Friday, March 15, 2019

A Hen & Chicks Weekly Link Round-Up




On our visit to the Desert Botanical Garden at the end of February, I saw two things at the gift shop that just had to come home with me. One was a plant, a succulent that my grandmother always called "hen and chicks." It had been years since I'd seen that particular succulent, and the memories of my grandmother came back to me so strongly that I couldn't swallow for the huge lump in my throat.

Hen and chicks loved my grandmother. I think most of us have a plant that we just can't kill. (Some of us just haven't found it yet.) For example, I had a spider plant that almost took over my bedroom. It was like living in a jungle.The thing was huge and just kept popping out babies. Supposedly the conditions were not ideal for spider plants in my bedroom, but the one I had ignored the odds. My grandmother was the same way with hen and chicks. Hers would just keep sending out little chicks, and it's obvious that the plants were thrilled with their home.

Once my grandmother came home from an estate sale with six planters shaped like old boots. She cleaned them up and then didn't know how she was going to display them. My grandparents had a deck off their kitchen that had two different sets of steps... three steps up on both. I looked at the steps. Looked at the boot planters. Looked at my grandmother. "Have them climb up the steps on one side and down the steps on the other," I suggested, and that's what she did. Half the boots had impatiens and the other half hen and chicks. I wish I'd brought at least one of those boot planters with me to Arizona when she died.



Here are my hen and chicks soaking up the sun at the office window-- along with their guard iguana from the same gift shop. I think they're happy because I took that photo a couple of weeks ago, and they've grown a lot since then. Denis had never seen anything like them before and keeps a close eye on them. He swears I'm going to have to buy a bigger pot soon. Perhaps I have more of my grandmother's green thumb than I thought...



►Books & Other Interesting Tidbits◄


►Channeling My Inner Indiana Jones◄


►Channeling My Inner Elly Mae Clampett◄
  • Trump's wall threatens 93 endangered species.
  • A teenager transformed this 22-acre island into a summer home for a lovable bunch of bunnies
  • This talking crow asks people passing by on the street "Y'all right, love?" in a strong Yorkshire accent. 
  • Golf courses across the U.S. step up to save Monarch butterflies.
  • Tigers don't eat humans, so why did this one kill over four hundred people? 
  • A loophole in Australian federal law allows one million tons of sludge to be dumped on the Great Barrier Reef
  • The decades-long political fight to save the Grand Canyon. (And the threats never stop.)

►Fascinating Folk◄

►The Happy Wanderer◄

►I ♥ Lists◄
  • Fifteen of the greatest "twists" ever written.
  • Nine mysteries that will take you on a journey from Paris to the south of France.
  • Twenty unusual things that famous people did.
  • Fifteen animal names that can be used as verbs.
  • The top fifteen global brands ranked annually from 2000 through 2018 in order of determined valuation.
  • 100 words turning 100 this year.



That's all for this week! Don't forget to stop by next Friday when I'll be sharing a freshly selected batch of links for your surfing pleasure.

Have a great weekend, and read something fabulous!


6 comments:

  1. I love that succulent, Cathy. It's beautiful, and it's nice that it's growing well for you. I have to admit I've never had much of a green thumb, myself. I guess it's just not in some people's DNA or something.. . Anyway, I'm off to Monte Alban... ;-)

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  2. Love your 'hen and chicks' and love the story about your grandmother. I have no green thumb at all. At all. However, there was one plant that I had (not sure why I even had a plant) that got left in the garage over the winter accidentally. I think we had moved and it was tucked behind something. It was one that my paternal grandmother (not a gardener at all) had enjoyed because she couldn't kill it. I can't remember what she called the plant, but anyway, the one in our garage was still alive months after having been forgotten. I decided that maybe I had a little of my grandmother in me too. Also love your 'guard'.

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    1. I remember someone else telling me about a plant just like that. How it survived without being watered, I'll never know!

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  3. Do the hens and chicks ever bloom flowers? Or just more little plants? I'm asking because I just had an allergic response to a flowering plant I have and am trying to find some more plants that won't stir up the histamines.

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    1. I've never seen them with flowers, just with tiny "babies" popping out hither and yon. Mine has three new babies now.

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