Constant change...

 I was so hoping that the acupuncture at Dr. Corey's office would help my glaucoma, but when I went to get the pressure checked after the last laser treatment, it was even higher than before.  Yikes.  So they've scheduled me for next week to have cataract surgery in my left eye, at which time they will also put in some kind of drainage system that will help keep the pressure down.  They said either "stents" or some other system that almost sounds like a tiny "hose".  Doc said he would consult with other doctors to see which system would likely work best for my kind of glaucoma.  So next Monday they will do my left eye, then the week after that, they will do my right eye.  This will apparently vastly change my sight so I will then need new lenses in my glasses.  So I've got a pretty expensive month ahead of me...

I'll take a couple weeks off from work.  They said I could see well enough to work, but I figure since I drive when I work, it seems like if I'm a) light sensitive and b) my sight will be vastly different (they said to wait a month to get new lenses)... then add to that c) I'm not supposed to wear any eye makeup for those 2 weeks... I figure it's best to just take it easy, let them heal good.  I think driving with the vision change and light sensitivity will probably lead to a headache, and I hate driving with a headache!  So I'll make it a point to get some plants in, get repotting done, make decisions about what to keep and what to part with.  That Holy Cross festival is during that time - I give them a couple flats of plants every year, so that will give me plenty of time to get that ready for them.

An old friend from HS has been asking for "loans" lately... I know I will never see the money back, and that's ok.  It's been mostly small "asks" that don't hurt me, and I feel terrible that, at our age, she is struggling so much.  But I will probably use this month of extra expenditures as an excuse to stop the money-train, even if just temporarily.  After a couple asks in the same week, I'm wondering if this is going to be habitual.  Her last request was only for $20 for gas money.... "My son (who she lives with) may have a job soon and needs money for gas."  He's apparently plagued by anxiety and has trouble working or keeping a job.  I think he may even be on disability because of it, but I'm not sure of that.  What a hard mess her life is... (And as I am typing this, another request came through...)

I have a couple other friends who really struggle.  I don't mind helping because I just feel blessed that I have enough, that life has been good to me.  I'm not rich, but I can cover all my expenses and have enough for modest "extras."  A lot more than many...

My poor 18-year-old cat, Pearl, isn't exactly thriving.  She seems to be vomiting a few times a day.  She still has an appetite and eats ok, though she's lost a lot of weight over the last couple years.  And she keeps her food down initially.  Right now, it seems like she eats, then she's very restless and (unlike most cats who go straight to a nap after eating), she wanders around and "complains" for awhile.  Then she'll finally settle down to a nap.  But eventually, it seems that what gets her up is the need to throw up.  I find spots all over the place.  Most of the time, I think she has mostly digested what she ate so it's just stomach bile.  But then there are other times it's undigested food.  Poor baby.  I know she's "on her way out", soon to join my other babies at the Rainbow Bridge.  The vet says her kidneys are failing, slowly (or maybe not so slowly...)  She's been a great companion - she's my bed buddy.  We've slept together since I've had her.  I get in my recliner, even just for a kick-back, and bam! - she's on my lap.  I'm really going to miss that.  **SIGH**

Today, I repotted another couple of Gasterias and brought them in.  They are all terribly potbound!  I have one more I'll repot tomorrow.  

Two Hoyas are blooming today - probably more, but these are two I want to highlight.  I've had this little variegated wayetti for a couple years.  Of course, some think it's kentiana, not wayetti, others think it's neither.  But now that it's bloomed, I'm more convinced than every that it is, indeed, wayetti...

This is definitely wayetti flowers.  For aesthetics, I still love the old green wayetti better.  I mean, who doesn't love a variegated plant?  But the leaves want to fold on this variegated variety which kind of spoils the looks a little in my opinion.  

The other one blooming is a mystery Hoya.  My best guess is that it is probably patcharawalai (aka icensis), but since I lost the tag, I can't be 100% sure...

