Ch-Ch-Changes

While the Grow Write Guild prompt asked about changes to your garden, as the closest thing I have to a garden at the moment is my houseplants, I decided it would be best to write about those instead. 

Back in the fall of 2011 I moved out of the house and into my a tiny closet of a college dorm room. The only greenery I took with me was a small clay pot with a spider plant stolon taken from a large plant back at my house in Michigan. Over the course of a year, I went from one plant to three, to eight, to twelve. Now that I'm in a large apartment, my plant count is currently at eighteen houseplants; that count not including the five tomatoes and three pepper plants that will soon be going into a friend vegetable garden. 

My collection began with that little pot that is holding up a
 few of my books and was soon joined by another spider plant.

My plant propagation class soon bumped my total up even higher.

My hibiscus plant was one of the biggest additions.

My first African violet has now become four African violets
through propagation and division.

Here is two of those new African violets with a bit of a
view of the pothos plant.

Also added to the mix has been two orchids, a snake plant and a pothos taken from one of my mom's pothos plants at home. Soon I might have even more African violets from a propagation project I'm working on right now. And I love each one of my plants and dote on them all the time. Each new plant is exciting in the way making a new friend is exciting. Thinking about it, my "garden" of houseplants has gone from a sentimental attachement to home through a spider plant, to a horticulturalist and plant geek's garden of misfits, propagation projects and friends. And I'm quite glad it's turned out that way, even if I sometimes look at my little corner and wonder just how I came to have so many plants. 

Current houseplant "garden".

Blooms of Campus

It's a little sad that I'm only posting this now. Last year, I was posting "What's Blooming on Campus?" back in April! Thankfully, the weather is finally acting like summer and campus finally got some color. Below the pictures I've got a bit of an update on what I'll be up to this summer and what you can expect to see from me through my posts!

White Magnolia

Pink Magnolia

Apple Blossoms

Tulips are springing up everywhere on the St. Paul campus.

Yellow and red tulips.

An adorable crocus variety I found blooming on the West Bank.

Finals are also finished with so I actually have time to blog now! I passed all my classes (hooray!) and now all I have in front of me is my job at the greenhouse, being a tour guide for the university, and gardening with one of my best friends once she's back from studying abroad. So you can expect vegetable garden posts from me this summer, as well as some other Twin Cities gardening related topics. I'll be getting back into Grow Write Guild posts as well. My next post will hopefully be one of those. :)

Spring! Spring?

So Minnesota has decided it doesn't remember what season are anymore and, despite the few days of gorgeous, spring-like weather we had last weekend, yesterday brought almost a foot of snow to the southern part of the state. Thankfully, the Twin Cities didn't get any and instead get to enjoy chilly, cold, gray weather. I'm sure all the plants that got excited and sprouted during the warm weather are rather confused by this point. Frankly, I am as well. Last year, we had daffodils by the beginning of April, and this year we're dealing with 30 degree days at the beginning of May. Doesn't really make much sense.
Thankfully the St. Paul campus has some color to offer up in the form of the adorable little scilla flowers that blanket the more wooded areas.

In other news, last week I started my greenhouse job and am having a really good time. Just being able to work in a place filled with plants makes even the more simple tasks enjoyable. We do a lot of rearranging displays, watering and lots and lots of sweeping. My favorite task so far was when we got a new shipment of  moth orchids in and I got to help unpack the boxes, tag them and set them out on display. It was like a mini Christmas, pulling plant after plant out of the boxes, all with amazingly vibrant colors. They were right in mid-bloom and absolutely gorgeous. Some of the larger varieties included some giant, pure white blooms, a white variety with purple spots on the petals and a purple center, one with yellow-green petals and a purple center and rich, dark purple ones as well. There were tiny ones too, some bright pink with yellow edges, purple with darker centers and peach colored ones with gold centers. I've probably ranted enough about orchids now... Anyway, I've found I have to learn things in a really short amount of time, and by no means do I know even close to half yet. But I have another full weekend of work starting tomorrow, so we'll see what that brings.

I'm planning on filling another Grow Write Guild prompt for my next post, but I'll probably be pretty busy until finals week is over. So probably somewhere around the 17th or 18th I'll try to have that up.
In the meantime, I leave you with more scilla carpet pictures. I hope spring is proving to be a lot...springy-er than mine!

My Fantasy Garden

One of my favorite things over at Gayla Trail's "You Grow Girl" website is the Grow Write Guild prompts. Every two weeks, there's a new prompt for those times when you want to blog but you've got writers block.

This week: Describe your fantasy garden.

At first I was slightly unsure what to write. How can I even begin to describe my fantasy garden? I would make a blog post so long, no one would ever put up with me long enough to get to the end of it. So what I've decided to write on is somewhat of a spin on the fantasy garden idea. It's basically what I'd do if I won the lottery (after I paid off my college tuition). What I'd love to do is take big, old, abandoned houses in whatever city I end up living in, and turn them into "Garden Houses". 

