It’s been about three months since my last house plant journal update, so I thought I’d share some recent photos. I briefly started a separate Instagram account for all things house plant related, but to be honest I am feeling a little bit overwhelmed by Instagram and I’m not sure keeping two accounts is something I want to do at the moment as I end up spending too much time in app which leaves me feeling distracted and irritable. It’s such a busy, noisy app, and really commercial what with the new shopping tab taking prime position in the user interface.
The Instagram plant community is really friendly and positive, but as with all hobbies these days there are also lots of influencers who make their money through product placement and advertising, and I am trying to limit my exposure to these things as I personally feel happiest that way. Despite my best intentions and awareness of behavioural psychology and the power of advertising, I’m human. It’s all too easy to see a beautiful plant I’ve never heard of and then think I need it when the reality is I don’t, and nor do I have the space or conditions to look after it properly. So, for the time being I will just share house plant things here on my blog. My collection is small, made up of common plants, and I have set a limit on how many plants I can keep at any one time to keep things from getting out of hand. The plants I have make me happy, and that is enough.
New leaves on my pilea peperomioides after I gave it a few drops of fertiliser. It’s really quite dark inside now that we’re through to November, and some of the lower leaves were starting to turn yellow and drop off. I knew it wasn’t from overwatering as I’ve really got a handle on that now, but thought a little bit of food might help make it happier as I grow my plants in a soil free mix – coir, perlite and bark – and thought it might be short on nutrients as I hadn’t fed it since early September.
I have to laugh at myself for fitting the stereotype of my generation. In my defence, my collection of succulents is quite small and only takes up a tiny corner of one room of my home. I can also put them out on the balcony when it’s warm. I never thought I’d be interested in houseplants – chuckling at the couple who live opposite and have blocked their entire window and all natural light in their flat with a collection of huge plants – but I found myself craving something green while both botanical gardens were shut during the first wave of the pandemic, and so here we are.
Saturday is treat day, and so yesterday afternoon I made a strawberry cheesecake. I’ve made a raw vegan strawberry cheesecake before, but I couldn’t find the recipe for it and so I looked online for some ideas. I found this recipe on the Sainsbury’s website, and loosely followed it to get an idea for proportions. The final cheesecake is very different to the Sainsbury’s recipe though, so I thought I would write it down and share it here on my blog so that I can remember the changes I made next time I want to make one. It’s a very simple recipe and you can’t go too far wrong. I’ve also included suggestions for ingredient swaps if you don’t have something on the list. The basic idea for this cake is a smoothie poured over a pressed almond and date base, and then frozen to set. You don’t have to use strawberries, you could also make it with blueberries, peaches, blackberries, or any other soft fruit you have to hand.
On the way to town to buy birthday cards on Sunday afternoon, a man stopped us to ask if we were local and if so, where he could go for some lunch. Reliant on a walking frame he explained that he couldn’t go very far and that he wasn’t familiar with Birmingham, but that he happened to end up here as a result of a mix up with the trains. The question, it turns out, wasn’t really about lunch, but rather an excuse to start up a conversation. Step by painful step we continued in the same direction as him for some twenty minutes, covering just twenty metres in that time, but also more than twenty years of his memories. Love, loss, disability, loneliness, despair and the cost of living, but also his love of classics, philosophy, and memories of all the places he has called home over the fifty seasons he’s seen come and go.
