Trying to be creative...

I like recycling when I can.  I like growing little Hoyas in leca (lightweight expanded clay aggregate, used for hydroponic or semi-hydroponic growing).  But if you use leca in a clear glass container, it quickly grows green with algae.  I don't think the algae is necessarily bad for the plant roots (?), but it looks ugly.  I buy green olives in these little glass jars and have dozens of them I've saved.  So... over the winter, I decorated the jars and then started little Hoyas in leca to sell at the Farmer's Market this year.  And here I am, no Farmer's Market and I have all these little starts that I guess I'll try to sell when we have a sale, and then I'll give a bunch away in fall.  But it's still fun to decorate them, though the time it takes is not commensurate with what I can get for them!  Here are a few and my experiments in how to decorate.  When I started, I decided decoupage was a good fit, and it's messy, but what fun!  I buy paper napkins with pretty and interesting designs and separate the design from the plain white backing then apply it to the glass jar with decoupage glue/coating.  After a few topcoats, I wait a couple weeks then seal it with a clearcoat.  Check these out:

The first one is H. krohniana, the second one is a form of H. lacunosa and the third one is a Dischidia ovata (watermelon Dischdia).  I'll keep the middle one and sell or give away the other two.  I have several more, but these are good examples of the decoupage I have done.  Then I used acrylic paint on some of them.  This next one I painted red then used a straw to create little yellow circles.  I love how it turned out:

And that led me to order some little rubber stamps, which I haven't really tried yet.  I'll try that out this winter...  Another experiment is using dried flowers/greenery, like this one...

So I should stay busy this winter with making these for next year.  Once the plants in the jars become fuller (lusher), I may try selling them on the local Hoya FB page.  I think if more people tried leca, it's popularity would explode.  It's an almost foolproof way of growing, as long as you keep the plants fed...

It was blazing hot today, so I did a little watering outside early.  And I took photos of a few of my Hoyas that I whacked down to a stump and put outside to see if they would make a comeback.  Several did not, but a few did.  One that is most impressive is H. mcgregorii.  It was looking old and tired and a little wrinkled... it's very potbound, and it can be hard to keep them watered enough.  I whacked it and was confident it would come back and it certainly did!  Here's the nice lush foliage...

It was right out there, getting some full sun but protected from the late afternoon sun.   I left the gnarly spot on - I believe this is caused by flat mites, a critter you can not see but apparently it does damage to the joints of plants...

It's as if the plant tries and tries to grow from that node, but it fails and each "try" leaves a knobby scar.  I had a few plants that did this for a while some years back and I had no idea what was causing it until I read an article about flat mites.  Like so many plant-related issues, there's not much you can do about it except toss the plant, but I've rarely done that.  Anyway, it survived the mites and it's fine now, no signs of ongoing damage.  And then I had one of those weird... I suppose you would call it a "crested" leaf becaure it seems to be essentially two leaves that melded into one...

I love it when a plant does this!  It's not exactly rare, but it is uncommon.  I've probably seen it a dozen or so times over the years and I'm always fascinated by it!  I actually found some information about this:

Conjoined or fused leaves
If the plant is older and the “double leaf” refers to two leaf blades growing together from a single petiole or sharing a broad base, this is called a conjoined leaf (also called fused, twin, or syndactylous leaves). This is a developmental anomaly, not a disease. It happens when the tightly regulated process of leaf primordia formation fails—often due to:

• Mechanical stress (e.g., crowding, brushing, or shipping damage)

• Temperature extremes (below ~12°C or above ~32°C during bud initiation)

• Light shock (sudden change from low to high light intensity)

• Water stress (drought followed by overwatering)

• Genetic predisposition (stable mutations in certain cultivars)

Interesting, right?!  I suspect that this one could have been due to the change to very high light intensity (compared to being indoors...)

Just a few more photos of Hoyas I whacked and put outside this spring.  Two that I can't identify because of lost or faded tags...

This (above) looks like a form of verticillata.  Below could be one of the pottsii varieties.

And here is the australis ssp. tenuipes I gave to Jessica at work last year.  They wanted me to try to "fix" it this spring, so I brought it home and did just a bit of whacking and put it out on the porch.  It has put on lots of new growth...

And this is H. sp. aff. vittellina.  It had gotten old and tired looking and I took cuttings and set the leafless stump out on the deck.  Honestly, I thought it wouldn't do anything, but after a few weeks, here came some little new leaves.  I don't think these are going to get any bigger, and I have no idea if it will now put on normal size leaves, or if it's simply stunted because it is so excessively potbound.  But I don't care to give it a larger pot... I'd rather start with a smaller plant and I guess I'll just see what this does by summer's end...

And before I sign off this time, I wanted to both fuss and celebrate about body issues.  The whole issue with my eye is still frustrating me.  It seemed a little better, not as blurry in the mornings.  But this morning was pretty bad again (2-1/2 weeks after the laser procedure) and it has not gotten particularly clear today and has been... uncomfortable all day.  I have my fingers crossed that this is going to improve because if not, they have compromised my vision pretty significantly...

Second, I had three really decent days with my back/hip... three days I had off.  It usually seems worse on days I'm home, probably because I'm so focused on the pain with little to distract me.  Then came Monday and it was bad again.  And of course after my soft wave therapy, it was bad yesterday.  But today it's better, so I'm feeling optimistic that maybe, MAYBE the SF therapy is helping.  However, now my right knee is hurting. I couldn't use my pedal machine at all last night, which I find very discouraging!  I've been using that for at least 1.5 hours every evening for probably a year.  I get this shooting pain right in the top of the knee when I try to use it!  I hope it's better tonight after some adjustment by Dr. Corey today...

