Pretty picture: Canna NOID

It doesn't feel like it could possibly be Canna-blooming season again, and yet here we are.

Which means we must also be getting close to the Annual Sighting Of The Hummingbird as well. We planted Salvia elegans at the far edge of the property this year for the hummingbirds too, but we were expecting the field behind the house to be planted in soybeans this year (last year was corn; they've alternated in the past) and instead got corn again, which means that the pineapple sage is getting shaded out. Or at least I assume that's the reason why it's been staying so short. Goodness knows we've gotten enough rain. (Officially no longer in a drought as of a few weeks ago!)

This picture's from July 9, but they look about the same now, except that one of them has shattered and died. (It looked like something heavy fell squarely on the center of the plant.) I am choosing to believe that this was a case of Sheba running over it while chasing a tennis ball, instead of a mowing accident, which I can do because I didn't see it happen and can consequently explain it to myself in whatever way causes me the least upset. Though the mowing thing is more likely.

I have decided as of this year that it doesn't really make sense for me to try to overwinter the Salvia elegans indoors anymore, and I'm going to stop trying. It's not that it's hard exactly; the problem is more that the cuttings outgrow their containers so quickly that I wind up having to take three or four rounds of cuttings in the course of a winter. Which is nice, in that I start with one plant and wind up with twenty-five, but they also always get spider mites in early/mid spring, regardless of where I have them in the house, which means a few weeks of worry about that, plus all the time it takes to keep them watered, pruned, and propagating. I could just spend $4 at the garden center in February, propagate off that for a few weeks, and wind up in more or less the same situation by May, just without all the work. So that's what I'm going to try next year.

Oh. Reading back over this, I realize I just kind of jumped topics without explanation. I went from hummingbirds to pineapple sage because the hummingbirds also like pineapple sage. Though my pineapple sage plants are going to have to grow quite a lot before September if they expect to be hummingbird-worthy. The hummingbirds have standards.

Saturday morning Sheba picture

It's been a while since anything particularly noteworthy happened with Sheba. Lots of shedding, I suppose, but otherwise everything's fine. And it's not like the shedding ever actually stops; it's just been more intense lately.

Saturday Morning Sheba Picture

Due to unanticipated levels of family chaos, your regularly-scheduled Anthurium update post is postponed.

Here is a photo of Sheba in its stead.

Saturday morning Sheba picture

It's Sheba!

Nothing new with her lately. She eats, she poops, she sleeps. Same as it ever was.

Dog Hair as a Rooting Medium

Background:

Dog (Canis familiaris) hair is cheap, abundant, renewable, and produced in such vast quantities that one feels mortally certain that it must be good for something besides canine thermoregulation. Furthermore, most existing rooting media are dependent on the destruction of natural ecosystems (peat moss), require a large amount of energy for production (perlite), or pose a health hazard to the producers and users (vermiculite),¹ so finding a more renewable medium would be a boon to both plant-loving dog owners and the environment.

As canine hair has some qualities in common (holds water, fibrous texture) with other substances used in rooting media and soilless potting mixes, it was evaluated for its potential as a rooting medium.


Experiment:

The floor of a home containing a dog ("Sheba," Fig. 1) was swept, and the sweepings collected into a pile. (Fig. 2) The sweepings were then separated into hair and non-hair, with the latter discarded. (Fig. 3) The material which resulted was fibrous and mostly dark gray in color, with inclusions of lighter matter.²

Fig. 1 ("Sheba")

Fig. 2 (material collected by sweeping)

Fig. 3 (collected material post-purification)
The hair was then added to a plastic pot, 7 cm in diameter. Non-hair material was left out of the pot when it was feasible to separate it. Once the hair had been placed in the pot, it was rinsed with water several times to remove water-soluble contaminants. (Fig. 4)

Fig. 4 (rinsed hair in pot)
Next, the cutting to be rooted was prepared. We selected Plectranthus verticillatus (Fig. 5) as a test subject, because P. verticillatus is known to root readily under a large range of conditions. A cutting approximately 7 cm in length was taken from a plant (Fig. 6), and the lowest pair of leaves was removed.

Fig. 5 (the stock Plectranthus verticillatus plant from which cutting was obtained)

Fig. 6 (Plectranthus verticillatus cutting before removal of lowest pair of leaves)
After making a hole in the dog hair at the center of the pot, the end of the cutting was placed into the hole, and the hair packed around the stem to ensure contact between the rooting medium and the cutting. The pot was then placed in a brightly-lit but sunless location. Moisture level was monitored, and water added when it would have been added for a cutting rooted in soil.


