Miss T's Mystery House of Yarn & Horrors

It's Blooming!

I've had a small patch of Voodoo Sedum in the front yard for about three years now, but this is the first time I've seen it bloom.  Isn't it pretty?

Anybody Know What This Is?

I got this plant by accident and it’s been happily living in the shade of a big maple tree, next to my hostas, for several years.  You can see how tiny the flower is by comparing it to the helicopters on the ground, under the green leaves.  I like it, but I have no idea what it is.  Ideas? 

Spring On the Inside

Outside -- blech.  We won’t even talk about that.  My indoor garden is putting on a show, though.  Blooming right now are:

Peace Lily.  This plant normally has much bigger flowers, but it produced a little one so as not to be left out.



Shamrock.  Yes, it’s the purple variety.  I love this plant.  I got it at a garage sale a few years ago, just a couple of leaves in a tiny pot.  It’s grown like mad since then, and blooms all the time.



Christmas Cactus.  Mine blooms at least twice a year, around Christmas and around Easter.  So far, only one flower.  At Christmas it went crazy with at least fifteen.



Geranium.  I cut this plant back to nothing but stumps at the end of the summer, and brought it in the house.  It’s filled out beautifully, and has bloomed several times over the winter.



Kalanchoe.  Isn’t it cute?



Hyacinth.  I couldn’t resist this at the grocery store the other day, and I’m glad I didn’t.  It’s not only blooming, it’s perfuming the entire first floor.

Just waiting on my windowpane plant now.  Still growing, hasn’t opened up its blossoms yet.  Soon!  I think the outside should take a clue from the inside, don’t you?

There It Goes

Three stems this year!

Springtime for Baobabs

For much of the year, the baobab (Adansonia digitata) doesn’t have any leaves.  It’s dry where it lives in Africa, so most of the time the baobab just hangs out, dormant, water stored up in its gigantic trunk.  I do mean gigantic.  The girth of a baobab trunk can be over a hundred feet, and it’s like a water tank -- it can hold thousands of gallons. 

If you have a baobab in a pot (or in my case, two) that you started from seed, it’s nothing but a stick for a good portion of the year.  A stick that you keep out of the light and don’t water -- not at all, not one drop -- until spring comes.  Mine started to wake up in early June, and here they are!

True, this has nothing whatsoever to do with knitting.  And most of you couldn’t give a naked mole rat’s patootie about little sticks in pots.  Or about baobabs.  But I love them, and I’m pretty darned excited that mine are healthy and thriving and have survived another winter.  They’re still seedlings, only about two years old.  It will be years before they start to develop big, thick trunks, and I’m hoping they’ll stay healthy and do just that.  They’re fun to watch.  You know, in a slow sort of way.  Not all watching has to be fast.

Almost in Bloom

This sock would be done already, except that I ran an experiment just before reaching the toe.  I added a band of the stitch pattern, done every row.  Pretty, but ultimately it was too tight and made the foot pucker.  Rip, rip, rip.  The revised version should be done soon, however.  Possibly tonight.

Also ready to bloom is my Windowpane Plant.  Last year, it surprised me by sending up a single stalk, about nine inches tall, which bore a white blossom.  This year, it’s working on two blossoms!  I love it when a plant lets me know it’s healthy and happy.

And yes, I promise a pedicure is next.  Time to bring on the spring toes, too.

Middles, and a Beginning

I’m at that frustrating point with all my knitting:  the middle.  My projects are going just fine but they’re all at about the same stage, and if you’ve been reading my blog for any length of time you know how I feel about middles. 

Totally Autumn is, according to the instructions, nearing its end.  It’s shorter than I’d like, however, so I’m going to do some additional repeats of the pattern.  That means it’s in the middle.

My Elegance sock is almost to the toe decreases--but not quite.  Middle.

Neither of my other socks has progressed at all, so I’m not taking pictures of them.

Middles.  Bah.

This is something to get excited about:

My Albuca Spiralis has sent up a shoot!  I’m beside myself.  (The M.E. will testify to this.)  At one point last spring, I was positive I’d killed it.  But the tricky little Spiralis is a winter grower.  It’s dormant all summer, no foliage, nothing but a tiny brown bulb in a cup of dry pebbles.  You can’t water it until it starts growing again.

You can see how it looked while dormant in this picture:

(Click on the picture to make it bigger or you'll never find the plant.)  The Albuca Spiralis is in the cup on the right.  On the left is my Tick Plant, which went dormant about the same time.

