Telling you about my houseplants...

A few weeks ago, Loree at Danger Garden asked people to tell about their houseplants, and showed hers! It took me a while, but here are all of mine. I have, as it turns out, a lot? I've always had a lot of houseplants... for a long time, i didn't have a garden, and indoor plants is how i gardened. Now, i have the garden, and a lot of indoor plants. So it's the best of both. If "best" means more plants, which of course it does.

Let's start near the patio door, and go clockwise around the house. I'll warn you - I'm not all that good at taking pictures indoors... But i think i got most of the plants!

this combination of cacti and a few vining plants live to the right of the patio door

I should also note that i'm not very good at watering - everything that survives inside has to learn to do with watering every 2 weeks or so.

a big monstera, a draceana i rescued from work, and a pathos vine

The kitchen is to the right of the area we were just in. There's actually an orchid in between that i missed taking a picture of... The kitchen may be getting remodeled soon, and plant needs will be considered!

more cacti. They jump in my cart in stores

artfully cropped out the dishes! These plants can see their big siblings outside all year 

3rd kitchen window - more cacti and a giant jade plant

That Jade plant is going to have to move... or i need more counter space. (notes for kitchen remodel...)

Now we're in the dining room. Some people have centerpieces. I have plants:

a non-blooming christmas cactus, an "ikea plant" and a pilea

more christmas cacti (they are different colors!) and some cuttings

Now we're in the living room. Before we go around, here's the view back to the stairs:

aloes and hoyas

The aloes stay there year round. The hoyas (circled in green) go outside in the summer, or as soon as the temperatures at night stay above 50 deg F. 

Continuing around the living room - there's a weird open spot near the front window. That's where the Christmas tree was. We're still trying to decide whether the furniture moves back, or if there's more room for plants. 

these three are to the left of the window. 

That large pot is a pathos vine. It's probably dead, but it keeps putting out one leaf... and i have a problem with giving up!

Next are these (and yes, those are my fling pots!)

although with some new plants in 2 cases

almost forgot these two - the ficus is mad because i moved it a few weeks ago.  

Not quite done yet! Looking back at the living room, there are two more groups of plants:

two zz plants here

and two rubber plants (one variegated, one not) here

Now we're on to the office. This room was sadly lacking in plants up to a few weeks ago. Then this baby showed up:

a monstera (either obliqua and/or adansonii)

It came from Lowes, with the pot! Which ever one it is, it was a steal, considering. 

Outside of the office is the TV room. It has more plants:

this sansevieria probably doesn't get enough light

another zz plant, and an sansevieria cylindrica

There is another s. cylindrica i didn't get a picture of, mostly because it's very sad. It's below these two:

a begonia? that really needs a new pot, and another M. adansonii

almost around:

another sansevieria, and a lamp (not a plant, sadly)

This next plant has a story - it was given to me by a neighbor years ago, when he and his girlfriend broke up, they were moving, and she didn't want it anymore. I don't know how old it is, but i've probably had it for 10 years? It's the source plant for all the other zz plants i have: 

zz plant. It needs to be rotated again so it grows evenly

Now there is one more area to look at! I thought i had already posted about this on the blog, but i guess not. A few years ago, we remodeled the master bathroom. One goal was to increase the amount of light in the room. The combination of lots of light and more humidity than the rest of the house means that (of course?) the bathroom is filled with plants! This is the far side of our walk in shower:

so many plants! It's like a spa

Some of the plants in that picture: a nepenthes (bottom right), another monstera, a fiddle leaf fig, a yucca (weird, but it's one of the few plants that does well close to that window), a superlong senecio radicans, and a bunch of other stuff. Outside the shower, there are two other plants:

a spider plant next to the sink

a fatsia (i think)

That plant has been a trial and error - it's further away from the window than most plants want to live (the yucca was very unhappy) but the combination of a shade-happy plant and a bit of extra height seems to be doing the trick.

Phew - we made it all the way around! There are few odd and ends that i didn't get a picture of, but i think i captured most of my indoor plants. I would love to promise that i won't get more, but that would be a lie. I like my indoor plants just as much as the garden, so i'm sure they'll keep multiplying... just like they do outside! Do you keep houseplants?

