Hibern­at­ing & clean­ing

I was supposed to be in Austria right now running school work­shops, but obvi­ously that’s not happen­ing. Like many other people right now I’m unem­ployed as my whole industry has stopped exist­ing overnight. Seeing as I’ll be spend­ing a lot of time at home in the fore­see­able future, today seemed like a good time to have a big cleanup of the living room.

Char­ity shop finds

I haven’t found as many good char­ity shop items lately as over the summer, but there’s been the odd few things. I got this vase for £2, which I’ve planted an aloe vera in, for my own plant version of Sideshow Bob.

Trif­fids in search of a new home

I’ve got a large number of cacti and succu­lents, some of which I’ve had for years (and have their own offshoot chil­dren grow­ing in separ­ate pots now). By the end of the summer, some of them were look­ing a bit sad, and were in seri­ous need of repot­ting. I collec­ted a load of Hornsea ware and other vintage pottery for £1-3 a time over the summer, and then had a big repot­ting session outside, just before the weath­er star­ted turn­ing cold.

Trif­fids

I’ve built up a collec­tion of cacti and other succu­lents over the last year or so. They’re desert plants from the Amer­icas and south­ern Africa which store water in their bodies, so they don’t need a lot of look­ing after, and they have a huge range of dramat­ic shapes, which explains why they’re such popu­lar house plants. They’re also cheap to buy- mine all came from the super­mar­ket, Wilco or IKEA and cost £2-4 each- and can live a long time if kept in the right condi­tions. (Opuntia cacti also produce deli­cious prickly pears and nopales pads for cook­ing). My current room has a large windowsill which gets some fierce sunshine around lunch­time, and is next to a radi­at­or which dries up the air through­out the winter, which is the ideal condi­tions for grow­ing them. I used to be into grow­ing orch­ids and indoor herbs as well, but they just don’t thrive in the condi­tions here.

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Categorised as Nature
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