Don't pretend you don't waste an inordinate amount of time fawning over succulents. You know you do. You're probably every bit as much of a hapless succ-er as I am. Today I began wondering about how I can spend so much time thinking about succulents, and decided to catalog some of the more ridiculous succulent- and cacti-related ways in which I spend my not-actually-all-that-copious free time.
How about you, my dear succ-er friends? Do any of these resonate with you? Do you have any succulent-ish pastimes to add to the list?
- Studiously pretending offense when my wife says something like, "You spend more time on your plants than you do on your research!"
- Bidding early on an eBay plant I know I'll never afford, then getting an email three days later that says something like, "Tiger Eye variegated Japanese haworthia sold for $275.50 over your max bid."
- Watching Debra Lee Baldwin's videos. She is so mesmerizing!
- Taking a container garden apart and putting the plants from it into individual pots.
- Taking plants out of individual pots and putting them into a container garden.
- Organizing plants in my plastic flats by genus and species.
- Creating labels for plants that don't have them (I wish I did this more often).
- Shopping online on Mountain Crest Gardens or Jadepoint Succulents or Plant Delights or some other store I like and putting a bunch of stuff into my cart to see how much it would cost if I placed an order.
- Picking dead leaves off the bottoms of various plants, especially echeverias.
- Checking plants obsessively for babies, mealybug, etc.
- Leaf. Propagation. OMG.
- Freshening the top dressing. (Did I really just write that? Yes. Yes, I did.)
- Going to local nurseries to "see what's new" because you "never know."
- Flipping obsessively through Under the Spell of Succulents or Aloes and Agaves in Cultivation.
- Looking at the bottom of pots to see if any roots or babies are coming out of drainage holes, which would mean that I am basically forced to stop everything and repot immediately.
- Organizing pictures I have taken on various succulent outings and adventures.
- Fancifully planning visits to various parts of the world where succulents feature prominently (South Africa, anyone?).
- Instagram.
- Setting up alerts for phrases such as "crassula barklyi" and "haworthia maughanii."
- Googling things that seem absurd, such as "variegated ariocarpus" and spending 30 minutes at a time drooling over the results.
How about you, my dear succ-er friends? Do any of these resonate with you? Do you have any succulent-ish pastimes to add to the list?
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