Plants in the Shower!

After watching Hoover Boo at Piece of Eden finish her "non-garden project" I realized i had never shared one of the more exciting indoor gardening projects I finished last year. After a leaking pipe in the wall necessitated a major master bathroom remodel (as well as other things, the joy of remodeling...), our master bath suddenly had way more light. And you know what that means - more plants! Especially plants i can't grow outside here, because they need lots of water/humidity/have large leaves, etc etc.

This is now the view across from the actual shower:

plants!

The shower colors are mostly white and blue-ish, so that's what made the pot colors work. Some of these plants were already living in the house, just not in places that made them very happy.

that fig grew 4 new leaves in about a month after it got moved in here

Initially, all the pots had saucers, but that actually let to too much water (not a problem i'm very familiar with!) so now all the pots drain. The nice part of them being in the large shower enclosure is that watering and draining becomes very easy.

including for little ones like this

My houseplants usually never look this happy!

after some complains about getting dirt everywhere, i did learn to put some rock mulch on top

Even outside of the shower enclosure, there's now enough light for more plants!

by the sink!

and even a yucca!

This remodel took a while, but in the end, it's all worth it for this gardener... more plants! Oh, and no more leaking pipes in the wall, that was good too :)

New House Plants (& Fling Pots!)

Happy 2019! There are so many things I want to share after taking a break, but i'm going to start with some of my catch up fling posts! On one of the fling nights, we had a great dinner and raffle, courtesy of the sponsors. There was also a pinata!

While I didn't win any of the "official" prizes, the tickets for each prize were collected in pots, and I won two of those! The colors didn't really go with any of the outside garden, but they made an excellent excuse to buy new plants for indoors. It was probably safer (for the plants) to plant new indoor plants at this point in the summer anyway...

The first new plant was the first pilea peperomioides that i ever tracked down locally!

i thought that yellow decoration was a bee, but i think it's just a plant

I got one pot of pilea, but was able to break it into 3 plants! One went here, one on the dining room table, and one in the shower. Yes, i have a lot of indoor plants...It's what keeps me busy during the summer.

The 2nd pot got a simple green ficus benjamina.

perhaps not the most exciting house plant, but it works!

To tie the two pots together, plus use up another cute cache pot, they were joined by a red & yellow flowering bromeliad. It won't last forever, of course, but that's ok. Sometimes house plants can be "annuals" too!

and three plants look better than 2 - that's what my designer friends tell me anyway...

They are all living right by the front door window, where they should get just enough light without burning. And i get to see my fling pots every time!

Hanging Hoyas

One thing i've done every spring/summer for a while now is put my Hoya kerrii outside. In the summer of 2018, hoya carnosa 'Rubra' was also big enough to join it. These two hung out just by the front door all summer:

rubra on the left, kerrii on the right

This spot is basically in full shade all day - it gets about 2 hours of morning sun. Through experimenting with kerrii, anything more than that will induce leaf burn. It's also a very sheltered spot from the wind, since it's almost enclosed from 3 sides - 2 by the house, and the 3rd by that large pillar covered with rocks. That means the wind can't/won't (hasn't?) damaged these yet.

from the other side

 While hoya kerrii will bloom indoor for me, putting it outside usually causes it to bloom all summer. The flowers look strange... both when they are in bud and actually blooming.

Hoya kerrii bloom hanging out above the hoya carnosa

 The other nice thing about them being outside is that the nectar doesn't drip all over the place inside.

Hoya carnosa rubra aka Pink Princess bloomed too, but less. 

This year, the hoyas stayed outside until right before Halloween. Now they are sitting on one of the ledges near the stairs inside. They grow so much when they're outside that they sprawl all over the place...

Sitting on the ledge, sprawling like octopus...

Starting around early April they'll go back out. I'm sure they can't wait!

Hoya Kerrii - Favorite Plant

Danger Garden identified a shady combo of ferns and mahonia as her favorites for July - so i took a look at my favorite shade plant (of which i don't have very many!)

