Plants of happiness

I'm really enjoying the plants I have in my little house and yard. One of my newest is this orange tree we bought on sale because the nursery had left it out during a freeze, and all the leaves were frosted off. They're coming back to life and looking very nice now:


I'm really pleased with this one, because I thought I had lost it. I had planted this avocado seed, which had sprouted into a little tree about three inches tall, and an unexpected frost seemed to have killed it. But recently, when I went out to pull weeds in preparation for my spring garden, I found that it had survived, and sent up a new shoot:



Notice to the right is a new baby plant that I was trying to replace it with - another seed.

And finally, my little potted ocotillo. Sonya, my caving friend from from the Dallas area, shared a cutting from her ocotillo a few years ago, and I put it in cactus potting soil, and carefully misted it until it could grow some roots. It hadn't leafed out in a while, so I was afraid it was dead this time, but you never know with ocotillo, and it leafed out again to my delight:



I love plants.

Our baby ocotillo has established its root system. I've never managed to grow one of these, my favorite desert plants, from a seed. But a friend gave me a cutting from hers, and I stuck it in the dirt and misted the stalk daily. It grew a leaf or two to prove it was still alive, and eventually the leaf turned yellow. So instead of misting it, I watered the dirt it was planted in, and just as they do in the desert, it leafed out within an hour or two, to take advantage of the "rain" it had just received.

Some day, if I take care of it, this little baby should grow to a magnificent tree. Yes, the ocotillo is not a cactus, it is a tree. You can tell when one is alive by looking for a green stripe running its length. The little curly "thorn" is actually a future leaf. The thorn on the end is where the plant will grow taller next time it rains.