mid-80s, which I guess is older than the national average of life length.  Well, this lady will be sorely missed...

I've been clearing off one of my shelves in the GH so that I can take it apart, which will give me the room to move the others around and give the GH a good cleaning this year.  Boy is it scroungy!  There are places in the corners that have a thin layer of black moldy gunk growing.  It needs a good scrub-down with some clorox water, and maybe in the future, I'll periodically spray those areas with a mold-inhibiting disinfectant.  Anyway, once I get it all cleaned up and before fall gets here, I'll replace the shelf. 

 

Wed., May 19th

Well, it's a week later - I intended to get back and write more and get this published.  But that day turned into a long one - we didn't get back to Omaha until after 5 p.m.  Sandy was surprisingly cheerful and seemed not bad at all, but that might have been a facade.  I hope we didn't stay too long, but she seemed to SO appreciate having Mom there.  Her daughter, Chris, was there... Chris is kind of a loser.  She's my sister's age so that would make her 58, and she an alcoholic that just got out of rehab, again.  Court ordered.  She is a serious, falling-down drunk.  Also there was Sandy's son (she has two that live on the east coast) and his daughter.  They were trying to figure out her finances because, get this, her husband's daughter packed him up and took her back east with her!  He's dying too, and according to Chris, she (his daughter) "drained the accounts" and took off.  I'm not so sure that's what happened - I suspect maybe Chris did it and blamed it on them.  Whatever the case, it's a mess and something poor Sandy should NOT have to think about at the end of her life.  It's just... SAD...

I took today off to go a follow-up with Dr. Tierney, the doc who did my hysterectomy.  Without going into gory detail, I had (uh-hum) SOMEthing exit my hoo-hah a couple weeks ago that I suspect is something they left behind after surgery.  It was perfectly square, which doesn't seem like something that would naturally be in there!  I called his office to ask if perhaps there could be something that might have been left in there to (for example) absorb discharge, or like a gauze bandage to cover where it got "closed up" with (I assume) stitches.  No, she said, shouldn't be anything like that in there.  She said she would ask the doc and get back to me.  I got radio silence for several days, then she called me back and said he'd like to see me at the 6 week mark, "just to make sure everything is healing properly."  He told me at my last visit that he used to do 6 week check-backs, but he quit doing that because it seemed unnecessary.  Well, I think he might suspect what I suspect and wants to make sure there's nothing else in there!  LOL!

On to a more fun subject!  I recently had my first trade in some time.  Actually, I sold this lady some cuttings, but she had 3 that I wanted so it was a sale AND a trade.  I got a replacement for my tsangii (YAY!!!), a pub called 'Jungle Garden' that has some beautiful coloring (maybe it will keep it, maybe it won't...), and the third was supposed to be Dee's Big One, but it wasn't.  It was something Logee's sells as Dee's Big One that is NOT! It's a very nice clone of carnosa, I'm pretty sure.  But it's ok - not this lady's fault.  I was telling Karin in my cactus club about it and she has apparently gotten that from Logee's as well, so I'm sure there are plenty of people out there who think they have a Dee's that don't...  But that put me on a hunt for the real deal.  I tried sending Awanda (who I got mine from about a dozen years ago) a message through FB but didn't get a response.  So I went on Etsy and I'm pretty sure I found it.  The seller wanted $49 for a rooted cutting - well, I've been hard-pressed to pay that much for a Hoya (though that's cheap compared to what some people are willing to pay!) so I threw out the idea of a trade.  At first, she said she'd be willing to trade for a 'Michelle'.  I felt like saying, "Yeah, I BET you would!!"  I saw one of those from Ric go for over $1000!  I told I do grow it, but I call her "that bitch, Michelle" because she drops baby leaves - maybe one in 10 make it to maturity, so it never seems to get bigger.  If I get one or two leaves a season, I'm thrilled!  But I told her what I do have that she might want to consider and she liked lobbii, so I gave her two cuttings of lobbii for the Dee's.  (And I threw in some Dischidia nr. Burma as a surprise...)  This is her first trade (wow, really??!) and she's very excited.  Me too!

