141:365 In the Plant Room . . .

This could be pretty much any room in my house, since there are a lot of plants here. But I have a light cart full of African violets in my guest room, and that's where this photo was taken.

I groomed all the plants in the guest room, most of which were in bloom - this is what it looks like when you do a lot of grooming work all at one time. There are blossoms from a lot of different plants - Fresh Air, Smooch Me, Mid-America, Powwow, Sansoucy' Coco, Gail, Milang Skies and Sapphire Halo and probably a few other varieties under all those leaves.

I spent about 6 hours with my plants today - repotting some, and separating and potting up an entire tray of plantlets that had been languishing since last August . . . that's kind of embarrassing to admit, since I'm a show grower and also a Senior Judge for the African Violet Society of America :-D If you look closely, you can see that some of these were actually in bloom under the dome. I didn't keep all those babies - I just kept the best one (occasionally best two) of each variety that was in the tray.

I shifted things around and moved some plants upstairs and some down - it's interesting to me to see how they grow in each location - it's clear that some of the plants do not like the basement light cart. It's cooler down there, so I'm moving most of the variegated plants downstairs because they generally like the cooler temps.

Violets are kind of like poodles in that they come in miniature, semi-miniature and standard sizes :-D I grow mostly standards, but I have a few semis. Minis and I don't get along very well, though.

I always feel better after I do this work - something about having my hands in the dirt, I guess. There is more for me to do tomorrow - mostly repotting now that all the plantlets are potted up. I probably should have gone outside and power-washed the deck, but I didn't . . . but I'm really glad I got this plant work accomplished.