I have a hoya kerrii that lives in a pot, that i've had for years. It spends the summers hanging by my front door. This year, a mourning dove built a nest in it, and i left it alone the whole time the baby birds were in there. When they finally left the nest, the plant celebrated by promptly bursting into bloom:

funny looking flowers

yes, they will drip nectar all over my front patio

and the leaves

but they are cute, funny looking things!

This is the whole plant - it's in the shade for most of the day, minus a few hours in the morning. It does not like our full sun at all. 

it looks like some kind of weird sea creature with too many legs

Hoya kerrii gets to be my favorite plant right now, and hopefully no more birds will build nests in it!

Orchid Blooming!

I'm excited! For the first time ever, my (one and only) orchid rebloomed! Perhaps it saw that I called it out in this post and also got some inspiration from the Huntington orchids. On that post, Helene and Hoover Boo were kind enough to offer advice on getting my orchid to rebloom, so maybe that helped too!

It turns out I was wrong - mine wasn't white, but pink-ish instead:

The first flower opened about 2 weeks ago.

 Is it just me, or does it look like it has a face? Weird...
There were 5 buds on the bloom stalk - 4.5 have now opened.

Two are on one side

and two on the other side

the last bud is also starting to open - so cool!

the closest I can get to seeing all of them at the same time.

It is pretty cool, even if it is pink. I've probably had this plant for 2 years, and it's still in the same pot. Maybe after this stalk is done blooming, I should repot it? Hopefully I won't kill it then, but I should be able to enjoy these for a while longer. I have no idea what kind of orchid this might be (other than that it came from Trader Joe's) but i am happy it finally rebloomed!

Challenge Reward!

Even though I'm still working up to my whole post-four-days-a-week thing, I did want to share what I did as a "reward" for actually taking a picture every single day and posting it here in January.

Several of the pictures I took of my house plant (like this one) were all taken in the same place - this weird ledge-think I have in my house, by the stairs. It actually doesn't get much natural light, but with some of the other lights on, it made a good spot for taking pictures at night. So for my reward, I decided to make it nicer - hang some pictures, some paint, and, of course, more plants. Here is what the area looked like while I was trying to pick a paint color:

Green, dark blue and light blue were the options - this area is very open to the rest of house, so it had to match...

 Since I already had the paint, the only things I bought for this area were the two new plants and containers to go with them. I ended up using the light blue paint:

Here you can see the odd shape this ledge has.

 And here it is all finished with pictures and plants:

It's not too cluttered, which is good. always room for more plants.

The plant at the far end is the fake plant that was up there already. The one in the middle is a very bright Dracena - hopefully it will be ok with the lack of light. If not, I'll switch it out with something else.

Here are the pictures that are on one side of the wall. The fun part is that these are all pictures I took during the January challenge! I just printed them on 8x10 photo paper, and framed them. I think I will add matting to them at some point in the future (when I make/find some).

The new plant + pictures on one side

 This plant is a Sanseveria "Moonlight". Loree recommended a Sanseveria for this low light area, and this one is really pretty. Of course, now I have to look at different colored ones every time I go somewhere, and I'll probably end up with more of them, assuming I don't kill this one.

The little succulents in pots that show up in these pictures are also pretty fun - they're not real plants, but wall-stickers that I got at IKEA of all places a while ago! They come six in one pack, and they just stick to the wall, but can come off if needed. I added them to the area to add some more color and interest. Plus now it looks like there's even more plants.

The other side of the wall has this grouping of pictures. The one in the middle is one a local artist made of an airplane. The others are more pictures from the challenge:

The picture arrangement makes sense with the sharply-sloping ceiling at this point

The best thing about this reward is that this is now the view from my favorite spot in the living room:

sorry for the blurry cellphone picture!

Pictures and plants! Much nicer to look at than the white walls and not-much-else that was there before. And now, if I do this challenge again, and need to take pictures indoors at night, I'll have a slightly more interesting background for them! And I'll have the pictures up on the wall to remind me of the challenge - and the fact that I actually did it.

Now if only I could get on that 4-day-a-week posting schedule...