Giving Cheer On A Grey Day. . .

"We flower no matter what the weather!"

                                                                            Above Photo by MarashGirl©2022  

 

Desperately Seeking . . . Not Susan, But An Avocado Pit That Will Sprout!!!!

On Wednesday, August 31, 2011, Marash Girl wrote a blog on how easy it is to grow avocado trees from the pit inside of a ripe avocado . . . well, it seems that, to quote Grandpa Peter, "Those days are gone . . . forever!" Now, no matter how desperately she searches, Marash Girl is unable to find an avocado that, once eaten, its pit will sprout anything -- not roots, not a stem, not leaves . . . Any suggestions?

When is a teapot not a teapot?

When is a teapot not a teapot? When it becomes a flower pot!!! [When you break the cover of the teapot, you have transfigured the teapot into a pot for the flowers in your front yard!]

Summer Avocado Dip

Simple and quick, this avocado dip is perfect with your favorite chips.

Cut a ripe avocado in half, remove pit and save for later (see below), remove flesh of avocado from skin and mash; stir in a tablespoonful of your favorite salsa and a teaspoon of freshly squeezed lemon juice and serve with your favorite chips.

If the pit has begun to sprout a root or two, pierce the pit half way down from the top of the pit with three toothpicks evenly spaced around the pit and allow the toothpicks to hold the pit halfway into the water, half of it above the water, with the toothpicks resting along the side of a glass full of water.  Place on a windowsill and watch the roots grow down into the water and a beautiful plant emerge above the water.  When the plant is large enough, it may be placed in a pot of soil an eventually become a beautiful tree!

The Leaf Stealer

A short story?  Not yet!  But a true story!  Medzmama, born in Marash, a survivor of the Armenian Genocide, was as generous and as honest as a summer's day is long.  But when it came to house plants, you could not trust her.  In the hope that she would come across a plant with a stealable leaf, she would always keep a wet handkerchief, or in later days, a wet kleenex, or a wet paper towel in a small plastic bag in her purse, with the hope that she would come across a stealable leaf, a leaf that she could carefully remove from a full-grown house plant (a plant in someone else's house), to take home hidden in the wet handkerchief in the plastic bag in a side pocket of her purse, and plant in the soil of an established potted plant, in the hopes that it would root, and that she could transplant the rooted leaf into a pot of its own.  And she did exactly that, ending up with a houseful of plants that she had started from leaf.

Ice Cubes for your Indoor Plants?

Yes, ice cubes for your indoor plants!  Easier and safer than watering is to place ice cubes on the soil around your indoor plants -- the ice will slowly melt and the plants will welcome the refreshment, without getting drowned!  They can't sip wine, but they sure will enjoy those sips of water!

Don't trash those Poinsettia Plants!

Have you noticed that after the winter holidays, folks trash their poinsettia plants?  Why?  Are they any less lovely after January 1 than before January 1?  Is their value really only as holiday decor?  Marash Girl insists that they are living, breathing plants and deserve a second chance at life!

They will survive if you keep them lightly watered and in light.  As Marash Girl is no expert in plant advice, she begs her readers (possible owners of Christmas Poinsettia) to check online to see how to care for these beautiful plants . . . they will live for another day, another holiday, another year, another decade!

Why is Marash Girl discussing poinsettias and not politics?  Her daughter Lorig will be attending the inauguration and will provide photos and info which Marash Girl will post tomorrow, so stay tuned!

New Year's Day Surprise

What are those beautiful pink flowers?  Marash Girl has had this plant for years -- where she got it, nobody knows -- and never a flower.  Yet yesterday evening, on New Year's Day, the beautiful flamingo pink flowers made their way into her living room saying, "Happy New Year!"  (Do any of you know the name of this plant?  Marash Girl does not!")

Christmas Cactus In Bloom!

Why are all of Marash Girl's Christmas Cactus blooming now, just in time for Thanksgiving?

She Killed Her Cat

A while back, a friend gifted a very large dragon leaf begonia to Marash Girl.  The plant was too 

large for any space in Marash Girl's abode, so Marash Girl gifted the plant to a friend who worked at 

Newton Parks and Recreation.

Last night, at a meeting of Newton Parks and Recreation, Marash Girl saw the new owner of the 

dragon leaf begonia and asked how the plant was doing.

"Oh, it's fine," she said.   "We're keeping the begonia at the office though.  After doing some research, 

I learned that begonias are poisonous to animals, especially cats!  All of us at the office love the 

begonia."   The conclusion to the story?   "The plant is doing great, and so is my cat!"

N.B.  The former owner of the begonia never could figure out why her father's cat, a cat she had adopted and dearly loved,  mysteriously passed away soon after she adopted it.

