Plants over the weekend...
Jan. 12th, 2026 08:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickI repotted another round of seedling cacti. Turns out that when you sow cactus seeds, eventually you get cactus seedlings (which are smol) and these will need to be potted on while they are still pretty smol and you as a human have great huge mitts of hands that are not super useful for potting smol cacti seedlings.
I am actually putting off reading about the new depreciation schedule instructions put out by the IRS. They have changed how depreciation works for businesses in the recent omnibus legislation (Dear Leader does, in spite of his many many faults, understand the importance of naming things in ways that appeal to the seething mob that votes for him) and there are twenty-two pages of instructions detailing how that is supposed to work nowadays. Since I have businesses with depreciable purchases, these new rules very likely apply to me. So... reading about it is definitely in my future for today.
But first, a round of procrastination. This is one of the benefits of self-employment, the "I can blog while warming up to the idea of reading tax documentation" thing.
In repotting very smol cacti, I use long-handled tweezers, the sort of thing you'd maybe also use to feed your not-huge snake. They look like this if you're not sure what I'm talking about. I also use these tweezers to clean off dust or grit or small pebbles that fall in among the spines of the cacti large and small, to fetch out dead leaves from succulent clumps, and to generally act as precision hands where my own huge mitts of hands fall short.
On Saturday, it was fairly rainy and my rain bucket (outside under the short gutter over my doorway) refilled. It's been a pretty dry fall/winter over here and I was running short on rainwater, so this was a welcome event. I refilled all of my plant water containers due to the rainfall.
I use cider vinegar and also windshield squirty stuff plastic gallon jugs that are DEFINITELY NOT LEAKING and are in fact CONDENSING when I bring them in filled with 40 degree water and put them on the floor of my 55%+ humid, 72 degree plant room. I checked this carefully while repotting my infant cacti. It is 100% condensation and not leakage. The floor is water-impervious vinyl plank flooring, so I just mopped the condensation up.
In other plant chores, I severed the pothos that is climbing the moss pole from the potted pothos. (This is part of the moss pole project that I am doing to see if I can have huge leaves on my pothos like the internet says is possible. I am skeptical but also I like projects so we will see.) The climbing part of the pothos is now its own thing and I bought it a lightbulb to climb towards and I have to... hang the lightbulb and stuff but that's a project for later this week. I also built another moss pole so that I can one-potato-two-potato the moss poles and convince the pothos that it is climbing endlessly towards the light while still keeping it in a room with an 8' ceiling. It's not ready for the second moss pole yet, but I was doing plant stuff and getting prepared. I should probably post some pictures of the project because pothos grows a shitton faster than cactus and there's more to see there.
I also made labels for the cacti and succulents that I am delivering to Mom when I visit her on Wednesday. Yeah, that is a workday. Doesn't matter. Lala asked it off work so long ago that she forgot she'd done it but recently(ish) reported that her work calendar showed her as being off for "sheep to shawl, Farm Show" so... we're going to attend sheep-to-shawl at the Farm Show.
In my opinion, sheep-to-shawl is a thing best enjoyed in... bite sized viewings as you also wander around doing other farm show shit. It's a three hour (give or take) affair, so it's not necessary to watch the whole thing start to finish. You can watch it in small bites and check back to see how they're getting on and you won't miss much. Laur doesn't raise sheep or spin or knit or weave or do any other fiber arts of any kind, so I am not sure what she is hoping to get out of this, but whatever. It's an outing.
Mom lives so close (literally minutes away) to the Farm Show Complex (Harrisburg PA) that we park at her house and get door-to-door taxi service from her plus also a free dinner when we're done Farm Showing. My money's on porterhouse steaks on the grill because (a) her husband likes to grill and (b) he just got a new fancy grill this fall and (c) they mostly pretend to be vegetarian unless there's an excuse to cook up some porterhouses, like, for example, a visit from the daughter and her friend. The relative cost of porterhouses in today's beef market is irrelevant. Rod likes to grill and he likes to grill nice steaks and I am 100% not above eating nice steaks and I do not point out that vegetarian except for when we feel like eating porterhouses is not really vegetarianism because that would probably dash the future odds of free porterhouses.
At any rate, Mom's doing houseplants, kinda, so I am taking her some small succulents and cacti that I propped or grew so that she can enjoy them. She's getting the following items:
1. Parodia magnifica (cactus)
2. Mammillaria longimamma (cactus)
3. Mammillaria standleyi (cactus)
4. Sedum morganianum (burro tail succulent)
5. Graptopetalum pachyphyllum (blue bean succulent)
6. Sinocrassula yuannensis (another succulent)
I still need to write up a general care sheet for her without sounding too... Well, acktually but probably that's a lost cause. I sound pretty Well, acktually just sitting quietly in a corner. *sigh* Mostly, people do not want your opinion even if it's useful and correct and timely.
