Indoor Gardening

Let me offer up apologies for those of you who may have missed a column from me last week. I did write one, but it was all recipes for the holidays. So the Courier rightly put it into the holiday recipe special. I hadn't even really thought about that possibility, so the error (if such it was) is all on my lack of judgment.

We've had another 6-8" of heavy, wet snow in the past week. I've been reduced to "indoor gardening" again.

I've had a philodendron plant for over eight years. It was a plant sent to my father-in-law's funeral, so it's a conduit to memories of him. It's a bit root-bound, and not being willing to lose it and its connection to those memories, I'd started several tendrils from it at the end of the summer. I've started several from it in the past, having recently given some of those starts to my sister-in-law from Washington. The current starts are now newly planted in a couple of smaller pots.

It's easy to start new plants from vining plants. Pinch or cut off lengths of the tendrils, remove the lowest leaves, and put them in a container of water. They will start roots along the stem under the water. Leaves are removed lest they befoul the water. You could also skip the pre-rooting and simply plant the length of stem minus the lower leaves. I prefer seeing the roots develop, usually. I'm starting another nine tendrils in water, although I'm not sure why. In a month or so I'll be looking for new homes for those, when they're ready to go into a pot of dirt.

I had extra potting soil, as well as a few smaller pots, so I'm starting a few other plants. One pot contains ivies - Swedish, a couple for which I have no names, and both a variegated and a plain ice plant. Those I didn't pre-root, but just stuck into the dirt. I'm hoping for the best. I struggle with ice plants inside in the winter. They thrive outside in the summer. I probably overwater them.

Another pot contains pre-rooted philodendron, a hoya vine, and one of those no-name ivies. The third pot has succulents. My zebra succulent had gone bananas, so I pulled one of its babies, with roots. The other succulents were pinched off and just stuck into the dirt. They should root themselves easily. A few of those consist of a length of stem with leaves, and a few are simply leaves. The leaves have the stem-end lightly pushed into the soil. They'll either start or dry up and die. It's their choice at this point. A new amaryllis has also been started. Those kits are easy to grow.

I do have a couple containers of seeds from my garden. The members of the gardening club that visited me this summer had requested some. I plan to mail those to the club president soon, and she can distribute them to the members. One of the cleaned-out spice containers is filled with seeds from my "black" double-flowered columbine, a perennial that freely seeds itself. It's really a deep, dark purple. The other is a fully green flowering annual. Again, I don't know its name. Many years ago I'd planted a packet of old-fashioned annuals. This green flower, along with bachelor buttons, Queen Anne's lace, baby's breath, and larkspur reappear every summer. I let these "free" annuals run riot in the rows that are too shaded by the huge tree at the edge of the garden for my veggies. Both sets of seeds are black and about the same size, so my re-purposed spice containers are clearly labeled.

The Whole Life Challenge is on hiatus until mid-January. I'm currently enjoying lots of non-compliant foods. I'm hoping keeping the habits of ten-minutes each of stretching and exercise (almost) daily will prevent regaining the weight I've lost. To that end, our new treadmill should arrive today. The belt I had trod upon is shredding, after some 20 or so years of use.

This morning I tried a recipe for cranberry muffins using coconut flour. The zucchini biscuit recipe I'd shared earlier this summer had called for that flour, which I didn't have. I'd subbed in flax meal. I've since obtained the coconut flour, so now I'm experimenting with it. I'll let you know next week if these muffins were worth the effort.

Happy Thanksgiving.