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Pottering Around

So if you've been following my Instagram, you probably know that in the past week or so, I've bought...a staggering number of small plants. Way more than I have window space for (or counter space), and on top of that, in a few months I'll be moving into an even smaller space with even less window and counter space.

An unpainted wooden porch swing with paper bags full of small orange-flowered plants and succulents, a small red-flowered rose plant, and a variety of tan, blue, and green ceramic pots. On the red porch, front and left of the swing, are open bags of potting soil and play sand, and an empty white ceramic bowl.
I don't have a potting bench, but I do have this porch swing.

Never fear, I have a plan. Most of these plants are going to live on my desk at work, under a grow light; the orange-flowered ones are little Avens geum for my mom (for Mother's Day. She loves them, and already has a spot picked out in the garden for them). This is also going to get a bunch of the ceramicware I have and love, but don't really have space to use or display, out of the house.

A close-up of a white hand holding half a broken white ceramic plate, with a narrow turquoise rim stamped with fine gold designs. Two small terracotta pots and the bottom of a bag of play sand are visible in the background.
Alas, poor plate, I barely knew ye.

And I get to put this plate to use, which I'm still pretty bummed about breaking—I dropped it and it landed just wrong and snapped in two—but was not likely to repair, because I'm just not that organized a person.

A photo from above of the photographer's knees and long denim skirt, with shards of white-and-turquoise ceramic gathered in a fold of the skirt. Four small terracotta pots are arranged in a half circle in front of the photographer, each with a few shards of white-and-turquoise ceramic in the base. Low afternoon sunlight makes the scene glow.
I bled for this step. Those suckers are sharp.

Breaking the plate further was fun, other than the minor stab wound I got from a fiercely pointed piece. It was already broken, and that was where the sadness was. This was justified destruction, and (with apologies to any potters in the audience) to sound of clay breaking is viscerally satisfying at times.

Besides, I needed something to semi-block the drainage holes in the pots, so my soil wouldn't just fall out every time I watered.

Four small terracotta pots in a row on a red porch, each with a small, single-stemmed red rose plant. Dappled late-afternoon sunlight falls on them.
I love them.

The grocery store had tiny pots of miniature roses, which I resisted for about a week, and then I bought one. And it had four tiny rose plants in it! So I split them up and gave each its own pot, and I'm going to see about training them into a tiny hedge for the back of the office garden. Eventually they'll need bigger pots, but these should keep them happy for a while.

A large, blue-purple succulent with ruffle-edged, heart-shaped leaves, in a tall ceramic pot with deep blue glaze on the top half, and ruddy matte glaze on the bottom.
If I were in the habit of naming plants, I'd call this one mon petit chou, because it looks like a cabbage.

And I've fallen thoroughly into the succulent craze. They're so pretty, and varied, and this particular one looks like a pastel vegetative rendering of the aurora borealis, which makes it perfect for one of my clumsy flowerpots from the one ceramics class I squeezed in during college.

A green succulent with slightly pointed oval leaves, edged in garnet red, with fainter lines of garnet red down the center of each leaf. The plant has two centers emerging from nearly the same point, and is potted in a wide, shallow white ceramic bowl. The soil is lumpy and clearly very sandy.
This one's striking in person, but difficult to photograph.

This was the last of its kind at the hardware store, and it may be twin plants—I hesitate to pry too much into the center, though, in case I break the leaves. It also gets to live in a piece of my student work; the smallest of what was meant to be a set of mixing bowls. They're large enough, but too conical to be easy to use; food splashes out at the slightest provocation. The shape is just about perfect for a succulent in a bowl with no drainage holes, though—plenty of room to fill the bottom with pottery shards and sand, to allow excess water to collect away from the roots.

A small, tree-like succulent with tiny, red-tipped, jade-green leaves in clusters on several main stems. The leaves are rough triangular prisms, with tiny points allong each of the main ridges. It's leaning dramatically to the left out of a small, round, brown ceramic pot with a row of black dots around the widest circumference, and a single column of alternating black circles and dots.
It's like a little tree!

This one is also charming, and I don't think I've ever seen a succulent like it—it has a very definite trunk, and really looks like an unusual bonsai.

A close-up of a glaucous green succulent with very thick, slightly recurved spade-shaped leaves tightly enclosing the plant center, in a small, round, brown ceramic pot with a row of black dots around the widest circumference, and a single column of alternating black circles and dots.
This one's so chubby and cute.

And of course, a fairly standard rotational-symmetry Echevaria—they're just so charming, and I love that this one echoes the shape of its pot so perfectly.

Two square plastic containers filled with slightly sandy soil. Each has two African violet leaves standing proud from the dirt; the container on the left has two tiny leaves, with deeply grooved surfaces where the main veins run. The leaves in the container on the right are about three times the size of the others, and have red stems. Sunlight glows faintly green through the center veins of the larger leaves, and in the background are a dirty white ceramic bowl and scattered earth and sand.
Good luck, babies!

I also had mentioned a hope to get some African violets for the office to my manager, who almost immediately found an Etsy shop with leaves from plants with a huge range of flower types and colors. I picked out a fairly plain semi-double blue-purple (the smaller leaves—they sent two!) and a ruffled lavender (one of the bigger leaves), and she picked two of her own. When the leaves arrived, the company had sent a bonus leaf, too, of another ruffled purple, and I got to have that one, too.

They got trimmed and dipped in rooting powder, and plunked in the dirt. They're now enjoying life on what was my cookie-cooling table, by the only other window in my apartment that doesn't have Large Furniture in front of it. It also happens to be north-facing, which is the ideal kind of light for African violets where I live. Hopefully they like it, and grow lots of lovely roots.

A high-angle photo of a very dirty red porch, with four small red-flowered roses in terracotta pots, four succulents in a variety of ceramic pots and bowls, a stray succulent leaf set in dirt in another ceramic bowl, two square plastic containers with two African violet leeaves each, open bags of potting soil and sand, empty plastic pots neatly stacked, a dirty white ceramic bowl and a trowel, and a red-flowered white pitcher with blue rim and handle. Two paper bags, one full of orange-flowered plants, a blue-green ceramic cup, and half a broken white-and-turquoise ceramic plate sit on the unpainted wood proch swing.
That's a lot more plants than intended.

Everything that needed a container got one, and I also stuck a broken-off leaf from one of my succulents in its own bowl of dirt, just to see if I can get it to root. Because I need more plants.

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