But I'm glad she chose lobbii because when I went to shoot her a photo, I noticed mealybugs!!  YIKES!  So I took it out to the back porch (wow, was THAT a chore - that is one crazy-ass big plant!) and shot all the mealies with alcohol, washed it down good and brought it back in and gave it a drink of bug poison (BATS).  I hope that wipes out the buggers!

Two of my three H. macrophyllas are putting on new growth, and both set 3 new leaves together!  Wonder what that's about?!  I'm not complaining, mind you, they're beautiful.  But the problem is that they STOP with the three leaves instead of a vine continuing to grow. Now I want some vines! Here's the ones in the sunroom - I think they're done growing - 2nd photo is a closeup of the biggest leaf showing how the silvery flecking looks like a fine snowfall with an occasional big odd flake!

And this is the one in the greenhouse, showing the back of the leaves because I couldn't get a good photo from the side facing the window...

 

Those are still growing - they keep that deep bronze color until they're full grown and start to mature.  Just waiting on the third one to start growing.  I may just put that one outside this summer...

H. pubicalyx 'Pink Dragon' has a single open umbel...first photo is a closeup without the flash, second is with a flash...

And the plant is getting new growth in at least two different places!  So I guess it's out of the funk it seemed to be in last fall.  Maybe it was just typical dormancy...  'Black Dragon', on the other hand, it, well EH.  I whacked it up and put cuttings in two different glass jars of leca and rooted a third in soil.  The ones in leca have tiny growth nubbins, but it's going to take a LOT of growing out to hide the old yellowish leaves!  The one in soil, on the other hand, is doing fantastic and actively growing.  

It's been raining off and on for the last three days, and rain seems to be in the forecast for the next several days.  I've gotten all but a few plants out - I'm trying to decide which of my Hoyas to hang in the tree this year.  I did already put variegated mac out.  It needs to be renewed, and a lot of it is trying to revert back to green.  I took some of the green cuttings off to start to eventually sell and I'll probably take more off.  It's got a vine with green leaves that it putting on new growth and I want to wait to see if the new growth is all green or if it comes back to being variegated before I whack it off...

A few weeks ago, I repotted H. siamica into a bigger pot.  That little bugger has been in the same 2.5" pot for YEARS, in my kitchen window.  It has done ok, but never been a big grower. But it dries out fast, and I thought maybe it just needs more root-room to take off, so I moved it to a 4" pot and put it back in its spot.  Well, I can see at least 3 placed with new growth!  Maybe this will be it's year!

It's a sweet little plant with hairy leaves (though you can't tell from the photo).  I apparently lost notes on where it came from, but I just did a search of my blog and found I got it from Joni in 2012.  Apparently, I ordered a dozen from her in late November and the box got "lost" for over a week.  Of the dozen I ordered, I still have 4 and this is one of them.  Now I understand why it's been a slow one - Joni's plants were always weak - she would take cuttings from newish growth, which really isn't a good idea.  New growth is strong when it's connected to the mother plant, but take it away from the mother and it STRUGGLES to root.  Well, think about it - it's putting all its energy into growing and suddenly, it has to stop and put its energy into rooting.  I think it stunts them and it can take them a long time to recover and start growing again.  Anyway, I think after nearly 10 years, it's going to be a productive plant now!

Well, I need to get some stuff done.  It's stopped raining for the moment and I need to decide on more Hoyas to go out to enjoy the rain!

 

It's been WAY too long since my last post!  My life is more and more complicated by the day (seems like...)   I have more energy than I did a couple years ago, but because so much "stuff" has been put off for so long, it's overwhelming to dive in and get things done.  I managed to get the downstairs bathroom and laundry room painted.  It turned into a fiasco because I got impatient and let some amateurs do it and it turned out awful, so then I had to hire other people to make it right. Some years ago, I would have just done it myself, but I don't think I could stand on a step stool for any significant amount of time, so it would have been a very extended project...Anyway, it's done (or close to so, as I'm still putting up the decor...) and it's looking good!  I'll post pics when I'm done.

