Homage to Indoor Plants-PICS!

Always Keep a Vase of Flowers from Yon Gardens on the Window Sill.

When the world is too loud and raucous, retire to the gardens of Grandmother's world

Homage to Indoor Plants: They Help Me Limp Through the Winter

I would hope, sweet Granddaughter, that your house of the moment would always have a few living plants situated at strategic and sunny spots throughout.

It is with much concern that I note how fewer and fewer households have a happy plant of ivy or a delightful fig tree growing within an inside sunbeam while adding the depth such greenery provides to an indoor environment.

The grander palatial estates will, of course, have entire garden rooms filled with broad leafed tropical plants and entire trees that reach for the glass-paned ceilings. There once was a time when even the most modest abodes required at least one potted plant basking in the glow of a parlor lamp.

Indoor plants are messy at times and at those same times I wonder why bother? After many years in a bursting Adams Family type house Grandmother finally can enjoy daily life in an abode more suitable to modern times. As such there aren’t many window-studded spaces that Grandmother’s handsome plant collection requires.

Which is not to say this most modern house wasn’t designed to have big windows that allow the outdoors in, as the designers so love. It’s just that the rooms with such wide open window spaces are not meant to house a bevy of huge plants indulged and pampered to amazing growth for many years. The few rooms in my happening house with wide widow exposure are meant to hold normal inhabitants who would enjoy the view of adjacent bird-feeders and the feel of the afternoon sun glow.

They are not designed to hold a living jungle along with those happy inhabitants is what I’m saying here.

Still Grandmother plans and schemes and measures and eventually, through a combination of shelving and artful placement, manages to crowd her fine plant collection around the major sun spots in the house.

Which is why my Dracena, Fig tree, and Rubber tree sit on a bench behind my bed, diagonally placed against a corner wall. That empty diagonal perfect for the bench to fit and hold these monster plants and, not coincidentally, best placed to receive full benefit of the wide bedroom windows and the sun they allow within.

The effect is as if my bed has a living headboard and frankly I’d rank it right up there with anything HGTV has come up with. I must, of course, raise my protective blinds but the plants have grown so leafy that they provide plenty of privacy protection.

I took pictures of my precious jungle before bringing them in as I must do every Fall after their summer spent happily on the shaded porch. As I snapped away I considered the age of these plants and realized to my surprise that most of these plants have been with me for almost my entire marriage, now going on to its 16th year.

Some, sadly quite a few, are grown from bereavement arrangements sent after the loss of a dear one. The arrangements are living plants all arranged artfully to resemble a more practical floral package than beautiful flowers that will die shortly. I couldn’t bear to let the plants in the arrangements die so I would re-pot them and treat them with care.

Which, Grandmother supposes, is the intent, that the new green plant would somehow replace the lost loved one to continue on the memory.

Scroll down below this post to see the pictures of each plant plus everything I know about them.

FISH ELECTION PREDICTIONS SUNDAY NIGHT