 lants!
I love houseplants, and at one time had basically my entire front window
worked into a solid wall of greenery. Unfortunately that window is
a harsh mistress when it comes to flora, and the blazing direct sunlight
and very high temperatures it creates, even when the blinds are drawn,
tends to cook them. At least isn't good for them maintaining their
full glorious greenery.
I have a huge and
beautiful Boston fern that thrives here in the winter, but has to go
live in my dad's backyard in the summer, for the heat causes the leaves
to drop off like lemmings (aside from the fact that lemmings have never
actually thrown themselves into the sea; it's all a myth).
My plant preference?
Greenery. I don't really care about blossoms or flowers, what I
like are green leaves, and lots of them. The thicker the
better. Fortunately this isn't too hard to achieve with house
plants, relatively speaking.
In addition to pics of
my houseplants, this page contains shots of various plants taken
elsewhere, mostly in my dad's backyard. My preference is for lots
of greenery there too, oddly enough.
- More recent photos
are added to the top of this page. Be warned: captions may
contain sarcasm.
I love these little
gift bamboo plants in pottery jugs. Someday I'll have a more
well-lit home, about 50 of these around the place, enough cats to keep
them trimmed, and hardwood floors to make cleaning up the resulting
furball hork easy for my butler.
--January 29, 2003
It's hard to imagine
while the ficus tree doesn't thrive more, what with the gentle
treatment the rodents give it, huh? There were actually 2 or 3 more
down underneath the dirt in this shot, below the orange one on the top
left. I had to wait several hours for them to get tired of sleeping in
the vampire grave before they emerged to be put back into their box.
See more ratfruit
tree photos on the baby rats page.
--November 5, 2002
This was inside a
grapefruit segment. Obviously a grapefruit seed, but you don't
generally see one taking root quite like this, while still in the
citrus. I planted it in potting soil and watered it, but it
shriveled up and died after a few weeks anyway. I should have
put it in water, I think. Or a rotting grapefruit in dirt somewhere
outside my apartment. My citrus empire doomed before it truly
began.
--September 26, 2002
Yet another shot from
dad's backyard, this one near the koi pond. He's got a small
forest of these funky tropical elephant-ear plants, and while I love
the enormous spreading leaves, I like the roots best. The plants
are constantly putting out these snake-like tendrils that are flexible
and tender when new, but hard and bark-covered once they wrap around
something and harden into adult permanence. The plants essentially
hold themselves upright, since they aren't very sturdy once they get
tall, and a solo one would topple in a high wind. But when there
are 10 or 12 in a cluster, all wrapped around each other, they are
quite strong. Plus they look cool, and yeah, the roots are creepy when
they come out, like blind snakes. A whole forest of these things
would be totally impassable short of a chainsaw, if they had room to
keep spreading out and interlocking.
-- July 1, 2002
This somewhat
vertiginous shot is looking up at the big avocado tree in my dad's
backyard. The orange tree is visible in the background, behind
the skeleton of what was once a swing set. The guy who owned the
house before dad had a young daughter. There is another avocado tree
to the left, out of view in this shot.
And no, I don't like
avocado, other than occasionally as guacamole. That's not proper
in Southern California, but I have thus far avoided official reprimand
for my gustatory short comings. Let us hope that my terrible secret
never becomes widely known.
-- July 1, 2002
The tomato box at in
my dad's backyard. Soon after getting my digicam, I had the idea of
taking a photo of them from the same location every week for the
growing season, and was them going to put them all into an animation,
or just line them up on the same page, to compare over time.
I scrapped this plan
when I realized that it would be about as exciting as um... watching
grass grow.
--June 29, 2002.
My dad's back yard,
on an overcast day. (Dad not pictured.) This is where my dying living
room plants go for rehab. In fact that's where the palm tree you
see behind the table came from. Other escapees are hanging off
to the right, out of view in this image.
Plants seem to grow
much better if they are out of the direct sunlight they get in my
apartment, and under the mesh covering here at my dad's place.
Contrary to what one might expect given their millions of years of
sun-loving evolution.
--June 29, 2002
A nice forest-y shot
from the Wild Animal Park trip. Click it to see this shot in much
larger size. You can see this one on the Wild Animal Park page
as well.
--June 29, 2002
My living room as of
June 2002. There should be more, and more greenery. This is the first
plant pic I ever posted on the site, and one of the first ever taken
with my digicam. It's like history in the making, aside from the
historical part.
--June 27, 2002
|
