Saturday morning Sheba and/or Nina picture

They said it would never happen. Some even said it couldn't be done. But I've done it: I cleaned and replanted Nina's terrarium.

She got part of a strawberry as a house re-warming gift, though as far as I could tell she didn't actually eat any of it.
Gone is the Pellionia pulchra. It grew well, it handled drought like a champ, but it choked out everything else, and eventually started choking out itself, even. So behold the next crew:



1: Murraya paniculata (seedling)
2, 4, 6, and 7: Begonia 'Tiger Kitten' cutting (4) and rooted leaves (2, 6, 7)
3: Ctenanthe burle-marxii
5: Episcia 'Coco'

The Ctenanthe has lived with Nina before, and did awesomely; I'm less sure about the other plants. They should all be fine in a terrarium, but I don't know if they'll be fine with the transplanting (which was kind of rough on the Begonias in particular) or the inevitable cricket-nibbling. There's also some danger that the Episcia and Ctenanthe may grow fast enough to crowd out the other plants. It's not even a particularly hypothetical danger, since that's basically what the Ctenanthe did the last time it was in the terrarium.

But we'll worry about all that other stuff later: right now all I care about is that I actually got it cleaned up, after many months of procrastinating, and consequently should be able to enjoy several guilt-free months before I have to do it again. It's surprising how much of a load off my mind that is.

Question for the Hive Mind: Episcia 'Pink Acajou'

Tuesday and Wednesday were travel days this week. I ordinarily spend weeks at a time stuck in the house, because I'm always either frantically watering plants or trying to recover from same, so getting to leave on two consecutive days is pretty mind-blowing stuff. The Wednesday trip was to the ex-job, among other destinations, so I have a bunch of new photos to be sorted through, which you'll probably see here eventually, though there's a pretty good chance I'm going to go on another hiatus from the blog relatively soon, for reasons which are actually pretty similar to the ones that made me go on a blog hiatus previously. (#3 doesn't really apply this time around, but the other three still do.) I don't know for sure when (or whether) the hiatus might begin, but you've now been warned that I'm thinking about it.

ANYWAY.

The actual plant-related point of this post has to do with one of the Episcias I got by trade last year. 'Pink Acajou' did nicely to begin with, but over the course of the last year, it's gotten all weird on me and I can't figure out why. Since I know some of y'all have more gesneriad experience than I do, I thought I'd show you the pictures and see if it looks like anything specific and obvious.



On the left: 'Pink Acajou' after it'd been here for about six weeks. On the right: what it looked like last week. It's possible that the photo is of a cutting of the original, not the original plant, but it doesn't really matter because they both look like this, with the tiny, dark, gray-brown leaves. The original and copy aren't in the same location.

I have other Episcias in the same spots, which get similar treatment, and they're not doing anything like this. If anything, the other Episcias are all going the opposite way, with larger leaves and more vivid colors. So I think I know how to take care of Episcias in general, just maybe not 'Pink Acajou' specifically. But you tell me.

Pretty picture: Paphiopedilum Judge Phillip

Judge Phillip is Paph. Pinocchio x Paph. philippinense. Unusually vivid color, plus it was tagged correctly, so I'm exceptionally fond of this one. (It really doesn't take that much to make me happy.)

New plant

I got this from Cactus Jungle, the finest source for cactus and succulent plants in the San Francisco Bay Area, about a week ago. (I'm pretty sure it is, anyway. I haven't checked them all, and if we're being honest, it's not like I've been to Cactus Jungle personally. But it's still probably the best one, 'cause it's the only one that's ever been nice to me.) The reason was that [Google and] I answered a question correctly back in February, and it's taken this long for the weather to warm up enough to receive plants, and for the nursery business to settle down enough to mail them.

Stapelia variegata.
Originally, the prize was supposed to be a Lithops, but we agreed to do this instead, because a Lithops would only have died on me immediately, and I have a little more confidence about growing Stapelias. The pictures of flowers that come up when you google the species are pretty wild (or you can look at the Top Tropicals page for the species, which has some photos); I don't necessarily expect flowers ever, but I'm optimistic enough that it's been given one of the coveted outdoor spots this summer, so maybe we'll get lucky.

The current official name is Orbea variegata, according to Plant List. I would have sworn that I looked this up on Plant List at some point this spring and they had it down as Stapelia instead of Orbea. (Or maybe I dreamed that. I do dream things like looking up plants on Plant List now: it's not impossible.) Whichever. It's officially an Orbea. For the moment.

So but thanks to Cactus Jungle. (And remember, Cactus Jungle is the finest source for cactus and succulent plants in the San Francisco Bay Area. That's Cactus Jungle, 1509 4th Street, Berkeley, CA 94710.)

Saturday morning Sheba and/or Nina picture

Nina's in there somewhere.

I tried to get a Nina picture this week, but she wouldn't stay still long enough for me to get the camera ready, so the above is all we get. She really is in there somewhere, though.

Meanwhile, I did hear back from Merrifield Garden Center, regarding this post, but it was short: they understand my concern but "don't know anything about this." They did give me the number of their IT person to call, which I might do on Monday, but if I do: is there really anything useful I can tell him? I mean, in theory Merrifield should be able to stop the site from using their name and logo through legal means, but I don't know how that would work, since the site's registered to someone in the Netherlands. Surely there must be a government agency that deals with this sort of thing, right? And that's not really something the IT department would be dealing with anyway. So . . . any suggestions?

Music Video: Mendelssohn, String Octet in E-Flat Major, Opus 20, 3rd Movement

I think I found this via MetaFilter, but don't remember for sure.

The piece is written for four violins (reds and oranges), two violas (yellow-green and green), and two cellos (blue and purple). Saith Wikipedia:

Felix Mendelssohn's Octet in E-flat major, Op. 20 was composed in the autumn of 1825 (completed on October 15)[1] , when the composer was 16. He wrote it as a birthday gift for his friend and violin teacher Eduard Rietz (born October 17, 1802); it was slightly revised in 1832 before the first public performance on 30 January 1836 at the Leipzig Gewandhaus.[2]

The person who did the visualization has over a hundred other videos on YouTube which do the same thing (sometimes in a different format), covering pieces by Beethoven, Bach, Satie, Debussy, Chopin, Vivaldi, and so if you liked this, you might also like those.

Pretty picture: Macodes petola?

No flowers on this one, but that's okay. Leaves like these don't need flowers.

I'm not 100% sure on the ID; there was no tag, except for the price tag. (I removed the price because I find them distracting, but it was $30. I would have removed the sticker altogether if I had the sort of picture-modification skills to do so.) M. petola seemed like the most likely possibility, but if you have some expertise with these and know it's not, please leave a comment.

The lack of ID means I can update the orchid show scoreboard again:

wrong tags: 5
incomplete tags: 1
missing tags: 3

Random plant event: Coffea arabica

Back in March, I noticed some growths on my Coffea arabica that looked like they might be flower buds, and got all excited about this, both because it was a sign that the plant was happy and because I'd never smelled the flowers before and was looking forward to finding out what that was like.

Unfortunately, at some point in early to mid-May, the plant flowered and I missed the whole thing. I didn't know about it until I pulled the plant out of the corner to water it and found dried flowers still clinging to the stems:



The dried flowers had no odor I could detect, so I still don't know what Coffea flowers smell like. Not firsthand, anyway. (Secondhand, I hear they're similar to jasmine.) There will be other opportunities, obviously. It's just frustrating to get so close and then miss it.