Gifted Plants

I love plants and flowers.  Unfortunately, they don't seem to love me as much.

I get seed catalogs in the mail and spend an obscene amount of time going through them and planning out a pretend gorgeous garden.  I never pull the trigger, though, because all evidence is pointing to me having a black thumb.  All previous attempts to cultivate the earth have been almost complete disasters.  (I did have a little success growing lilies from bulbs last year.)  I can't blame the plants, it's more my negligent treatment of them.  After all, plants grow naturally, so I have a hard time remembering that they need stuff like fertilizer, plant food, etc. 

Even hardy plants are not safe around me.  We inherited a beautiful nightshade plant with our current house.  It seemed to be thriving on the heat.  Until we woke up one morning to discover it had been devoured by a gigantic caterpillar.  A good gardener would have seen that coming.  Now I'm left looking at the carnage everytime we go out the front door.

So, imagine my surprise that I have (so far) managed not to kill my latest victim plant.

I received it as a gift when I was in the hospital - so I have somehow managed to keep it alive for over a month.  Without even trying!  I stuck him in a (not particularly bright) corner when I got home and about once a week I remember to water it.

I'm not super crazy about its looks, and didn't want to get too attached since I knew it would shortly die.  But as the weeks passed and it turned out to be so resilient, I decided to find out a little bit about my amazing, kill-proof plant.

Turns out it is called an Elephant-Ear's Plant, or Alocasia.  They are great for houseplants because they don't need a lot of light (one site described it as "enough to comfortably read a newspaper") or water.  In fact, too much of either will kill it.  Basically, it's a perfect plant for me.

While we're on the subject of indoor plants, I wanted to share pics of the beautiful boquet the boyfriend brought home this week

Gladliolus and ? - no idea.

There's nothing like a big showstopper arrangement.