Invite your plants to take a shower

At the end of this long cold winter, especially if your heating system is of the "hot air" variety, you can be sure that all of your indoor plants are covered with dust, no matter how dust-free you think your house is.  Your plants are ready for a nice cool shower.  And that's what they deserve!  Just take your potted plants into the bathroom, place them in your shower stall or your bath tub,  and shower them in a gentle shower with water that is at room temperature.  (Too hot or too cold will be too much of a shock for the plants to endure . . .  no soap please, unless the plants are buggy!)  [Thanks to Susan of Longmeadow for this idea.] 

Alternatively, if you don't have a shower, as soon as the weather warms up, when the weatherman forecasts a gentle rain (no wind), take your potted indoor plants outside for their spring bathing.

You'll be surprised at how your plants will "come alive"!

Blooms brave the Massachusetts snow!

Here in Massachusetts, the news is snow and more snow.  Folks have not been able to drive down Maple Avenue for 24 hours!  Nonetheless,t the flowers are  blooming in the east window of our kitchen!

Indoor Gardening á la Thalassa Cruso

Many years ago, Marash Girl read Thalassa Cruso's Making Things Grow, a  gardening book with verve and humor.  To this day, Marash Girl remembers two points from the book, both of which made her smile at the time, and make her smile today.

Cruso cautions us to wash those emptied plant pots before putting them away in a corner of the cellar.  You wouldn't put dirty dishes on a shelf, would you? she asked.

Does Marash Girl remember correctly?  Did Thalassa Cruso really ask, "Do you keep fresh flowers after they have wilted or worse, died? Why keep a potted plant that is not thriving?  Simply buy another!"

That theory, of course, would have been anathema to Marash Boy's mother, who would rescue wilted twigs from the sale shelf at the back of the "Five and Ten" and with her last five or ten cents, buy a twig and nurse it into a living, thriving plant!

Would that Marash Girl had Medzmama's green thumb! Or Thalassa Curso's, for that matter!

Growing Tomatoes, à la Peter

This is how Peter (Grandpa Peter, Pete, Daddy) grew prize-winning tomatoes!

1.  Start saving beer cans, and if you don't drink beer, ask all your friends to save them for you.  (No kidding! This is the beginning of success!)

2. When the winter seems as if it will never end, start removing the bottoms of the beer cans with a can opener, and slip that bottom piece into the bottom of the can (which is actually the top of the can, the side with the flip top removed . . .The can now will have a double lid at its base, with a hole for drainage at the very bottom.)

3. Order Burpee's seed catalogue.

4.  Order Big Boy tomato seeds as soon as is possible.

4a.  As you will learn from the comments below, Grandpa Peter, acc. to Marash Girl's brother, first planted the seeds in a small seed starter; Marash Girl does not remember that; it may have been a later rendition of this planting ritual!

5. Sterilize soil from your compost pile (and Grandpa Peter had a big one) in your oven, causing the house to reek!  (These days folks would probably buy potting soil from the local garden supply house.)

6.  Leaving beer can tops in bottom of beer can, fill cans with sterilized soil, placing seeds in can in February in sunroom (his sunroom faced to the east), placing cans in a tray so that the drainage will not damage the floor of your sunroom!

7. Keep soil slightly moist until tomato plant sprouts; then water only when plant is beginning to wilt; that, explained Grandpa Peter, will make the plants strong.  Let plants grow gangly.

8. Just before planting when danger of frost has past (usually May 15), withhold water from plants so that plants become droopy and pliable.

9.  On May 15, water plants just before removing from beer, preparing plants to plant in the garden (after, of course, you have tilled the soil in the garden.)

10.  Not until you are in the garden, (hopefully your garden will have rich soil, soil from years of composting!) and your hole is dug only 1 inch deep and about 5 inches long, push tomato plant out of beer can using screwdriver to push through hole at base of beer can. Do so gently, and low to the ground so that the plant does not "plop" out.

11.  Carefully place tomato plant and roots sideways,  approx. 1 inch below the soil, leaving about 2 to three inches of plant above the ground.  (Peter discovered that tomatoes root ONLY 1 inch below the surface of the soil; in order to establish a strong root system, Peter developed the "sideways" planting method for his tomatoes.) You may prop them with sticks and use strips torn from old white cotton shirts -- Grandpa Peter's father Moses had many a ball of those strips around the house for use in the garden --  Peter continued the tradition!

12.  Pat the soil over the planted seedling; water gently, and keep moist until plant becomes sturdy.

13.  When plant has established itself, only water when plant begins to droop, as that will make for a stronger plant (see above).

14.  If you're lucky, you'll have the most delicious tomatoes in town!

Touch Your Plants!

As spring approaches in New England (no, March 21st is definitely NOT the first day of spring around here, ground covered with snow in March), tiny green shoots dare to make their presence known above the nearly frozen earth, through their blanket of mulch (be it leaves or coffee grounds or the dried plant leavings from the year before), and all who have indoor plants wait with longing to be able to expose them to the open air, the direct warmth of the sun,  the rustling of their leaves as the wind makes its way across, the gentleness or not so gentleness of raindrops . . .  What all of this brings to mind is the need to touch your indoor plants while they are indoors . . . touch that they would naturally feel out of doors -- from the rain, from the wind, from the movement of other plants, from insects, bees, butterflies, from animals wandering by (be they wild coyotes or household cats) . . . And so Marash Girl begs you to consider touching your plants, ruffling their leaves . . . . plants need to be touched as do we all.

