The Wild Life and Times of a Botanical Geek

I would just like to say that I had an awesome afternoon yesterday. It involved spending it with aneles, whom I haven't seen in months, during which we were catching up on things, drinking tea and eating cookies, exchanging presents (I now have a pomegranate bonsai kit that I'm just itching to try), and baking sushi cookies--as in, cookies colored and shaped to look like sushi, not cookies with rice and raw fish. We had a fair amount of colored dough left afterwards, though, so we mixed up some other colors and also made other randomly colored cookies, such as polka dot ones and earth ones and face ones and marbleized ones and other sorts of interesting and unusual cookies. I had an absolute blast, and was really happy to get a chance to see her during winter break. Love. <3 <3 <3 <3

And today, Mom baked half moon cookies, and they are glorious in their deliciousness. You should all be JEALOUS. JEALOUS, I say!

Considering how it was actually almost warm out today, I decided to take the plunge and put Avobaby into a bigger pot. It's not much bigger than the previous one, but it has a bit more space. I think it was a good idea to do it now--I was somewhat surprised to discover when I got it out of the previous pot that it was actually starting to get a little potbound. So, I tried to tease the roots out a bit before it went into the new pot. I dunno how much help it was, but hopefully it'll realize that it has more space and extend out a bit. I also hope it's not going to be mad and sulky at me for pulling out of its previous pot and into a new one.

I have to admit, I was rather anxious while extracting Avobaby--it did NOT want to come out. I eventually had to fish a spatula that had been trashed due to it being no longer food-worthy out of the garbage and use that to loosen it out. I was terrified that it would snap in two, at which point I would be a very sad Ru. I'm very glad, therefore, that that did not happen.

Speaking of spatulas and food, the Great Bake Off ended today. Mom managed to get by with using the garage as an auxillary fridge by keeping the door closed and keeping as much coldness from the previous night in it. That seemed to work pretty well. The final inventory of things made was: truffles (4 kinds--peppermint, mocha, orange, and Crown Royal whiskey), chocolate peanut butter balls, cookies (M&M, chocolate chip, and oatmeal), chocolate nutty bars, haystacks (which are fairly simple conocotions of chow mein noodles and peanuts coated in a chocolate/butterscotch mix--trust me, they're tasty. She also made a version that uses white chocolate and cheerios), false toffee, peanut butter fudge, chocolate-almond fudge, and three kinds of bark--chocolate-almond, chocolate-peppermint, and cranberry-white chocolate. Needless to say, the kitchen and both of us were all covered in chocolate by the end of it. Thank goodness most of it is going to other people, as I think we'd all be Violet Beauregarde-shaped by the end of the holidays otherwise. XD

Avobaby's growth has slowed down significantly, though it still continues to move up. I was going to transplant it this weekend to give it a bit more stability on the bottom end, but, well, with all the craziness lately, I haven't been able to get around to it. Besides that, I'm a little afraid to transplant it now, as I do my potting outside, and it's so cold out that I don't want to risk shocking Avobaby, even if it'll be outside for only a few minutes. So, I dunno. We'll see.

( But in the meantime, pictures! )

Dear Weather,

Hi! Hope things have been going well for you. Listen, I don't want to sound unappreciative, or anything, because believe me, I love 70 degree weather. If I could, I'd love to have 70 degree weather all year round. It's like my ideal weather temperature. But seriously, this has got to stop. It's the end of frickin' November. We've put up the damn Christmas tree. By all rights, it should be frosting on a regular basis and I should be breaking out the scarf and gloves. Please, start doing the cold thing soon. You're confusing the hell out of my Japanese magnolia. It's leafing out, and while I know that if it were really gearing up for spring, it'd flower first, I don't want it to be damaged by a sudden cold snap. I've already lost one tree in that area. Don't want to lose another. So, in summary, GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER AND GET BACK ON TRACK.

No love,
Ru

If I suddenly drop off the face of the planet, it's because the avocado has eaten me. In a week, it's doubled in size. At this rate, in a few months it'll be growing teeth and asking to be fed.

