I grow both types of Mother-of-Thousands for their big, showy foliage and sweet, little leaflets along the leaf margins.
I do not bring all the parent plants inside for the winter. It is much easier to pull off leaflets to grow for next spring.
I just toss these in pots with other plants that I do haul inside. THE tiny plantlets get bigger over the winter. Then I repot the best ones in spring.
Sometimes I bring in a parent plant or two to watch it bloom. This is Kolanchoe laetivirens. It has grayish orange, bell-shaped blooms hanging down to form its lovely candelabra.
Kolanchoe laetivirens
Please note the leaves may be toxic to pets and children. Also, if you live where there are few freezes it can be invasive.
It was always there under the oaks in the shade. Beside the hammock and behind the swing. It was a site for all kinds of action for over sixty years.
Daddy made it long, wide and heavy. We could fit eight friends on it to play ship at sea.
We painted rocks on it. We set up our Sizzler race track and raced cars on it.
We ate on it and played under it. We climbed all over it. We read sitting on the top while the dogs napped underneath.
HAPPY, TRAMP AND PETEDaddy and Rose
Daddy hosted his group of Lunch Bunch friends there. They ate tomato sandwiches and water melon. Sometimes he made peach ice cream.
My wonderful daddy.
The squirrels gnawed the wood down. I guess it was all that salty goodness that dripped down from all those lunches. The wood rotted and moss grew on it.
After the auction at Enwood, a junk hauling company came to clear everything that was left.
It took three, big men to load that rotten picnic table into the trailer full of debris.
I stood in stunned silence and looked at our old table upside down among the junk.
Notice the squirrel-gnawed legs
It seemed wrong to not have some sort of farewell ceremony for it. It started to rain. The crew rushed to finish.
That fixture from our childhood got hauled away that day. I felt grateful for all the use we had gotten from it and grateful that the giant, rotten picnic table was no longer our problem.
Enwood is sold. Daddy is in a bluebird blue urn in the mountains. Mama is in a home being perfectly taken care of. I am truly grateful for that, too.
We had over sixty wonderful years under those oaks on Enwood.
I have looked at these photos of the Junk Bug many times. I clearly remember the afternoon I saw the tiny fluffy mess walking along the deck railing. I was so mesmerized by it that I did not think to take a picture for quite a while.
Junk Bug/ Green Lacewing Larva
The load it carried was many times bigger than its body underneath. The junk pile is the Green Lacewing Larva’s camouflage. It is a hunter and hides under its load so its victims will not recognize it as a threat.
It attaches lichen, detritis and the body parts of former victims onto its back. This is not a random packing either. This camouflage must have balance.
I realized this when the bug moved from a horizontal position to vertical as it crawled down the side of a post. It seemed the pack on its back would cause it to backflip off to plummet to its death, but it took the move in stride.
Balancing a load is the lesson here. Carrying past hurts and future worries is something I have done as an adult. Writing our book about Rose helped me put down those stories I thought I had to carry. Our blog,
seizuremamaandrose.org
has helped continue this process. We got a message of appreciation from another epilepsy mother last night. It helps to turn all that hurt into help for someone else.
I wrote off a huge part of that load. Now I am writing to heal again. Ditching more of my camouflage, so I can move on to the next stage of my development. Just like the Junk Bug eventually dumps its load to become a beautiful and helpful Green Lacewing.
Its time to quit balancing this load and spread my wings and fly.
A first draft has a life of its own. I have tried to stay on task with my three targets of this book I am birthing. But tangents keep emerging which take me off to somewhere unintended. These have a pull too strong to ignore. So now I have seven files instead of four: Intro, Parts 1,2, 3 and Tangents 1,2,3.
This is how I have gotten myself unstuck in the writer’s muck. Who knows? Maybe this will end up being three books or a collection of short stories. I just know that when the spirit catches you…you do what it tells you to do.
Tangents are an important part of the process. I have learned not to ignore the quirky visions and ideas that pop up while writing. Those tangents can completely reorient a project.
I also know to pause and process an event from various angles. Seeing Part 1 from my dad’s point of view made the heated argument rather comical. I cannot imagine how frustrated he was with his brazen daughter. I remember he seemed resigned at the end of that disagreement. I know that feeling in dealing with my own headstrong daughter. Poor Daddy!
I have not worked at my desk in months. I spent the morning decluttering it and being PIBWIB (put it back where it belongs). My computer has been upgraded. I had to put a new battery and card in my camera. Blogging will be frustating for a bit as I relearn the ropes after such a long absence.
I have been deleting all my social media sites. I did not warn my Twitter/X followers because of trolls. They search across all forms to find you for intimidation purposes. This has only happened once, four years ago. It was maddening to think of such a tactic.
I will be more focused in the future. I am getting rid of sources of chaos and distraction. It’s time to do some serious work with some real folks. I will still be around, just underground. I am sticking with WordPress. They have been dependable.
We are just about to this point in my family. Mom will turn 93 next week. She has dementia. Daddy is gone. I have questions that no one can answer. That is a hard reality.
I did do one smart thing years ago. I made each of the grandparents a memory book. The ones that can be purchased were too much for elderly folks to fill in.
Grandparents’ Books
I kept the questions simple and added some art to each page. I interviewed my parents using it and filled in answers. Stories were told. Pages and photos were added.
Now we have books titled: Who are you? We really want to know. These books will answer some questions when no one is left to remember. Life ends fast. Time passes.
I thought of these today as I was pondering the plight of the poor folks in California who must flee the fires. I was asking myself what I would take with me. These books would be in the first box out.
Since I am staying with my sister for a bit and away from my plant collection, I thought it would be a good idea to share my favorite bunny posts during the cold weather.
I spotted Barley when my family went into a pet shop to buy fish. I refused to leave without him. I did not want a lonely bunny, so I made my daughter pick out another one. She picked Charlotte because while all the other bunnies were trying to eat, Charlotte sat in the middle of the food bowl. We thought this was both smart and funny.
Here are my favorite posts about these two funny bunnies. They are no longer with us. Each was put to sleep, about a year apart, in my arms under a tree in the yard of the specialized vet clinic. Heartbreaking. No regrets.
Please do not run out and adopt bunnies. They were a lot of work. Entertaining, but needy. I love all my pets wholeheartedly, so losing each is traumatic.
floweralley 