Moving plants
Started: 2021-07-09 23:06:17
Submitted: 2021-07-10 00:48:58
Visibility: World-readable
In which the intrepid narrator moves his houseplants between houses
Before the movers showed up to move my household to Santa Cruz, I moved my collection of houseplants by myself. I wrapped the smaller plants in packing paper and cling wrap and staged them in milk crates to carry them down the mountain.
From left to right, these plants are:
- Ponytail palm (Nolina recurvata). The oldest plant in my collection, I acquired this plant as an office plant for my desk at my office at Qualcomm when I got promoted and upgraded to a window office. (Here's a picture of it on my desk in 2013.) I've kept it ever since, and it's grown considerably in the last decade.
- Ficus benjamina. A plant I picked up at a garden center trip last fall when I came home with a bunch of house plants.
- Avocado "Hass" (Persea americana). I germinated this seedling from a seed over the winter. After something like three months sitting in the dirt, just as I was about to give up on it, the seed decided to sprout and now I have a very short avocado tree.
- Money tree. Another garden center acquisition from last fall.
- A flowering bulb whose identity escapes me, a gift from my mother over the winter. It bloomed spectacularly early this spring, and now its leaves remain to soak up energy ahead of the winter.
- Pygmy date palm (Phoenix roebelenii). Another garden center acquisition from last fall. This plant sat behind me in my video conferences, and during a meeting one of my colleagues messaged me to say he thought my background looked like a virtual background, all thanks to the potted date palm on the table behind me.
In addition to these plants, I have two larger plants I moved later in the final week before the big move: a larger Ficus benjamina that (in its pot) took up most of my trunk when I moved it down the mountain, and a coffee tree.
I unpacked the plants into the master bathroom, because I was about to get all of the carpet in the house replaced, and I wasn't yet ready to put the plants on my newly-refinished wood floor. The plants filled the tile counter and provided a nice contrast to the chrome-and-tile bathroom.
The ponytail palm took up a corner of the counter all on its own. I want to get a tall stand for this plant, since I think it wants to let its long hair drape dramatically over the edge of the pot.
We're still surrounded by boxes after moving into the house, and I hope we'll be able to fill up some of the empty spaces with even more house plants.
