Funny Thing Happened at Dinner Last Night

For plant nerds and other kinds of garden wackos the Web has been a great tool. Like many other people with compulsive hobbies that cannot be understood—let alone controlled—with it in our lives we can do just about anything. Just recently I met a friend through a gardening Web site and it is the first time in many years that I have had to explain to people: "Oh, how did we meet? Online of course, we met on a gardening Web site called Davesgarden. We were talking about plants."
Last night I sat at a dinner table, with my friend and her partner Bill, explaining to people I used to work with at the Gordon house how we'd met. Since most of the attendees at this potluck were retired folks, and my new friends are retired folks too, you'd think that any kind of odd asides wouldn't occur. Nevertheless, people were kind of laughing a bit when we explained how we'd "met online". Maybe it's nice to know that such things are still not completely commonplace. I guess I'm just glad that is not the only place we meet other people.

Houseplants

Houseplants have not always been my forté. Throughout my childhood, though, I always had one cactus in my room. No wait, scratch that, let me restate that, I had a very long procession of look-alike cacti much like Snowball the cat on the Simpsons. In reality, every cacti I ever owned was an Old Man Cactus, but I should say I always had Old MEN Cacti. After one died, I always replaced it with another. I think when I discovered boys and sports though, the cactus in my room just disappeared altogether.

When I was 25 or 26 I assembled a cactus for the dining table in my condo. Since the table was surrounded by windows on two sides, the plants did very well. Then I met the man I married, and we moved out into what is now our old rental house. The cacti grew, and moved out of their terra cotta planter into other planters. Some struggled and died, others were simply forgotten and neglected, and one, a large Opuntia, is still with me today.

That cactus is in the back of this large plant pile that I have assembled in our old sun room. With the folding plant stands, I purchased the light, and I have to say that the addition of artificial light has saved so many plants from seeing that final compost heap in the sky.

So the moral of this story? Just make sure that your houseplants always have the light that they need in order to succeed in life.