Results:

During the first full watering, a considerable amount of dark brown material washed out of the rooting medium. Chemical characterization was not performed, and the identity of the substance is unknown. Similar but lighter yellow material was washed out of the medium following some but not all subsequent waterings.(Fig. 7) Rooting medium had no discernible odor.

Fig. 7 (drainage water containing uncharacterized yellow contaminant)
The experimental pot retained water much longer than a comparably-sized pot of standard potting mix. However, the distribution of the water was quite different. The upper half remained relatively dry, even immediately following the addition of water, while the lower half stayed very wet. This made it difficult to determine when to water the cutting.

The oldest pair of leaves wilted significantly after three or four days. No new leaf growth was observed; a few small (< 2 mm) roots had formed by four weeks (Fig. 8). This is significantly less root growth than would have been expected from potting soil or water after an equivalent length of time.

Fig. 8 (roots formed after four weeks in rooting medium)
After five weeks, the cutting remained alive but wilted, and had produced no new growth. (Fig. 9)

Fig. 9 (cutting after five weeks in rooting medium)

Conclusions:

Though root development suggests that canine hair may be capable of rooting plant cuttings under some circumstances, development was slow compared to standard media, probably due to the different water-absorbing abilities of canine hair, and it is likely not an acceptable substitute for potting soil.

This experiment also demonstrates that Plectranthus verticillatus, contrary to popular perception, is not in fact capable of rooting in any material, merely in most of them.

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¹ Large-scale production of canine hair also results in the indirect destruction of natural ecosystems and consumes considerable energy, in addition to generating significant amounts of ecologically problematic waste. Objective observation of human behavior to date with respect to animal companions leads us to conclude that humans simply do not give a shit about the ecological impact of their pets, and would continue to attempt to keep domesticated dogs, cats, hamsters, etc. even if forced to live in a poisoned, radioactive, waterless hellscape as a result, because they are adorable and precious, whoosa good dog, whoosa good dog yes you are. If humans are to keep animals as pets in any case, we may as well figure out how to do so in as minimally disruptive a manner as possible.
² The inclusions were primarily composed of household dust, lint, fragments of potting medium from indoor plants, and the fallen leaves of said plants.

Saturday morning Sheba picture

Sheba's still here. So's the snow. I'm pretty happy about both.

I feel badly for those readers who are tired of snow and wish it would stop already. Also envious. I have yet to reach snow satiety, and I think 2008 was a record snow year for Iowa, so it may well be that the concept of too much snow just doesn't exist for me. Or that if it does exist, I would have to move somewhere else in order to experience it.

Saturday morning Sheba picture

Sheba's itching problem has gotten bad enough that in spots, she's bitten off all her fur and then kept going, leaving sores. You can't see them in the picture because I've deliberately chosen an angle that hides them (you might still be able to see a little bit on her back right leg), but they're there. We've tried everything we can think of here (anesthetic sprays, baths, oatmeal baths, benadryl, changing her bedding, changing her food), and none of it seems to make any difference (the benadryl might help slightly, but it's such a small amount that any perceived improvement might be wishful thinking). And still no obvious indications about what's causing it in the first place. I feel like a bad dog dad. So she's got a vet appointment on Tuesday, which is too damn far away but also the best we can do.

My primary worry is that this is going to turn out to be a mold allergy, because if we have mold, I suspect that the plants will be indirectly responsible. Not that I'm so thrilled with the plants lately anyway. It might be nice to have a reason to get rid of some of them, but I wouldn't be okay with getting rid of all of them.

Not sure what the best-case scenario would be. Maybe a laundry detergent sensitivity? I guess the best explanation would be that she was biting holes in herself because she's just that hungry. I'd feel way worse, but it'd be even easier to fix than the laundry detergent thing. I doubt that's our problem, though.

Saturday morning Sheba picture

No big Sheba news. No little Sheba news either, as far as that goes.

Unrelated: I noticed yesterday morning when I was out with Sheba that we had a volunteer Petunia in one of the beds (the one that never got weeded or watered and was full of whiteflies for the last month and a half of the summer because I am a bad outdoor gardener and because whiteflies like Cannas).

I like Petunias quite a bit, but we've never actually grown any here, or even attempted to, so this was a happy surprise. (Also a happy surprise: it color-coordinates with the blog.) We had a tiny peach poppy appear out of nowhere in early August, as well.

We might be able to explain the Papaver, as there's a chance it might have been in an old packet of "wildflower seeds" that we threw around the lawn just to see what would happen, but the Petunia is a mystery. Maybe seeds got blown through the fence from the neighbors' garden?

Saturday morning Sheba picture

I had planned on taking a new Sheba picture to post today, but then it rained all morning yesterday, making that difficult. So instead you get a photo from August 2010, not terribly long after we first got her (in March 2010).