If I'm right, it's the first time it's bloomed.  It got a lot of light this summer, so I'm guessing it's one of those that needs more light to bloom.  It's got another umbel budding besides this one.

And yesterday, I noticed this very interesting and pretty plant coming up with a lot of other weeds in a pot outside next to the GH.  I googled it and it turns out it is a species of Hibiscus that can be very invasive.  I've been here nearly 40 years and have never seen it before, so I'm really perplexed where it came from.  I guess I wonder if it's possible there was a seed of it in the pot of a plant I put in that pot earlier in the spring.  I lost that plant when the weather got so terribly hot, then this one emerged.  Anyway, it had a couple buds on it and today, one opened and oh, it's so pretty!...

Unlike the Hibiscus I'm used to seeing, this flower is only about 1" or so across!  So cute!  I don't think I mind if this adorable thing comes up again next year!

================

I started this a few days ago, then Pearl just stopped eating.  She sat like a loaf, here and there, looking utterly miserable. This went on for 2 days - not sleeping with me at night, just that loaf, on the floor, in none of her favorite "spots".  Then she started moving around a bit, but she was oh-so-wobbly.  She would come up like she wanted to eat when I got out the canned food, she would sniff it and eventually wobble away.  Last night, she wanted on my lap at bedtime, which I thought was either a good sign or a bad sign.  Is she better, or just closer to the end and wants to be close?  This morning, she actually ate a little bit, so maybe she's rallying a bit.  I know she isn't long for this world, so I'm have no illusions of improvement, but maybe she's not quite ready.  But she is definitely NOT herself.  No constant talking, very subdued and obviously not comfortable.  I pray for the powers that be, that all her loved ones... Daddy, Grandma, Uncle Wes, her sister Bella and of course, Lucy... I ask that they are all calling her into their loving arms.  My favorite photo of Pearl with Lucy:

It's been almost exactly 10 years since we lost Lucy (end of July, 2016) and I think it's time for them to be together again.  Go into the light, my little fluff-muffin...💔

Sunday, I repotted a Rhipsalis into a hanging pot as it had gotten quite lenghty, but I found that one of the stems seemed to be rotting, a stem that had quite a lot of nice new growth from this past summer.  It was rotting at the base, so I took cuttings and this morning, I will pot them with hopes that they will root before winter.  Actually, I think what I will do is put them in perlite as that produces such nice roots - and then I will plant them back in with the rest of what's left.  I don't want to risk losing it as it's one of my favorite Rhips because of it's amazing "twisted" looking stems!  Here are the cutting sitting on my kitchen counter, callousing over...

It's Rhipsalis paradoxa.  

*******************

Now it's Friday.  I woke at 4:30 to the cats chasing a bat.  Oh great - I thought I had that problem resolved!  I had the access to the attic sealed a while ago... I'm thinking it might already be a couple years ago.  I assumed that's where they would come in.  Well, I managed to get it confined to the greenhouse - at least I'm 99% sure it went out there.  It had landed on the bamboo blinds I have in front of the slider, on the door side, and I opened the door, pulled the blinds and I assume it flew in there.  After I slammed the door shut, I heard a small "bang" on the window, so I'm pretty sure it was the bat no coming toward the light and not seeing the glass.  So I waited for the sun to come up and went out there to find it, catch it and either release or call the Humane Society to test it.  I don't usually do that, but sine Little Man isn't vaccinated, I may do that.  I haven't decided yet.  Google says that only about .5% of bats in Nebraska get rabies, so it's a slim chance that it would be infected...  anyway, I never found it.  I keep stepping out there and looking for it, but it's probably tucked in someplace within a plant or behind something and I can't find it.  There's a slim chance it did not go into the GH, but two things... 1) I didn't imagine the "bang" and nothing else explains that.  And 2) surely the cats would have known and continued to chase it.  Unless, of course, it settled down somewhere.  If that's the case, it will be back after dark.  But more likely than not, it's in the GH.  I may just have to wait for it to starve to death, which is sad.  According to Google, it only takes a couple days of not eating for a bat to succumb to starvation.  Sorry dude...  Of course, I suppose there's a chance I won't even find it's body until, for example, I go to repot a large plant, or I pull something out to clean behind it.  

