Growing Things

A table full of plants: free.
Thanks to our landlord for making letting me take care of all his plants while he's gone (yeah, he said he was going to Ukraine in September when we moved in, but several delays, postponed flights, and suspicions about whether-or-not-he-was-going-to-leave later, he did... in april).

A plant ladder: also free.
Thanks Pinterest for the idea and the landlord for leaving this ladder here. Because he was totally going to take it with him, just like the plants, right?

Awesome Peruvian llama and alpaca collection: thanks dad! I really must get a better picture of them.

Finally filling in the empty spaces in the picture frame we got for our wedding: priceless.
How wonderful is it that we've grown our family to include another member? 

Actually, the price is that we have to look at these really horrid pictures of ourselves every time we walk past. Good incentive to get some family pictures done, right? It's on my to-do list.

Until then, ugh.

So during the last few weeks I've gone kind of plant crazy. Our landlord left several sprawling geraniums, a few elephant ear plants, some kalanchoe, Christmas cactus, and a horrible old aloe vera. I've sort of dedicated my time to trying to make these plants look a little better.

For starters, the aloe plant had twelve or so pups growing off of it. I was able to separate those and pot them up. Most of them look really well now. The mother plant is looking better too, but I don't think there's anything I can do for the awful sprawl.

It has to be supported by another planter. Yikes!

Next, the geraniums (blooming in red, white, and two shades of pink) look like weeds (look at how tall the one in the very first picture is). Seriously, they're ugly. I'm trying to get them to bush out more by cutting off a few of the taller sections and making those into their own plants. I think I may have been too gentle and I need to trim them even further. Gorgeous blooms though.

The Christmas cactus is a horrid old woody plant, but boy does it have some fabulous blooms in the winter. I trimmed that way back and I'm giving away a ton of the pieces as starts.

I complain, but it really is nice to be surrounded by so much greenery. It's exciting having things growing all around you. Between the plants and the baby, growing things pretty much rule my world right now.