New Succulents!

I recently bought several new succulent varieties off of my succulent wish list. They arrived last week and are nicely potted up and doing well, so here are some pictures!

 This first one is a Euphorbia milii, also known as Crown of Thorns. According to legend this is the plant that Jesus' crown of thorns was made of. The variety I bought has yellow flowers, but they also come in red!

 This is an Adenium arabicum. They make much bigger caudexes than Adenium obesum. The variety I bought is from Oman.

 This is an Astroloba foliolosa. I don't know a whole lot about these plants, but I bought it because it looks really cool! I like these funky columnar varieties.

 Here is a Haworthia nigra. It's the smallest of the plants I bought right now, but eventually will grow to be larger and more columnar. Hopefully it will thrive; apparently these guys can be very prone to root rot.

 This is a Haworthia viscosa, already branching and columnar. I really like these columnar varieties, they are just so cool!

Lastly, this is a Euphorbia bupleurifolia. It's also called the Pinecone Plant because its base looks like a pinecone. It actually prefers partial shade unlike some of the other Euphorbias.

Seed Starting Round 1

I took a couple of days off of work this week so I could have a long weekend. As it just so happened, today was the major day to start a bunch of my seeds. I'd previously started my tomatoes a couple weeks prior in a fit of impatience, so I started off by transplanting the seedlings into plastic cups. I also moved my alpine strawberry seedlings into a bigger pot. Then I started working with my seeds. Today I sowed Sweet Basil, Dark Opal Basil, Sweet Marjoram, Cabbage, Chinese Lantern, Bee Balm, Chamomile, and common Milkweed.
Then later in the afternoon, the mail ran! I got a package of seeds from my awesome friend Katie. So I have more seeds to start tomorrow! I'll be sowing Crimson King Basil, Christmas Basil, Ground Cherry, Lamb's Ear, Lemon Balm, Black Moon pansies, and Bowles Black violas. She also sent me Black Velvet Nasturtium, which I have to wait to sow until after my last frost date, and Pink Banana seeds, which have to soak for a couple of days before I can sow them.
I love starting seeds! It's a lot of fun and very relaxing to me. I love watching and waiting for the seedlings to emerge. It's so cool to me that I can begin with tiny little seeds and end up with a load of food after nurturing them.

Even more indoor plants!

Have some more indoor plants! I have no idea what the first two are. 

 But the next one is a Ledebouria socialis. Apparently it actually likes a lot of water.

 And this is a huge Epiphyllum I was able to get on sale! I won't know what kind until it flowers.

More indoor plants

It's still been incredibly cold up until about this week. Spring might finally be on the way, but of course it can't just happen. It's snowing right now as I'm typing this. So my outdoor garden is still waiting to happen. I cracked and bought a bunch of indoor plants because I just can't stand waiting for outdoor gardening! Here are some of my new additions to my collection. 

 It's a lucky bamboo, which isn't bamboo at all but a member of the Dracaena family. I've never had one of these before so I had to buy one.

 I didn't know what exactly this was when I bought it, but I've been told it's an Aloe aristata. It's got kind of plump leaves with a tinge of red on the edges.

And this is a Crassula perforata. Again, I wasn't sure what it was when I bought it, but I really like these neat columnar succulents and have a bunch of them on my wishlist. So it made sense to buy this guy!