You Grow Girl™

Thursday night I went to Canada Blooms. The theme for this year's show was "a Symphony of Garden's" and as a result all displays explored the theme of music. In years past there was always at least one garden that was really interesting or exciting. Sadly this year there was nothing that held my attention for longer than a few minutes. By far the best garden was a small, string instrument shaped bed that held really long, textural grass and flowering native plants. I was impressed with the fact that the designers had managed to acquire wild flowers such as columbine and jack-in-the-pulpit in bloom rather than relying on the same old forced bulb plants that are consistently over-used every year. The long, wavy grass was certainly the most striking aspect and drew people in to bend down and touch it. Maybe this is the start of a trend towards the unmanicured lawn... The obsessive compulsives may have a hard go of it though.

As usual my favourite part by far was the market place. And as usual I went crazy and bought a bunch of new plants. I knew the shopping was going to be good as soon as I entered the first floor of the show. The first booth that caught my eye was a wonderland of large, phallic nepenthes of varying species hanging from the ceiling. At $22.00 each I couldn't resist buying one. If I had the space I could have purchased one of every kind. But I settled on the one pictured here which I have surmised is called Nepenthes Maximus. How's that for phallic? Actually as an aside a friend of mine commented that the under-developed pitchers looked like penises and the fully developed ones like vaginas. Anyways, the leaves of the maximus are really different from my alata. They are really wide and have some red colouration along the edges. It is so beautiful. The pitchers are green with red spots and toothy wings down the front. The lid has a small "tooth-like" bit. The plant has several healthy pitchers on it, all in varying stages of development. It's really fascinating to see how the change and develop. I've already spent quite a lot of time inspecting the plant and photographing it from every angle.

Sundew

I bought so many interesting plants it's hard for me to decide which I like better. One of my most exciting finds was a sundew (Drosera). I have been wanting a sundew desperately. They are so fascinating with their tiny little pads covered in teeny droplets of sticky acid. Sometimes the pads look green, but then when the light catches them you see that the dew is red. In The Savage Garden, Peter D'Amato has a brilliant introduction to them.

"If an insect ever evolved the brains to write a horror novel, the monster in that novel would probably be a sundew.

Sundews are innocent-looking and pretty, their delicate leaves sparkling with the promise of sweet nectar, but the foolish insect curious enough to give a sundew the slightest touch will suddenly find itself caught in a living nightmare. Doomed to a horrible death, the insect may struggle for a blessed few minutes or suffer for untold hours as it tried to break free of ensnaring, suffocating glue, grasping tenacles, and burning acids and enzymes; meanwhile, its precious bodily fluids are slowly sucked dry. Mother Nature hopefully had psychiatric care after she designed the sundews."

I have also spent an insane amount of time insepcting my sundew. I'm planning to keep it in the crappy cup with lid contraption it came in because I'm going away this Thursday for 9 days. I'm concerned that without the cup the poor plant won't get the humidity it requires and I won't be around to check on it.

Well I should have waited before leaping and buying the sarracenia. One of the stores had a large assortment of very healthy specimens at their booth for the same price I paid for my half-dead one. Needless to say I bought another one. I felt it may be my last chance for a logn time to get one and if the first one doesn't make it, I won't be as heartbroken. The new one has alot more red in the leaves so it is a little bit different.

My final plant purchase was a Paphiopedilum orchid with beautiful leaves. The actual flower is green (I love green flowers) but the leaves on their own are spectacular. The plant I purchased does not currently have a flower so it will be a real acheivement if I get it to bloom. I've been practicing memorising the name as a cheap way to "make friends and influence people", but have already found myself resorting to the short "Paph" because Paphiopedilum is really tough to remember.

The only other purchase I made at the show were some lithops seeds and my VERY FAVOURITE basil 'Siam Queen'. I will be growing alot of that one this year as we only had one small plant last year and were forced to ration it out in tiny increments. Of course I opened up the lithops seed packet as soon as I got home. I have a habit of opening seed packets just to see what they look like even though I know I'm not going to sow them any time soon. I have even purchased seeds JUST to see what they looked like so... The lithops by-the-way looked like sand they are so microscopically tiny.