Flowering in celebration of the New Year

This plant had the temerity to flower on the first day of the first snowstorm of the  New Year!

Would that we all could follow its example!

Poking a Finger into the Soil of Other People's Plants

This winter has caused havoc on Marash Girl's plants.  Keeping the house at a cool 62 or 64, Marash Girl and her plants are happy; not so her family, and so the heat gets cranked up to 68 and 70 and the plants (not to mention Marash Girl) start wilting.  Marash Girl always wondered why, with so little sun, her plants could survive; the answer was, not over watering.  But then, how do you know?  She was unaware of the fact that, as she walks through her house, should she pass a plant, she surreptitiously pokes a finger into the soil to determine whether or not the plant is ready for another drink, and in doing so, she brushes the plant leaves with her arm.  This habit became so ingrained, that one day, she found herself in someone else's house, surreptitiously putting her finger into their plants' soil (and finding it far too dry)!  Yikes.  She hopes she wasn't discovered.  The audacity!

But then again, perhaps it isn't just the water, but the brush with a living creature on a regular basis that keeps the plants alive and healthy.  After all, in the wild, plants are brushed by the wind, by birds and fox, cats and coyotes . . .  People and plants cannot live by water alone!

Carnivorous Plant Exhibit, U.S. Botanic Gardens, Washington, DC

Thinking the whole thing a joke, kids pose as food for carnivorous plants.

Captured by Marash GIrl's camera and the carnivorous plant (above), this fly is not laughing.

"Hands on" displays at the Botanic Gardens help kids to understand the reality of meat-eating plants.

The question is, can the plant tell the difference between an insect and a human finger?  Enila tells of a friend who has a pet plant to which she feeds ground meat!  Are there vegan plants? Plants that eat other plants?

N.B.  Marash Girl could have used a few carnivorous plants in her kitchen last week! (See Marash Girl's post, A Phalanx of Flies)

New Life for an Old Plant

Who would want a plant that's called "Mother-In-Law's Tongue" or "Snake Plant"?

The story of the lost plant that was found.

For days the winds blew, the rains poured and at the end of the street was a lone plant on the edge of the sidewalk, a plant that had blown over in the wind.  It was out on trash day, and it was still out on the next day and the next day and the next.  Loving to save plants from certain death, Marash Girl has been known to salvage a plant from the sidewalk and nurse it back to health, but this plant looked like it had been placed on the tree belt for decoration and had inadvertently been blown over in the wind.  Marash Girl set it upright as she walked by, only to notice it was out with the trash barrels on the next trash day.  Concerned for the survival of an otherwise healthy looking plant, Marash Girl knocked on the door of the house to which the plant seemed to belong.  The lady of the house answered.  The plant?  No, she didn't want it.  Her husband had bought it for her, but she had too many plants as it was, so she had set it out on the sidewalk in the hope that someone would adopt it.  Marash Girl thanked the lady of the house and carried the plant home, still in its plastic pot, without a name or a home.  Placing the plant on her front porch, Marash Girl asked every passer by and soon found that the plant was known as "Mother-In-Law's Tongue" or "Snake Plant".  No wonder nobody wanted the poor thing, with names like that!

 

Marash Girl decided to ask  Karoun, whose favorite color is green, if she would adopt the plant. And sure enough, on the very day she was packing to move, Karoun worked her magic.  The plant has indeed found a new mother and a new home (and most likely a new name). Above are the photos to prove it.

The Avocado Pit Grower's Indoor How-to Book

There was a day in the late 1960's when everywhere we went, young married couples would proudly display in the corner of their living rooms the avocado trees they had grown from an avocado pit...Big huge trees with green, green leaves.  And all for the price of an overripe avocado.  So off I went, way back in the late 1960's, searching for an overripe avocado that would already have a sprouting plant within it.  And I found one and actually grew my own green leafed avocado plant, soon to be tree, even though my thumb was only the lightest of green.  Why someone had to write a book about something so simple was an amazing revelation.  I guess you can write a book (or a blog, for that matter) about anything.  Actually, I never read the book, perhaps because the book makes the whole process seem less than magical. Our shop has a fourth printing of the book, but the outer edge of the front cover's spine is split, just the way the avocado seed should be in order to sprout, but thankfully this book is not sprouting anything but information!

You know what?  I think, as soon as this post-hurricane clean-up passes, I'll head out to the green grocer's to look for an over-ripe avocado, and try my hand yet again at what every young bride of the late 1960s tried (in the category of indoor gardening, that is!)  Growing an avocado tree in the corner of my Victorian living room!