I am the Audience

Plant pot dilemmas

December 4, 2025

bonsai, carnivores, plants
I need a new pot for my Japanese maple bonsai. I’m going to the Winter Bonsai Expo in Kannapolis on Sunday. So, I can pick one up there.

I could have gotten an identical one in Florence at the Pee Dee Farmers’ Market in May. But, I didn’t. I hadn’t come expecting to find bonsai supplies and I was dithering because there was a lot. And at that point it had only lost a chip on the side. So, I just decided to wait. Now, the pot is kind of crumbling. ~~It’s still enough together that the trees are OK. But, that won’t last forever~~. I went outside to take a picture to show you and when I lifted it up the bottom stayed where it was. So, it’s really crumbling and critical that I get them a new pot.

I have carnivorous plant pot dilemmas, too. The Drosera binata is in the little plastic pot I bought it in and it’s still very small. I think it can stay there for a while. But, it’s not particularly attractive. It needs to keep its feet wet and I have it sitting in a milk glass dish that was given to my parents as a wedding present.

See?

(That dish is its own dilemma. It’s kind of a weird shape and I have never known how to use it. When my mother gave it to me, it had a frog in the bottom. So, I guess she used it as a flower vase. When I asked her about it, she said she didn’t know of anything else to do with it.)

And.

I would like to add a Sarracenia pupurea to my carnivores. It can live in the water garden with the Sarracenia psittacina I already have.

Sarracenia psittacina, aka parrot pitcher

My other Sarracenia are happy in their bowl on a table. I keep their feet wet, there, too. I think one is probably ‘Judith Hindle’. It may be a hybrid. There’s a little one with it that’s flourishing. But, its leaves never have gotten big since I got it. It did so well this summer, I was able to give a piece to a friend. I have no clue what variety it might be.

It’s headed into dormancy so there’s more dead showing than usual.

The purpurea has a different way of consuming insects than the others and I like the look of it. Its mouth is open to catch rain and drowns its food. Insects get trapped by the hoods of the other two types.

None of them can go in terra cotta. So, I have to be particular about their pots. I can put them in terra cotta if I have it lined with plastic. And I can use glazed pots.

I have a large, whitish, glazed-everywhere pot similar to the one the nepenthes is in that I could use for the purpurea. It’s about the same size as the blue one with the psittacina is in.

I have a pretty, medium sized pot that is terra cotta inside. It would have to have a liner to put the binata in it. I could get a small one like the one holding the nepenthes (and eventually purpurea). But, it would need a deeper tray to keep it’s feet wet and it has a tray attached. The purpurea will get set down in the water garden deeply enough that it won’t be a problem.

So.
- I have to buy a bonsai pot this weekend.
- When I’m in SC for ArtFields, I can pick up a purpurea and, while I’m there, get a bag of peat-and-perlite mix to plant it in the other pot because I do not have enough to fill that thing up.
- And the binata can stay as it is for now.
I have a PLN¹.
1. Feegle for “plan.” ↩︎
Dirty Santa

November 27, 2025

family, holidays
We are all too old and particular to need or want other people to do our shopping. But, Xmas still kind of demands some kind of gift exchange. We can’t help ourselves. It’s pretty hilarious when a bunch of adults are trying to sneak around and put things in multiple stockings without being seen.

Our other way of gift giving has become playing Dirty Santa. After an unfortunate round with his own family, my BIL has instituted a one-steal-only rule and, with 12 or 13 participants, it keeps us from going into the next day.

If you don’t know the game, here are the rules:
- Everyone brings a single gift that should be fun for at least one (preferably more) other member of the group. Not something like “Sis wants this particular pair of earrings”. More like “I really love this book and I think at least 3 of my family might like to read it.”
- We set a maximum price at $50. It doesn’t have to be that much. But, that’s to keep stuff from getting out of hand and anyone from feeling stressed about extravagant expectations. A $5 joke gift that cracks us all up is perfectly acceptable.
- All gifts are wrapped with no name on the label.
- Gifts go in a big pile.
- Everyone draws a number.
- Person 1 picks a gift and opens it. Everyone expresses delight or makes a joke or whatever.
- Person 2 either picks a gift or takes the gift Person 1 has already unwrapped and Person 1 opens another package. In my family, if their first gift was taken, Person 1 is now safe from stealing.
- Person 3 either picks an unopened gift or takes a previously opened gift and that person opens another package.
- Continue until everything is unwrapped.
- You only have to give up a gift once. If your first gift is taken, your second gift is safe.
- A single gift may be taken by multiple people. But, no one ends up being the solitary unwrapper. At most, some of us open 2 gifts. And some of us never actually open one. But, those people knew what we were choosing.
One year, an excellent travel bag and a bottle of bourbon were each “stolen” 3 or 4 times.

