The start of Planty Heather
Well, this is awkward. Hi, my name is Heather. What is yours? This post already feels like kindergarten meet and greets but I do not know how to start this. You will find that I can ramble on and on forever when there is likely a very easy way to get my point across without writing three paragraphs. I have yet to master that skill at twenty(muffled coughing) years old.
What I can say is that I have always really enjoyed plants and want to share my love of plants and findings from owning and caring for them with others. This whole obsession started out when I was little and my grandmother always had more than a dozen houseplants as well as a full, gorgeous garden out back. She still has a majority of those same plants which I hope to one day inherit and continue their happy lives. It is nice to have another plant person in my family to talk to and to give cuttings to on occasion. The rest of my family (immediate and extended) cannot keep a plant alive if their own life depended on it or just simply are disinterested.
The last time I counted my plants was well over a year ago, on a day where there was so much snow in my town that my workplace was closed and I was snowed-in. I am waiting for the same opportunity to occur this year to have an entire day to set aside with no prior commitments to recount. My estimate is over 200 plants but I really do not know and quite frankly am a little afraid to find out. I do keep a little notepad with the names of every plant I purchase and the month/year I purchased it. I am going to work on getting those in a spreadsheet this winter as well. I am also sure that my husband will not be thrilled by the number of plants I have once that is determined. He is also not a plant person. As much as I try to force it upon him, it doesn't stick.
I think the only areas in our 1,392 square foot house that don't have plants are my husband's office, our very damp, scary unfinished basement that we avoid going in at all costs and our attic which does not have a pull down ladder and we do not have a chair tall enough to safely climb in there. Quite frankly, I think I hear animals in there sometimes and I am apprehensive to borrow a ladder because I am afraid that a bat or oppossum or something will dive-bomb my head when I open the latch. This isn't to say that I am not also fascinated at the idea of what could be stored up there (this is a rental house) and am constantly telling my husband we need to get up there.
I recently noticed after a year of living here that from the outside of our house there is a chimney flue but we don't have a chimney on the ground level or upstairs. The attic has windows which suggest there could be a whole stand-up walk-in room up there that we are not utilizing. This makes me crazy curious. I did not want to divulge too much in this first blog post and scare everyone off but I like weird things. For instance, I collect taxidermy and mannequins and really enjoy reading about serial killers and wondering what makes them tick. Part of this feeds into my obsession with the attic as I wonder if there is some weird stuff up there from previous renters or possibly the previous renters themselves, who knows! -spooooooky-
You may think that having this many houseplants means my house looks like a jungle. Although I am sure my husband would refer to it that way as anything over five plants seems overwhelming to him but a lot of the people I follow on social media and youtube really do not start having that jungle-vibe indoors until well past 700 plants. I am certainly not at that level for many reasons: financially, I cannot purchase that volume of plants on my paycheck, I do not know enough plant people to get cuttings from, my marriage would pretty much end if I suffocated my husband with plants (I swear he is supportive of me but he is also a person with personal space needs that I need to skirt around) and one of the biggest factors here, I have cats.
I have two cats who I am sure I will picture at some point and one of them loves to attempt to eat any plant she can get her little chiclet-teeth onto. I have to keep my plants high up and confined to the perimeters of rooms to keep them as safe as I can from the cats and alternatively, to keep the cats safe from the plants. There are numerous plants that are pretty toxic/poisonous to cats which I especially keep in places that the cats cannot get to. I had one scare where my girl Lucy ate a dried leaf from a caladium and the vet did not know what to do which was super scary. He told me it isn't possible to get a cat to vomit but I was able to, feeding her a lot of wet food mixed with milk. I was told that if the leaf was fresh off of the plant as opposed to dried she could have been much sicker.
I do not think there is going to be some huge influx of readers here as this is my first post but I do want to let whoever does come here know that you can ask me questions and I will do my best to answer them while keeping some semblance of personal privacy on my end. I want you to give me suggestions as to what topics you might want to read about or what things interest you. For instance, what is more fun to you: getting a plant tour room by room or categories of plants/things such as "only peperomias" or "what is in my terrariums"? I will try my hardest to not make anyone feel bait-and-switched as it is one of my least favorite things in the world when people tag every "it" plant in their instagram post but none or maybe one of those plants is even included in the post itself. That just seems so sleazy and dishonest to me and I have a personal moral code of ethics that just does not allow me to feel as though I could ever even attempt to pull-one-over on anyone, that feels gross.
