Tuesday, December 25, 2012

Random Plant Thing

Remeber the dracaena I chopped down because it got cold damaged? There's signs of life!


I was doing the daily misting and noticed these two new sprouts on the end of one of the stalks! Also...


Not the best picture, but you can tell that there is somethin' brewin' under that bark! I think we are due for another sprout! There's also this...


There was a small closed spike of leaves that survived the big chop because it was only partially damaged and I wanted to see if it would open up. Well all of a sudden one morning it looks like it exploded! I'm really happy one original leaf cluster survived!

That's all for now, I will be doing a big update soon because tonight I repotted and re-arranged some of the plants and the plant area is looking really snazzy!

Thursday, December 20, 2012

P for Parrot Update #2

Here's last night's progress. There are a lot of unfinished crosses because sometimes I feel like doing the counting and stitching new areas and other times I like to do a bit more mindless stitching (like when watching TV) so if the areas are already mapped out I can just go back and finish the crosses then.

Wednesday, December 19, 2012

P for Parrot Update #1



I'm making the first one in the picture, "P is for Parrot". Here's what I have so far as of last night:

Makin' Mincemeat!

This year we are having two dinners, a traditional ukranian dinner on the Sunday before Christmas, for which I am making a mountain of perogies, and a traditional Southern dinner on Christmas day for which Craig is frying a whole turkey (expect pictures!) and for this dinner I have been charged with making an old fashioned, real, from scratch mincemeat pie. Not sure how that came about, seeing as I have only ever tasted mincemeat once or twice and have never made a pie beyond the "canned filling frozen crust" type. But I will try my best, the mincemeat lovers (Craig) are counting on me! The filling got made yesterday and of course I took pictures of the process.


Here are all the strange and wonderful things that go into the mincemeat, not including of course...





The meat! How many people out there knew there was real meat in mincemeat? Not me! We bought some beef and I cut it into rough pieces and browned it in a pan with a bit of water. Then I drained it and let it cool, and then chopped it up pretty fine. There was some extra when I was all done, Buster got that.


Buster is always around to help with the cooking.

Next came the fruit prep, which was the most time consuming part. The recipe required 4 cups of chopped apple and a large orange to be peeled and diced.



For those keeping track at home, that's a TON of apple chopping to do.

All of that gets put into a big pot with a bunch of strange and seemingly unrelated ingredients...

Raisins...


Sweet pickle juice and pineapple juice...


Spices, beef broth and molasses.

Everything got combined and looked like this:


Then got cooked down for about two hours into this:


Craig came home and tasted it and said it was great, I don't have much experience with mincemeat so if he was impressed I guess I did alright! Now just to pack it up and put it in the fridge until next week. According to The Internet, it gets better if it sits for a little while.

Thursday, December 13, 2012

Quote of the Day

Me: "He flies through space, doin' whatever Nyan Cat does..."
Craig: "...makin' rainbows..."

Tuesday, December 4, 2012

Sick day.

I finally have a reader (hi Mom!)! Today's post isn't much, I didn't go in to work today because I woke up scratchy throated, blocked up, headachey and nauseated. After getting up and having a bit of breakfast I felt a bit better, I took Craig to do a few things and then to work, came home and slept for about 4 hours. I got up and felt a bit better but was fairly bored so I decided to do some gardeny stuff.


I re-arranged the corner by the table, one chair has been temporarily employed as a plant stand because the spider plant wasn't getting enough light where it was. These pictures were at the end of the day so he looks considerably more perky than this morning. We've also gotten the annual Christmas poinsettia, and someone looks a little different than last time. Which leads me to...


Dracaena has been beheaded! Unbeknownst to me the plant had gotten frozen on the truck on the way home and I was left to scratch my head as a normal looking plant suddenly got very dark and dropped all of it's leaves. After I discovered this I decided it was better off for me to chop off all the misshapen trunks and hope for new branches. I left one top on because this one has fresh new green growth coming out. We will see what happens here!


We also bought this "Frosty Fern", I know it's tacky but I love grocery store holiday plants with the garish foil and silly ornaments. This will be repotted in a normal pot after Christmas. There were also live Holly plants at the one Safeway we went to last grocery day, we ended up having to go to a different Safeway for what we needed so I left without buying it, thinking they would all have them. Nope! Hopefully the one we usually go to gets them in soon!


Everyone is looking nice and lush today!


My Pothos rehabilitation project is coming along nicely I think.