Brian, the handyman, will come by today and check out my chimney to see if maybe the bats could be coming in there.  If there is not screen cover, he'll put one on.  And I'll have him put on a better vent cover on my dryer vent.  That's pretty cheap and shitty and I think they could get in there, thought I wouldn't think they could get in the house unless the pipe behind has pulled loose.  Maybe he'll have other ideas of where they might be getting in...

So I'm thinking about kicking back for a nap.  But I wanted to get this published before I did that rather than letting it go on longer.  I wanted to say that Pearl seems to have rallied somewhat.  She's been eating a little, and she has even spent a little time on my lap and once up on the bed.  I'm sure her kidneys are probably shutting down and it's just a matter of time, but until she gives me a clear sign or I find her lifeless body, I'm just going to make the best of what's left of her time.  I ordered (and will receive today) a pheromone diffuser that will hopefully help keep her calm and give her some peace...

We're almost 1 week from the 5 year anniversary of Mark's death.  Wow.  Where does time go?  You know what's great about time?  You forget the bad shit, or it at least takes a "back seat" to the good shit.  I really do miss him more now than I did right (and for a while) after he died.  I was pretty hostile for a while.  Mad that he didn't take better care of himself.  Mad that he was such a crappy "help mate".  Mad that his health issues that were the result of his bad choices ruled my life for so long.  But time has softened my memories, I guess.  Seems like I think more about the parts worth missing... his spontaneity, how comfortable he was in his own skin, how totally chill he was.  He always called me 'neice, or sometimes Blondie (unless my hairdresser got my hair too dark, then it was "Red" LOL).  Until the last few years when he had to rely on me so much, he rarely said "those three words", but he would say something like "dig ya like a backhoe, baby!"  When his health got bad, he told me at least once a day that he loved me.  I think he realized how little he expressed it up to then and thought I need to hear it.  I appreciated the sentiment, but I always knew how he felt.  Anyway, the point is, I do miss a lot about him these days.  But I will also stress that I do love what I've done to the house (some of which he would have objected to) and how tidy and clean it is all the time.  I will never miss what a slob he was!  LOL

And I'm off for that nap.  More another day!

AI & other things...

 And this is what scares me about AI... this was on the news this morning:

Anthropic has revealed that its AI Claude model hacked into three organizations during internal testing. The company said Claude gained ‌unauthorized access to the systems after it broke out and reached the internet from testing environments that ‌were supposed to be isolated. The three incidents were found during a review of more than 141,000 cybersecurity evaluation runs. “Claude compromised the ​impacted ​organizations’ infrastructure using ​basic techniques, such as ​exploiting weak passwords and ​unauthenticated endpoints,” Anthropic said in a statement. The models involved in the testing were Claude Opus 4.7, Claude Mythos 5 and an internal research model, with the earliest incident dating back to April. The company said the models were given a “capture the flag” style task involving informing the models of a piece of secret information hidden on a different machine on the network, and seeing if they could break in and retrieve it. Anthropic said it had reached out to the three organizations affected. Rival company OpenAI announced last week that one of its autonomous AI models had escaped and compromised the infrastructure of AI startup Hugging Face during controlled testing.

Of course, the concept of AI has been around for a long, long time, but when it started to look like it was on the verge of being autonomous, I started to get visions of a future that looked like the beginning of the first "Terminator" movie, where AI had decided humans were a plague and "it" was trying to exterminate us.  And here we are, with AI already going "rogue" and doing its own thing beyond what it's been programmed to do.  And here is one more thing that makes me thankful for two things:  1) that I don't have children or grandchildren whose futures I have to worry about and 2) that I'm closer to the end of my time here than the beginning. I can't imagine what the future holds...

