No Willpower

Put a cute plant for sale under my nose and I will not be able to resist taking it home. I went to our grocery store the other night for boring things like bread and deli meat and walked in on a tray of small succulents for $1.99. I picked up three, but wanted at least double that... they are all different... control yourself... resist the urge...

Here's my purchase:

 $6 and not even a minute of planting time later, they are in my planter near front door.

Stray Puppies

A few weeks ago I dropped my son at baseball practice and told him I'll be in a nearby Home Depot until it's time to pick him up. "Don't buy any plants,"he said. Well, I had no intention to. But when I wandered in the houseplants section, I saw these two cactuses scattered around with no pots. I just had to save them.

Winter Blooms

Some of my houseplants are blooming right now. I bought this cyclamen more than a year ago to decorate my house for New Year's. Typically it is hard to get cyclamen to bloom again the following year, but this gal might have liked my cold and shady laundry room where I kept it from spring to late fall.This amaryllis--also from a grocery store--was supposed to be white and I was hoping it would bloom around Christmas. Oh well. I hope to add this one to my collection of amaryllis bulbs.
This is how my coffee table and mantel looks right now. The orchid on the coffee table was an unexpected gift from a neighbor recently.
Beautiful!
With all the blooming houseplants around, there's really no need for cut flowers. Besides, the branches that I'm forcing are about to come into bloom... I'd never guess I would have more blooms in my house in February than at any other time when it's warm outside.

Repotting

Today was the repotting day. According to my mom and Latvian forefathers, things have to be seeded or planted while the moon is waxing. (Do so when the moon is waning, and nothing will grow; hence it's a good time for haircuts!) This superstition was a good enough excuse to transfer some of my indoor plants to bigger pots while the days are still sunny and warm and there's another month or so before the plants will enter dormancy stage.

The task took me longer than I anticipated, mostly because after a closer look almost everything needed more root space. The collection below is about a half of my plants that were moved. For now, they'll stay in the sunroom; I plan to move them inside when the nights get colder, probably around the first frosts.

Fig and Lithops

I ordered two new plants and the came recently. To the left is a sapling of a dwarf fig variety 'Petite Negra'. In the small pot are lithops, commonly called living stones.

I read about this fig in a magazine and it sounded just perfect for my front garden. I learned about lithops in another blog and got very curious about this weird plant. It will be very interesting to see it grow.
Lithops close up. For a reference, the clay pot they came in is 2 inches wide.