Three weeks from today!

Three weeks from today we leave home.

Although I am excited about our trip, I’m also a little bored with it. I have been spending so much time planning my wardrobe, planning the tours, reading books, thinking about what I might want to buy and for whom that I think I need a break. But it’s getting closer and closer so I don’t really have time for a break!

So what have I accomplished, for example, TODAY? I pruned our Adenium. That was really major as I always worry that I will kill the poor plant if I do it wrong. I was a bit bolstered by our poor Rock Fig as it got freezer (yes, Tucson does get cold enough that we have to bring plants inside) burn that Randy was sure killed it (we left it out ONE night too long) because shortly after we brought it in the house it dropped all its leaves and just looked SO forlorn. But I kept giving it a bit of water every couple of weeks and the branches were kind of bendy, not brittle, so I thought it was OK and—ta da! It is! A couple of weeks ago I saw a few lonely little leaves so I decided to trim it back a bit. After its brush with death, how much could I hurt it? So I went a little crazy and it has the Rock Fig equivalent of a brush cut. Those of you not in the military may not have any idea what that is. Ask your father. Lots of little leaves are poking out and we’ve put it back outside and given the poor thing a bit of fertilizer.

So now the Adenium is desperately trying so hard to bloom that I think it must be time to water it. It has had no water since October when we brought it in the house because the nighttime temperatures were dropping into the 40s (5-10C). It hibernates in the winter and needs NO water. In fact water might damage it if it gets too much (or even any) while it’s hibernating. I know, I know, plants don’t hibernate!

Anyway, it’s putting out a bloom here and a bloom there and tomorrow we’ll move it outside and I’m betting that when I give it water and some fertilizer it will explode with blossoms. I’ve a before picture and I’ll try to post another before we leave in three weeks.