Music video pop quiz: Röyksopp "The Girl and the Robot"

Watch the following electronica video about robot-human romantic relationships, paying careful attention to any houseplant species portrayed. When finished, list as many species as you can remember seeing in the comments. There are at least four distinct and more-or-less-identifiable species of plants in the video. To pass, you need to name at least two.

Point of interest: the woman in the video, Swedish pop star Robyn, is only two degrees of separation from Mr. Subjunctive, as we both know Francis Strand in real life. Mr. Subjunctive imagines that Robyn is as proud of this as he is.

Random plant event: Senecio macroglossus flowers

I saw buds on the one lonely full-size Senecio macroglossus at work right before I "left," and then one flower opened for me right before I "came back." This is cool, because I had figured I would never get to see the flowers, which according to rumor were (quoting from the Senecio macroglossus plant profile) "big, yellow-to-white daisy-like things that you wouldn't expect from a plant that looks so much like English ivy" and had a "lemony" fragrance.

For some "reason" I'm all of a sudden really into "scare quotes." (I'll stop now.)


Reality is a little disappointing: they're not especially big, and they don't smell like lemons. In fact, as far as I could tell, they don't smell like anything at all. (But as I noted in the profile, I wasn't really expecting them to, because the same source claimed that the foliage, too, smelled like lemons, and I'd never detected anything remotely lemony about the leaves.)


The general size and shape of them reminds me more of Zinnia than anything else, specifically the 'Profusion' line of Zinnias. The Senecio flowers are slightly larger, maybe a couple inches (5 cm) across, but they're built similarly.

[pause to look things up]


Well, what do you know. Zinnia and Senecio are both in the Asteraceae. So they really should sort of resemble one another. Learn something new every day.

Glad I got to see this, because otherwise I would have wondered about it forever, and props to the plant for the timing. Almost makes me wonder if maybe I want to try growing one again. So I bought another one. Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in. . . .

Question for the Hive Mind: strange Dracaena 'Janet Craig Compacta' behavior

So. Back at work on Saturday, which doesn't mean I haven't quit, just that a sort of loophole has been found whereby I could help out for a couple days, which is nice for all concerned, I guess. I don't know. It was weird to be back but not back but back.

The plan is to go back again today, Monday, and work another part-day, which should be about as enjoyable as work ever gets, because it's supposed to involve helping to put away a new tropical order from Florida, an event which happens only four times a year or so and which is always way better than Christmas. (Those of you who are watching me on Twitter may recall that there's supposed to be a Pleomele thalioides in this order specifically for me. All kinds of other potential points of interest and impulse buys as well, but the Pleomele is the one I'm most interested in seeing. I don't know why: they're not especially pretty plants. I just need one.)

Anyway. So but to get to the point of the post, when I was at work on Saturday, I saw that the Dracaena deremensis 'Janet Craig Compacta' plants were all doing this:


The simplest way to describe it would be to say that it looks like one of the leaves, not too long ago, simply refused to uncurl as it emerged, and every leaf since has grown up into the center of this original rebellious leaf, over time becoming a tightly compacted wad of non-unfurling leaves. In every case I saw, at some point this had forced the wad to bend sharply over to the side.

The main question, then, would be: what the hell? How does something like this get started in the first place? What's keeping the original rebel leaf held together, despite the pressure from the leaves growing inside it? I didn't see any evidence of bugs or anything.

The other odd thing is that all six growing tips, on two plants, which weren't together, are doing this, and they appear to have started at more or less the same time, because the affected foliage is roughly the same-sized wad on all six. So whatever it is clearly has a cause of some kind. This isn't just an accidental forgetting to unfurl kind of thing. And it's not a mechanical damage kind of thing, because the wads are all still firmly attached to the plant.


So . . . anybody have any guesses? I can't tell you what's happened to them in the last couple weeks, because I wasn't around, but maybe someone has seen this before?

Mr. Subjunctive: now on Twitter! (But why?)

