MOM'S NEW PLANTS

Ever since she started working at the garden center, Mom keeps buying plants.  I think this is a bad thing to do because if you ask me, the money should be spent on dog food and dog treats instead.  But of course, Mom just ignores my opinion and does whatever she wants to do.  I have no control over her at all.

Anyway, since she has these new plants, I thought maybe I would write about them in my blog because I don't really have anything else to write about today.

Plant #1 is a ficus tree.  Lots of people have ficus trees sitting around in their houses or offices.  It seems strange to grow an entire tree indoors, but people do it, for some reason.  Mom's ficus is different from the more usual kind you see.  Mom's ficus is what's called a Banana Leaf Ficus.  It is called this because the leaves are long like bananas.  But they are not curved like bananas.  Also, they aren't yellow and you can't eat them.

Mom liked this ficus tree because it had interesting roots that were wrapped around and around, and they were growing way up out of the pot because they didn't have anyplace else to go.  Mom thought she could separate these roots and make them grow over rocks and look very interesting.  But this turned out to be lots harder than Mom thought.

The pot had to get cut off of the roots, and then the roots were so thick and grown together that Mom had to spend a lot of time hacking and cutting them to try to spread them out a little.  Now the ficus tree is in a bigger pot, and it has a few rocks between the roots.  It is going to spend the summer outside on the patio, unless the weather gets really, really hot.  And in the winter, the ficus tree will come inside, where it is warm.  If you live in a place like Florida, you can actually plant your ficus in the ground, and it might grow as tall as 20 feet.


Plant #2 is a Japanese maple that was grown as a bonsai.  This tree is 8 years old, but it is very small because it was kept in a small pot, and it was trimmed back a lot.  Mom is interested in bonsai, but she doesn't know a whole lot about the subject.  So she bought this tree, and she is going to mess around with it and see what kind of classic bonsai shape she can make it grow into.

First, Mom wants to repot the tree into a smaller pot, and she wants to trim its roots back some more.  And also its branches.  If she ruins this tree or kills it, that will mean she wasted about $45, which would have bought some very nice doggy chew toys.  But sadly, Mom never thinks about important stuff like this.


Plant #3 is called a staghorn fern.  This is a silly name because stags do not have horns, they have antlers.  So the name really should be a stagantler fern or maybe a cowhorn fern.  But I did not name this plant.  I'm just saying.  Anyway, it likes to grow in the rain forest or some such place where it's humid and there are lots of trees.  You don't need a pot or any dirt for a staghorn fern, because it just grows right on a tree.  Or at least that's what it does in the wild.  Mom's staghorn fern is growing on a board.  The grower tied it on there with some moss behind it.

Mom decided it would look cool to hang her fern from our oak tree, so it would kind of look like it was growing there.  She tried to put a string around the trunk of the tree, but the tree is too big, and Mom could not get a string tied around it without anybody to help her.  So Mom drove some nails into the tree and tied the fern to them.  Mom apologized to the tree for hurting it, but I am afraid the tree will still be angry, and it might decide to fall on our house sometime and crush us to death.


Plant #4 is a little tree that Mom planted on Monday.  First, Mom had to dig up our dappled willow because it turned out to be like two-thirds dead this spring.  Probably, Mom did not water it enough last summer during The Drought.

Our poor little almost-dead dappled willow

Anyway, Mom decided to buy a new little tree to put in the front yard, so she got one that is called Harry Lauder's Walking Stick.  This is a very strange name, but there really was a guy named Harry Lauder, and he was an old Scottish comedian who used a crooked walking stick when he performed.  So this tree, which has crooked branches, got its name from that.  Most of these trees have green leaves, but some have red, so Mom bought the one with red, even though it cost about $30 more, and she could have used that money to help pay for my surgery bill instead.  Mom will just never learn, if you ask me.

So on Monday, Mom spent a lot of time digging up the dappled willow, which she decided to try to save by planting the alive part in the back yard.  It doesn't look very perky, so we don't know if it will live or not.  Then Mom planted the Red Walking Stick in the front yard.

We hope that it will be a happy little tree, which it might be if Mom waters it enough