I am actually putting off reading about the new depreciation schedule instructions put out by the IRS. They have changed how depreciation works for businesses in the recent omnibus legislation (Dear Leader does, in spite of his many many faults, understand the importance of naming things in ways that appeal to the seething mob that votes for him) and there are twenty-two pages of instructions detailing how that is supposed to work nowadays. Since I have businesses with depreciable purchases, these new rules very likely apply to me. So... reading about it is definitely in my future for today.
But first, a round of procrastination. This is one of the benefits of self-employment, the "I can blog while warming up to the idea of reading tax documentation" thing.
In repotting very smol cacti, I use long-handled tweezers, the sort of thing you'd maybe also use to feed your not-huge snake. They look like this if you're not sure what I'm talking about. I also use these tweezers to clean off dust or grit or small pebbles that fall in among the spines of the cacti large and small, to fetch out dead leaves from succulent clumps, and to generally act as precision hands where my own huge mitts of hands fall short.
On Saturday, it was fairly rainy and my rain bucket (outside under the short gutter over my doorway) refilled. It's been a pretty dry fall/winter over here and I was running short on rainwater, so this was a welcome event. I refilled all of my plant water containers due to the rainfall.
I use cider vinegar and also windshield squirty stuff plastic gallon jugs that are DEFINITELY NOT LEAKING and are in fact CONDENSING when I bring them in filled with 40 degree water and put them on the floor of my 55%+ humid, 72 degree plant room. I checked this carefully while repotting my infant cacti. It is 100% condensation and not leakage. The floor is water-impervious vinyl plank flooring, so I just mopped the condensation up.
In other plant chores, I severed the pothos that is climbing the moss pole from the potted pothos. (This is part of the moss pole project that I am doing to see if I can have huge leaves on my pothos like the internet says is possible. I am skeptical but also I like projects so we will see.) The climbing part of the pothos is now its own thing and I bought it a lightbulb to climb towards and I have to... hang the lightbulb and stuff but that's a project for later this week. I also built another moss pole so that I can one-potato-two-potato the moss poles and convince the pothos that it is climbing endlessly towards the light while still keeping it in a room with an 8' ceiling. It's not ready for the second moss pole yet, but I was doing plant stuff and getting prepared. I should probably post some pictures of the project because pothos grows a shitton faster than cactus and there's more to see there.
I also made labels for the cacti and succulents that I am delivering to Mom when I visit her on Wednesday. Yeah, that is a workday. Doesn't matter. Lala asked it off work so long ago that she forgot she'd done it but recently(ish) reported that her work calendar showed her as being off for "sheep to shawl, Farm Show" so... we're going to attend sheep-to-shawl at the Farm Show.
In my opinion, sheep-to-shawl is a thing best enjoyed in... bite sized viewings as you also wander around doing other farm show shit. It's a three hour (give or take) affair, so it's not necessary to watch the whole thing start to finish. You can watch it in small bites and check back to see how they're getting on and you won't miss much. Laur doesn't raise sheep or spin or knit or weave or do any other fiber arts of any kind, so I am not sure what she is hoping to get out of this, but whatever. It's an outing.
Mom lives so close (literally minutes away) to the Farm Show Complex (Harrisburg PA) that we park at her house and get door-to-door taxi service from her plus also a free dinner when we're done Farm Showing. My money's on porterhouse steaks on the grill because (a) her husband likes to grill and (b) he just got a new fancy grill this fall and (c) they mostly pretend to be vegetarian unless there's an excuse to cook up some porterhouses, like, for example, a visit from the daughter and her friend. The relative cost of porterhouses in today's beef market is irrelevant. Rod likes to grill and he likes to grill nice steaks and I am 100% not above eating nice steaks and I do not point out that vegetarian except for when we feel like eating porterhouses is not really vegetarianism because that would probably dash the future odds of free porterhouses.
At any rate, Mom's doing houseplants, kinda, so I am taking her some small succulents and cacti that I propped or grew so that she can enjoy them. She's getting the following items:
1. Parodia magnifica (cactus)
2. Mammillaria longimamma (cactus)
3. Mammillaria standleyi (cactus)
4. Sedum morganianum (burro tail succulent)
5. Graptopetalum pachyphyllum (blue bean succulent)
6. Sinocrassula yuannensis (another succulent)
I still need to write up a general care sheet for her without sounding too... Well, acktually but probably that's a lost cause. I sound pretty Well, acktually just sitting quietly in a corner. *sigh* Mostly, people do not want your opinion even if it's useful and correct and timely.
