Disaster Strikes and History Repeats Itself

Well, well, well, look what we have here. A plant update/disaster story courtesy of Princess, my clueless 15-year-old cocker spaniel.

Here she decided Andrew's backpack would make a great dog bed

She's deaf, going blind, and slides a bit when she walks because she doesn't have 100% muscle control anymore but she's generally really healthy considering her age. She's always on the hunt for food, or whatever she thinks is food, and is rarely ever looking forward or up. In her world it's eyes on the floor = eyes on prize (possibly food, though it's mostly dog hair).

I'm not entirely sure if Princess mistook my hands being filled with plants as my hands being filled with treats, or if she was just scanning the floor for never-even-there crumbs. Either way, she knocked into me and when I couldn't recover fast enough, I tripped. This happens countless times every single day. Andrew and I are constantly tripping over her, but this time I tripped while moving my leaf cuttings from one window sill to another and, thus, disaster struck.

It took me quite a while to clean up the mess and go through each cutting while playing plant surgeon. After two long hours of babying the leaves and the tiny plants growing from them, I ended up with a few new arrangements. Admittedly, they look super cute with their little toothpick supports even if it's sad they need them.

Because I mist the plants I don't think drainage will be an issue this time around, I just hope they're not in shock/on the brink of death. So many tiny leaves broke off and now I'm guessing all of their energy will be put into recovery versus growth. I'll be happy as long as they don't all die.

The leaf cuttings and plants which were totally unaffected by Princess' wrath are still going strong. Some have been late bloomers but now have wild hot pink roots growing in every direction after looking like this only a month ago.

One of my lithops is worrying me a bit; same goes for my Split Rock. Both have gone wrinkly all of a sudden despite both only being watered once. I'm not totally sure, but I think the misting of nearby plants may be the culprit. I hope they make it...

And here I thought this single leaf I knocked off a couple weeks ago was a tragedy! I post progress shots on Instagram if you'd like to see these little guys growing in between posts, and I've blogged about them in July and August. It's all so cute and stressful! Can you believe they survived this just last Friday?