( Pictures! )

Okay, I decided to give this a whirl, see how it goes.

( Seedling picture and observations! )

My avocado seed. Has begun. To sprout. After like. Ten bajillion weeks. O. M. G.

When I had discovered it was starting to put out a teeny little brown seedling, I had the sudden urge to scream Dr. Frankenstein-style "IT'S ALIIIIIIIIIIVE!!!".

YAY.

So, I walk into the stalls in the first floor bathroom in the building where I work, and I find myself confronted with a perplexing sight: sitting on the toilet, just behind the seat where the flusher would be (the flusher itself is mounted on the wall, so there's basically a blank spot) was a spoon. Arranged neatly. Like it was supposed to be there.

I stood there for a good couple of minutes trying to figure out the scene before me. Input error. Reboot. The spoon waited patiently while I tried to explain its presence. However, *nothing* made sense in my mind as to why it would be sitting on the toilet. I mean, what was so boggling was how neatly arranged the spoon was on it. Is it some sort of new bathroom benefit? A toilet spoon? No! I've got it! It's a loospoon! A LOOSPOON! XDD

Anyway, moving on, books!

( Yay! More books! #9 and #10! )

Also, on a side note: natural honey locust trees? SCARIEST. TREES. EVER.

I have a tentacle monster in my room.

Or, well, I have one in the making, anyway. My split leaf philodendron (also known as a swiss cheese plant, due to the characteristic holey leaves) is the biggest plant I have. Stretched out, it's almost as tall as I am. Technically speaking, though, it's actually a vine. Now generally, depending on the species, vines have several mechanisms for doing the whole climbing thing that typically constitutes a vine--some physically twine themselves around thing, while others put out tendrils or other appendages to hoist themselves up. My philodendron falls into the latter category.

This is partially my fault. I've been using a dowel to give it some support, but it's long outgrown it. I bought some wire mesh a while back with the idea of making a long tube with it that the philodendron can climb up, but I keep forgetting to do stuff with it. In the meantime, it's gotten bigger and bigger, and now frequently falls over, thanks to being all top-heavy and all.

When I went upstairs to my room today, I found it had once again fallen over. Okay, no big deal. I had moved it back up so that the dowel somewhat supported it when I noticed it had put out some rather...long tendrils, apparently searching out something to grab ahold of. I went about fishing to see where these things had gone, and discovered that it had managed to violate a lampshade I had sitting on the ground. It had managed to get itself into it to the point where it required a knife to separate the two. Thankfully that was the only thing it had really managed to attack, and in the end, neither the shade nor the plant were really worse for wear, since it just required cutting the plastic cover on it in order to get them apart, but I now need to find a way to wash a lampshade.

I now have serious motivation to repot it and give it that mesh column to climb up so I don't have to worry about it doing things I might not like, like attacking me in my sleep.

Over the course of the summer, I've been working part time in the herbarium at the uni. For those of you who came in late, an herbarium is essentially a repository of dried plants--a plant reference library, if you will, generally stored in large cabinets.

Anyway, I've been looking through the cabinets for a project I'm working on, which means seeing lots and lots of genus names. While I have to resist the urge to look through every single genus, I have been entertaining myself with the names themselves.

There are times when taxonomy can be downright amusing. As this site shows, there are some very interesting names out there (the vampire squid from hell holds a special place in my heart. <3 ). Animals have most of the fun, but I saw some plant genus names today that made me giggle. Here are a few, with my own personal speculations on what sort of plants belong in the genus (at least in Ru-world, anyway).

Phyllospadix: A plant whose main reproductive part (the spadix) is made out of a light, tasty pastry, which can be used as a substitute when making baklava.
Crossandra: A form of wheat which can be used to make bread that tells the future.
Elegia: Mispelled due to a glitch in the naming. Plants in this genus have multicolored foliage--blue, green, and yellow, produce daisy-like flowers, and have a thing for curses and fashionable clothing. (Word to the Underhill people! <3 )

Aaah, names are fun. <3 <3