This dracaena also got one of it's ends chopped off. I'm not sure what happened to it but it got dark and soft so I just cut it off. Hopefully it branches!


And I will finish off with a picture of my favourite plant, china doll. It's gotten so big and pretty and I love it!

Well that's all for today, I'm off to make some Campbell's chicken noodle and cocoon myself on the couch.

Wednesday, November 28, 2012

My houseplants (a picture heavy post).

I don't have much of an outdoor green thumb, but I suppose I make up for it with all of my indoor plants! Today I was kinda bored, so I decided to take a photo log of all of my plants. Enjoy!


This is a couple of lucky bamboo that are in a jar of marbles and water on my dinner table. The plaque was a gift from my aunt.


Here is a very large dracaena and a cat palm that were saved from being thrown out at various office buildings.


This is another office rescue, a deiffenbacchia that has grown immensely since Craig brought it home. It also has a couple of spider friends to share his pot!


A cute little jade plant in a macrame plant hanger.


I have had these cacti for years and just recently moved them from a small plastic pot that sat in this planter, to the actual planter itself, and I'm not sure but I think they might be getting bigger!


Yet another office rescue, this dracaena was sad and droopy in a tiny Christmas pot. After repotting into a large container it has taken off. Also his little friend phalaenopsis orchid sitting in the container too.


A picture of a group of plants that sit on the hutch by the window.


A small yellow palm I got at Walmart. I saw these but much larger while we were in Mexico, but the leaves were twisty looking. This one has started to do the same thing now that it's getting bigger.


This strange looking plant was brought to me from an office building where it was sitting in a pot more than a foot across, dry as a bone and wilted from getting too cold. I cut off all the dead stuff (amazingly one leaf survived completely unharmed), repotted in a smallish container and am now waiting to see what happens.


A bromeliad whose large flower plume unfortunately dried out and broke off before it bloomed, while I was on holiday. I trimmed it off and don't know if a new one will ever appear. The foliage is still pretty though.


This is a small pot with a mix of rooted spider and pothos cuttings. I have a few more of each still rooting and the plan is to add a few more spiders along the outside and a couple more pothos to the middle to make a neat looking mix once the plants grow a bit.


I have no idea what this one is, I bought it for $3 at Walmart and it's delightfully sharp along the edges, the leaves feel like hacksaw blades! It looks beautiful in the orange pot that I happily managed to save after repotting a giant spider plant. It took about half an hour of careful digging and wiggling to get the spider out without breaking the pot!


A wee family of various little cacti.


A bunch of pothos rooting in water and a small pot of jade plant leaves rooting in vermiculite.


Most of my christmas cactus' buds fell off this year without blooming, but it has grown a lot and the foliage is still pretty. Beside it (the only thing I didn't get a picture of) is a deiffenbacchia cutting I have been trying to root, it has been planted for about 2 months with no sign of new growth BUT the stalk and leaf are still healthy so I'm hoping something is happening! I have read that to propagate this way takes FOREVER so hopefully something happens eventually!


The aforementioned giant spider plant, can you believe this honker was all fit into that little orange pot? This is the pot that tiny spiky cold damaged plant was in when it was brought to me.


A pothos I've had for quite a while, that got a little bit damaged while I was away on holiday. It has required a fair amount of cutting, re-rooting and repotting of vines, but has started to fill out nicely. I will probably add a few more rooted cuttings to the pot yet.


In our bedroom by the chair we have another tall dracaena and a plant hanger with a china doll and an aloe vera plant. Both plants in the hanger have gotten HUGE since I bought them a few months ago.


A close up of the china doll, this is one of my favourites of all my plants and it just keeps growing and growing.


The aloe plant at the top of the hanger, this is another of my favourites and though it is a slow grower and I had a bit of a battle with rot early on, it has managed to grow big and tall!


This venus flytrap sits on the back of my toilet, it is in the bathroom because I thought it needed more warmth and humidity, but at the sacrifice of a lot of sunlight I'm not sure it's doing so well. It's looking better than it did but I suppose only time will tell.


And finally a picture of the little bamboo stalk that also lives on the back of the toilet. Unlike his friend the venus flytrap he seems to love it in the dark warm bathroom and so he sits in his little jar of marbles and watches us poop.


That concludes my photo roundup of all the houseplants, hope you enjoyed them and it wasn't too long! I will now leave you with a picture of Franklin, because he is cute sometimes.