In All Reality

Life can feel unbearably oppressive sometimes.  You get up, you go to work, you eat lunch, you work some more, you come home and kill some time before you go to bed, and then you get up and do it all over again.  Rinse, repeat.  Routines are necessary for productivity in our lives, but the grind really starts to live up to its name after awhile.  It’s the simple things, like hobbies or side projects, that keep us sane.  Sometimes it can be something as small as reading for a half hour before bed, or enjoying a glass of wine.  My bit of sanity: home gardening.

Growing up, my mother owned a very successful greenhouse/grower business.  Mom stayed at home with my sister and I in our formative years, and the greenhouse was a way for her to make some extra money and to (perhaps more importantly) keep her sanity.  I never really understood the latter portion, because I was always too busy complaining about having to work carrying plants and potting seeds because I was a lazy and (oddly enough) very clean child.

When I met my wife-to-be, the first thing that struck me was the sheer number of plants she kept.  Some people have dozens of cats, or a collection of buttons, or china figurines of lawn gnomes — Brenda has African violets, bamboo, ferns, and a curious plant named Rev. Throckmorten Green, Jr.  The life they brought to her apartment really caught me, and the subliminal green thumb embedded in my psyche by my mother started to bloom (da da ching!).  And so I began growing anything, everywhere, anytime!

…Well, Sort Of

I live in a townhouse apartment, which means I can’t really go out front and dig up the yard because A) it isn’t my yard and B) there really isn’t a yard anyway.  That means I can’t grow a garden in the traditional sense, be it one of vegetables or purely for decoration.  I’m limited to what I can grown indoors in planters and on my back porch area, which also means that my choices of what I can grow are limited as well.  I already had a single bamboo arrangement and an African violet, both given to me by Brenda as a gift.  But I wanted to try my hand at growing my own.  Enter: succulents.

I was wandering through Wal-Mart and decided to take a look to see if they had any bamboo.  They, of course, didn’t (though they have claimed every time I’ve been in there since that a shipment will come perpetually next week) but my eye was drawn to a variety of succulents.  Succulents are, in short, plants that retain water and are adapted for more arid environments.  Cacti are probably the best known variety, but there are quite a few more. They require little care, only need to be watered periodically, and the species that bloom can be very beautiful.  Wal-Mart actually had a very wide selection that day, so I chose eight small and interesting-looking varieties and headed off to the housewares department.  Yes…the housewares department.

I’m Cheap

In seriousness, I’m a very frugal person and I understand the value in spending a little extra effort and the large amount of monetary cost it can save.  Ceramic pots cost upward of $5 a piece for the boring terracotta variety and getting increasingly more expensive for the decorated models.  I initially only wanted a couple pots, but even that would have been double the cost on what I was spending for the plants themselves.  I was fortunate enough to be able to get high quality potting soil from my mother’s greenhouse, and I could have procured pots as well, but they would have been the boring black plastic type.

If you’ve never noticed before, ceramic serving bowls are actually pretty pleasing to the eye.  Wal-Mart carried a wide selection of really pleasant-looking cereal bowls: blacks, whites, some with nice striped finishes…all for about $0.50 a piece.  I chose a few that I liked, and even splurged ($1.29) on the handled serving bowl you see to the left.  Plants need drainage, and these bowls obviously didn’t have holes in the bottom.  It was a simple matter of using a drill press and a set of drill bits specialized for cutting glass to bore a few holes in the bottom of each bowl.  Wha-la!  Instant pots!

Within a short while, the cacti/succulents had grown enough that they each needed their own pot.  A little bit of extra soil and some handfuls of gravel for surface cover and each plant was nestled happily in its own home.  As the succulents grew, they begin to drop off some of their “leaves”, which then bud into new plants.  The plant in the handled pot pictured above has six small plant buds surrounding it, each having sprouted a new sprig through the gravel.  It’s really quite amazing, because I don’t feel like I’ve done much except dump water on them (when I remember to).

Since my cacti endeavours, I’ve inherited a Schefflera from my grandmother and have successfully grown (and harvested) a huge crop of sweet basil in my window box.  Brenda’s mother also provided me with the air plant you see on the left, which continues to mystify me by its sheer existence. I highly recommend gardening to anyone with stress problems or who just wants another creative hobby.  There are a wide variety of low-maintenance houseplants that you can grow from seed, trimmings, or buying a started pot from someplace like Lowe’s or Wal-Mart.  Even a small urban garden can be very rewarding, and the experience can be very calming…not to mention providing some nice decorations and conversation pieces!

If you’ve had any home gardening experiences of your own that you felt were worthwhile, leave a comment!