Maybe the aliens will save us from ourselves.  Yes, I think they're here.  Yes, I think they've been here for a long time.  I think it's possible that many of us may even be descended from aliens since I think they've been long integrated into our world.  And I think many others are watching us, watching over us.  Even keeping us out of trouble.  At least I hope so.  Here's an interesting article I found after my aunt told me that there was a theory that aliens had a hand in preventing a global catastrophe during the cold war:

Edgar Mitchell, who was involved in the Apollo 14 mission, gained a reputation for sharing conspiracy theories when he arrived back from the moon in 1971.  Mitchell was the sixth man on the moon and was the Lunar Module Pilot on Apollo 14. Before his death in 2016, Mitchell spoke at length claiming that aliens visited Earth.  He alleged that aliens were responsible for preventing nuclear war between the US and the Soviets at the height of Cold War tensions.

At the time, Mitchell focused on the White Sands Missile Range facility in New Mexico. “White Sands was a testing ground for atomic weapons – and that's what the extraterrestrials were interested in,” he said.  "They wanted to know about our military capabilities. My own experience talking to people has made it clear the ETs had been attempting to keep us from going to war and help create peace on Earth." White Sands Missile Range is where the first atomic bomb was tested in 1945, and Mitchell claimed that officers there had told him aliens had shot down missiles flying over the site.

Wouldn't surprise me.  Seems like we (humans) are too stupid to figure out how to live in harmony with people with whom we have ideological differences...  Why do humans think that everyone on the planet needs to agree about how to live and what to believe?  We push democracy, Russia pushes communism, the Middle East pushes "death to America" because we're not Muslim... Many religions think that THEY are "the chosen" and everyone else is going to hell.  What a messed up world we live in!

I know some people might think I'm a kook, but I think it's a little crazy, even arrogant, to think we're alone in this vast universe.  Even if you believe that God created all of this (and I do, though my view of God is a little different than the conventional view), isn't it arrogant to think that he didn't create other life elsewhere?  This all may be just one big experiment and if it is, I hope he had better success elsewhere because some days, this feels like a big failure.

Here is something Neil deGrasses Tyson posted on FB recently:

Very heady shit, but it would sure explain a lot!  I may have to get this book and give it a read!

I don't mean to imply that I'm unhappy.  I've managed to, as I put it, make my world small... what I mean by that is that most of the time, I can "shut out" the terrible things that we are pummeled with daily on the news and in social media.  It can be a challenge and I'm not always successful, but I try to keep my personal space free of negativity.  It will be easier when we're rid of Trump and all his minions who have let him ruin our country.  Oh, there will still be plenty of negativity, but not the kind that affects me and my friends and family daily like the shit that's happening now.  

Anyway, on to more positive things! A couple of beautiful blooms in the sunroom a couple days ago include Hoya 'Dee's Big One' (aka skinneriana)...

And also blooming was the Hoya fungii I got from Colorado Kathy several years ago - she sent it to me as a splashy clone, though it has produced very few splashy leaves since I've had it.  Maybe there was something about the Colorado sun, the altitude or something, that caused the "splashiness"...

It's a very nice clone and grows like a weed!  In fact, the vine that had this flower had wandered into the corner of the sunroom and was actually on the floor in front of the shelf it sits on!  

Also in the sunroom, in front of the north window, is this philodendron that I got from Karin...

It had gotten unruly and I whacked it WAY back this spring.  Doesn't look any worse for wear!  Next to it is my oldest Hoya macrophylla.  It got wacked back a couple years ago.  This spring, I bought a 3-pack of these little one-plant grow lights... here's a photo from the ad:

I wasn't sure how well they would work, but I put one over the macrophylla.  Well, it's put on two new leaves so far!  Now keep in mind that Big Mac (as I fondly call it) is a very slow grower (for me anyway) and if I get a few new leaves each year, I'm thrilled.  So here is the newest and biggest leaf:

I love those silver spots - I think the little grow light is doing its job!  Between it and the bright indirect light of the north window, seems like it's pretty happy!