Sheba's been fine as far as I can tell, though her latest thing is dandruff. Terrible, terrible dandruff, from like her rib cage on back to her tail. (Though I doubt it would show up in photos -- it really was the rain that was the problem, I swear.) This has never happened before. She doesn't seem particularly bothered by it, and dandruff is (barely) preferable to bald spots, so we're not freaking out or anything, but still.

Saturday morning Sheba picture

I should maybe start giving Sheba treats after taking her picture. It's hard to get her attention.

Saturday morning Sheba picture

Saturday morning Sheba and/or Nina picture

This picture is from last Sunday (30 June). We were coming back from a trip to Fairfield, and stopped just north of Brighton, in a public area for people to launch their boats into the Skunk River. There's a former bar (now apparently a house) along the road to the launch site, and a dog who lives there saw Sheba go by in the car and followed so she could introduce herself.

Saturday morning Sheba and/or Nina picture

For a while yesterday, Google/Blogger wasn't letting me upload this photo (I tried three or four times), so you almost didn't get to see this. But I tried again after a few hours, because I care, so you do.

You're welcome.

Not really any Sheba news to speak of; she's been getting some hot spots over the last month or so, probably because it's been a terrible year for biting insects (I didn't even know what a buffalo gnat was until this year, and I've lived in Iowa about 75% of my life.) and she had existing allergies to something already, which have been coming and going for a long time. I don't think the spots at her elbows are hot spots: I think that's just how her hair grows.

Saturday morning Sheba and/or Nina picture

Technically Sheba's on the neighbor's lawn in this picture, not ours; our lot has a corner taken out of it for unknown historical reasons.

Saturday morning Sheba and/or Nina picture

A bunch of things have been happening -- new plants, sightings of interesting and/or pretty things, discoveries of articles on the internet that you may find relevant or important -- but I've been unable to write during the last few days because 1) all the plants had to come back in the house for a few days, and then 2) in the process of bringing all the plants back in the house for a few days, I exhausted myself, to the point where I was questioning whether or not I might actually be sick.

All available evidence suggests that no, I was not sick, only tired, but it doesn't really help at all to think that there's probably no actual virus or whatever involved.

Sheba in the plant room, before everything came back in. It's always that messy, but usually you can't see the mess because there are plants there to hide it.
So anyway. I'm debating whether or not to put the plants back out again immediately once the weather warms back up. Since they're already semi-acclimated to the light level out there, it seems like a waste of the effort I've already put in not to move them back out immediately. On the other hand, the nights aren't going to be warm enough to leave them out for a while, so if I put them out, I'll have to move them twice a day until it is warm enough. Which isn't very appealing at the moment. So it looks like I'll have to procrastinate on making the decision.

Saturday morning Sheba and/or Nina picture

Spent a lot of yesterday moving plants outside, and then (after looking at the weather forecast) back inside again. The location is sort of new: the husband poured a slab of concrete on the north side of the garage last fall, which means I've got a decent-sized, mostly-shaded, level surface to fill up with plants this summer.

Unfortunately, they're not accustomed to outdoor light yet, so even if it had been warm enough to leave them out, I couldn't have done it. The side of the garage still gets some direct sun in the afternoon. Sunburn isn't the worst thing in the world, but it's worth going to a little extra trouble to avoid. So for a while, I'm going to be moving plants out every morning and then in again every night.

As for the pets, Sheba had a pretty nice Friday; both the husband and I were outside a lot, so she got to sniff every square inch of the back yard. Several times. Apparently it's fascinating.

Saturday morning Sheba and/or Nina picture

I know a lot of y'all hate snow, but I am going to miss it so much when it's gone. I'm not a fan of slush, of course, because . . . well, I don't think I need to defend that, because who likes slush? And I acknowledge that snow is dangerous to walk or drive on, and that it's frequently accompanied by unpleasant cold, and all that. But snow is just so neat.

This particular snowfall happened on 18 March, and was an unusually heavy, sticky, wet snow. Not my favorite type, necessarily, but I'm happy to take anything. (It was gone within a couple days anyway.) It's looking like Eastern Iowa may be clawing its way out of last summer's drought, though officially we are are still "abnormally dry" and a couple inches short of normal. Our long-term forecast for this spring is warm and wet, which potentially means thunderstorms and tornadoes, my other favorite kind of weather, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

I suppose I should probably mention the dog in the photo at some point.

Sheba's doing fine. The ear infection went on forever, but seems to have cleared up finally. Or at least her ear doesn't smell terrible anymore. Hopefully those are the same thing.

She's still getting hot spots, off and on. This is irritating to all three of us, but it doesn't seem to have much to do with whether or not she's taking the Benadryl, and in any case it's been harder to convince her to take them. So long as it's just one, every once in a while, I think we're all just going to have to live with it. Everything else seems to be fine.

