...I want to do lots of crafts

I finally took the time to go out and find all the supplies to make the succulent wreath I've been wanting to make for a while. It took me a while and two tries but I finally got a base that I was happy with. Here's the tutorial I worked from, and here's what I actually did:

I went to Lowe's and Wal-Mart and bought some succulents. I bought some that were on their own and some that were already in little gardens. I DO NOT recommend buying the ones in the gardens because it turns out that translates to over-cramped and having rocks glued on top of them. Not cool.

But, one bonus of the pre-made gardens is you get to keep the cool pots they come in. I also bought the little red amoeba looking things. It turns out they were just a pot of lies. I'm not exactly sure what they are, but they aren't succulents, they were little rootless plants HOT GLUED to some sponge moss. That was upsetting, but at least I got to keep the cute little pots.

For the life of me I couldn't find a wire wreath form so I made my own from two wire clothes hangers and floral wire. I don't recommend this, at all. Find the energy to brave Michael's or some other craft store and actually find a wreath form because this was a pain in the butt.

The first attempt I just followed the instructions and patted in the sphagnum moss into the frame and wrapped the floral wire around it. I could tell this wasn't going to work. There was dirt everywhere, and I mean EVERYWHERE. But I decided to keep going anyway and added the succulents in anyway and this is what I got.

I nervously hung it on the door and it slumped under the weight, the succulents started falling off, and left dirt on the door...

And the floor...

So I took that down and thought about it over night and tried again the next day. I pulled out the coconut mesh from one of my planters and cut a X in the middle of it so I could wrap it around the wreath form and sphagnum moss. I closed it with floral wire and then "sewed" it together on the back to make sure as much of the back was covered with the coconut mesh as possible. This is what the front looked like after I was finished. Much better!

I added the succulents again and they were much more secure and I was even able to add the bigger succulents this time. I need a lot more succulents to be able to finish the whole thing and I suggest to anyone trying this project to invest in succulents that grow out instead of up.

Although I'm not entirely happy with the wreath as a whole, I do like the groupings individually. Like this one:

And this one, I like the little bubble like succulents.

And this one- I love the black succulent.

And this one- it reminds me of a pineapple.

I hope this was helpful to anyone that wants to do this project, and if not, feel free to ask me any questions!

My next project: re-doing the kitchen table and chairs. The table is going to be painted the bottom blue color and each of the chairs is going to be one of the other color. Hopefully it will look cute and not crazy, because when I grow up, I want to do a lot of crafts.

...I want tons of succulents

I have to say that succulents are pretty awesome. All you do is, uh, "liberate" a leaf from a well established plant at Lowe's or Home Depot or Wal-Mart or any store that sells succulents, and take them home, and you can get your own garden going! It is so fun to watch a whole new plant grow from just a leaf, and it's so incredibly easy.

A lot of articles on Pinterest say all kinds of thing about mixing special dirt with special fertilizer and blending it all up with special desert sand and then putting them in the window and moving them around and all this crazy stuff. Don't do that, you don't have to. Also, some articles say to place the succulent leaf straight into the soil- that also doesn't work. I'm not entirely sure why, but I do know that the first few leaves I tried to propagate that way all rotted. My theory is because the leaves are mostly made up of water so when you stick them in the ground you're just keeping the water trapped and giving it the perfect place to sit and rot by sticking in the soil.

But here's how you do propagate succulents! (Please forgive my bad picture quality and badly painted fingernails)

So here is a "liberated" leaf. Make sure you get a whole leaf and not one thats torn halfway up. I just stick them in my pocket while I'm looking for other plants to buy and set them out on my propagating dish when I get home. A lot of places will say to let them sit for a day to scab over before trying to propagate them but it doesn't seem to make a difference- they'll scab over whether they're sitting on the dirt or not. 

And this is what I mean by "scab". All that means is that it's not watery on the end anymore, it's dried up. It will generally look brown instead of the pink color here- in this picture this succulent is actually about to start sprouting roots and I know that because of the pink color, but I'm getting ahead of myself!

So, I started with a shallow dish full of soil. All you need to do is lay the leaves flat on top of the soil and keep the soil wet. Because my dish was so shallow that meant I was watering it every day. Good news though, if you forget to water it, it's not a big deal, it just means they probably won't propagate as quickly. What else is awesome about this? Do you see how many succulents I can propagate at one time in such a tiny dish?

 Then not long afterwards, they started shooting roots and new leaves! You might be able to tell (even with the horrible picture quality) that the original leaves look kinda shriveled and like they're dying- that's ok! That's actually what you want to happen! The original leaf is going to die and leave the new plant by itself, which is good. Otherwise you would have this gorgeous new succulent with this ugly dead leaf tumor hanging off of it, and no one wants that. 

So yay! New succulents are growing! After they started to get bigger I transferred them to their own little temporary plastic pots. Why? Well, because we're broke and we don't have anything pretty to put them in, but more importantly because they not have more established roots they need their own pots so they can start growing into bigger plants! 

And now what? Well, once you've got some slightly established plants you still want to water the soil whenever it dries out to keep them growing. What do you not want to do? Mist the plants. That makes them grow shallow roots. Why? Because the water will only go to the very top layer of the soil. You want to encourage the roots to reach down far into the soil, so water all of it, not just the top layer! 