Outside, in a couple of those grow pots against the north fence, I planted cotton seeds.  I'd never grown cotton before, so when these big, tall plants started to bloom, I thought "hmm, are cotton flowers bright orange?"  Nope!  What I have there are Mexican sunflowers!  I know Cactus Kathy gave me some seeds, but I don't remember planting them!  Here's one of those adorable flowers:

But wow, are they tall!  At least 6'!!  But very pretty...

.................................

I started this several days ago...I got side-tracked last week when I was getting the cactus club newsletter out.  So I'll add a few things and get it published.

Yesterday, I brought in my first plant.  I don't usually start until mid-August, so I'm a few days early, but I'd like to get a lot of plants repotted before I bring them in this year, and since I'm still such a gimp, I might need some extra time to get them all in.  So I brought in a Gasteria - I'm guessing it's batesiana as the tag has been lost for a long time.  I took photos from 3 angles because it's become quite a cluster!  From the top to show overall size:

It's taken on some nice red undertones with the sun it's gotten.  And here are photos of the sides which are packed with pups:

I've probably had this one for 20 or 25 years.  It could use a bigger pot, and I may do that later in the winter, but for now, I like how it looks all jammed in this 6" pot.

I think I'm going to offer my biggest Crown of Thorns on Marketplace.  It takes up a lot of room and it's gotten too big (for me) to lug it outside, which means it's not likely to bloom.  And I've taken a cutting to restart a smaller one - I'm ready to let it go.  I may first offer it to Michelle, the plant lady to whom I donate a couple flats of plants to every fall for the Holy Cross festival plant booth.  She could take cuttings and sell them next year if she wanted...  It would be a good time to let her see my GH - she's bugged me about coming to see it for a long time and we've just never made that happen.

Not really much else to talk about right now.  Now is kind a weird time because I'm thinking a lot about Mark and what was happening 5 years ago.  Yes, it will be 5 years since he died on Labor Day.  Five years ago right now he was in the nursing home and had been for about 3 weeks, he wasn't making any effort in rehab, sometimes downright refusing to do it.  They were warning me that he only had 30 days of rehab paid for by Medicare, and when that was up, they would be moving him to long-term care if there was no progress.  All the pleading and encouragement in the world wasn't inspiring him to work at it.  I knew he had given up and all I could think about was how long could/would he live like this, in this place that I wasn't particularly impressed with, not really living but waiting to die.  He had a strong heart and though I could see his will to live was gone, his body could hang on for years, so I was prepared for this to be my life for a while. Add to that what was going on with Pearl and her infected eye that had me running to the vet's office twice a day.  I was kind of a mess and I was talking to Wes all the time and he was throwing signs at me - I kept "feeling" the message was "it's ok, it will BE ok..."  I didn't really want to burden or worry Mom with the pressure I was feeling, so talking to Wes was my therapy, so to speak.  It's very comforting when you know your loved ones are never really gone...

And with that, I'm done for this time! 

 

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...

 

Wonderful rain...

 We've been in one of those "seven day cycles" my grandfather used to talk about.  It doesn't happen every year, but often enough that old farmers used to point it out.  And maybe it does happen most years, but it's not as noticeable until it happens on the weekends... rain every weekend for several weeks gets us talking.  And that's how it's happening this year.  We had more rain overnight, close to 2".  Even some flooding in places like southeast Douglas and northwest Sarpy counties and over in Council Bluffs.  Low lying areas only, of course.  It pretty much ended right after I got up around 7 a.m., but was cloudy and cool all day.  A gorgeous day with my windows wide open!  And now (it's a little after 4:00) the sun is trying to peak out and there's an awesome breeze, so I went out and took some pics...

