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on May 27, 2010

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A couple more altered images....

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Be Still My String of Hearts! Adventures in cuttings and repotting...

I just posted a short article about my 'delicate' potting up of some cuttings outdoors, on my seed blog. https://cohanseeds.blogspot.com/2019/09/fall-work-yard-clean-up-and-linnaea.html That came about as a side effect of some yard work I was doing. Today, I was intending to water some houseplants, and again got pulled down a (modest) rabbit hole of potting and cuttings! First I noticed a pot that had a mostly dead Gasteria, with one little piece living ( and a couple of bits of Aloe that got stuck in there at some point)- so that needed repotting into much smaller pots. Then, since I was thinking plant maintenance, I thought I might as well deal with a Ceropegia woodii / String of Hearts which I had moved a while ago, and was sitting draped over and clambering around some other plants. It was already rooting into at least one other pot, and I figured if I left it much longer it would be inextricable! Ceropegia woodii on Sansevieria Well, it was tangled

Killing Tropicals: (Belatedly) Saving Plants from Depleted Commercial Soils

I have to confess: although I like tropical plants, I don't have the best track record with them. Long term I do better with cacti and succulents, as I tend to be an erratic waterer. I've been realising, though, that the problem is not only or primarily an issue of watering: rather I think it becomes about soil! Typical houseplant nurseries use sterile substrates which are generally fertilised with each watering. Many of these mixes do not hold up long- breaking down and compacting, becoming difficult to wet evenly, and/or to dry out properly. Compacted peat, can remain dry in the centre of the pot, leaving roots without moisture. Other mixes may lose texture ending up goopy with a lack of aeration in the soil, and plants which are not adapted for water-logged soils have difficulty absorbing water without oxygen in the soil. Either way you end up with plants unable to take up enough water, with roots that may be dried out/atrophied or rotting. Commercial growers avoid this by

Māras/Great Mother Day: Late Summer Altar and an Earth Goddess

(Note: as I read and learn more over time, I have new questions- see some more recent posts for perhaps slightly different takes on the roles/origins of various goddesses. Is Māra the primoridal goddess or is she of Indo-European origin? a hybrid? Is she the same as Laima? is Ragana the true original Bird Goddess of earth/water/sky? are they all aspects of the One?) Like most primal goddesses of nature, life, death, fertility, the original deity is not really good or bad, rather somewhat ambivalent to human concerns. This seems to me to be a natural representation of the forces of nature- providing all the bounty for life to thrive, yet able at a seeming whim to take life in tragic moment, a failed crop, a harsh winter. While Latvians seem less inclined to this fearful approach to worship than some, with the negative aspects of deities downplayed, they do still have customs designed to encourage, beg, or compel beneficial divine activity. Achillea/Yarrow and Anaphalis/Everlasting as

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