greenery

Hello... my name is Laurie and I have a large plant obsession.  Not large plants... just plants in general... large obsession is better. When I vacationed with my family in Florida this summer I asked my loving husband to water my plants for me.  He all but freaks when asked to do this chore.  Luckily none of them died while I was gone.  All but four, excluding the terrarium, of my houseplants enjoy the summer outside on our covered porch.  In total my plant count outside right now is around fifty two.  Though to walk around the porch it doesn't seem it to me.  There's just greenery in corners and my African violets are blooming and they all enjoy it so.  The plants do come in during the winter and are all over the house.  Not all fifty something come in... some of those are herbs and flowers that would be deprived of sunlight in a bad way if brought in.  I treat my plants not as though they were just another decoration but more as friends... some of them almost twenty years old.  After all I do talk to them, nurture them, feed them and they are living things.  Not like a chair.  My dream one day is to have a greenhouse.  I dream of one of those glassed in greenhouses that you can watch the rain trickle down from the inside that would become quite steamy and tropical when heated for my friends during cooler months.  Pictures like these leave me reeling and drooling for my dream to come into fruition.  I even saved a whole block of bricks when we built our house to use as the floor.  I have a plan... I just hope I can hold out and I'm not quite sure where this room would be exactly... but it would be very dreamy for me and my friends to hang out in.

from flightsofwhimsy


from myfotolog.tumblr


from moontomoon


from ginnybranch.tumblr on pinterest


and

from tdclassicist.blogspot.com

And who can forget the herb greenhouse from the movie Practical Magic?  Not I.

Indoor Garden Terrariums

When I told people what I made for my sisters and mom for Christmas, most of them said "wow, those are from the seventies!"  But really terrariums have made a humongo come back.  I love the idea of a self sufficient world under glass.  Once the plants are established you don't even have to water them much at all.  Maybe every few weeks and not much then.  They don't need outside oxygen and don't need a terrific amount of sun light.  It's the perfect little world.

I bought my glass containers at Wal-Mart because they were the cheapest and believe me when I say I shopped around looking for low priced ones because I was making four.  One for me and three for them.  They were in the kitchen department and ran seven and nine dollars. 

The plants I bought at Lowe's.  The moss I dug up from around Shaun's shop in the gravel.  I used a layer of gravel from the driveway on the bottom, activated charcoal, potting soil and then plants.  I stuck pretty rocks that I have found and placed them in there for character.  They all seem to be doing very well.

I will tell you that I got my courage from Martha Stewart and her very instructional videos.  Once you find one and watch it, it will bring up more and more.  I bet I watched ten of them and I was ready to roll. 

 

 

 

The charcoal can be messy!  But it keeps the stink out.

The big one was for me :) It's is 2 gallon and the others are 1 gallon.

One bought plant can be seperated into several.

 

Give it a pretty good spray down so the plants will settle in.  But not so much water on the plants themselves as trying to get it to the soil and moss.

 

 

I will say the the ferns haven't done very well, the ones that I bought.  A different kind may respond better.  And you do have to trim the plants down some so they aren't too tall.  And also they aren't supposed to touch the glass. 

 

If the inside of the jar has moisture building up it is either in a spot that's too sunny and it definately doesn't need water.  You can tilt the lid a touch and let it get a small amount of air to absorb the extra moisture. 

 

The moss that I got from the driveway has done well and little plants have popped up out of it. 

 

It really didn't take long at all once I had on the ingredients and I love the results!