I have a planter on the back patio that I planted with a couple Sedums and a nice-sized Sempervivum ("Hen & Chicks), and the Semp is blooming!

In the first photo, you can see the size of the plant and how loaded it is with flowers and buds.  But that closeup of the flower... I love the little bit of deep red behind the yellow anthers (I guess that's what those are... It's always hard for me to remember the botanical names of the individual flower parts.)  I believe that when a Semp flowers, the main plant typically dies off leaving "pups" to fill in.  A little sad, but I'm hoping it will survive the winter.  If not, next year I will mix in more perlite to loosen the soil.

In the same pot are those two Sedums - this one is S. lineare variegated:

And yes, that's one of those annoying "Mother of Thousands" Kalanchoes in the pot.  It was in with another plant and if I was smart, I would have picked it out and thrown it away, but I just threw it in this pot thinking maybe it would bloom in the fall, and then I'll toss it out!  Or maybe I'll just put it in with my donations I give the the Holy Cross plant booth every fall...

And this is Sedum sexangulare.  Both are growing fast.  From my research, it appears that lineare is not winter hardy here, so I'll pull it out in the fall.

I've also got some very aggressive purslane growing in the pot.  I like the look of purslane and I'm letting it grow though I have to keep it in check by weeding some of it out about once a week.  I keep thinking I will put some in a salad one of these days and see what I think of the taste...

More tomorrow.  Right now, I'm off to have an early dinner with Liane...

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Today is Monday (21st) - the Summer Solstice.  Meaning tomorrow the days start getting shorter, the sun starts moving south again.  It's weird that we say it that way since the sun stays constant and it's the earth's movement that changes the angle of the sun.  I suppose it's because to our bodies, it's the earth that feels like the constant...  Just one of those things that my mind wanders about often.

It's barely 7 a.m.  I would normally be doing "beginning of the day" things, but I got up (I'm using those words loosely!) with such terrible back pain that I could barely move!  Standing straight was oh-so-painful.  The pain is coming from the left side of my lower back - the opposite side from my every day pain.  So I can barely walk, and my cane is in the car.  I have another one downstairs, but it would be as much a challenge to get down there as to the car, so I decided to sit here at the computer and first ice for 20 minutes, then I'll wait 20 minutes, and then I'll use heat and see if I can get it settled down.  WTF did I do yesterday to bring on this hell??  I have a somewhat physical day ahead of me as I have to move shelves in the GH so they can replace the broken glass tomorrow morning.  I also need to go to the chiropractor and stop at the bank.  This could be an interesting day!

Getting back to plants... A couple weeks ago, a wind blew my Cissus rotundifolia off the porch shelf.  I've had it for years but started a cutting and gave away the main plant last year, so it was in a 5" nice clay pot that broke.  (Damn!)  It's a viny plant with somewhat succulent round leaves with tendrils for climbing.  I can't seem to find a photo of my own, so here's a photo from the web...

To my surprise, when I went to repot it I found that it has those gnarly roots that can be exposed.  I know there is a botanical name - it's not a caudex, but they're swollen and almost barky, so when I repotted it, I left them slightly exposed...

It could turn into an interesting specimen as it matures.  Keeping it from growing into everything around it is the challenge!