This is my first post for 2021... Where do I begin?  I went to the doc for a routine visit in late December and mentioned that I was experiencing "post-menopausal spotting", something I had NO intention of mentioning because I thought that kind of thing just happened.  It had been going on "now and then" for a few months.  Nothing significant, mind you.  The only reason I brought it up is because in either late November or early December, an old friend from my teen years (Greg) sent me one of what he calls his "Newzines".  Now here's the weird part... Greg has apparently been doing these for years - email newsletters he sends to friends and family to keep them up-to-date on what's going on in his and his wife's lives.  I have probably been in contact with him for at least a dozen years and I'd been getting them regularly.  Now, when I got this one, I had not seen one for probably a year or two, and hadn't really even given it much thought until this one came in.  "Huh!" I thought.  "When was the last time I saw one of THOSE?!"  Then I read it.  From the content, it was obvious that his wife was on her death bed... the statement was something like, "I'm amazed she made it through the night"...  So as sensitively as possible, I told him I had not been receiving his Newzines for some time so I was not "in the loop" about why Bonnie was sick and of course gave him as much moral support as I could being in the dark... He expressed surprise that I had not been receiving his Newzines - said he didn't take me off the list and wondered why I had been excluded, then explained that Bonnie was dying of cervical cancer.  So the point of me relaying this is to explain WHY I decided...maybe it's a good idea just to MENTION it to the doc.  I fully expected the doc to ask a few questions and say something like, "Well, as long as it's just occasional and there's no heavy bleeding like a real period, no worries."  And then give me some things to watch for that could be a more serious problem.

Well, she said "Post-menopausal spotting or bleeding is never normal.  Let's investigate."  And she sent me on to have an ultrasound done.  They did that and said I had "a thickening of my uterus lining and perhaps a polyp", so they sent me on to a gynecologist to do a "D&C", which I refer to as a "dusting and cleaning."  LOL... I'll point out here that the gyn said something like "Polyps are rarely ever cancerous in the uterus."  Hate it when the use the "C" word even with the word NOT in front of it!  But at least it was in there.  Well, a few days after the D&C, the doc called me to say that I DO have uterine cancer, albeit stage 1 which, as she put it to quell my angst, is almost always cured simply by doing a hysterectomy... Of course, my head is saying, "Yeah, but you said polyps are almost never cancerous, so this whole 'almost' thing isn't a SURE thing."

So she sent me on to a gynecology oncologist who set me straight on the whole stage one thing...  "We can not determine what STAGE it is until we take it out because STAGE is about how far it has spread, and we won't know that until after surgery.  What you have is Level 1 cancer, which means it is very slow growing." So I had to wait a month, with that knowledge, and they did a hysterectomy.  Another 8 or 9 days later, the lab work comes back and...THEY GOT IT ALL, no need for any further treatment!

Of course, I thank my lucky stars that the Universe gave me a big NUDGE with my friend's Newzine just before a routine visit to the doctor.  Let's recount all the coincidences... first, the Universe stopped the incoming Newzines a year or more ago.  This is significant because most of them were a bit mundane and though I would usually open them and take a quick look to see if there was anything interesting, I might let them sit for a month or more before I did so.  So because one suddenly appeared after so long, I opened it immediately to see "what's going on" with Greg... Second, the coincidence that his wife was dying at that moment of something that would evoke the response that made me ask the question.  This is a case of something positive coming out of a terrible tragedy...  Third, it came at a time when I already had an appointment with the doc - I doubt, even knowing of his wife's death, that I would have made a special appointment over the issue, and if it had been months later, I might not have even thought of mentioning it.  And here's another little side coincidence... that appointment had actually been for late August, and I put it off because it's so damn expensive to see the doc.  I made it for the end of December just so it got in under the wire for my insurance.  I thing this is a case of the Universe is always looking out for me!

So it's been a nerve wracking year so far.  Now, on top of that, a few months ago, Mark apparently had a stroke, or at least that's what they think.  His left hand quit working, and when I say that I mean it it utterly useless.  No grip, can't open it, it just hangs there like a club.  He finally talked to the doc about it and they checked his carotid arteries and found they're both "narrowed", the right one pretty significantly, so they went in and cleaned it out.  Not that will bring his hand back, but it will hopefully prevent another stroke.  Well, this hand thing is a real deal changer.  It's almost impossible for him to button his shirts (got him a tool that helps somewhat), can't tie his shoes (I have to do that), hard to impossible to put on a jacket or coat (he's learning some techniques)...  But I think his balance is affected as well, but he denies it.  He scares the crap out of me when he gets up from his chair because he almost always loses his balance and all but goes down.  Well, yesterday he fell TWICE.  First time outside and I had a hell of a time getting him up.  Second time was about 10 p.m., when he got up out of his dining chair (they're on wheels, think I need to get him a stationary chair...)  I couldn't get him up no matter what we did and I ended up calling 911 and they sent firemen over to get him up.  This is not going well...

