A Mishmash Update

There's a lot going on in the world of The Indoor Garden(er) right now, not least of all the fact that I tore a tendon that is supposed to be attaching my previously broken collarbone to the rest of my body. I now understand why my new bike has a little sticker saying "Do not ride at night," but I'm still trying to figure out why the sidewalk decided it needed to have a set of stairs while I was biking all up on it. On Saturday night, a car's headlights blinded me a bit, so I didn't see the stairs (for all I knew at the time, I had achieved the power of levitation) until I kicked the bike off of me after tumbling, knocking, and generally flailing rag-doll-like on the concrete. I have wicked road rash (read: bruises, scrapes, and other ouchies) on my left shoulder and elbow and my right palm, in addition to the internal damage.

The concrete sustained few injuries except for some superficial marring from scraping the paint and a bit of metal off of my handlebars.

So, when all the big things in life seem to be going down the tube, I take comfort in more pleasant things: plants!


Example the first: Hops! Humulus lupulus from Michelle at digging the district. The hops are for beer-making. Maybe Cascade? Michelle wasn't sure which one she had extra of, and I can't remember the other possible variety she said she has. This is the second year that we have volunteered together at the Washington Youth Garden, and we were talking hops the other weekend while weeding the perennial border, not far from where the Youth Garden's hops grow up a teepee trellis. I traded her a potted offset of my Philodendron bipinnatifidum and a Ledebouria socialis bulblet for her spare hops plant last week at a shady cafe swap. I'm still debating where, exactly, to plant it, but Mr. Yogato is at the top of the list.


This is some sort of succulent in a cute little pot with some Sempervivum that I bought recently. I stole a little bit of this trailing succulent from a pot on Columbia Road in Adams Morgan here in DC, maybe sometime in February or March? It has been doing well on my windowsill--I really enjoy the cascading action!


Here's the little Amorphophallus konjac corm, its leaf filling out and photosynthesizing! It didn't send out a flower, but maybe next year it will. I'll be sniffing around, waiting for it!


The larger corm didn't send out a flower, either, but it's taller and will clearly have a larger leaf than the smaller corm. I love the patchwork colouring on the stem/petiole/whatever it is!


These are some Dianthus blooms that I got on 16 May from Hillwood Estate, Museum & Gardens. I volunteer there on occasional Sundays, now. I was putting some greenhouse plants together for a volunteer event that I couldn't attend, and a lot of blooms fell off the plants. So I made a small bouquet and kept it with me that day. The flowers have held up amazingly well! They delight me--I have grown to be a fan of Dianthus this year, primarily due to the massive display of beauty I saw at the National Arboretum last month. (That's not just a plug for my friend's artistic eye and horticultural expertise--I really found them to be incredible plants to grow, photograph, and keep. But also his artistry and hortistry. Horticultry? Horticulturissimo? Sorry, the slight concussion from my accident is showing, isn't it...?)


This makes me almost more pleased than anything else (except the hops!). This lily bulb is showing some life--it's in a large terracotta pot that I put in front of Mr. Yogato. There is a "Hello Darkness" Iris and two other bulbs somewhere in that pot, but this one is somehow slightly above the soil surface. I bought these last June, and they struggled for a few weeks before dying aboveground. They clearly didn't die altogether! Although many other lilies in the area are already blooming, I have hopes for my little guys.