Nina says hello. The terrarium is still in shambles from the last batch of crickets, and it looks like possibly the Episcia is on its way out, but it's been clear for a while that eventually the terrarium was going to fill up with Begonia 'Tiger Kitten,' so this isn't the most surprising thing in the world.

*

EDIT: I have elected not to completely disable anonymous commenting for the moment; instead we're going to go with captchas for a while, to see how much that cuts down on the spam comments (if at all). Or at least that's the plan. One of the quirks of Blogger is that I apparently can't see the captchas when signed in, so I'm not sure whether that's actually happening now or not.

If the captchas don't solve the problem, then we'll move on to disabling anonymous commenting entirely, but hopefully this will be enough.

Saturday morning Sheba and/or Nina pictures

I know, I know, it's been so long. But I've been busy.

Nina on a bed of lettuce. This is from last summer sometime; I can tell because that's some of the lettuce we grew in the back yard. I'm not sure it was worth the effort. There was too much of it, and the more time we spend trying to grow plants outdoors, the more I think maybe it's just not for me. I mean, it always seems like a good idea, in the winter. Why would we not want to be able to go to the back yard and pick our own produce? And it'd be so economical!

The reality of it is that we have yet to come out ahead, financially, any year we've tried. The corn verged on inedible (either because it got pollinated with the field corn just behind the back yard or because we waited too long to pick it). The raspberry cane died before we got it planted. The husband wouldn't eat the tomatoes because of concerns about them being in a spot where treated lumber had previously sat (and I don't like raw tomatoes, so they were always going to be useless to me personally). I don't especially like lettuce or spinach, and we overplanted it besides. The peppers were swallowed up by weeds and never seen again. The strawberries were too young to produce the first year, claimed by the birds and squirrels the second year, and had just been set back by moving the third year. So far, outdoor food gardening looks like a ton of work for basically nothing. (If only we could eat Cannas. We'd never need to buy groceries again.¹)

Nina more recently. I think she was trying to be flirty, by sticking the Episcia flower behind her ear, but then realized at the last minute that she doesn't have external ears to tuck flowers behind.

Sheba and I don't agree on much. After straining to think of as many things as possible, I came up with these: we both think that her dog food (Pedigree, canned, "with chopped beef" variety) smells delicious,² we're not crazy about fireworks or small children, and we both enjoy popcorn, bread, the husband, and snow.

Sheba got a bath last week, in preparation for a visit to the vet.³ When we first got her, she'd spend the whole bath trying to escape, which made washing her pretty challenging. Now, she goes kind of catatonic and can barely be convinced to move. (I guess that's an improvement?) This is her bath time thousand-yard stare.

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¹ Probably an exaggeration. But Cannas would be much more helpful than any of the other stuff we've tried, considering how fast and how well they grow. Check out what the husband dug up last October:

As for whether Cannas are edible, well, apparently they actually are. Or at least some of them are. I don't know how to prepare them, and it's not clear that they'd be any good, since they've been bred for looks, not taste. But eating Cannas is apparently a thing people do actually do.
² No. Seriously.
³ Bad news: the beginnings of an ear infection. We caught it early enough that it shouldn't be a big deal, but still.

Saturday morning Sheba and/or Nina picture

Not really any Sheba or Nina news; things have been quiet since Sheba's bald patches cleared up.

I really like how this photo (from 29 November) turned out.

Saturday morning Sheba and/or Nina picture

Most of the pet news belongs to Nina at the moment. Her special UV-making light bulb burnt out about a week ago. It got replaced on Wednesday, but there were a good four or five days there where she was sitting alone in the dark, making passive-aggressive comments about how she was fine, no need to worry about her. So that kind of sucked.¹

There's nothing big going on with Sheba, aside from an isolated case of donut theft on Thursday morning. She's normally very good about not eating people-food unless we specifically offer it to her, but this doesn't seem to apply to food on the husband's desk, for reasons neither of us understand.

(The husband was able to locate a replacement donut, and the remainder of the morning passed without incident.)

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¹ The burn-out was premature, and probably caused by me trying to get more light on the other side of the terrarium. The placement of the hinge in the top of the tank makes it more or less impossible to light both sides of the terrarium at the same time, but putting any strain on the base of the compact fluorescent bulb makes it burn out. So I'd tried to get some light to the plants on the unlit side of the tank, and shortly thereafter the bulb burnt out. Lesson learned, at least for a little while.
Really, we should never have been using a gooseneck desk lamp for the terrarium in the first place, but I wasn't expecting her to live this long (3 1/2 years!), either. Had I known, I maybe would have tried harder to find a more durable lighting system.