This past Sunday was the Feast of Pentecost, which ends the Easter Season, and, even though the Easter Season is a fifty day celebration, I am already feeling a bit unfulfilled — despite my participation in the intense Easter observances as well as the preparation for them during Lent. Therefore, I was consoled to read the following comment by the blogger, Emily L. Hauser who is referring to her experience with her 2011 Passover celebrations. Hauser writes, "It really does seem that every year, Passover goes by faster. One minute I'm hyperventilating over the inhumane amount of cleaning, the next minute I'm saying 'what, it's over?' But here we are. Tonight is the start of the second holiday, the one that closes the week, and boom — its back to bread." I realize that Passover 2011 ended quite some time ago, and that for Ms. Hauser the festival of Shavuot (which is symbolically and historically related to Pentecost) was last week, but it is aways comforting to be reminded of the fact that my emotions are hardly unique to me, and that, in fact quite often, they transcend cultures and belief systems.
Additionally, as this Easter Season comes to a close, I am also reminded that it is probably time to remove the Easter decorations that are interspersed with my indoor garden of succulents which grow (under a special lighting system using cold/hot bulbs) in containers that have been lovingly and strategically placed on top of humidity trays (that are laden with pebbles), which are resting on a space I've created for an indoor garden on top of my kitchen armoire. (Please see this past blog entry for details.) You may recall, dear reader, that I initially created this indoor garden during wintertime (a few years ago) to have a home for some of my plants that would not withstand winter temperatures and conditions. (Yes, this does happen with my outdoor plants — on rare occasions — in spite of my attentive winterizing methods — methods that I have described in a previous blog post which can be found by clicking here.
In any event, indoor gardens are quite nice to have — even if you do have the space for an outdoor garden. You may recall that in an earlier blog entry I wrote about a neighborhood indoor garden, a garden that is a celebration of the textures of succulents; and if you'd like to reread it, you may refer to by clicking here.
As for my "armoire-top" garden, it now contains a variety of succulents found at the Greenmarket at Union Square in New York City. One of the succulents in my "armoire-top garden" — although not totally visible in the photograph posted above — is known as a Peperomia clusiifolia variegat , and can be seen in the two photographs posted below:
This lovely Peperomia clusiifolia variegat was sold to me for $3.00, and the "back story" on my purchase is this: The "clerk" asked David, the grower (who owns Fantastic Gardens), if this Peperomia clusiifolia variegat was one of the many $5.00 succulents that he was selling, and he replied to her, "one day it will grow up to be a $5.00 plant, but today it is only a $3 plant . . . "
I share this story because I have a special place in my heart for David, and his nursery, Fantastic Gardens, because his mother sold me my H.F. Young Clematis a few years ago, and it has thrived in my terrace garden since day one. The H.F. Young Clematis, is a vine that I grow outside in my terrace garden, and it is a vine which I have referred to in a number of blog entries, including ones which you can refer to by clicking here as well as here and here .
The other succulents in my indoor garden are from Cheerful Cherry Farms, owned by a man named Jim, a widower, whose deceased wife Donna (a woman that was also his garden partner), sold me an Autumn Clematis a few years ago. My interaction with Donna at that time has prompted me to not only call the Autumn Clematis that she sold me "Donna's Legacy", but also to include it in a number of blog posts including ones that you can read by clicking here as well here and here. Additionally, the Autumn Clematis, sold to me by Donna, of Cheerful Cherry Farms, is featured in my first garden movie,"The Kiwi Vine Speaks . . . Fifteen minutes of fame . . . almost", which is now on Vimeo. Details about this movie as well as a link to view it are available in a blog post which you can read by clicking here.
In any event, the succulents from Cheerful Cherry Farms, are quite unique, as evidenced in photographs of a few of them (posted below) as they look in my armoire-top garden still interspersed with Easter decorations.
Not only are the succulents from Cheerful Cherry Farms unusual; but the "packaging" (utilizing strawberry boxes — which they also use to sell their luscious strawberries) that Cheerful Cherry Farms gives to their customers to carry the succulents from the greenmarket to their respective gardens reflects their "cheerful spirit" as seen below in the photographs posted below of my succulents in the boxes from Cheerful Cherry Farms before I planted them in my containers at home.
When I told the girls who work at the booth for Cheerful Cherry Farms about my appreciation for the unique succulent presentation, as well as my heartfelt sadness over the death of their bosses' wife, Donna, they posed for a photograph to honor her memory which you can see below.
I hope, dear reader, that today's blog post has inspired you to think of setting up a succulent garden in your home, or, if you have one, that this post has inspired you to intersperse your succulents with decorations for a holiday season of your choice, or with simple miniature garden gnomes, which I will be using when I put away my Easter decorations.
When it comes to growing succulents, the only limitation you have in creating a place for them is your imagination, as evidenced by Arthur Lee Jacobson, who "took a damaged rear bike wheel, cleaned off the grime and rigged it into a planter for succulents", as seen in the screen shot posted below, and which you can read about by clicking here.
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