Task: Prune and repot plants

At one point I made a long task list of all of these things that I needed to get done, and I had blogged that I was doing that, and at some point I intended to write about all of the little things—maybe why they were important and what progress I had made. Anyway, one way I am going to be able to blog daily during a period of great business is that I will do some quick task updates interspersed with the more verbose postings.

Once upon a time I had three plants. One was a gift from two friends at a time when I was feeling down. It is a gold-dust kroton, but I did not know that originally so I just called it Spot.

They other two were rescues from someone who was away from work for an extended period (I think it was maternity leave). I noticed them dying and started watering them, and when she got back and I mentioned that, she said I could have them. (Whenever I go on vacation I put someone in charge of watering the plants, so clearly we just had different viewpoints on the importance of plant care.) The African violet I recognized, and called Violet, but it took me a while before I knew that Stripe was a dieffenbachia.

Anyway, they all did pretty well. Violet eventually started blooming again, and even though Stripe lost a limb when Stephen sat on my desk against it, the rest was doing fine. Well, Violet has since died, but I feel like it was okay, and just the natural course of events rather than anything I did. The real problem was Spot.

Krotons are amazingly resilient. They can go for a long time without water, and eventually the leaves will start to get a little droopy, and then a quick drink perks them right up. You can also overwater, apparently, and they survive that too. The problem is that Spot keeps getting taller without getting thicker. Judicious pruning early on probably could have fixed that, but I didn’t see the need until too late. Anyway, Spot periodically gets a little top-heavy, and needs to have the top snipped off.

I hate doing this. There is this lush, green growth, stretching upward, and looking all happy, and I just come along like a barbarian and cut it down. Still, I think if I didn’t, there would be an issue with the distribution of nourishment, and the roots would grow weak and it would die.

I have taken care of pruning, although it will come up again. I don’t really like the pots for either, and so I frequently come back to this idea of getting something new for them. Of course, it was not an absolute necessity, and I have been so broke, that it was not really an option. Now that I will have income again, perhaps I can think about it. Could they go in together, and share a pot? I don’t know. I know some people who have tended indoor plants professionally though, so maybe I can ask.

Disco Sweat (28/70)
Crunches
Mosiah 6 – Mosiah 1