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May. 17th, 2005 07:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickWhile I had a busy day today (don't ask ME about spring-assisted garage doors), the most interesting things in my day were plant-related.
I planted a mock orange in my yard a couple of years after I moved into the house. I'd read that mock orange bushes (they're a fairly large shrubbery) were cold-hardy like polar bears, had no thorns, did not suffer insect or disease problems, did not need to be pruned, and would make abundant lovely white flowers with a delightful scent each spring for absolutely no effort on my part. That sounded like a not-to-be-missed shrubbery of surpassing beauty and worth, so I ponied up my money and I bought one. When it arrived, it was six inches tall. From that inauspicious beginning, it got gnawed off a couple of times by the deer, so I had to build it a little fence to live in so that it could get taller than the deer could eat. (The deer thing is an unfortunate consequence of living in the woods, though I'm told that suburban folks have similar problems these days.) Anyway, the years went by and I maintained the mock orange until it was above the 4' browse line. Along about last year, I unfenced the mock orange because it was seven feet tall and able to defend itself from deer. I was also tired of mowing around its fence because the mock orange was starting to irritate me. It was a cold-hardy shrub with no thorns and no disease or pest problems. It was healthy as all hell. It grew nicely and didn't need much attention. On those fronts, it was everything the catalong had claimed. Thing was, it didn't bloom. It was just a nice green shrubbery.
The lack of bloom seriously pissed me off. Fucking thing was supposed to be a flowering shrubbery, after all, and it wasn't flowering. Because I was pissed off, I gave the mock orange a stern talking to this spring while I was shovel pruning the nonperforming roses. The mock orange responded thusly:
I think we're all on the same page now. :)
In my house, I have two relatively put-upon houseplants. I'm not a very good plant caretaker and the plants I have are long-suffering or they're dead, those being the only options available to them. One of the houseplants is an English Ivy. It's not entirely lovely but it's green and it makes a couple of new leaves every year come springtime. They're cheering in February, which is only really springtime in my imagination. The other houseplant is a Christmas cactus. I don't much like the christmas cactus, but my grandmother gave it to me and she asks after it pretty regularly and if I were to off it, she'd get a bit shirty with me. Now, near as I can tell, Christmas cacti are so named because they bloom at Christmas. Mine blooms at Christmas, to be fair, and it's bright and cheerful and not an onerous thing until the fucking blooms die and fall all over the floor. Here's a picture I took of it today:
It's mid-May. Christmas was four and a half months ago. What is this? Do I have a defective Christmas cactus?
I planted a mock orange in my yard a couple of years after I moved into the house. I'd read that mock orange bushes (they're a fairly large shrubbery) were cold-hardy like polar bears, had no thorns, did not suffer insect or disease problems, did not need to be pruned, and would make abundant lovely white flowers with a delightful scent each spring for absolutely no effort on my part. That sounded like a not-to-be-missed shrubbery of surpassing beauty and worth, so I ponied up my money and I bought one. When it arrived, it was six inches tall. From that inauspicious beginning, it got gnawed off a couple of times by the deer, so I had to build it a little fence to live in so that it could get taller than the deer could eat. (The deer thing is an unfortunate consequence of living in the woods, though I'm told that suburban folks have similar problems these days.) Anyway, the years went by and I maintained the mock orange until it was above the 4' browse line. Along about last year, I unfenced the mock orange because it was seven feet tall and able to defend itself from deer. I was also tired of mowing around its fence because the mock orange was starting to irritate me. It was a cold-hardy shrub with no thorns and no disease or pest problems. It was healthy as all hell. It grew nicely and didn't need much attention. On those fronts, it was everything the catalong had claimed. Thing was, it didn't bloom. It was just a nice green shrubbery.
The lack of bloom seriously pissed me off. Fucking thing was supposed to be a flowering shrubbery, after all, and it wasn't flowering. Because I was pissed off, I gave the mock orange a stern talking to this spring while I was shovel pruning the nonperforming roses. The mock orange responded thusly:
I think we're all on the same page now. :)
In my house, I have two relatively put-upon houseplants. I'm not a very good plant caretaker and the plants I have are long-suffering or they're dead, those being the only options available to them. One of the houseplants is an English Ivy. It's not entirely lovely but it's green and it makes a couple of new leaves every year come springtime. They're cheering in February, which is only really springtime in my imagination. The other houseplant is a Christmas cactus. I don't much like the christmas cactus, but my grandmother gave it to me and she asks after it pretty regularly and if I were to off it, she'd get a bit shirty with me. Now, near as I can tell, Christmas cacti are so named because they bloom at Christmas. Mine blooms at Christmas, to be fair, and it's bright and cheerful and not an onerous thing until the fucking blooms die and fall all over the floor. Here's a picture I took of it today:
It's mid-May. Christmas was four and a half months ago. What is this? Do I have a defective Christmas cactus?
