Phew! It’s been a slow start to the gardening year for your overwhelmed Girl Reporter, who has been struggling with a prolonged flare-up of the old ankyspondydoodah.
Regular viewers will recall that last year we traded our quarter-acre block in sunny Queensland for the blank canvas of a rooftop garden in our new Hong Kong headquarters.
Look, it should not have been a surprise that such an epic change of circumstance would take its toll. That’s the thing about chronic illnesses, like my own personal favourite, the impossible-to-spell ankylosing spondylitis (I am not kidding. Sweet Sally Wordsmith has to check it every time. It’s only been my entire adult life….).
Major life changes will put pressure on an already compromised immune system. And, unsurprisingly, we shorten our To Do lists accordingly, and not always consciously.
While the garden has been thriving under my neglect – strange, how it always seems to look the better for it – I have been concentrating on the must-do’s, the little things like my job, and feeding the cat.
AND ALFIE MAKES THREE
Alfie the Wonder Cat joined us in December 2016. We adopted him from the RSPCA in Brisbane, where he’d ended up as a stray with a hitchhiking paralysis tick which nearly killed him. He is a Wonder Cat because he has hidden skills. Alfie was only with us a few days when he followed the current Mr B into the bathroom, jumped into the tub and peed straight down the plughole … as if he’d been trained. Who knows what other talents lurk beneath? I suspect he could bring me coffee in bed or save the world, if only I knew what signal to give him.
The first signs, as usual, were small and only obvious in retrospect. Y’all know I love my news and it won’t surprise you that I had been avidly following the Mueller Report and the Brexit shambles. Until, one day, I wasn’t. But I didn’t notice until one of my fellow word maulers asked if I’d watched US attorney-general William Barr’s testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee – and I hadn’t.
As a trained – but not practising – hippie counsellor (Australian College of Natural Medicine Diploma in Health Science (Holistic Counselling Practices) GPA 6.11) I can advise – but not counsel! – that the first things to go are those we enjoy.
And, unsurprisingly, some of those things are essential to managing a chronic condition. Which brings us, in a meandering way, back to gardening.
One of the best bits of advice I took from my two years as a hippie counselling student was to get a pot plant. Well, that was unexpected, even for a hippie counselling school, but it turned out that the plant in question could be any kind, so long as it was in a pot.
The concept is simple. If your plant is looking neglected, you are probably neglecting yourself as well. The plant becomes an indication of your well-being, an early warning system to check in with yourself and do a bit of an assessment.
Have there been any changes in your life that might have been piling on some accumulative pressure? How’s your diet? Have you stopped doing things that you usually enjoy? Have you been angry or upset about anything lately, and has it been in what you regard as an appropriate range?
While you run through your checklist, don’t forget to water your plant!
Valar Morghulis, baby. Another one bites the dust.
Make a habit of this and before long, and without too much effort, you will begin to build a map for yourself, gradually populating it with signposts of things that help you manage your condition, and things which don’t, but which you can perhaps better prepare for.
Your pot plant – of whichever variety you choose – will thank you for it. And you just might have picked up on the delights of gardening…
The thing about a potted plant, of course, is that it’s entirely reliant on you for its existence. How much light it gets, how much water, and what nutrients. Now, since depression is not uncommon among people with chronic conditions – which shouldn’t come as a surprise – it’s probably important to choose something that’s easy to grow if you’re thinking of trying this.
You don’t need to add ‘gardening failure’ to your list of inadequacies. Of course, one of the great joys of gardening is its destructive element, but it can take some time for the beginner to work this out.
My top survivor pick is a Devil’s Ivy (Epipremnum aureum). It is almost impossible to kill. Believe me, viewers, I have tried all ways. I put it in the dankest of corners and it thrived. I put it in a window where it gets the full heat of the afternoon sun magnified through glass and it went off like a riot.
The most successful bit of greenery in Alfie’s flat started as an illicitly obtained 10cm cutting about a year ago.
This specimen was yanked out of the ground from the side of a path to our secret island hideout a year ago and has so far yielded four new plants. Each leaf nodule also forms a root, which become clinging tendrils if they don’t find earth. Needless to say, this plant is an invasive pest which does not belong in an Australian garden.
