Someone recently asked if I was actually a plant person or if I just pretended for my blog. An interesting query. Plants are the type of stylistic addition that you tend not to notice until you become aware of how hard it can be to nurture plants.
Offices with a lush, full-bodied potted plants perched on every other shelf…how do they get enough sunlight? Are they strategically moved about? Then there are the long-haul plant nurturers who have trained pothos or philodendron to drape luxuriously in a long trailing vine across a spread of windows or all along a row of bookshelves. Such an admirable investment of time and cultivation.
Then there are the rest of us who muddle through wondering what exactly things are called and figuring out that the secret to basic plant success is ensuring there are holes in the bottom of the pot so the roots don’t rot.
Am I plant person? Not yet. There’s nothing grand or impressive or abundant yet. But I am a passionate advocate for propagating. As tempting as it is to shell out money for a great big plant to jump to the success stage of plant personhood, the most likely outcome of that purchase is killing a very large and lovely plant you spent good money on. With propagating, a bitty scrap or clipping of a plant lives in a glass in the sunny kitchen window for a time (days or weeks, depending). If it doesn’t live, it turns brown and mushy and gets tossed. All that costs you is pretty much nothing.
From that little smidgen of a plant mysteriously bursts forth plants entire. It does take time. But not as much as you might think. Our propagation fascination began only nine months ago, and already there are a few plants beginning to fill in and trail out in impressive extravagance.
Tradescantia continues to charm, specifically tradescantia zebrina with its purple backs to the leaves and shiny striped surface. Begonias of two varieties have been gradually growing into bigger pots awaiting the day of themselves becoming the source of further propagation. The ever-hardy kolanchoe surprised with late December blooms called forth by unseasonably sunny days. A twig from the neighbor’s pencil cactus badly needs to be propped with a stake as its gangly limbs promise one day in a few years a great hulking stick tree from which many more may come.
When plants grow into a home or a porch gradually, they seem to be seamless extensions of the environment. As long as they are not subjected to drastic temperature changes or dramatic variations in light exposure, they are dependably hardy. You need not fear the mature plant from the nursery that wilts and droops lethally when introduced to your strange home environment. You need not fear full-scale pest invasion from the store nursery (though newly potted plants next to the open sliding door are susceptible to fungus gnats, which were thankfully quickly obliterated with a treatment of diluted hydrogen peroxide).
No, I’m not a plant person anymore than I am a legitimate and experienced birder, but I am a lover of the growing green things expanding in the sunny spots indoors and along the patio. After reading “The Little White Horse” I’m tempted to find salmon pink geraniums to endlessly propagate, but for now we’re enjoying the array of scraps and clippings that have made their way into the home.
Here is an ever expanding specimen begun from a leaf on a straggly stem picked up by a little girl at the garden center. What it is, we do not know. Despite planting it upside down, it took off!