On the kitchen windowsills are some of my littlest Hoyas.  Hoya manipurensis is a species I attempted to grow several times.  Last year, I ordered yet another one from Etsy.  I ordered three Hoyas and a Dischidia from the seller and all were very tiny and only one was well rooted.  The other three had hardly any roots at all and manipurensis was one of those.  I was so sure they wouldn't make it that I contacted the seller and expressed my disappointment in the health and viability of the plants and crossed that seller off my list.  Of the four, manipurensis was the only one that survived.  I put it in my rooting tub where it recovered.  I potted it and put it over my kitchen sink so that I would see it daily and make sure it stayed well watered.  Well, it has flourished and very early this spring, I took a deep breath and whacked the top.  It's one of those Hoyas that grows straight up with no branching, so my hope was that it would branch.  I stuck the cutting in with the mother plant and made sure that I sprayed some water on the new cutting every couple of days to make sure it didn't dry out, giving it the best chance of rooting.  I honestly didn't expect it to root because it rarely works to root a new cutting back into the same pot, but probably because I was so diligent about keeping it moist, it worked and not only that but the mother plant then sprouted new growth at FOUR nodes!  I think I could actually get flowers before year's end!  I've wanted to grow this one forever because of it's unique leaf shape (some call it the "butterfly Hoya" because the leaved resemble butterfly wings), because of the unique flowers that look more like Dischidia flowers than Hoya flowers, and of course because Mom was a butterly collector.  I find it coincidental that I'm suddenly having success in growing it now that Mom is back in source!  Maybe she has a hand in that...

The leaves are a very dark green, almost black, and slightly pubescent, almost leathery.  

And the other little gem I'm growing that I took a pic of is a cutting off my very large H. sp. aff. burtoniae, one I've grown for a bazillion years.  It was the first small-leaved Hoya I ever bought. I love it because again, it has leathery somewhat pubescent leaves that develop black edges with some sun.  This little sweety is growing in a tiny 2" owl pot in hydroton (leca) and is budding for the second or third time (since the photo was taken a couple weeks ago)...

The mother plant grows in the bathroom and hangs about 2 feet and is heavy, blooms regularly.  That's it on the left...

Back out to the succulents growing out on the porch and patio, some photos to show how well they are responding to all this awesome rain we've been getting.  First is Adromischus cooperi, which is referred to as "Plover Eggs" in an old book:

This one has gotten large and heavy, considering it is still in a 4 or 5" pot!  It needs to go into a heavier pot because it wants to fall over easily.

Euphorbia francoisii is a very popular one since a few growers have started selling variations that are incredibly colorful and/or mottled/veined.  

Between the interesting caudex and the variable leaves, they make a beautiful bonsai plant.

I grow a lot of South African bulbs and the one that is blooming right now is Ledebouria concolor.  It's a large bulb whose leaves tend to get a little "crispy" on the edges if over or under watered, but it seems to be doing well with the rain.  The plant then the flowers:

The flowers are on a long stalk and they open from top to bottom.  Not by any means colorful, but cute nonetheless.

Aloes that are growing in dish gardens... this first one is Aloe 'Black Gem', which has several pups poking out from under...

In this next photo, the little Aloe at the bottom left is A. descoingii, one of the mini-Aloes.  The larger one above, according to google ID, is another Gasteraloe 'Flow', same as the one I just got from Karin (detailed in the last post).  If they are the same, the difference must have something to do with light because hers is growing more upright and mine is much more open.  I had no idea I already had one as they are quite different.  But I'm pretty sure hers grows under grow lights, which explains the difference.

I went to my chiropractor, and he said this is not a muscle pull but a subluxation.  I'm hoping the adjustment will help, but so far... I'm still suffering.  Not sure if I'll be able to work this week.  I did the the shelves moved out of the way, so I'm ready for the glass replacement tomorrow.

So on to more photos.  In one of the other dish gardens, I have a Crassula spiralis, which has stayed nicely compact and is starting to bloom...

And in another dish garden (I have 3 of them), this light bluish plant is Sedeveria 'Fanfare'.  Sedeveria is a cross between Sedum and Echeveria...

The other succulent is a Haworthia, most likely a form of H. cymbiformis.  Both are looking quite happy, which is interesting since Haworthias really don't need a ton of light to look good and it's usually suggested they are not paired with high-light plants.  But they do just great when grown in sun as long as they start out that way and you don't just thrust them into sun from a shady spot.

This Aeonium 'Kiwi' has many heads in with some other plants...

I need to get up and move around so I'm stopping for today.