Whew

[treeskin]

Finally got a chance to sit down. Had the Russian Volunteer in this morning, and that little gal can work. Damn. She worked through a BIG pile of repotting, went through at least one bale of potting soil by herself, and kept Donna and I scurrying to keep up with her for 3 hours. Impressive, for a 4'6" white-haired whirilwind.

Bri got the aquarium set up in the back house, to start the Victoria water lilies in--or will start them, as soon as the water gets up to temp. It's very picky stuff...the seed will die if it dries out, it won't germinate if the water's under 85 degrees, fertilizer only at certain stages. But it'll be soooo cool to have one in here.

Ah, that's right, most of you don't know what these are. Here is a closeup of them, at the Missouri Botanical Garden. This shot shows the thorns on the underside of the leaves (keeps critters from grazing). In flower. None of these shots show the size of the thing....the "care and feeding" sheet Bri got with the seeds says to give each plant at least 100 square feet.

Wait, found one that shows the size. Your standard publicity shot of these, no date on the photo. The trick to the shots of people standing on the leaves of these is that they often put boards under the leaves, or carefully inside them, to distribute the weight.

Comments

[kcalohagirl.livejournal.com]

Those are AWESOME!!!!!! I may be turning into a plant geek.

[treeskin.livejournal.com]

We're still trying to figure out what we're going to do with them, assuming the seeds germinate. (If we get more than one, the consensus is that we donate the spares to local botanic gardens, because of all the ones reasonably close, only St Louis Botanic has them.)

Bri is talking about getting a 9' diam stock tank to put in the back of the greenhouse to grow 1 (!) plant in....I guess it doesn't have to be super deep, just wide.