I’ve become delighted with house plants. For years and years I thought I was a plant killer — nothing would stay alive for me. My new interest in house plants started after my trip to Europe in 2018. I noticed that a plant that my sister-in-law, Diane, had on her lanai had “babies”, and I asked if I could take one. I did and planted it, only to have it die. I was ashamed and put it outside in the spring, planning on using the pot for something else. Imagine my surprise when the plant started putting out leaves. Today it is quite healthy and getting bigger each season.

The last trip I made to the grocery store before the pandemic restrictions were put in place was just before St. Patrick’s day 2020 and I bought a shamrock plant for the holiday. It continued blooming all year long, although the foliage and flowers became very thin. I call it my pandemic plant.

When I met up with my friend, Rosanne, I took a cutting of her Swedish ivy which is now a full-fledged plant.

I’ve written about my success with propagating a wintersweet plant — it’s still growing strong.

Armed with four successes I’ve asked Andrew to pass along cuttings from his vast collection of houseplants. He gave me a pothos a while back and more recently a “wandering Jew” (that he has renamed as a “wandering dude”, believing that the original name is slightly derogatory).

Today I repotted the shamrock, Swedish ivy, wintersweet and wandering dude.

As noted above, the shamrock’s leaves and flowers had thinned out considerably — likely because it was terribly root-bound. I replanted it in a much larger pot and saved part of it for Andrew. It’s likely to go dormant now since I disturbed it, but I have confidence that it will be back after a while.

The Swedish Ivy was fine, but I thought I might as well put it in a larger pot since it was growing so well.

The wintersweet was in a tiny (but lovely) pot, but I knew it would outgrow that quickly so I put it in a not-so lovely larger pot.

Finally, while the wandering dude’s pot was not too small, the soil was infested with fungus gnats. Against Andrew’s advice I removed all soil from the roots and repotted it into clean, gnat-free, soil.

Fingers crossed that all the plants survive.

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