Some houseplants thrive no matter what you do to ’em. My mother-in-law’s tongue seems to fall into that category. It’s an African perennial herb, Sansevieria trifasciata, and it has absolutely thrived under my regime of inattention. I toss it onto the porch in summer, toss it into the study in winter. I forget to water it, now and then I divide it, and generally it grows and grows and grows. It has bloomed for me a couple of times, and it is blooming now. The fragrance is lovely – floral, sweet, and light.
Tag: Home & Garden
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Mother-in-law’s tongue in bloom
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Black walnut bounty
Black walnuts that were “squirreled” away in our garage. Today is a beautiful fall day, clear blue skies, high 70s, warm sun. I decided it was time to rake the leaves in the backyard. We have a big, beautiful black walnut tree back there. It has lovely, feathery leaves, and when we fly over our neighborhood, I think it is the biggest tree on our block.
Every fall, it drops its leaves, its leaf rachises, and its fruit. The fruit is about 1.5-2 inches in diameter, with a green skin, and they drop with a bang onto the roof of our garage.
This year, the neigborhood squirrels seem to have been especially active. They salted away so many nuts in the planter for my dwarf orange tree that they eventually completely uprooted it, killing it. Today, when I went into our garage to get the rake and the lawn & leaf bags, I saw that the squirrels have decided to take a new tack. They have been piling up black walnut fruits onto a work surface in the garage–they have filled Dave’s old ski boots, filled some ceramic pots, and even started to place black walnuts along the groove in our ski rack.
After seven years of living here, this is the first time we’ve seen anything like this. Either our squirrels have learned a new skill, have forgotten what they know about burying nuts, or are preparing for a very long winter.
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Bathroom Renovation
Our big news is that we had our bathroom gutted this summer. On August 6, they came in and knocked our old bathroom out, tossing it in pieces out the little window, down a chute, and into a skip in the driveway. It came apart quickly. It has come back together a bit more slowly.
My husband put his engineering degree to use in rigging up a shower in the basement out of 2 garden hoses, a submersible sump pump, an inflatable kiddy pool, and an outdoor shower setup. I was completely skeptical and imagined trekking to the Ann Arbor Y for showers, but it’s been absolutely fine.
When they first ripped out the old fixtures, plaster, and floor, I was shocked at how tiny the room looked. And, I wondered why we’d bothered writing that very big check to destroy this very small room. It seemed impossibly small when it was empty.
It’s starting to look like a real bathroom now, and the design decisions we made are starting to twinkle out at me, reminding me that I really did dislike cozying up to the toilet just so I could wash my hands in the sink. The big improvement was a pocket door, by freeing up the space for the door swinging into the room, we got to give the toilet and sink some distance from each other.
It’s not done yet, but we’re seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.
Folks who contributed include:
- Angelini & Associates Architects and
- Sean Smith Custom Carpentry.
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Black-eyed Susans invading my lawn
Black-eyed Susans invading my lawn, originally uploaded by dunrie.
We’ve got black-eyed Susans flowering in our back lawn, and they’ve crossed the fence and are working their way towards our neighbors’ garage. My garden is colonizing our and our neighbors’ lawn. I have been meaning to do this myself (dig up turf, replace with flowerbeds)–how interesting to see that the plants have decided to take on the task themselves.
A weed is a plant growing in the wrong place. These are garden, not weeds!
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Gone modular
So, I apparently am a sucker for modular floorcovering. I didn’t know this until I received the FLOR catalog in the mail. Flor offers lots of color, pattern, and texture options. I like the quilt-esque ones, but they were vetoed by the house’s other occupant. The compromise choice was a mixture of two color variants of “Thick and Thin”.
I think I might be addicted. This room (the upstairs guestroom/tv room) is now the funkiest and most fun one in the house.
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The Morikami Museum & Japanese Gardens
I have spent a fair bit of time in south Florida, my family purchased a condo there in the late 70s. When I was a kid, we’d visit go to Parrot Jungle, Monkey Jungle, the snake place (Serpentarium?), Lion Country Safari, all the crazy kid places. We also spent a fair bit of time in the Everglades, admiring the egrets, herons, and anhingas and watching for crocs. We used to go to a seafood restaurant (Joe Muer’s) that was located on or near Yamato Road. I was always intrigued with the exit off I-95 for Yamato – a Japanese name among the more standard streetnames Atlantic Blvd, Sample Road, Gateway Blvd, Boynton Beach Blvd.