And that's all I have for now.  Time to start on the cactus club newsletter!

Mostly plants today...

 I don't think I've bought even one Hoya this year.  I got a cutting of H. linearis from Karin, but that hardly counts.  I've tried that species many times and failed, so I'll be surprised if it survives, but I am taking Karin's advice on how to grow it... in pure perlite.  After a month or so, it's still alive and kicking, though it hasn't grown yet.

Below is Hoya patcharasalai, aka icensis.  At the beginning of spring, it was one of those looking not-so-great.  It was wrinkled, seemingly not taking up water as it should.  So when it got warm enough, I put it outside with the other flailing Hoyas, though I did not whack this one back.  With the rain we've had, it's fattened up nicely and is putting on new growth, so I brought it back in for safekeeping.  It's a bit washed out from getting so much sun, but it still looks terrific!  I'll keep a close eye on it to make sure it doesn't start to wrinkle again, and if there are any signs of that, I will move it to a larger pot...

Today, I decided to whack back my biggest Hoya krohniana.  It's such an adorable Hoya, but the leaves tend to "wash out" and turn yellow once they mature.  I think it may be grown best in no direct sun and I'm going to try that to see if it keeps its lush dark green leaves.  But in the process of whacking, I found this...

A crested stem!!  In the 50 years I've been growing Hoyas, I've only had one other that formed a crested stem.  It's very unusual!  And the itty-bitty leaves on it are just darling!  I'm anxious to see what happens as it grows out.  

Last week, I was puttering around out on the back deck, checking on plants after a rain storm the night before.  I have a kind of ugly plant I grow, only because once in awhile, it blooms.  It was kind of tucked under a little table and I walked by at just the right angle and the big bright pink bud caught my eye.  If I'd waited another day or two, I would have missed the flower!  So it was lucky that I saw it when I did.  Sure enough, the next evening (after work), I found the open flower.  I almost forgot to check on it!  And here are two angles...

Sure glad I didn't miss that show!!

Back to photos I took in June, I think I finally figured out how much light is just right for my Echeveria agavoides 'Lipstick'.  It seems every year, it gets burned.  This year, I put it down on the 3rd shelf and in the middle so that it only gets a little afternoon sun and it looks truly spectacular:

Plenty of red on the tips but no dark burn spots.  It must be a species that is a little more reactive to full sun because most Echeverias thrive in full sun.

I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but I discovered a long time ago that when I have trouble with Haworthias that lose their roots (and this can be a problem with some species...), if I put them in with sun-loving plants, as kind of a "ground cover", they thrive - no root loss.  I think this is probably because the main plant in the pot pulls extra moisture away from the Haworthia so that it is less likely to sit damp too long.  So I have a lot of clumping Haworthias in with larger succulent.  These are in with my mom's big old Desert Rose and seem to be perfectly happy out in full sun:

I believe these are a form of Haworhiopsis tortuosa.

I have a form of Aloe brevifolia I got a few years ago that got to looking crappy so I cut the two "heads" off and rooted them separately, and this is the one I intend to keep:

I don't know if this is the true species or a cross.  It appears smaller and a little less chunky than the true brevifolia, but I can't seem to find a photo that better matches mine to confirm a different species or sub-species.

Pachyveria clavifolia is in with one of the dish gardens:

You can see the flower stem, though the flowers weren't worthy of a photo.  Pachyveria is one of those inter-species crosses, Pachyphytum and Echeveria.

Gasteraloe 'Thais' is one I just got this spring from Mountain Crest Gardens.  I got a couple of plants for outdoors as well - I was thoroughly unimpressed with those and will probably not buy plants from them again.  Two of the other three didn't make it.  They were Sedums, which are notoriously hard to kill, so that surprised me, but they weren't exactly hale and hardy to start with.  At least the Gasteraloe is a cute little thing!

And one last one for today is Haworthia marsaii, a new one I got this spring:

It's one of the miniature Haworthias and I look forward to it filling this wide, shallow pot I put it in.  Looks like it has a good start!

A couple things I wanted to get down "on paper" in case I need it for future reference... Last Monday (which was the 6th), I saw the eye doctor again.  I'm not sure if I've talked about this here, but I have glaucoma - a form that is caused by "flaking off" of the eye color.  My regular eye doctor has told me for years that I am predisposed to having glaucoma for this reason, so it came as no surprise when my pressure started to go up a couple years ago.  And last year, it got high enough in my left eye that he sent me to a specialist.  And for the last many months, probably since before the beginning of the year, I've been going in for them to check the pressure.  At first, they put me on two different eye drops which brought it down some, but not enough.  So then they did a laser procedure that literally took two seconds.  Then I continued on the two different drops - one twice a day, they other just before bedtime.  It came down a little more, but they still weren't happy and switched out the twice a day drop for a different one.  It still wasn't down enough, so they did the laser procedure again, but this time, it took quite a bit longer and was a little uncomfortable.  It felt like this thing was kind of poking my eye.  Not that I could actually feel pokes, but it definitely felt like it was making contact with my eye.  Anyway, my eye was sore-ish and light sensitive for the next few days, but I've been noticing the last 3 mornings that my vision is seriously fucked up when I get up.  Like I'm looking through a veil.  Once I put the drops in, it does improve, but it's still fuzzy-ish in that left eye.  And each morning, it seems a little worse.  So I'm starting to get a little concerned about it.  I wanted to document this in case they've done something to screw up my vision.  For now, I'm going to assume that the pressure builds up at night and the drops bring it down.  That's what makes sense, and maybe this is all completely normal as it heals.  But if that's the case, they could have given me a heads-up!

Today is the cactus club meeting, so I need to get moving for that.  More another day...