It must be spring here, our noses are stuffy, there are flowers blooming, and Malt the corn snake is refusing to eat. All sure signs.
It is on the list to clean out this front flower bed. The abelia bushes did not make the winter, so need to be replaced. The hibiscus needs to be trimmed back, as well as the honeysuckles. Hello Spring.
I love my spider plant, and love the curtain of off shoots it sends out around the perimeter. However the top starts to get thin, and the parent plant droops. It is under a vent, so gets dry. I’ve increased the amount of water I give it, but it still doesn’t fill in. I used to root out the baby spider plants in water and replant, but they wouldn’t always take. So I have a new method. I keep the baby plant on its lifeline and set it in the soil. It is still getting support from the mother plant, but its base is touching the soil and moisture, which promotes root growth. When the baby is firmly established, then I cut the cord. It has worked several times so far. In the picture below I have used a twist tie to secure the cord to keep the little plant pressed into the dirt (else it goes flying back out with its siblings).
The ONLY good thing about rain that freezes when it hits the ground is the discovery of ice leaves.
I was sliding my way out to the chickens when I noticed all the leaves I stepped on looked like broken glass. Hm. Yup, I could peel the layer of ice off and get a shard of crystal leaf. Here is a short video. I would have investigated the phenomenon further, but it was raining. Raining. And freezing.
My Thanksgiving Cactus is doing double time. Many of the stems have two buds rather than one like last year. I’m still not doing anything special: it hangs in a northern facing window, and I water it twice a week. Every few months I add fertilizer to the water for all my plants, but this is haphazard at best, even though I have a reminder on my phone to do so. This is the window that leads to the catio, so often it is open below where the cactus hangs. The plant is often festooned with house spider webs. I am bemused that it is happy, thriving, and blooming, but I certainly enjoy that it is.
This is the largest leaf on our property. iNaturalist identifies it, consistently, as a kind of mulberry. We have a few saplings with this kind of leaf in the back woods, one of which is about 12 feet tall. I have not seen any berries, but the trees are all under a canopy of post oak and cedar elm, so don’t get much sunlight. I’m keeping an eye on them though, and I’ve marked a couple of the smaller saplings for possible transplant to a sunnier location. The idea of mulberry pie is enticing.
Critters and Craft 