I don't really understand why people use Twitter, or why I should, and it actually seems kinda impossible for me to write anything under 140 characters, but I'm going to try it anyway. I'm on as @mrsubjunctive. I don't understand why I have to put the @ first. I'm also unclear about the #s everywhere. There is much to learn. It may not even be worth it to learn. I dunno. Nevertheless, here we go.

Pretty picture: Hibiscus rosa-sinensis NOID

Before leaving work (except that it wasn't really leaving, since I went back yesterday, and may go back again tomorrow, though tomorrow, if it happens, really will be my last day unless I do seasonal help in the future, which is a possibility though not a very strong one), I did finally break down and buy a Hibiscus. At the time, I was still very taken with a solid, deep-orange one ('Caribbean Breeze:' see the Orange post for a picture) we'd had off and on recently, and when I found a plant with no flowers, but a tag indicating that it was a single orange like the one I was coveting, I went ahead and bought it.

Shortly thereafter, it bloomed, and -- not quite the plant I was looking for.


I'm not saying that it's not nice. Obviously it's nice. And it's bloomed at least three times since then, which is pretty impressive considering that I've only had it for two weeks. But it's also mostly pink, if we're being honest about it, and part of me is still disappointed that it's not orange like the tag said it was, even though this is more interesting than the orange would have been.

[Exceptionally] Pretty pictures: transmitted light -- Part XIII

(The previous transmitted light posts can be found here.)

Peperomia clusiifolia cv. There's really no point to trying to do the transmitted light thing with Peperomias. Not that I won't probably try again anyway, but just -- it doesn't work. Leaves are too thick.

Pelargonium x hortorum cv. Sort of a lost-in-translation thing going on here: in person, this was a not-bad picture, but by the time it's cropped and shrunk, it doesn't look like much. Pelargoniums tend to be difficult anyway, because the leaves, annoyingly, try to curl, which makes it hard to get things properly in focus.

Plectranthus ciliatus. Doesn't make a very good houseplant, though it's a vigorous grower in the greenhouse, or outdoors. They get huge.

Hedera canariensis 'Gloire de Marengo.' Excellent focus, and it doesn't even have spider mites visible, so this is, like, the Platonic ideal picture of Hedera canariensis venation.

Lantana camara 'Landmark Yellow.' Good old Lantana.

Hosta cv. 'Orange Marmalade.' Is not even remotely orange, by the way. Not sure what sort of weird Hosta-grower logic was operating when the name was assigned.

Philodendron bipinnatifidum. Sort of mildly surprising: the venation here is very visible, but the plant is so huge that you're not looking for anything on this small of a scale.

Polyscias balfouriana (new leaf). I dislike this picture but can't pin down a reason why. Nothing obviously wrong with it. Maybe the focus could have been better.

Begonia NOID. Not the best of this particular batch, probably, but it's different from anything else I can remember posting before. It's a cane-type Begonia, maybe also an "angel-wing," but I really have a hard time understanding all the fine distinctions in the world of Begonias as far as which are fibrous, tuberous, angel-wing, dragon-wing, non-stop, and so on and so forth. I can more or less tell the rexes apart from everything else, but that's about all. A person could get a Ph.D. in Begonias, it looks like.

Solenostemon scutellarioides 'Gays Delight.' "Gays" may or may not have an apostrophe in it: the name doesn't really make sense without an apostrophe in there somewhere, but officially, there may not be one.

Amphibians

The move is accomplished. No plant casualties reported so far, though the husband tried to put all of his plants (two spider plants, Chlorophytum comosum; two pothos, Epipremnum aureum; and a corn plant, Dracaena fragrans 'Massangeana') out in full sun on the east side of the house, with predictably ghastly results. I expect the Epipremnum and Dracaena to make full recoveries, but the Chlorophytums may be toast. Which I suspect was actually the (subconscious, passive-aggressive) idea in the first place, though he says otherwise.