What I can say is that I have always really enjoyed plants and want to share my love of plants and findings from owning and caring for them with others. This whole obsession started out when I was little and my grandmother always had more than a dozen houseplants as well as a full, gorgeous garden out back. She still has a majority of those same plants which I hope to one day inherit and continue their happy lives. It is nice to have another plant person in my family to talk to and to give cuttings to on occasion. The rest of my family (immediate and extended) cannot keep a plant alive if their own life depended on it or just simply are disinterested.
The last time I counted my plants was well over a year ago, on a day where there was so much snow in my town that my workplace was closed and I was snowed-in. I am waiting for the same opportunity to occur this year to have an entire day to set aside with no prior commitments to recount. My estimate is over 200 plants but I really do not know and quite frankly am a little afraid to find out. I do keep a little notepad with the names of every plant I purchase and the month/year I purchased it. I am going to work on getting those in a spreadsheet this winter as well. I am also sure that my husband will not be thrilled by the number of plants I have once that is determined. He is also not a plant person. As much as I try to force it upon him, it doesn't stick.
I think the only areas in our 1,392 square foot house that don't have plants are my husband's office, our very damp, scary unfinished basement that we avoid going in at all costs and our attic which does not have a pull down ladder and we do not have a chair tall enough to safely climb in there. Quite frankly, I think I hear animals in there sometimes and I am apprehensive to borrow a ladder because I am afraid that a bat or oppossum or something will dive-bomb my head when I open the latch. This isn't to say that I am not also fascinated at the idea of what could be stored up there (this is a rental house) and am constantly telling my husband we need to get up there.
I recently noticed after a year of living here that from the outside of our house there is a chimney flue but we don't have a chimney on the ground level or upstairs. The attic has windows which suggest there could be a whole stand-up walk-in room up there that we are not utilizing. This makes me crazy curious. I did not want to divulge too much in this first blog post and scare everyone off but I like weird things. For instance, I collect taxidermy and mannequins and really enjoy reading about serial killers and wondering what makes them tick. Part of this feeds into my obsession with the attic as I wonder if there is some weird stuff up there from previous renters or possibly the previous renters themselves, who knows! -spooooooky-
You may think that having this many houseplants means my house looks like a jungle. Although I am sure my husband would refer to it that way as anything over five plants seems overwhelming to him but a lot of the people I follow on social media and youtube really do not start having that jungle-vibe indoors until well past 700 plants. I am certainly not at that level for many reasons: financially, I cannot purchase that volume of plants on my paycheck, I do not know enough plant people to get cuttings from, my marriage would pretty much end if I suffocated my husband with plants (I swear he is supportive of me but he is also a person with personal space needs that I need to skirt around) and one of the biggest factors here, I have cats.
I have two cats who I am sure I will picture at some point and one of them loves to attempt to eat any plant she can get her little chiclet-teeth onto. I have to keep my plants high up and confined to the perimeters of rooms to keep them as safe as I can from the cats and alternatively, to keep the cats safe from the plants. There are numerous plants that are pretty toxic/poisonous to cats which I especially keep in places that the cats cannot get to. I had one scare where my girl Lucy ate a dried leaf from a caladium and the vet did not know what to do which was super scary. He told me it isn't possible to get a cat to vomit but I was able to, feeding her a lot of wet food mixed with milk. I was told that if the leaf was fresh off of the plant as opposed to dried she could have been much sicker.
I do not think there is going to be some huge influx of readers here as this is my first post but I do want to let whoever does come here know that you can ask me questions and I will do my best to answer them while keeping some semblance of personal privacy on my end. I want you to give me suggestions as to what topics you might want to read about or what things interest you. For instance, what is more fun to you: getting a plant tour room by room or categories of plants/things such as "only peperomias" or "what is in my terrariums"? I will try my hardest to not make anyone feel bait-and-switched as it is one of my least favorite things in the world when people tag every "it" plant in their instagram post but none or maybe one of those plants is even included in the post itself. That just seems so sleazy and dishonest to me and I have a personal moral code of ethics that just does not allow me to feel as though I could ever even attempt to pull-one-over on anyone, that feels gross.
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