New Office Plant

This morning Handy Woman had left a jade plant in my office for me. Now some people may say I have a green thumb, but jade plants are a completely different matter. They are supposed to be so easy to grow, yet I have always managed to kill them. Mr. N’Awlins has (or had at one point) a giant jade plant that was practically a tree, and it was so happy that it would actually bloom. Not that jade plant flowers are anything that spectacular, but I’m just saying, contrast that with my experiences. Years ago I had a crazy neighbor (she always used my phone because hers was “bugged”) who suddenly ran off to Seattle, leaving me her plants. One was an organ pipe jade plant, and I had it for a few years, when it even seemed happy and grew bigger, but then when I moved to my condo, it slowly died. Maybe this was back in the days before Plant World; I can’t remember now how long ago it’s been. Some leaves had fallen off of it and started to grow baby plants, but even those are long gone. Want to take bets on how long it will be before I kill this jade plant? Unless, for some reason, it likes my office. The cyclamen Travalon gave me for our one-year anniversary has been growing happily in my office window, getting larger and blooming continuously, but a cyclamen is (obviously) not a jade plant. Only time will tell if this jade plant will meet the same fate as every other one I have ever owned.

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Jolly Bob: Plant on Wheels

This happened exactly a week ago, but I never blogged about it and have no better ideas for blogging today, so here goes: two weekends ago I noticed that the new growth on my big dracaena Jolly Bob was yellowish with brown spots, so I pointed it out to Richard Bonomo and Kathbert and expressed my concern. Kathbert said Jolly Bob was in much too small a pot; it has grown substantially since I found it sitting on the sidewalk on the way back from the restaurant it is named after several years ago. So last week after Date Night with Jesus, I went to the plant store near Rich’s house, but they had just closed… so I went to Walgreen’s, since they have everything, and sure enough, they had potting soil. They only had small bags, so I had to buy three. I had brought a very large pot from home, as well as a water catcher that has wheels so now Jolly Bob can be rolled around. (Hardingfele found the water catcher by the side of the road and told me about it.) This is not just for fun, but for practical considerations, since Jolly Bob is getting very heavy to have to lift if it needs to be moved. It already looks much happier since moving into its roomier, more mobile new home.

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