Unrelated photo of a frog which may or may not be the gray treefrog, Hyla versicolor, which was spotted on a garage door a week or two ago. Even if it's not the gray treefrog, it's pretty inarguably a gray treefrog.
Everything in the apartment was cleaned. Everything in the new place, with a few exceptions, is still dirty and still needs to be cleaned. We also have contractors running all over the place putting in fences, replacing windows and doors, cutting holes in the floor for heat/AC vents, installing the heater and air conditioner (though we don't know if we can actually use them yet: they may or may not be done), and doing stuff with concrete, plumbing, and electrical wiring I'm afraid I don't even understand well enough to enumerate. Also we've had somebody in to hook us up to cable and internet. Obviously.

Yet to be done: harmful chemicals will be employed to remove carpet glue from the concrete floor of the plant room (at which point the majority of them will be relocated to the plant room, though the particularly fussy, decorative, or irreplaceable ones will likely remain in the house), three of the five (!) microwave ovens we now possess will be disposed of in some fashion,¹ the pink bedroom will have to be painted something a little less pink (assuming we can agree on a color which don't hold your breath), the other rooms will also have to be painted, the wall which was knocked out will have to have the studs removed and replaced with beams, which will then be painted (maybe) and have shelves put in them, everything will have to be swept and dusted and cleaned, the aquarium will have to be assigned a location and set up (ideally before all the fish die), plants in excess of requirements will have to be sold on consignment or given away or otherwise removed,² furniture will be lugged up and down stairs endlessly, the upstairs bathroom floor has to be redone, the downstairs bathroom needs to have walls and lights put in,³ books and clothes and suchlike all need to be unpacked and sorted and placed in appropriate locations, the downstairs non-bathroom area needs to have its carpet removed, its carpet adhesive dissolved away, and then get re-covered with epoxy or something, and all this while laundry continues to get done, plants continue to be watered, mail continues to be checked,⁴ bills continue to be paid, and so on. And then at some point in there we have to get married, I guess. And I may go back to work a day or two before June is over as well. And I think I was supposed to write a book proposal somewhere in there too, soonish, if not necessarily in June.

American toad, Bufo americanus. Also from the house.
So the point is that there's a lot of stuff to do. I do anticipate returning to a regular blog posting schedule at some point relatively soon (in the next couple weeks?), but we're not there yet. We'll aim for a post every few days until things have calmed down enough to resume daily posting.

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¹ How two people get five microwaves: 1 The husband had one when we met. 2 I had one when we met. When we merged households, neither of us was willing to give up our microwaves, so we kept them both, and it turns out that it's often surprisingly convenient to have two microwaves, so we got accustomed to having two and now couldn't imagine having only one. (Or, well, I could imagine it, but obviously it'd be totally impossible for someone to actually live like that.) Then 3 a microwave came with the house, and 4,5 the husband saw a couple stainless steel ones that he thought were cool a long time ago, and bought them, and they're still in storage (along with two of our four dining room tables and two of our three bicycles) because we don't have anywhere to put them right now.
² Which also means that some method of determining how many plants two people might reasonably be understood to require will have to be invented, obviously.
³ 'Cause right now it's just a toilet sitting on one side of the laundry room, next to an enclosed shower, which is kind of awkward. Particularly when there are contractors wandering, antlike, all over the house, for eight or nine hours every day, and one of them could pop out of a corner at any moment. Not that we don't have an alternate, less public toilet too. But it's upstairs, and sometimes it seems worth the risk if it means not having to make a trip up the stairs.
⁴ Less trivial than you would think: here, mail is only delivered to your home if you live on one particular street. If you live on any other street, you have to pay for a P.O. Box and go pick your mail up yourself, except that we can't do that yet because the town is out of P.O. Boxes at the moment. So they're just holding our mail somewhere back behind the counter, and we'll have to go during business hours and ask for it until somebody moves or dies or whatever and we can take their box. Upon first hearing this, the husband and I questioned whether it was even legal -- neither of us had ever heard of anything like this before, and I grew up in a town in Iowa about an eighth this size. So this is freaky and inconvenient and borderline, I don't know, communist or something. When asked, residents of the town just shrug and say that that's how it's always been. The postmaster said "maybe someday" they'll deliver mail to everybody, though according to the husband she said it in the kind of tone that indicates that you don't really think it's ever going to happen, like "maybe someday I'll take that trip around the world I've always wanted" or "maybe someday I'll resume those piano lessons I was taking when I was in third grade."

