Gardening: My New Found Love!

I never consider myself as someone who would go crazy over plants. I do appreciate flowers and I love them, I even attended a flower arrangement workshop but I don't have the time and patience to raise and care for them. That is my mom's job! I guarantee you, she's a certified gardener and a green thumb. She's grown vegetables and fruits, flowers, and ornamental plants.

My mother-in-law love plants as well, she's into cacti and succulents for several years now. However, my first encounter with them when we went home to my in-laws for the Holidays wasn't that special at all. For some reason I don't and can't find the beauty in them. I didn't understand the fondness my MIL has on her CnS collection. Until recently.

mother-in-law's collection

My family's yearly Holiday visits must've helped a lot. Her cacti and succulent slowly grew on me and find myself closely appreciating each one's unique beauty. I also started taking pictures of them so I could have my little souvenir from our vacation.

Then one day, May 2018, while inside the mall, my mom and I saw succulents being sold. And you've guessed it right! We bought our very first CnS! We also went home with an air plant. I'm amazed that we finally have our own. But that doesn't mean that I'm hands-on with the new babies. Because I don't have the time and I am just merely appreciating them, they were under my mom's care.

the first ones - rose cabbage or blue rose imbricata, black prince, potato cactus

Fast forward January 2019, as we they've grown in numbers from the additional CnS courtesy of my cousin and my dad, my mom couldn't take care of them anymore. She was so busy with her small farm growing and harvesting vegetables, and sad to say they were slightly neglected. Though they say that cactus and succulents thrive even when neglected, still I felt the sadness in them. That's the time I finally took over.

I gathered all of them and see what can be saved and what needs to go. I started rehabilitating the succulents and repotted some of the plants. Sadly, we lost one of my favorite portulaca succulent plant because of it's long exposure during the January rain and mealy bug infestation, I just couldn't revive it anymore. And the biggest assignment that I did was to identify each one of them so I could have enough information on their proper care.

09.01.18 - portulaca grandiflora fairytales cinderella

02.15.19 - overwatered by rain and infested with mealy bugs ☹

Now that it's been 3 months, I can say that I'm doing pretty good with them. The CnS family is growing bigger as well, there are a lot that has been added in the collection and a few that has been propagated too. I am now a certified plant mom and I'm loving it!