The other day, Chuck said, “I can never remember when the tea bushes bloom.”
It’s now.
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Swan Lake Iris Gardens in Sumter, SC has an Iris Festival every year on Memorial Day weekend and the local Master Gardeners group has a fundraising plant sale. Most of what they sell are irises. But, one of the MGs is a genius with carnivorous plants and donated several bog gardens to the cause. After some heavy quizzing (because I didn’t want to spend $40 on one to just kill it), I bought one.
New purchase I chose this one because I liked the variety of colors in the sarracenias and it included a Venus Fly Trap. The one on the bottom left is a S. psittacina, also called a Parrot pitcher. The green pitcher plant is a S. oreophilia. The red and white one on the top left is probably a cross of S. leucophylla and S. rubra and I believe it is small because it is young, not because it will stay that way.
She told me to keep their feet wet (they are bog plants), leave them outside all year (they are native to our part of the world), don’t freak out when they die back in winter and don’t bother to feed them. Particularly, don’t fertilize them. They get nutrients from the insects they trap and, if you fertilize them, they don’t need those nutrients and don’t bother to make traps.
In case you didn’t know, the traps are not the flowers of carnivorous plants. They are modified leaves. On the right is a VFT blossom and on the left is a pitcher plant blossom.
Because the plant sale was a fundraiser, the Master Gardeners didn’t use fine pots for the plants they donated. (I don’t blame them. I wouldn’t have either.) But, that meant that the plastic pot my bog was in turned out to be brittle. So, I replaced with a ceramic pot I got from Lowe’s. It is made to survive freezing and is glazed inside as well as out. (Terracotta does bad things to carnivores.)
It does have some soil underneath with a healthy dose of perlite and vermiculite to keep it from compacting too much. And there is sphagnum moss on top to help keep it wet.
The colors got stronger after it moved to my patio where it gets sun all day long.
My husband says it’s his favorite of my plant projects and my kid calls it the Swamp of Eternal Gladness. I am absolutely delighted.
This was the “care card” she included with my purchase. -
A decade or so ago, my friend, Ann, decided to try a block-a-month quilt project and learned a new trick that way. She has been a quilting fiend ever since. It’s been to my benefit. I have 2 gorgeous quilts that she made me and she made another one for my kid when they were getting situated elsewhere. Offspring loves that quilt.
I have tried various crafty things to keep my hands busy and none of them stuck. My paternal grandmother taught me how to make a cathedral window quilt. Ann helped me cut enough blocks of muslin to make one that would cover my bed. And there they sit. I took a class in chainmaille jewelry. Bought a collection of rings from a young friend who had gotten tired of it. And there they sit.
The only projects I stick with (much) are outside. I plant things, let the grass grow in the beds in the heat of summer, and fight the grass all Spring. And I do a little bonsai. Those are not things to do while I listen to a book during the blistering heat of the afternoon or watching TV in the evening.
I’ve been playing a lot of solitaire on my tablet and it was becoming really tedious.
So, when I saw a kit-a-month crochet ad on Instagram right after the shutdown started, I thought, “That’s kind of how Ann got started quilting. And I can quit after the first month if it just sits there. OR, I’ll end up with an afghan.”
I’m liking it. The kit teaches me 3 blocks a month and, in the end, I’ll have 30 blocks and the 11th month will be putting them all together. The difficult part has been getting a handle on how to do the end of the row correctly. I have ripped out you-wouldn’t-believe-how-many sections that either wanted to become trapezoids or magically expanded. But, that’s OK. It’s not like I have a deadline.
Frankly, the kits don’t come quickly enough because it’s too hot to do anything outside and I only work 2.5 days a week anyway. Three 9″ blocks hasn’t really been enough for the muscle memory to kick in either. And, I got the first kit done in a little over a week. So, being the mad genius that I am, I decided to do another afghan, at the same time, parallel to mine for my kid. Hello, practice!
Offspring likes black, grey and red. I am here to tell you that black yarn is impossible for 60 year old eyes to see worth a damn. So, they’re getting shades of grey and some finishing scarlet.And, I still didn’t have enough to do. So, Ann gets one, too. She asked for “bright” and we had a photo consultation via text while I shopped, masked and well spaced, at Michael’s.
I have no clue what I’ll do with this new skill once I have finished a few afghans. Honestly. How many blankets can you give to your friends and family?
I am the Audience 