Happy, dirty hands. And my coffee went cold.

Jersey Girl Trail

A single African Violet arrived a year ago, tucked into a box with several Streptocarpus. Ordered for my birthday from Violet Barn. 

It was potted up in my mix and survived well enough. 

Several leaves got set hoping to grow a few extra. Maybe send some home with Sara for her sills again. 

Insurance. 

Winter seemed never ending and some of the Streps struggled with powdery mildew. Bristol's Ravishing Ruby went to live on the kitchen window sill to keep a closer eye on it. 

A couple plants just withered and were lost.

My mix seemed to be too light. Plants needed watering every other day. So disheartening to find droopy plants everytime I

turned around.  

A new batch of soil mix was made, taking better care to measure. Things were repotted again. 

Turns out some of the babies had been seperated but I put 3 plantlets in several of the pots because they were so small. 

I made quite a mess repotting Jersey Girl Trail babies this morning.

Groot thought so, too.

LED tubes had been tried in the T8 fixture for longer than I could remember when I started with them. Not a fan although I couldn't put into words exactly why.

One warm & one cool tube were bought for two of the fixtures when seed starting time rolled around this March.  A couple of weeks later all six of them got new replacements. Ignoring the "rule" about never replacing lights all at once... 

Things grew. Things bloomed!

My greenhouse is stuffed with plants for the garden, waiting for the weather to warm up enough. One shelf on the light stand still holds four trays of the smallest plants. Mostly because there's just not enough room out there.

Flowers started appearing on my top shelf again. Which change "fixed" things? Maybe hard to say. 

Maybe it was that I had time and a desire to pay attention again.

(Mostly I think it was the lights!)

I'm not going to get carried away collecting too many AVs again. They become a chore. I just want a few old favorites, maybe a new variety or two I've never grown before.

Tomahawk arrives this week from Violet Barn, along with a couple new Streps.

It was my birthday yesterday :)