My christmas cactus

[pegkerr]

Here's my meme: drop me a comment telling me about a little thing in your life, so little and perhaps innocuous that you've never mentioned it before in any post you've ever done, but it's been there for years, or at least as long as you've been keeping a Livejournal.

I've been a more or less enthusiastic (if somewhat ignorant) gardener for years. But I have less luck with house plants. I've managed to kill everyone I've ever had, except for one.

My Christmas cactus is twenty-four years old. I got it as a Secret Santa gift from a coworker back in 1982. Which, when you think about it, is pretty amazing, isn't it?

The problem with house plants, of course, is that eventually I always forget to water them for long stretches of time. I've had ivies that I've kept alive for a good long time, for up to a couple years at a time, but if you forget too long, they will croak. The only one I really felt bad about was the ivy that I had sprouted off the ivy in my wedding bouquet. I felt really guilty when I lost that one.

But I can't kill the Christmas cactus. I think there have been times I have forgotten it for as long as a month, and the soil is like concrete. Sometimes the leaves can get a little shriveled. Occasionally, I will re-pot it (about once every year and a half, but my usual practice is to neglect it shamefully.

It always forgives me, though, and it lives.

It has gradually gotten bigger over the years, very slowly. It still is not too big for the oval table inherited from my great-grandfather, where it has been sitting for the last fifteen years or so.

It blooms (if all goes well) around Christmas and again around Easter. You need to lower the temperature at night to encourage the plant to bloom. I never am organized enough to move it to a cooler room, but it is against a window, and since it gets cold in Minnesota, it will suddenly start developing buds in December. On one side only, the side against the window where the ever-so-slight draft cools the air. When it is blooming, I turn it around so that the dark pink flowers face the room.

Comments

Spinnaker Flying!

[badonkatonks.livejournal.com]

Up until about twenty years ago I lived in Pascagoula, MS on the Gulf Coast. My friends and I loved sailing and one of them, Skipper (not kidding about the nickname), his family owned a sailboat with a 70 foot mast.

We would go spinnaker flying all the time. To spinnaker fly you anchor the sailboat, run up the spinnaker sail, detach the two short ends of the sail and rig a pulley seat on a rope between them, set the sail out behind the boat, sit in the pulley seat, get someone to help whip the sail up into the air and OFF you go flying! You are catapulted into the air by the wind catching the spinnaker sail.

It's kind of like para-sailing except you only go up and stay up as long as the sail stays filled with wind. The tip of the spinnaker always stays connected to the top of the sailboat's mast.

Here are some pictures of spinnaker flying. http://thorup.com/spinfly.html

I can't believe I was crazy enough to do that.

[knitmeapony.livejournal.com]

I have a stepstool that I've had since I could stand. My godmother stenciled Sesame Street characters on it, and it says 'Laurie's Gang' on the slats. I used to use it as a chair when I was tiny enough. I'm pretty tall, now, so I don't get much use out of it, but it's going with me when I move, possibly the only person of furnature to go.

It's been in my bathroom, my kitchen, my bedroom, and right now the front room.

Here's a couple of bad camera phone pictures:

http://flickr.com/photos/71084864@N00/190530551/in/photostream/

http://flickr.com/photos/71084864@N00/190530916/in/photostream/

[knitmeapony.livejournal.com]

Only PIECE of furnature. Heh, freudian slip.

[heure-actuelle.livejournal.com]

i'm addicted to candy. a lot of people are crazy about chocolate; i could take it or leave it. i can/could give up chips, pasta, pizza, etc. but never ever hard candy.

[catmcroy.livejournal.com]

This really is trivial but I eat the same thing every day for my breaks at work - a granola bar on my first coffee break and an apple on my second.

[catmcroy.livejournal.com]

I kill plants, too.

[tassie-gal.livejournal.com]

I am allergic to band-aids. hideously horribly allergice to anything that has elastoplast in it. I can however wear Harry Potter, Wiggles and sponge bob square pants band aids. Its something about the sticky stuff.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I have a Red Rose Tea figurine of a circus poodle on my desk. My friend greykev was going to give it to me to remind me of my dog back at my parents' house when I had moved away and gotten married, but when he showed up to do so, he found out that the dog had died the previous night. It used to make me sad, but now it reminds me of how thoughtful and utterly shattered on my behalf Kev was, and what a dear he is. I kept it because I knew someday it would change over that way, and it has.