Succulents in general grow pretty slow, but once they start propagating it's pretty incredible how quickly they grow. It's so much fun and I really encourage you to try it! Plus, if you're sneaky you can do it for free! And when I grow up, I want tons of these bad boys!

...I want to have a magnificent garden

Growing up I always had an amazing back yard because my parents loved to garden, and I absolutely loved it. I adored everything about our yard from the pond my Daddy built to the oh-so-climbable magnolia in the front. My best friends and I would pretend we were heroines in our own world my Daddy invented from his stories called "The Purple Dragon"- a mystical place filled with fairies and magic; and it was not a difficult task. My parent's garden and yard was overgrown with flowers and greenery (my mother loves ferns) and vegetables in an awe-inspiring way that made our small southern backyard look magical as soon as the sun started to dip down and cast that magical glowing light on everything.

I loved it so much I always wanted to help. My daddy, being the smart man he was, would allocate a small portion of his vegetable garden for my sister and me to do with what we liked. Every year we would go with him to Lowe's or Home Depot and pick out some seeds or seedlings and plant them in our little plot and I would get so excited that I would be growing the biggest watermelons or tomatoes or whatever it was I picked. Invariably, however I would soon lose interest and forget about my little plot until weeks later, and although my daddy had still taken care of my plants I would be disappointed that after weeks the seeds had only just sprouted or the seedlings hadn't produced a full watermelon. Of course, that was when I was 5 or 6...

But then I got older. We moved to a new house and my parents created an even more stunning garden. My daddy built an even bigger pond and we bought some koi that are now two feet long. There are herbs and roses and trees and ferns and vegetables and flowers and anythings else you can think of. Everyone that comes over says it is the most stunning backyard they have ever seen, and I will be the last to argue with them. So every spring when my parents would go out to start working on the garden, once again I would want to go out to help them. But just like when I was 5 or 6 I would quickly lose interest, only now it was starting to bother me. We moved to this new house when I was in middle school, but now I was in high school and college and I still wasn't able to maintain my interest in gardening. I've always wanted a garden when I had my own place and the fact that I wasn't interested in making mom and dad's garden better really bothered me. I was worried that I wouldn't ever have the garden I wanted because I didn't have the same interest in keeping one maintained that my parents did. I just liked the benefits, not the work that went into it.

I'm guessing that anyone here that is reading this already knows that my husband and I just recently moved to Mobile and are working on settling in to our new apartment. It's taken a while since he's been busy working and I've been busy studying for the bar, but I think we're almost finished.
Since we're in Mobile I don't have classes to go to, I watch all of my lectures online, and to make them more bearable, I have been watching them on my balcony. The view from my balcony was really very bleak, so I decided I needed to do something about it- so I bought some planters and a few seeds and hoped that my past pattern of behavior wouldn't repeat itself and I would pick up a new hobby to help keep me sane in these next few months. I am happy to say that my hopeful hobby has turned into nothing less than an obsession, and I absolutely love it and cannot wait for my balcony to be overgrown with plants and flowers!

I bought this fuchsia and have been keeping it alive. They're tricky and even my parents haven't ever had success with them, but Mobile is so humid that I'm confident I'll be able to keep it alive and flowering. 

I grew these strawberries from seed! I can't wait until they grow fruit, although that won't be for a year or two.

My ficus. I know they are typically indoor plants; however, Lulu likes to hide food in them, and I don't want her digging it up inside, and it really seems to like it outside. It's growing new leaves and everything.

Succulents that I'm rooting. 

These three are rooting, I'm so excited! I plan to make a wreath with them to hang on the balcony door once I have enough of them.

These moss roses are so easy to take care of. They don't need a lot of water love sunlight. I dead-headed them and they transformed into a new plant overnight! None of those blooms were there yesterday, and they popped up overnight after I deadheaded the plant. So little work for such a big reward!

My basil that I grew from seed. I plan to have a whole herb garden. My mom is mailing me clippings of all of her herbs, bur right now all I have is basil and mint. 

My most robust sunflower next to the basil. I can't wait for it to bloom. I grew it from a seed as well.

This is another sunflower and mint. I actually rooted the mint from some sprigs I bought at the grocery store.

                         

A vertical planter I put together. I got the idea from this pin on Pinterest and went with it. I absolutely love it! The top is Impatiens, the second level is... I honestly don't remember. I replaced the third layer with more moss roses (it used to have the same plant as the second layer but in white), and the bottom layer is called Bolivian Jew. I thought watering would be an issue, but it's actually really convenient to take care of. If you water too much on one level it will drain into the next, and so on and so forth. I haven't had any problems with over or under-watering at all, and it looks so pretty!. 

  

And finally, my tomato plant that I grew from seed. Again, I can't wait for it start producing fruit.

One other thing I absolutely love about our home are the stunning trees that surround us. They are breathtaking giants that I can't help stopping to admire every time I see them. 

I wish these pictures could capture their magnificence. They just don't even come close.

They have ecosystems all to themselves. Yes, that would be a tree growing on the tree. 

And if you haven't experienced resurrection ferns yet, they are something you absolutely need to see. When it gets dry they shrivel up like so:

But as soon as it rains, they become luscious and full again, just like nothing has happened. It's amazing. 

I can't wait to see what my balcony becomes, and I can't wait to see what my future yard becomes. Because when I grow up, I want to have a magnificent garden.