Well, school is over for the year, and I finally have some time to tend to my plants. Never let anyone tel you that a career change is easy!

Some of my plants have really suffered during this past winter. I was able to bring some of the plants into work to a greenhouse, and they all did spectacular, but these were smaller plants, or cuttings that I was trying to get some size on. Some of my larger plants are definitly not as happy as in years past.

For one thing, I was a little stingy with water this winter, as previous winters had rot in some of my plants. My big S. sp. 'Japanese Striped Giant' is a bit floppy - I'm sure it will recover, but it looks a little sad right now. Some of my S. tri. varieties are a bit wrinkled still, but again, I'm sure that they will come back. My S. cylindrica pushed up a large growth with next to no water this winter, so I'm not exactly sure what it will look like when it sget browght outside - a mystery indeed. The recently purchased S. cylindrica pautula were wintered over in the greenhouse, and have flowers on them right now. These plants grew quite a bit over the winter, but they were warm and moist. I got almost as much growth as I do over a summer from these guys. Same can be said for the leaf cuttings that were just starting to root in september - the plants are already a few inches high, with multiple leaves. This having a warm sunny place for the plants during the winter could really spoil me.

A couple of plants didn't make it this winter - although all of the sanseveria did survive. I lost a couple of Pachypodium brevicaule (shame, they were nice plant son their own roots), as well as a couple of spectacular crested Pachypodium species. I guess it was too cool and dark for them in my plant room. (the one that was suffering and was brought into the greenhouse has DOUBLED in size over the winter). Some of the Euphorbias are a lot shriveled, but I expect that they will revover, but look a little ragged after this hard winter. I'll have to get rid of more plants this year to lower the density of plants I maintain over the winter. This will make it possible to touch each plant once a month, and make sure that they all are doing well.

My Uncarina decaryii has gotten a bit large for my space. I started it from seed 6 years ago, and it has been flowering for the past three years, an dis now almost 6' tall. I've been pinching it to keep it shorter and bushy, but it is neither short nor bushy. It does have about a dozen growth tips, but many of the pinchings resulted in single growth points. It looks great, but it needs to be repotted, and that will amke it taller still. I hate to cut it back too hard, as I don't want to sacrifice this years flowers, but I'll have to do something.

My Pachypodium gracillis is another one that is starting to get out of hand. It was just 3" tall when I got it 5 years ago, and it is not 5' tall (with the pot). It has begun to develop the thick stem, and I hope (HOPE) that continuing to provide it with SuperPhosphate every year MIGHT induce it to bloom this year or next. It seems to be pretty happy with conditions - I know that having a winter dormancy slows things down, and that it can get much taller before initial bloom, but one can always dream. This is one plant that I do not want to have to top - it looks awful when that happens.

So the Sansevieria are mostly lookng sad (the S. masoniana and S. masoniana variagates I have pushed a lot of new growths this winter that are really nice already - so that's good news, as is that ALL of the variegated species are pushing variegated growth already), but everything will live.

Now if I could only get the time to start bringing everything outside....

Joe 'it's always something' DeRosa