Around here

I love snails.

I recently discovered the secret to perfectly peel-able boiled eggs! Put your raw eggs into water that’s already boiling. I’ve always done cold-start boiled eggs, so I guess that’s why my eggs always looked so awful and never peeled right. It’s like magic!

Little Man got some funky sunglasses and sent us a pic. Love how you can see his hand in the reflection. I can’t get over how long his hair is! It’s going to take some getting used to. But it’s his head so….

Double rainbow!

My seedlings are coming right along. Amazingly all my orphaned plants are still doing well. I’ll need to do a garden update soon.

I tried the new caramel crunch frappuccino. It’s pretty tasty, the “crunch” comes from bits of toffee.

We got library cards!

I’ve been without a pedometer since I lost my fitbit in December. I need to see numbers for motivation, so I picked up a cheap one at Target.

Jason did some repair work on the RC car and we took it out for a spin at the park.

Who’s the prettiest girl?

I’m working on hanging things on our walls finally. Last time I meticulously measured everything out and they were still not evenly spaced. This time I just guestimated and used my fingers as measuring tools.

And lastly, today is the nine year anniversary of our first meeting IRL. I will say a lot of things privately today, but I do want to say here- Thank you for taking a leap of faith and getting on a plane and flying almost 1000 miles to come meet me. Thank you for that first hug that changed my life. You still make me feel giddy and awkward in the best way. ❤

State of the plants, or how not to care for your vines.

Right now I have three living plants in my possession. That is the least amount of plants I’ve had in my entire adult life. I feel quite sad about that, but I’m sure I will make up for it once we get settled into our new place and I have a handle on the lighting situation.

In the meantime, I’m trying to give my remaining plants a little extra TLC. The only outdoor  plant I have left from when we first moved in here two years ago is my pink plant. She went through some rough times this winter and was quite neglected. Amazingly she’s bounced right back to the point that we call her the Resurrection Plant.

My peace lily is the one I’ve had the longest- well over 10 years. She is going through a transitional time right now so she looks lopsided and a little sad. But there is a whole lot of new growth popping up, so in a couple of months she should be back to normal. And hopefully producing blooms again.

And yes, she lives on my shoe rack. Lilies are very toxic to cats. Miss Kitty has never shown any interest in chewing my plants, but I keep this one barricaded on all sides in case she gets the munchies. It’s not super aesthetically pleasing, but it gives me peace of mind.

Now for the saddest plant of all, my poor vine. I took her off the bookshelf this week to give her a trim and this is what I found.

A hot mess of dead brown vines twisted around the pot. At our last place, she had a whole staircase to climb, but we live on one floor here. When we moved in I twisted all the vines around and set her on a bookshelf. Then I did absolutely no maintenance other than watering. Clearly that was a bad idea.

I started carefully untwisting everything and separating the dead bits from the healthy bits. Then I cut away all the brown vines. Weirdly many of them still had a few green leaves clinging to life at the ends.

After a quick google search, I realized I needed to do more trimming. I made cuts to the longer vines and stuck some of them back in the dirt. Hopefully they’ll take root. I took a couple more cuttings and put them in water to see if they’ll root that way.

My vines look so much happier now! And I have a much better understanding of what they need to stay that way.

Here are a couple of the sources I used to figure out how to fix things.

How to Prune an Indoor Vine from eHow
How to Prune an Indoor Vine from SFGate
Pruning Houseplants from Green Connection

As for future planty plans, I’m really looking forward to our move when I can start collecting  green things again. Basically I want All The Plants. Our new place is supposed to have great plant shelves built in. I can’t wait to fill them up. And of course our balcony will be over-run with whatever I can manage to get growing outside. I’m a little giddy just thinking about it. Crazy Plant Lady Lives!

One year later: Our patio garden

Last year, as an early Mother’s Day present, Jason took me on a plant shopping spree. Amazingly we still have a couple of those plants! Yes, most were killed or eaten, but I’ll chalk that up to learning experiences. This is what it looked like last July.

So here’s a little tour of our patio right now. (Sorry for the dark-ish pics. Spring in SoFlo means rain every day last week so it was pretty overcast when I took these).

This is our first year growing tomatoes, and it’s been super successful so far!

My iris are getting crazy tall! I’m kind of at a loss as to what to do with them, maybe a bigger pot…

Last year’s mint is humming right along.

I am notoriously bad at keeping basil alive, but this guy is going strong.

After a rough winter, the Wandering Jew is finally starting to perk back up. The pink plant is thriving. We got the parsley late last summer and it’s doing fantastic! I cut off sprigs almost every week. Last year’s impatiens are still growing strong. I still don’t know how, but they’re like the Energizer Bunny of Plants.

We’re hoping to get a few more plants in June once we get back from our summer travels. Then hopefully it’ll be a long summer of eating from and enjoying our little garden!

High Five for Friday

1. Veronica Mars movie is green lit! Shooting starts in June! Yay!!! Two weeks after I nearly lost my s**t over the VM Kickstarter, it’s official! Super excited!

2. Call Me Maybe, orchestra edition. Okay I’m sure I’m probably the last person on earth to see this, but just in case I’m not…

3. This recipe for cucumber/ vinegar/ honey deliciousness. 

4. Green things. I planted iris bulbs this week and I can’t wait to go get more plant-y goodness this weekend!

5. Pop Culture Happy hour podcast. Catching up on a bunch of back episodes and really enjoying them.

Also loving….

Ice Cream for Breakfast Day on Thursday.
The Mentalist. Still. It’s our new comfort show.
Lazy weekend mornings when we can sleep until 9 and we don’t feel like Death on a Cracker.

Happy Friday!

Garden update

I started my little balcony garden back in May. I would love to say it has flourished and that it has provided hours of enjoyment and fresh herbs. That is not exactly the case.

Before-
After-
I decided to move my Wandering Jew and the pink plant outside. (I can’t remember the name and unfortunately threw away it’s tag).

I’ve lost a few of my herbs. The cilantro didn’t last long. I don’t even think I harvested anything off of it. The basil did better. I got several good snips off it, but eventually it succumbed to my black thumb. I am really terrible at growing basil.

But I am persistent. We found this HUGE basil plant at a farmer’s market for only $5!! And I’m happy to say that it’s doing quite well so far.

I’ve also gotten quite a few good clippings from my mint. I recently repotted it, and I’m hoping it will take over my big planter. I hear that they spread out a lot, so you have to plant them in their own pot.

My other plants are doing great. I’m pleasantly surprised that my flowers have lasted so long. They’re still putting out little buds, which add a nice bit of color.

I think all my indoor plants might be jealous because I’m only talking about the outside ones. Maybe I’ll do a post on them soon. But in the meantime, I’m pretty excited that my balcony plants are doing so well.