Springtime Fun

After finally recovering from my two-week’s-long illness, I reveled in my good health for about 2 days before coming down with something else! Can you believe it? I am mostly feeling better, but it is putting a serious cramp in my exercise regimen because any time I do anything that’s even a mildly brisk walk, I start coughing like a maniac. It’s no way to live, y’all.

And yet, I carry on.

Cute W and I had a fantastic weekend. There was a lot of lawn-and-garden puttering and meals I didn’t cook. We headed to the Tulip Festival to see Guster on Saturday. We’ve attended the Tulip Festival many times over the years, taking the girls to the petting zoo or tabling for KidsOutAndAbout, and this was the first time we’d ventured to the music main stage. I think we were both expecting it to be much more of a push-and-shove, drunk-and-stoned crowd, but it was actually super mellow and pleasant. Maybe because many of the fans were geezers like us?

But there was also a pretty big proportion of young parents there, and it was comical, because many of them were hyped up and excited to see the band, while their children were so not into it. It was hilarious. There were tweens lounging on blankets and not even looking up from their phones, flinching at their parents’ enthusiastic yells, as well as babies on shoulders wearing enormous headphones for fear of damaging their baby eardrums. Just ahead of us, two very enthusiastic Guster fans were doing their best to keep their preschooler occupied and happy for the concert, but they’d clearly already had a long Tulip Festival day (butterfly face paint, copious festival snacks), and she just couldn’t get through the whole thing. They’d resorted to cotton candy — no disrespect, it’s a great free concert, I’d do it it, too — and after she failed to finish the whole gob of spun sugar, the little girl just started rubbing her cotton-candy hands all over her face. It was clear their time was up. They didn’t even make it through the song.

Cute W and I, meanwhile, were free to stay through ’til the end, then we headed over to eat Vietnamese food, and, daughter free, we skipped the tofu and ordered some beef. This empty nest thing ain’t so bad.

On the way home from the concert, Cute W stopped at Lowe’s to pick up some lumber for a vegetable garden bed, and I did my Current Favorite Thing At Lowe’s, which is to check out the houseplant clearance.

Part of me can’t believe that I haven’t mentioned Lowe’s Houseplant Clearance on this blog before, because I am a huge fan. Obviously, the plants are cheap. Sure. But even better: these plants are essentially on Death Row. They’re suffering from some sort of abuse or neglect, and if nobody buys them, they’ll end up dead for sure. Which means that bringing them home is a Beautiful Mission of Mercy. If they die, well, it’s not really your fault. No need to feel bad about it. But if you revive them, you are a Miracle Worker who has also scored a bargain. What could be better?

I am pleased to report that I have recently evolved from someone who used to always kill succulents into a person who has happy, growing succulents. Yay, me! I am really proud of this, although at least 87% of the credit goes to the fabulous person who helped me at Upshining Houseplant on Union Street (if you are a plant person and you haven’t been there yet, go! Also, if you put a gift card on your wish list, I promise you’ll find good stuff). Anyway, back in February, I bought a plant there that was a succulent, which made me wary, but I could not resist its loveliness. And when I expressed fear that I’d kill it, she advised me to wait to water it until the leaves got a little bit wrinkly. It is a long time between watering, but that plant is still growing strong.

So when I stopped by the clearance rack and found a bunch of different soaking wet, waterlogged succulents, I approached them with all the zeal of a recent convert. I needed to save some suffering, sopping little souls!

I absolutely should have taken a “Before” picture, but I was so alarmed by how very soggy the succulent arrangement was that it felt like an emergency rescue mission. I’d sat the little wooden square box with a closely-packed, c. 25% dead succulent arrangement on the floor of our car, and when we arrived home and I picked it up, the car’s carpet had a big square wet spot. I needed to free these babies, stat!

First I pulled them all out of the wet soil and let them dry out for the evening.

I also had to do some triage: some were doing better than others. There were definitely a bunch of sad, gooey, rotten leaves that just fell off, and then more that I trimmed off because they were a lost cause. But there were still plenty of plants left that looked ready to be revived.

The next morning I had a delightful little Mother’s Day project! The wooden planter was pretty, but it was lined with plastic and had only one drainage hole. With Cute W’s help (because power tools scare me a little bit, but I can do it), I added a bunch more drainage holes. On the bottom of the box I added a little felt pad at each corner to increase the air circulation around the drainage holes.

Then I mixed up some new succulent-friendly soil, which meant it was equal parts sand, perlite, and regular soil. There’s a lot of advice on the exact recipe for this soil, but it’s what I used for some succulents that I repotted who are happy, so that’s what I’m sticking with for now. I had some spare gravel-sized rocks, so I put a layer of those down before the soil, too.

As I started to refill the planter box, I was having some trouble fitting in and organizing all of the little plants, and that’s when I remembered my doll-sized shovel. I’d received it along with a succulent gift at some point, and at the time I thought it was very silly, but I hadn’t quite had the heart to throw it away, so I’d left it on a shelf. Suddenly it occurred to me: maybe it wasn’t actually silly, after all? And, indeed, it was the perfect size to help me wedge all the little babies into place.

I ended up dividing the plants into two different containers because I was worried that I’d injure them if I packed them closer, plus I wanted to give them a little chance to grow. I used a spare ceramic container that actually used to hold a candle. It doesn’t have any drainage holes, so I found a plastic pot with lots of drainage that almost fit inside–just a bit too tall. Then I cut off the top rim so it would be well-hidden and I added a little tape “pull-tab” to make it easy to remove the plastic pot when it’s watering time (we’ll see if it lasts). Altogether, it was a very satisfying little “zhuzh up” of the weepy little arrangement that I’d rescued.

Now I just need to clear more shelves for more plants.