A mid-November weekend

Last weekend, we decided it was time to clean up the plant stand and do some re-potting. The geraniums and coleus plants had gotten totally out of hand. Several Euphorbia trigona plants were outgrowing their pots. Ditto for several other plants. And we wanted to start a few cuttings.

After much hacking and slashing and playing in the dirt, we were done. It was a lot of fun.

The sunset was glorious.


Here's the view in the other direction, towards Pikes Peak. We might use this for the blog heading one of these days.



When the outdoor world is brown and cold, we enjoy having indoor greenery and flowers.

Here's a blooming geranium. The flowers looked nicer a few days ago.



We started several cuttings of coleus and geraniums. We have good luck with some varieties and bad luck with others. I hope we can get some rooted cuttings of the harder-to-root varieties.

A week later, the geraniums are sitting there. It's too soon to know what will root and what won't, but nothing has obviously kicked the bucket yet. The coleus are doing their usual thing -- the easy-to-root varieties are obviously doing well. The harder-to-root ones are sulking badly. Bummer. Oh, well. We buy coleus on impulse. If we can keep them going, that's great. If not, we'll buy more next time we get overcome by impulse.


Here's a view of some Euphorbia trigona plants. The big one is well over 6 feet tall. We still need to re-pot it, since it's gotten rather top-heavy. We didn't have any big enough pots around the house last weekend and thus had to buy a new, larger pot. The smaller one is maybe 4 feet tall. It's in a smaller pot which is sitting on an end table.



The large Euphorbia trigona is several decades old. The cutting came from the Denver Art Museum. EE was on a school field trip and found a piece of the plant on the floor next to the main plant. He took it home and secretly put it into a pot at home that already had another plant in it. A few months later, his mother discovered the new addition. ("It followed me home, Mom. Can I keep it? It's so cute!") It's been around ever since. A few years ago, we brought it to our house, where it has thrived. Really thrived. We've repotted it a few times, started several more of the plants, given away endless numbers of cuttings, and we're about to go through the process yet again.


We tend to acquire new houseplants during the cold months. Here are a few acquisitions.

This first one is a Euphorbia suzannae. It's so cute! It followed me home. It's small, maybe 2-3" tall. We'll see if we can keep it happy.



This is a holiday cactus, sometimes known as a Zygocactus or Schlumbergera. They're sold this time of year as Christmas Cactus, though I think most of them are technically a Thanksgiving Cactus aka crab cactus. The plant had a few small pinkish buds when I bought it on impulse. One flower opened this morning. I really like the way the petals shade from white on the inside to a lovely magenta/fuchsia color on the edges. I have no idea what the variety name is.


I'll probably buy more holiday cacti when they go on sale. They're so cute!