Catalog of Our Houseplants

I was finding myself having acute garden envy. After melodramatically sighing to Mike about our lack of an outdoor living space for five minutes, we laughed and figured we should help our indoor plants thrive before worrying about things that we don't have or need right now. I realize I'm quite fortunate, I promise. Especially when my sweet guy suggested we buy ourselves an orchid while at the hardware store to boost our spirits.

Armed with my huge library book on Indoor Plants, we tried to figure out which plants we had, and learn how to take care of them properly. I wanted a quick way to keep track of what we had and how to take care of them, so you can guess what followed...

Mike + Marissa's Illustrated Catalog of Some Thriving and Some Trying Not to Die Houseplants



The fun part about doing this was realizing how many of our plants were gifts from friends (like my ponytail plant from Mindy), or grown from cuttings of their plants, or rescued from the dying plant section of our Ikea.

For example, the aloe plant below was started from a part of a plant that fell onto our street when we helped move Olivia to her new house. The plant was given to Olivia from Monica, and now to me. Monica also gave me a bulb of some type of pretty red flower that I don't know the name of. That's growing now too!



The plant below was 4 inches tall and purchased from Ikea a few years ago for only 25 cents because it was almost dead. Somehow we revived it, and it's now nearly 3 feet tall.



There's a ficus plant that is growing pretty well in a pretty blue pot. The red and pink capped cacti were from the Philadelphia Flower Show last year. That's when I fell for succulents and cacti. Did you know that the pink and red caps cannot grown on their own, and have to be grown on top of a green cacti? They can't get the chlorophyll. I did not know that until last week and was quite surprised that it was not the same plant.



Here is the motley crew of plants we have that could either not be catologued, or I ran out of room on my paper. We have a prickly pear cactus, a bonsai tree I bought for Mike last year, and a plant that obviously needed a new pot and split itself into two sections like a misshapen heart. I came home from the flower show this year with more succulents. My Uncle Denny insisted on buying one for me (and for my 12 year old cousin, see I sure am lucky...sheesh!) My cousin and I named our succulents Geoffrey, Pierre and Krang. Man, I love that kid.



The highlight of this year was finding Chicken + Hen succulents! I've been a fan of them since I started helping my favorite boss in Bloomington garden in front of the art store where I worked (and actually met Mike).

This last important plant was given to me by one of my best friends KJ. She bought it when I moved into my first apartment by myself in 2002. Wasn't that sweet? Although this plant has been in my possession for 7 years now, it has not been thriving. Thanks to my cataloging assignment, I realized that it's a climbing plant and I'm not the reason for it's seeming demise each month. It just needs room to grow vertically. I'm on it!



If I write things down, I tend to remember them, even if I don't re-read it again. This is how I learn. If you try to read directions to me, forget it. I can barely process it. How about you guys? Since we're all so creative and crafty, I'm curious if most of us are visual learners as well.