Houseplants

I realize I left a comment on a site saying I’d be willing to answer questions about houseplants on my blog so I suppose I had better blog about some plants! When we first bought our house we had some roommates. Between us we had about 70 houseplants. Almost none of them were duplicates. Somehow I got to take care of them all. Which was fine. I like houseplants.Only about 30 of them moved out with the roommates. In the last year since my son was born the houseplants have been all but forgotten. If they can’t survive on my current regimen of neglect and poor placement (I’ve had to move most of them to the basement to keep the child from eating them) they get tossed. I think I’m down to 35 or so. At one time I made it a goal to have no repeat houseplants and to have as many as I could from the clean air list. (I was single. I had a lot of time on my hands.) Now my houseplants fit only three qualifications: they must not poison the child, they must not poison the cat (Jones eats my ferns. I think he’s trying for the next Garfield movie. He’s fat, he’s orange…) and they must not require anything of me other than an occasional glass of water being tossed at them if I walk by them while holding one.My one exception is an orchid my husband brought home from work. Someone had abandoned it and it was nothing more than a single furry dehydrated root and a couple of tiny leaves. It still hasn’t bloomed but it has tripled in size in the year and a half I have had it. I have faith. It’ll bloom eventually.Here is what I still have: philodendron (both heart and elephant leaf), spider plant, pothos, peace lily, aglaonema, coffee plant, mother-in-law tongue, christmas cactus and an oak leaf ivy that really should have died by now. What died: dracenas, English ivy, weeping fig or ficus, mums and daisies. I’ve never been able to grow palms. Hope that helps! Ok – something is wrong with my blog. I can’t make paragraphs.