Around the Island

Gardening With Galligan: More about succulents

CAROL GALLIGAN PHOTO | Here’s a poor photograph (sorry!) of my 25 babies. I think they’re wonderful!
CAROL GALLIGAN PHOTO | Here’s a poor photograph (sorry!) of my 25 babies. I think they’re wonderful!

Progress report as follows: I am still completely in love with my succulents. But I’m also still convinced they have come to us from another world. I am, after all, an experienced gardener, who thinks she knows about plants. And yet all my instincts here are basically mistaken. I keep checking with the experts and indeed, yes, they are mistaken. I gaze at the little plants fondly and want to do something for them. Feed them? No. You used Rootone when you planted them and that’s it, nothing more, so no. Water? No. Shouldn’t I maybe just mist them? Wouldn’t they like that? No. They wouldn’t. I’m trying hard to absorb this, but I grew up on Earth and not on that distant planet whence they came.

Anyway. Moving on. Further progress. Amazon has a wonderful assortment of teeny baby plants that come in teeny pots, an inch and a half square. Twenty-five plants for $25. I bought them and they arrived in very good shape, only slightly dusty from soil shifting in transit, but otherwise fine. I cleaned them up with a pastry brush and have to confess, I did, indeed water them, but after all, they’d been shipped. But I noted the date and didn’t do it again for two weeks, so I’m gaining some self control. I also bought white sand and shiny black pebbles. I’m going to buy shiny white pebbles soon.

Then had several “clay dates” with Stephanie Sareyani, made three shallow containers, and glazed them black. They looked great and I planted them almost immediately, along with the black pebbles. I made what I hoped would look like a small stream out of the white sand, thinking it might look like rushing water. I’m not sure it really does. Some guests thought it did, but after all, what could they say, I’d just made them dinner. I’m waiting for family to arrive. And imagining the conversation.

“What’s the white stuff, Nan?”

“Garden sand.”

“What’s it doing there?”

“I wanted it to look like a stream running through it, you know, like white tumbling water.”

“Oh.”

“You don’t think it does?”

Lengthy silence.

“It looks like white sand. Very nice white sand, but I just wondered what it was doing there.”

Well, it might require a leap of imagination. But the good thing about all of this is, you can just dump the container into the garbage and start again! Twenty-five plants for $25? Make as many mistakes as you want.

Update on my log/planter: holes getting deeper and last week I had a major breakthrough. As the hole was getting deeper, it was also getting harder to gauge, for lack of a better term. Then it occurred to me to fill the holes with water and that the water would maybe soften the wood as it very slowly drained through. That’s what happened and my progress has improved markedly. I may be ready to plant in two weeks, or maybe three, but soon enough for the next column, last week of June. So I’ll keep you posted.

And finally: the latest obsessive notion. I noticed on a roadside and I’m not going to tell you where for obvious reasons, what appeared to be a fallen birch tree. I pulled over, got out of the car and went to look. It was. Now the fact is that behind my sofa is a long black sofa table. The top has several nice things on it and pleases me. The table has a lower shelf. The lower shelf is empty and does not please me. Nothing I put there looks right. Everything I’ve tried is always  too short, always too something. But it might be just right for a four and a half foot (I measured it)  length of the birch tree, planted with succulents.

So Sunday morning when my garden helper, he with the major power tools and upper arm strength, arrives, I think it’s time to reconnoiter the birch tree. I’ll keep you posted.