I've had succulents for a while now, some have been with me since my senior year in college when I built a hot pink cinder block planter in front of our apartment. A few of the plants have even thrived and gotten pretty big, like my one flowering cactus has even done quite well.
Unfortunately most of the plants above are no longer with us. I've found that split rocks really can't tolerate a lot of water at the same time. You can't give them as much water at the same time as you would when you water a cactus or an aloe and that realization has been paved with the bodies of plenty of split rocks. That also applies to both gollum jade and babie's toes and all the other lithops, poor plants. That is why all three of those are now in the same pot today, because they get watered on a different schedule than the others.
Here were my plants last spring, as you can see my aloe and jade had gotten HUGE and all of my plants were doing really really well. Spring 2013 was a good time for these little babies, it was also when I found out that those spliced colorful cacti will ALWAYS DIE no matter what and they are a waste of money. The one above in the blue owl planter was cacti number 3 and as much as I loved the look of them, they were a waste of time. Unfortunately this past winter I was a terrible plant mom and I left them out on the patio during one too many cold nights. My Jade plant, my aloe, and my echeveria in particular suffered the most leaving my plants looking rather sad. After we moved into our new place and they got yet another new patio to sit on and I was hopeful they'd start looking better.
As you can see once I moved in I felt like the plants weren't doing too great so I went out and bought some new ones with the aim of replanting them. That was easy for the owl planter ones because everything in that plantar was dead already (freaking lithops man! So pretty and so temperamental!) The split rocks next to the owl planter are new and then the two still in the plastic pots obviously are new. As you can see that twig up there by the blue gnome is my Jade. Go look at the top picture and be sad. My Aloe also is still alive but looking rough and the echeveria in front of it is looking weak. All in all I was hoping to make my plants look a little less depressing.
A saw a post a while back on tumblr where they were talking about repotting plants as an analogy for self care. Not only caring for a plant but taking it and giving it a new home, and room to grow. That post actually really effected me and i've been thinking about it a lot lately. I mean I know it was just a dinky little post about attention and giving space but that's one of the reasons I like that website so much, it usually throws things at me right when I need them. To be honest that post was one of the reasons I finally made up my mind to try out for ComedySportz (which I got invited to train by the way! YAY!) I needed more room, and I needed to let myself get out there and so far i'm thriving. Like these plant babies! We went to Home Depot on Friday for soil and planters. They didn't have the small bag of soil so I ended up having to buy the big bag and now i've just got tons of soil left over. I also forgot just how expensive the planters at Home Depot are. You would think that after working there for 3 years I would have learned my lesson by now, but nope! They were all sold out of planters that match the big ones I have so we cut our losses and went to Michael's where they usually have sweet sales on outdoor stuff (surprising I know!). And jackpot! Tons of cute planters and they were all at least 50% off!
And voila! Cuteness overload and much happier plants. The plants that were in the jam jars had no problem spreading right on out and filling up their new homes. The split rocks in particular (small yellow container) just flopped right out. I think of all the plants though my Faucaria (the teethy one in the little blue pot) I swear got twice as big when I repotted it, it separated and got as far away from the others sections of itself as possible. It made me feel really good that I was finally giving them the space they needed to actually thrive. As for the ones in the big pots, I just have to continue taking care of them, trimming off the dead, and hope they come back. Re-potting was also just fun and soothing, even though it was already dark by the time I was done.
Overall my plants are happy and i'm happy and i'm taking this as yet another reminder to take care of myself.
What little things are you all doing to take care of yourselves? What other reminders are you giving yourself to give yourself some space to grow?
Until next time,
Meagan
What little things are you all doing to take care of yourselves? What other reminders are you giving yourself to give yourself some space to grow?
Until next time,
Meagan