A Fairy Tree House

One thing leads to another...

I bought a drill bit thing-a-ma-jig to cut circle shaped holes out of wood.  

Probably has more comprehensible (shorter!) name?

I wanted to cut pieces of birch different lengths and then drill plant-pot holes in the top. (I saw a centerpiece holding candles somewhere for inspiration.) Unusual Container ideas were floating around in my head for the coming Virtual AV Show! :)

So I played with polymer clay, baked, drilled, chiseled, whittled, cussed, applied band-aid, wood-glued.   
And produced this crafty piece of art. shush now!

Not exactly how I first envisioned it, but working fairy doors are going to take a little more planning.  Plus, round logs are harder to glue flat things to than I thought <grins>.
 

Plant is my sporty version of  

Ness' Fantasy Gold. 

Not much fantasy, but I finally got some "gold" - except every bloomstalk puts out a different colored flower on all 4 or 5 plants I've grown so far. And then very quickly the yellow turns into a ghastly orange/dead brown blossom?

This imitation palm-tree had it's rootball severely trimmed in order to play doll house fit.    May not be long for this world.   

BUT there's a couple more just like it on the plant shelf.  I'm hoping the next round of blooms on one of them will improve: pick a nice version and stick to it!

When the obvious stares back at you...

Temperature control and a bit of humidity can't hurt! 

In the past, growing plants under domes hasn't worked that well for me. 

The climate inside tends to be too moist.  

Self-confessed hoverers tend to over-water?

Condensation is generally excessive. 

I looked at 2 trays side-by-side on the shelf the other day and realized Tiger Trail babies under a vented dome were growing faster than than those in open air.  

Well, what do you know?! 

I went and found an extra dome for the tray without one. I do have the ends propped open with clothespins for maximum venting. 

And I'm trying hard to resist watering too much!

Temperatures are below seasonably cold right now and the wood stove gives the thermostat a false sense of what's "warm enough" for the rest of the house. 

I'm stubbornly nurturing ALL of these as treasured prizes and ignoring the "limit your collection" resolution for this variety. 

Never mind pointing out how big they'll get! 

The cream colored variegation seems to holding well for the ones that started that way. The pink tinged ones seem to be consistent as well. 

I like them all! 

I think I put one in a box I was packing to send home with Sara after Christmas.

And then I took it back.  How stingy?!

Nobody asked me, but ...

The latest issue of AVSA's magazine is out.
People are putting it down asking for hugs it's that depressing.
It was probably not by design that so many of the articles are about dead plants or terminal AV diseases that there's no cure for.
It's the dead of winter for many of us.
A little Hope & Hurry up Spring would have gone a long way to lift the spirits!

Even the lady who took over the Miniature column showcased what she called "mistakes".

I'm sorry... those are some seriously neglected plants.

The Thinking Small column was always my favorite of the magazine when written by Pat Richards.

Small Talk seems to suffer from "it's all been said before" syndrome.
Or "confession is good for the soul"?   (For goodness sake... snap out of it!)

A mistake is accidentally  ruining the center of the little plant in a thumb pot just as it's about to bloom. 

Over fertilized, over watered or over zealous repotting. OR all 3!

I'm letting it bloom and trying to ignore how I crapped it up so fast.

A mistake MIGHT be planting a "strawberry" Mickey Mouse Jar full of plantlets you could not bring yourself to throw into the compost bin.

Mickey Mouse (H. Inpijn) Double dark blue. Dark green, pointed/red back. Miniature.

I might have gotten carried away with deciding which Mickey Mouse plantlets to keep. 

So I kept all of them! Shut up.

A few "Mickey Mouse" extras went into the terrarium that's been coasting along since it was blogged about here a very long time ago. (2009?) These were the "too little to bother with" plantlets that totally should have been discarded. And I would have too. Except the terrarium was nearly empty.
And they're living... for now!

One of my terrarium's biggest mistakes was using perlite in the soil and not getting around to fixing that after killing the moss that was going to hide it originally. All of the other plants have come and gone, too. Except the possible "Ming (false?) Arailia" growing in back.
It fills the jar now, but I still don't know what it is!

Blossoms Finally!

THIS IS NICE . . .

I have blooming African Violets once again!

Luckily, I'm only growing them for my own enjoyment as the ones supposedly described with "fantasy blooms" are not very fantastic at the moment. 

One blue splotch finally showed up on the newest bud of Storybook Princess.

Reflections of Spring

Huge bloom stalk leaf!

Reflections of Spring is the plant with velvety-soft leaves I've pet every time I've come near it.  It started putting out buds first on the shelf, but they seemed to have taken forever to finally begin opening. 

Great huge cabbage-heads of green!  

I've never been a fan of green blooms, especially green edged ones, but these are curious enough make me reconsider!   

 

Plant ID - Double stars of gray/blue are outlined with a wide green edge that's slightly fringed. Medium green, standard foliage is tailored and slightly quilted. 

Ness' Fantasy Gold

Ness' Fantasy Gold is lovely - even without much gold!

This one is in a self-watering planter. It seems to be doing okay.  I'm wondering if the ceramic actually acts as a filter from my "hard" water?

I have leaves propagating to try the plant with my conditions from the start. This is one of the larger plants from my friend in Montana actually doing the best. Dropping a clipboard on a couple of their heads a month ago didn't help much!

UNUSUAL CONTAINERS!

I separated babies from mother leaves already of Blueberry  Kisses! August 15 - October 15.

These perfectly formed little plantlets were the only ones produced per leaf. Makes starting them off on their own easier to do because untangling them from the mother leaf was not an issue.

PLUS population is under control when only one baby is produced per leaf. Except I started about 6 leaves!

Turns out insurance leaves of this one was a good idea, since I moved my adult plant to the living room to see if less light would make the leaf stems grow longer (make the center less tight) and promptly chilled one side of the plant. Lost at least 3 leaves closest to the window and another looks suspect. 

But it started to bloom!

Do you see the face? I glued some of my "rock collection" into a sculpture! The face rock was found on a sandbar of Pleasant River while fishing along behind Tom. Lollipop Kid (another newly propagated baby - but questionable as to how it's adjusting) in a container rock found Letterboxing with Sara while she was home for a quick visit.