This year, my sister has requested that those of us who are creative contribute something we’ve made. So, Chuck is bringing a framed photo. My BIL, who is a woodworker, is making something (probably a mirror in a frame of especially lovely wood). I think my nephew’s GF is knitting something. I was given a significant look when I was seen crocheting an infinity scarf for a friend and made to know that I am included in that group.

I found some unplyed felted Peruvian merino wool yarn at the the Hillsborough Yarn Store that’s gorgeous and cost me $25. But, there was only 1 skein in that particular color combinaton and I have never worked with this stuff before. Even if there had been a second skein, I have no clue how to join them gracefully.

There’s not enough for an infinity scarf. And my count was off a couple of times so it became a trapezoid. I thought a cowl might work. But, the pattern that I tried flipped both times I started it, turning into a Möbius strip. I think I’ve ripped it and started over 7 times.

I finally made a muffler that will cross their chest and go down into their coat. It won’t wrap around their neck without a pin to hold it.

My BIL was asking his wife about price vs value and talking about how much more expensive his gift would be than $50 if you count his time, etc. He was mostly bitching about having a limit on generosity. But, if he brings it up on Xmas day, I’m going to tell him that’s a $600 dollar muffler and he needs to shut up.

My finished product.
Blackberry lilies

November 25, 2025

plants

Which are really irises.

They’re small and cute and bloom all summer in my yard. I like the way they twist up when they finish blooming. I assume that’s to insure pollination.

You can see from the leaves that they are more iris than lily. When my friend gave them to me, I wandered if she’d given me the plant she intended. But, that is one of its comon names.

You can see why from the seeds.

I have them all over the place because I can’t make a decision about where I like them best and they’re very easy to move.
Burn!!

November 24, 2025

a day in this life, home

Last night, we had the first burn of the season. And, then, I did more yard work. <great big grin>

The butterfly bush that has been swallowing everything at that end of the patio was crowding one of the chairs. It only had a handful of flower clusters left and those had very few open blossoms. So, I got the loppers out and freed the area where Chuck intended to sit.

We had a grand time burning 3 boxes of wood we’d accumulated from deadfall and yard waste.

When he went in ahead of me (the fire wasn’t quite done yet but it had died back enough that he was getting cold), I finished taking out the bush.

Now, we can see the beds over there more easily and, in a month, we’ll burn that bush.

There is a gardenia at the bottom left, a hyrangea above that, the edge of a compost bin to the left of my herb bed that’s growing oregano and parsley, an empty shepherd’s crook, a pot of autumn fern, a bed of collards and a bed of kale, both draped with green netting to stymie the deer. The butterfly bush is behind it all. And there’s the log that my nephew gave us to grow chicken-of-the-woods mushrooms. You remember, the one that had already been contaminated with turkey tails. The tag on the upper left is that bottom of a wind chime.

Where we burn
Free the roses!

November 20, 2025

a day in this life, dirt under my nails, roses

That was yesterday’s effort.

I have not been particularly successful with roses. This doesn’t mean I don’t keep trying. There’s a pink ‘Nachidoches’ noisette and a yellow ‘Radsunny’ by the fence on the the south side of the house. I have periodically pulled the grass and mulched around them. But, I haven’t maintained that and keep having to do it again.

SO. I started pulling grass out a few days ago and got about halfway in between them before giving my hands a rest. Tuesday, Chuck wanted to clear the cypress vines off the front stoop and I collected a handful of seeds to put between those roses. (That may have been a bad idea. They do tend to swallow whatever they’re near.) Yesterday, I finish pulling the grass around and between them, outlined that spot with some edgers I had lying around and mulched fairly heavily. I’m considering another load of mulch.

I’d moved the trash containers and the old gate I use to try to hide them over to that side a few days ago. And the pot has a flowering purslane in it. I think it comes up randomly as birds scatter the seeds. Which is why it’s in that ugly pot. I’d lifted it from the ground and stuck it in what was handy. If it comes back in that pot next year, it will get a nicer pot.

I’m hoping to show you something really beautiful there next summer.

Giving myself credit for a good day’s work, I shifted the stepping stone I’d stashed under the stoop to the spot where we’ve set up the Solo Stove so I could use the edgers Chuck had appropriated for that and I moved the tall marble garden table farther along the patio, putting it more in the sun. I keep swapping out the carnivores and the bonsai from there to one of the other tables on the patio and I think that’s better placement for whatever plants I have on it.

I would kind of like to shift the bench down closer to it. But, that thing is heavy and we said that it never moving again when we set it there.

Those large pots hold (L to R, front to back?) basil, thyme and sage. The big bush is the Brown Turkey fig.