Pop Quiz: U-Haul Full of Plants

Moving is horrible, and goes on for much, much longer than is tolerable. Yesterday the husband rented a U-Haul truck, so that we could move the really big stuff that would never be able to fit in the car: two dining room tables (one of them had been serving as an office desk for the last couple years. I'm told that we have two more dining room tables in storage somewhere: it will be interesting to see where they all wind up, considering that we basically never eat at a table together: usually we eat in the living room while watching TV.), a couch, a set of box springs, and the two six-foot Cereus peruvianus of mine that I have finally, knock wood, gotten the mealybugs off of.

But then since we had the truck, you know, why not move everything else, too, so we spent Thursday, all day, hauling big, awkward, or heavy objects up and down stairs. Started at 9:30 AM, and didn't stop until about midnight. The below photo is from the last load of the night, and represents probably about 20-30 percent of the total plants (not as terrible as it sounds: the very large or problematic plants all got moved first, so much of what's left are mostly small and won't be a big deal to move). The Cereus peruvianus aren't visible, but they're in there: they're laying on the floor in the back left corner. Which turned out to work surprisingly well, as a large-cactus-transport method.


Internet access is likely to be spotty for a while, and new posts will not necessarily resume on June 1, though that's still kinda the goal. It's not that I'll actually be without the internet for much (or any) of this, it's just that there are likely to be more pressing things going on. If nothing else, many of the plants haven't been properly watered in a couple weeks, and I'll have to do that. (I expect to lose a few, though hopefully plants that were already not doing so hot will finally get pushed over the edge, as opposed to plants that were healthy suddenly deciding that they can't go on.)

Meanwhile, you can look at the photo and see how many plants you can identify. I have the unfair advantage of knowing what I have, and having foggy memories of where everything got placed in the truck, but I can see at least 23 distinct species in there. A key will be posted whenever I have the opportunity and inclination.

One nice thing about living outside of Iowa City: there are stars in the country! It'd been so long since I'd lived anywhere with actual dark skies (last occasion would have been around 2001), I'd kind of forgotten about stars. But there are a lot of them, and they're very nice. Hell, we both saw a satellite, even, and I saw, though the husband did not, a meteor. So that's a plus.

I also finally got to see what will become the plant room 1) in sunlight and 2) in the afternoon, so I have a better sense, now, of how much light that room gets. The large tree in the backyard actually blocks a lot of the sunset, but there's a period of decent brightness in there anyway. It should work out.

I was originally kind of disappointed with the town, specifically the landscape, which is really flat, for Johnson County. Most of the county is given to picturesque gently rolling hills, and I'd kind of hoped for that, but it turns out that flat land is okay too: you can see forever, which is good for tornado-watching (I waited for 32 years before seeing my first tornado, and it was a good time, and I'm hoping to see some more. This should be an excellent location.), and the sunsets are, I'm told, periodically breathtaking, and we have a cornfield abutting the back yard, so we'll get to watch (and maybe listen to) the corn grow. I also think I heard a cow yesterday, but the cow remains unconfirmed.

A garden of sorts was planted a few days ago: jalapeno peppers and corn, and that's it. The previous owners had an area already dug up, and it wasn't very big, but that's okay because I'm not hugely into vegetables anyway. Also the soil turns out to be really dreadful, even by local standards: it's basically 100% clay. As in, you can go into the back yard, stick your shovel anywhere, peel off a thin layer of grass and roots, and then mold little unicorn statues all afternoon. It's sort of appaling. So we don't have a lot of hope for the garden, really. Apparently if you live there, you learn to just take it for granted that the soil will have to be amended somehow.

Photos as time permits.