Office Plant Update!

I know it has been a full week since my last post but I have had some really upsetting news as of late.  Perhaps one of these days I will share it but I'm not there yet.

In addition, I had some sort of weird flu bug from Saturday thru Monday.  At first, I thought it was a frozen flatbread pizza I had bought and not cooked right but after a couple of days and the way my body responded I knew it wasn't the pizza. 

Perhaps I was in denial or maybe it's because I'm NEVER sick.  I don't know...but it confused me.  I bet I haven't had the flu in at least 12 or 13 years (maybe more).  Plus, in 19 years of working at the place I currently work at - I have only taken a total of 4 sick days and 2 and a half of them were because of Sammy (our late dog) in 2009.

Anyhow, I thought I would do a post on my plants! 

It's been a LONG while since my last update.  The first photo above - is my treasured Ponytail Palm.  To see what it looked like when I first obtained it take a look at THIS POST from May of 2014.

In this 2nd photo, you will see a Praying Plant of some sort.  At dusk, it will rise upward like it's praying. 

This is one of the plants I recently transplanted.  Out of all of the ones I did attempt to transplant this one is the droopiest. 

These next two photos are of the same plant that I had a 'baby' or an 'offshoot' of and when I was transplanting the plants decided to try and break them up to be their own beings from here on out.  So far - so good!

You can see this one has the 'babies' that are traveling.

In the next photo, you will see how I separated them.

We re-use planters and mix old with new soil.  I use tea water, mostly, to water the plants, too!

Because we have obtained a lot of decorative tins and used box tops around the office, we now re-use these to place under the bottoms of the plants to catch any excess water.

I will never underappreciate the natural sunlight that shines thru my windows at work - I adore it!  Before I switched jobs here I was in the main office and nowhere near a window.

I'm not sure the exact name of these plants but I'm thinking they are some sort of spider plant.

I think this is some sort of spider plant, as well.  I've had this one for a while, too, but the first 6 months or more it just kept growing taller and floppy and nothing else, really. 

And then it happened!  Offshoots!  You can see two of them towards the floor.  I was thrilled!  I hope I start seeing more of these so I can try and re-plant the 'babies'.

This plant was so HUGE I wasn't sure where to put it so the last time I transplanted it (which was almost a year ago) I decided to place it on a chair.

If you know any of the names of these plants please let me know and I will surely update this post!

This one was a gift from my parents almost 4 years ago now.  They got it for me when I switched jobs.  Same company.  Different Job, that is. 

I thought it wasn't going to make it but once I started watering it with tea water it seemed to save it.  I've transplanted this at least 3 or 4 times already.  It keeps growing like crazy!

At one point it had a neat little white pouch of a bud and flower but that only lasted 3 days.

I noticed yesterday that this one has another plant growing in the same pot alongside of the BIG one so at some point I might try and start a new pot for the little one.

I don't care for the name of this plant.  It's not very P.C. so my co-workers and I decided to give it a new name instead.  Before taking this pic I had to untangle a lot of the vine.  This one seems to be doing extremely well, too, but, there isn't a real rhyme or reason to how or where it's growing.  Just every which way, really!

I LOVE the two-tone leaves on this.  Green and white on the one side and the underneath side is a rich purple color! 

I might have to find a hanging basket for this guy at some point. 

And speaking of having to find a hanging basketing for a plant - check out the next and last photo! 

Yup!  Here's an Ivy Vine Plant of some sort and it's growing and traveling and going a little nuts, too!

This started as a leaf from another plant that a co-worker gave me.  She actually gave me 3 leaves of her plant to try planting on my own.  After months the leaves weren't doing ANYTHING but after I removed the 2 weaker leaves the 3rd one started budding and traveling!

How cool is that!?  This is now about 5 feet tall (or long) - depending on how you look at it I guess.  And the only way I know it's about 5 feet in length is because I'm just over 5 feet tall (or short in my case). 

I don't see this one slowing down any time soon!  Do you have any house or office plants that are doing well at the moment?  I would love to see and/or hear about them!

 

Ponytail Palms, Cats Without Tails, Simple Foods from the Container/Rooftop Gardens

I know I have been posting a lot of food lately and you know I will continue to but I also have a lot of other things to post about too!

Here's a mish mash of things that aren't really food related - for the most part - that have been going on lately!

First - this AWESOME Ponytail Palm!  A few months ago my co-worker Sam brought one in for her office and I LOVED it so much!  I would do up and check it out each time I visited her office.  Her mother found one for me last week and it's now sitting on my desk.  I'm NOT next to a window but we will see how it does.  I have regular florescent office lights.  Hers is next to a window.  Mine isn't.  So I figured every Friday afternoon I would take mine upstairs and put it next to hers for the weekend near the window!

It's been a few weeks now since Charlie's surgery.  I wanted to wait to post about it until I was sure he was ok.  He had to have his tail amputated.  He has been doing remarkably well without this tail.  They left a bit of a 'nub'.  It's still healing but doing good.  When they took his tail off they noticed he had very small warts all over his tail that were NOT visible until after they shaved his tail to remove it.  They said to look for other unhealing wounds that may pop up.  They aren't overly concerned at this time that there is much else wrong.  However, IF he does have other unhealing wounds that form they said it may be cancerous. 

So of course when I saw this about 2 weeks after his surgery I was concerned!  After we took the cone off of him he had this small - yet clean - hole on his arm.  The first day it bled but I'm sure that was because he was licking it.  Ever since then it's been dry, clean, and unchanged - yet open. 

FINALLY yesterday morning I noticed this wound was closing!!!  I think we are on the upswing! 

As you can see on the other arm - that's the arm they shaved to put the IV in.  NOT the arm with the wound.  BUT...as long as it continues to heal - we are happy!

Okay...Okay...I know I said I wouldn't talk about food...but I can't help it!  Simple Foods left from last week!  Yes...I've now gotten 4 salads from our containers at work!  YAY!  I used some leftover dressings I made to top it and it was a nice simple lunch. 

I will have a post very soon with the progress of our Container Garden and Rooftop Garden Attempts!  We've also been doing updates on MyFolia.com which you can follow via my sidebar but I will be posting that more soon too!