And now it's time to talk about fun things.  I'm tired of thinking about this other stuff...

I got three new little plants last week.  I ordered them from Etsy.  Hoyas are not on my radar this year for purchase, only for trade, because they've gotten so expensive!  So I got a new Haworthia...

I was very impressed with the size and quality for $15.99!  Look at those beautiful leaves!  You can see why they call them "window-pane plants".  In habitat, those translucent leaves sit at ground level with the rest of the plant buried, and the leaves allow sun into the plant for photosynthesis.  Very cool!

Next we have a little sweet Opuntia...

 

I had to do some research to confirm the name of this one.  It's pretty cute - that's a 2" pot it's in, so it's very small.  From photos online, it looks like it will develop some spines as it grows - I was hoping it would be spineless, but I guess that was too much to hope for.

And last, a little Sansevieria...

So sweet!  This seller has great healthy plants.

I've sold 6 Hoyas so far, made about $300 or so with some added cuttings.  I haven't listed anymore yet just because I'm waiting for things to grow out a bit.  I can get more if they are actively growing, so I'd rather just wait it out.  I've decided not to send out my cutting list or offer cuttings except to a select few.  People are so insane and hungry for them right now that I know if I send it out, I'll end up turning most of them away because I refuse to "over harvest" my large plants...  But I did find someone who has a few that I've had and lost who I'm trading with.  She bought around $100 worth of cuttings and I knocked $40 off and she will send me 3 cuttings.  H. tsangii, H. Dee's Big One, and one more I can't recall right now - she sent them this morning, so I'll have them soon.

I've been working on the landscape a little this year.  I put in some Sedums last year in front of the sunroom that came back nicely, so I decided to put out some more to fill it in.  I have one of those "smart pots" made out of fabric, a big one, in the corner.  Last year I put in a Euphorbia that came back:

Not  a succulent one at all, but pretty.  I had planted a Clematis behind it with a trellis, but it didn't come back.  So this year, I put something called a Cardinal Climber behind it and Merry says it will probably come back because they're very hardy and grow FAST!  

I love the frilly leaves on this one!  Can't wait for it to really take off - I imagine the cool weather (cold nights) is holding it back right now...  And here is a more succulent winter hardy Euphorbia I planted last year:

 

Yes, that is a REAL old wagon wheel - still has a piece of the wood axel on the other side!  It's no replica - weighs about 100 lbs or more, I'd guess!  Anyway, the Euphorbia is called Donkey Tail Spurge and when it's not blooming, it looks like this:

 

This pic is from the web.  It's a cool plant and I hope it thickens up nice as I think it will look neat growing from behind the wheel.  Next to the wheel are some other cute and small Sedums:

 

This last one is Lewisia and wow, don't you love the flowers!  All those beautiful flowers from a little 4" rosette!  I read that it will produce offsets.  It's supposed to be winter hardy to zone 5, and we're considered 4.5 to 5.  So I may be tempted to put it in a pot and bring it inside in the fall.  If I get offsets, I may try to leave the mama plant out and see if it will overwinter, but bring in some offsets so I have a start if it doesn't.

Then I have two pots out front.  I put my rooted Plumeria in the middle of one then put some... is it Rose Moss?? around it...

 In spite of our cool weather, I see a new leaf sprouting on the Plumeria.  Will it bloom this year??  Who knows!  And the second pot:

I can't remember what the little succulents are called but they get pretty little flowers on them.  I don't think they're winter hardy - I'll have to see if I can find out.  I put some vinca in the pot as well.  (For some reason, this picture is upside down - must have been holding the camera wrong!)

Well, I have things to get done so that's all for now.  I want to get back to blogging so I can see the progress of my plants.  So more soon!