I’ve moved them both from my office to the sunniest window in the house.  The more hot sun the Spiralis gets, the more its leaves will curl.  And the Tick Plant?  It’s an extremely cute, very rare plant and I hope it makes an appearance soon.         

Little Green Friends

No knitting to show today.  Sock drama.  All fixed now.  Won't talk about it.  Look at the nice little green guys instead.

Baobab

Another baobab

Mango

Alien?

Growth Spurt

Some things seem to take a very long time to get going.  My prickly pear cactus is a good example.  I got it last summer at, of all places, a garage sale.

The woman had hostas for sale and I bought several.  I noticed that she had a good sized patch of healthy-looking prickly pear growing in her yard and couldn’t help but be curious--we get snow here, and deep cold, and (usually) plenty of rain.  How was this cactus thriving?

She told me it was a Montana variety which survived cold and wet quite well, and asked if I’d like some.  Having a serious jones for cacti, I couldn’t say no.  She refused payment, saying she needed to thin it anyway, and scurried away to get thick leather gloves and a hand trowel.

I planted my new prize in a pot since my plans for a rock garden have yet to come to fruition (it’s on the list!).



The prickly pear didn’t grow at all last summer, even though that’s the growing season.  It sat in its pot, looking as if it intended to stay just like that forever.  I didn’t expect anything over the winter but when spring came around I started to wonder how on earth that woman’s prickly pear had grown so much that she needed to thin it.  Mine wasn’t doing a thing, despite a good sandy potting mix and cactus food.  Then, the other day I noticed this:



See those tiny bumps?  New buds!  I think there’s one on the long section that dangles over the edge of the pot, too, but it’s hard to see.

Knitting, I realized, is much the same way.  I always reach a certain stage in a project--the dreaded middle--when no matter how much I do, nothing seems to be happening.  I get frustrated and think I’m never going to be done, that the sweater or shawl or sock is going to hang around, mocking me, forever.  And then, miraculously, it’s done.



Yes, I know it’s unconventional, but I’m leaving the toes on holders until my mom has tried them on and I know the fit is right.  Since this is the first time I’ve made socks for somebody else, I don’t want to have to un-Kitchener them if they’re wrong.  So, the second sock is done.  I’m going back to the first one now, to fix that Witchypoo toe.  The finish line is in sight!

Knitters Are Everywhere

I expected to come home from the Minnesota Bonsai Society spring auction with a tree to work on, maybe two.  Winter was harsh this year, with cold temperatures and very little snow, and I had some heavy losses.  Even the trees in cold storage had a tough time for some unknown reason.  Two cotoneasters, a mugo pine and a shimpaku juniper bit the dust, so I really wanted a new tree. 

The trees which sell at the live auction tend to be quite expensive.  The $50 and $60 trees were on the low end of what sold last night; quite a few went for well over $100.

That’s not my speed, even if I've got plenty of money burning a hole in my pocket.  I’m a great believer in the cheap tree, for one simple reason:  I do bonsai for fun and I won’t enjoy it if I’m worried to pieces about an expensive tree dying.  And they do.  Trees have no regard for how much you paid for them, and the spendy ones will give up the ghost just as easily as cheap ones will.  I’ve heard stories like the one about a Society member who spent $800 on a tree, only to have it expire within six months.  Eight hundred dollars for some very nicely styled firewood, in other words.  Uh uh.  Thirty bucks is about my limit.  (More money left for yarn that way, too!)

The cheapo trees were on the silent auction tables.  With a little advice from a mentor, I put in a bid on a nice Japanese maple.  Bidding was fast and furious towards the end, but I slid in with a second bid at the very last moment and got lucky.  Within my limit, too, at $25.



What I didn't expect to find at the auction was a knitter.  I had some stealth knitting in my bag just in case things got boring, and I wasn’t the only one.  I caught a glimpse of a sock in a woman’s totebag while bending over to inspect a tree.  All I had to say was, “I see knitting!” and we were off and running with a lively discussion (lively in hushed voices, that is, since we had to be quiet during the auction) of knitting blogs, magazines, knitter’s groups and which patterns each of us liked best.

It was a bit odd having my two hobbies collide.  There we were with secret socks in our bags, surrounded by people who had trees, and only trees, on their minds.  I felt like an infiltrator, there to infect the gathering of tree choppers (as the M.E. calls them) with knitting vibes.  Kinda cool, huh?

I think so.  Both of my hobbies have been gradually worming their way into my serious art and writing, and in doing so are moving closer to each other, too.  I don’t know what’s next, or if and how knitting and bonsai may eventually wind up intertwined, but I can’t wait to find out.