[morganmalfoy.livejournal.com]

we used to hide a zebra in my apartment from the Red Rose tea, we called the game the Purloined Zebra and it had to be hidden in plain sight (hence the reference). but those figurines, they're useful.

[avengangle.livejournal.com]

That's funny; I was about to post that I have a huge collection (thirty or forty pieces) of Red Rose Tea figurines, and then a fair amount of other ones that I've picked up from various places, like bears from the Smoky Mountains, and a turtle from the National Aquarium . . . et cetera. I'm pretty sure I have that circus poodle. My grandmother used to give them to me.

[malinaldarose.livejournal.com]

I have always loved letter writing, though I'm not a person whose letters will be avidly read after I'm gone; I'm a very conversational, rather than philosophic, writer. In any case, my friend Steve, who has lived in LA for many years, is such a terrible correspondent* that I once threatened to turn him into a frog if he didn't start answering my letters. The next time he came home to see his parents, he brought me a tiny pewter figurine of a frog in a wizard hat sitting on his grimoire. It's the only piece of my pewter figurine collection that I still have, and I won't part with it.

On the Christmas cactus front, my father's family has an ancestral Christmas cactus. Someone in the family many, many, many years ago brought it with them when them immigrated and the family has kept it alive all these years (it's so old that parts of it are more like wood and it's all gnarly and only has tiny leaves) and all my aunts and uncles and cousins on Dad's side have descendants of it. When we went to Philly last month, we brought it home with us. As I was getting out of the van, a piece broke off, so now I'm trying to root it so I'll have a descendant, too.

*Such a terrible correspondent, in fact, that I don't even have his current mailing address, though I do have an email address, at least.

[roadnotes.livejournal.com]

I never start a notebook on the first page. Whether it's a notebook or a journal, I leave the first pages for titles, epigrams, and such, and start writing on page five.

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

I have a Ficus which has been with me since 1991. I put off the usual weekend watering when I went off to CONvergence last weekend, and forgot about it for days afterward - until I noticed that half the leaves had gone yellow, and have now fallen. I feel terribly guilty about that.

[morganmalfoy.livejournal.com]

There's a bakery in my hometown, J's Bakery, and it's not fancy or anything, most of the cookies are .45, and besides brownies and outmeal cookies and peanut butter cookies they sell my favorites macaroons, caramel clusters, and smiley face cookies (huge round sugar cookies with that hard frosting in yellow and fudge eyes and mouth). They also make danishes, cakes, rolls, and tons of other great stuff. It's a total hole in the wall, but we used to go there when we went to visit my great-grandmother, and now I pass by it whenever I go to or from church. I always have to stop and get something.

They only take cash and checks, and only checks for more thatn $10, so today I got pink and white petit fours, caramel clusters, macaroons, and cream cheese danishes. It's also where all of my birthday cakes have come from.

So word to the wise: if you're ever in Pensacola, you have to go to J's Bakery.

[perimyndith.livejournal.com]

I'm starting a business. I applied for the business license about 6 weeks ago, and have four big boxes of products in my living room. It's debuting on Saturday at a local street festival. I don't know why I haven't blogged about it--I've spent hours every day working on it for about a month. I ordered all these keychains from a company in China and I'm scared to death they'll get stuck in customs and won't arrive in time but now I can't really do anything but wait. And wait.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

I have three menorahs. One is a small brass one I bought for my first apartment in 1989. One is a big slab of glass with a picture of ancient Jerusalem on it. The candles sit in little ceramic cups held on top by magnets. It's beautiful, but it means most to me because my (nonJewish) husband gave it to me for our first anniversary, twelve years and two weeks ago. The third is enamel on metal, and it is shaped like a biplane, with a female pilot with long wild hair, and I have had it almost exactly as long as I have been blogging, since early in 2001. I first saw it in a little gallery in Portsmouth, RI, while visiting a friend near there. I didn't buy it, because I already had one more menorah than I needed, but it stuck so fast in my mind that I went back for it a few weeks later. (Well, and to visit the friend again.) Because really, how many Jewish women pilots do *you* know?

[haniaw.livejournal.com]

At around the same time that my father died (about two years ago), I happened to be in need of a new winter coat. I put on his winter jacket one day to go and get something outside the house. I never talked about it or really thought about, but I'm still using that jacket and haven't bothered getting myself a new one. It's not very attactive and has a couple of rips that I've mended with duct tape (grimace), but it just makes me feel better. Whenever I put it on, I think of my father and imagine having his arms around me.