The first step of this would be, of course, to reclaim the house, revive it so it's livable again. Revamp, refurbish, renew and make it something beautiful again. It wouldn't have to be perfect. Quirkiness is a virtue, in my opinion. And the whole point of the project would be for the house to be in an urban setting. Learning to garden in urban environments is, I think, something we're going to have to do a lot more of in the future. 

Next would come the fun part. Gardens everywhere. Gardens in the yard, gardens in window-boxes, hanging baskets off the house, a greenhouse in the back, seeds starting in a sunroom, potted plants inside. And the ultimate goal would be a place that would be able to have classes on sustainability, how to start a garden, how you can successfully feed your family from your garden. 

One idea that I've thought about is having upstairs rooms to rent out, preferably to gardeners, horticulturalists and horticulture students that would help with the management of the house. Another idea would be having a seasonal cafe or market which uses some of the produce from the gardens around the house (either to sell or put in cafe meals) to help raise money to help run the house. I'm no businesswoman so I'm not terribly sure if that idea would make any sort of money, but hey, this is just my fantasy. But mostly I just want to help people grow food, especially if fresh produce is not something they see often in their diets. 

The whole idea would be to take something old and forgotten, fix it up and make it into something full of life again and to spread that life into the neighborhood around it. It could be a center for community outreach, and help be a place groups could plan new gardens in the area and expand outward. I think any area of a city looks better with more green and I think it makes people feel better too. Maybe it's not the solution to all the problems some neighborhoods face, but it might make life just a little bit better.

So my fantasy garden is more of a fantasy project. And I'd probably need tons of money to make it happen without it being a huge risk. Regardless, this would be years and years in the future if I ever make it happen. Until then, it'll live happily in the corner of my brain where all my crazy ideas come from.

Belated Blog Birthday!

So this should have been posted yesterday, but, being my crazy self, I was never actually at home with access to a computer. I opted instead for an adventure across the city to see a movie and girls night with friends. But, it was indeed the one year anniversary of my blog's beginnings yesterday. In the year that followed March 30th, 2012, I've managed to go from thinking I'd take my life in the direction of English or politics, to discovering I can actually make a major/career out of plants, and then go from "potential horticulture major" to "declared horticulture major". I've also accumulated a good number of plants in that time period. Slightly crazy right?
I really want to thank all of you who've at least given my little blog a read or two in your weekly blog perusing. I'm not the most consistent of bloggers, but I always try to make time for it even when school is insane. So thank you to all of you who've kept up with me and left my a comment or two every so often. It's so nice to connect with other people who share a love for growing things.
On top of all this, I would like to wish you all a Happy Easter. I hope your holiday was joyful and sunny. :)

Conservatory Trip: Year Two

It's that time of year again! Today I bring you a massive pile of pictures from my trip to the Como Conservatory where they're putting on their spring flower show just in time for Easter. If there's one thing that never fails to make me overwhelmingly excited, it's a trip here.

Of course, the first thing you see when you walk in is the soaring glass ceilings of the palm dome. I love just standing and staring up at it until my neck gets sore. The place also has a fragrance that makes me wish you could bottle up air and keep it for a gloomy day. It just smells like plants and earth and life.

Underneath the dome.

We walked into the sunken garden and found that this year the color scheme was a gorgeous dark red and purple with dark pinks as well. The place was absolutely packed, even though it was almost time for the conservatory to close. There were lots of little kids too, probably off on spring break now. 

The spring flower show in the Sunken Garden.

I loved the dark pink of these tulips.

These lilies were slightly fuzzy!

Adorable crocuses.

The Calla Lily was probably my favorite flower of the whole show.

Magnolia.

They never fail in having gorgeous ranunculus blooms.

Gorgeous double-petaled oriental lilies.

I loved the small magnolia trees. They had them in pots surrounded by ranunculus flowers.

Tulips.

Vibrant pink hydrangeas, some of which had light green centers.

I had fun messing around with editing techniques on my foxglove photos.

These orchids had roots that take nutrients from the air, as opposed to soil. So all the spiky things you see above the orchid are it's roots.

Colorful bromeliads.

I'll probably upload all of my pictures on my Google+ account sometime this week, so be on the lookout for that! Otherwise, I hope you all have a wonderful Easter weekend!

"Spring" Break in the UP

Even though it's mid-March, it's still winter here in the north, and the UP of Michigan is no exception. In fact, it's probably more winter-y here than it is back in Minneapolis. I'm back here for "Spring" Break...which is more like Winter Break: Take Two. And even though I'm anxious for spring, there's still some beautiful things the season has to offer. Today I took my family's DSLR camera outside and got a few good snapshots of it.

Just another winter day.

My dog Molly running down one of the trails by my house.

Our mailbox that has probably seen more winters than I have.

Running away from the scary snow-blower and my dad.

Our side porch.

One of the chickadees in the vines around the bird feeders.

The goldfinches still have their dull winter feathers.

The berries on the bittersweet vine.