But, as long as you treat any unused cuttings responsibly and put them in the bin, not your green waste, it makes a lovely and easy to care for houseplant. The amount of light it gets will determine whether the leaves are a glossy dark green or a swirling, creamy delight. Which makes it a fun choice for trying cuttings in different conditions.
My second pick is the Peace Lily (Spathiphyllum), another fairly tolerant fellow with a rather dramatic cry for help if it needs some water. The first time you come upon your Peace Lily in a collapsed state is alarming, but it recovers remarkably quickly with some watering.
This can add to a growing – if potentially misplaced – sense of competence on the part of the novice gardener. The next step, obviously, is to be mindful of how often your plant needs watering and try not to let it get to that state again.
Sally’s Gardening Tip: Over-watering kills more houseplants than under-watering. The best thing about a Peace Lily is that if it needs watering, the rest of your plants do too. If it’s doing alright – i.e. not drooping over the sides of its pot weakly crying ‘help me… help me’ – excellent. But there are other ways to check, and the easiest is to stick your finger in the soil. If it’s moist, walk away. Just walk away.
If the Devil’s Ivy nurtures your creative side – try it climbing up a pole! How about hanging from a basket? Did you know it looks great just growing in a water-filled jam jar? – then the Peace Lily is a great introduction to the basic elements of gardening.
Here is a plant which can’t stand full sunlight but won’t thrive in the same dank corners as our trusty workhorse, the Devil’s Ivy. So, you have to keep a bit more of an eye on it and learn to read the signs of what makes a happy plant.
The Peace Lily is a tolerant and rewarding teacher.
Here at our secret island location I bought three miniature Peace Lilies in pots. Two of them went out on the roof garden while the third was kept indoors. The difference in them is instructive. The ones on the roof have grown bushier but have remained compact. Their indoor brother is almost twice the height but has put on barely any new growth.
Spot the difference: The Peace Lily in the foreground grew tall indoors, while its brother, recently relocated from the roof, stayed short but added loads of new growth.
That’s because the indoor plant was putting all its energy into grabbing as much light as it possibly could, reaching towards the window in its hunger. It’s not a bad looking plant, but the others look better.
Up on the roof I’ve been able to protect them from the worst of the afternoon sun, but clearly my little indoor guy could use a brighter spot – and that means a move into Alfie’s flat, the only place that really gets any good light.
The challenge of Alfie’s flat is that it’s not very wide and it gets the full glare of the afternoon sun. It is a terrible place for his toilette, and a difficult one for plants. Even with the windows open, it is still quite enclosed, making it a perfect environment for odours and pests.
This has forced Your Girl Reporter to be reasonably vigilant in houseplant care, as dealing with one job leads naturally to the other. But, as you would expect, there were casualties. It grieves me to report that, while the two Bird of Paradise (Strelitzia) on the roof survive, their indoor brother is among the fallen.
Pests adore a warm, humid environment and Your Gardening Girl Reporter is in an ongoing battle against these little beasties. Hand me my spraygun. I’m going in.
It was an army of mealybugs in the end, that rampaged through Alfie’s flat and still the battle is not won. The only solution was to keep the unaffected and find more like them. With an abundance of miniature Peace Lilies up on the roof, I’ve moved one of them to Alfie’s flat to see how it goes.
A word of caution: Some plants, including the Peace Lily, are toxic for cats but Alfie has never shown the slightest interest in any of my growing efforts so I’m prepared to risk him. But if you have a chewer on your hands, a bit of Googling is advisable.
I’m hoping that the taller plants behind the Peace Lilies and the shade of the baskets will give them just enough protection from the sun.
As you know, Your Girl Reporter is a thrifty gardener and, apart from the Desert Rose (Adenium) – which cannot tolerate the amount of rain it would get on the roof and needs the sun – the replacement plants for Alfie’s flat are volunteers. Some, like the Devil’s Ivy, were opportunistic acquisitions. Others popped up unexpectedly.
All are welcome. Thanks to their efforts, Alfie’s flat is starting to look like home.
© Maria Spackman 2021
Want more Baxter? I also contribute the occasional culture piece. Versatile? I know, right?
Be the first to comment